One Heavy Medal

All human beings should have a medal,
A god cannot carry it, he is not able.

--Stevie Smith

One Wasted Treasure

I have lived and I have loved;
I have waked and I have slept;
I have sung and I have danced;
I have smiled and I have wept;
I have won and wasted treasure;
I have had my fill of pleasure;
And all these things were weariness,
And some of them were dreariness.
And all these things, but two things,
Were emptiness and pain:
And Love--it was the best of them;
And Sleep--worth all the rest of them.

--Anonymous

One Enthusiastic Crowd

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul."

--Soren Kierkegaard

One Fading Power

The poet...must use his special abilities to disappear.

--Stephen Burt

One Free Flower

from The Book of Hours
By Rainer Maria Rilke

And so they say: my life, my wife, my child,
my dog, well knowing all that they have styled
their own: life, wife, child, dog, remain
shapes foreign and unknown,
that blindly groping they must stumble on...

...in the beggary of their wandering
they cannot claim a bond with any thing,
but, driven from possessions they have prized,
not by their own belongings recognized,
they can own wives no more than they own flowers
whose life is alien and apart from ours.

--Translated by Babette Deutsch

One Abstract Eyeball

The Vision of Willie Yeats
By Louise Bogan

Suddenly into my chamber, I certainly would be at a loss to say from where,
A large roomy animal with mad abstract eyes, and considerable concrete hair
Advanced towards me with astronomical slowness, as I sat glued to my Byzantine chair.
While the sizzle of either Mrs. Yeats frying sausages, or sausages frying Mrs. Yeats, slouched up the winding stair.

One Good Letter

I have conquered, and shall go on conquering.

--William Blake

One Reliable Debtor

To nothing fitter can I thee compare
Than to the son of some rich penny-father,
Who, having now brought on his end with care,
Leaves to his son all he had heap'd together;
This new-rich novice, lavish of his chest,
To one man gives, doth on another spend,
Then here he riots, yet among the rest
Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.
Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste,
False friends thy kindness, born but to deceive thee,
Thy love that is on the unworthy plac'd,
Time hath thy beauty, which with age will leave thee;
Only that little which to me was lent
I give thee back, when all the rest is spent.

--Michael Drayton

One Slight Doom

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

--J. D. Salinger

One Fell Impaler

Fate slew Him, but He did not drop --
She felled -- He did not fall --
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all --

She stung Him -- sapped His firm Advance --
But when Her Worst was done
And He -- unmoved -- regarded Her --
Acknowledged Him a Man.

--Emily Dickinson

One Stymied Lobe

They make you sit up and not think, which is perhaps the real point of poetry.

--Colm Toibin

One Handy Book

We are happy, we are merry:
We got a rhyming dictionary.

--Bart Simpson

One Broken Blue

from Love Under House Arrest
By Nizar Qabbani

I ask your leave to go
for the blood I used to think would never turn to water
has turned to water
and the sky whose blue crystal I used to think
could not break...has broken


....and the words
I used to cover you with when you slept
have fled like frightened birds
and left you naked.

Translated by Lena Jayyusi and W.S. Merwin ~ Book

One Clear View

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

--John Ruskin

One Floating Shadow

from Carillon
By Tomas Transtromer

I lie on the bed with my arms outstretched
I am an anchor that has dug itself down
and holds steady the huge shadow
floating up there

the great unknown
that I am a part of
and which is certainly
more important than me.

-Translated by Robin Fulton

One Long Chime

Gather wood, build the bonfire high
I will give myself
only in bright light

Midnight. You are not here--
these blankets burn me like fire

All night
like a bell and with jewels
I chimed in your arms

Never fall asleep beside my body
I belong to those
who keep vigil over me

If I strangle that rooster
will you lie longer
in my arms


--Pashto landays, versions by Laura Sheahen

One Defeatable Wall

The wall is high
but my beloved is tall

--Qahar Asi

One Familiar Smell

Myth
By Muriel Rukeyser

Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was
the Sphinx. Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question.
Why didn't I recognize my mother?" "You gave the
wrong answer," said the Sphinx. "But that was what
made everything possible," said Oedipus. "No," she said.
"When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man. You didn't say anything about woman."
"When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women
too. Everyone knows that." She said, "That's what
you think."

One Damned Gender

from Sestina: Altaforte
By Ezra Pound

...And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace
His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing....


There's no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle's rejoicing,
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges 'gainst The Leopard's rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry 'Peace!'

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear the swords clash!
Hell blot black for alway the thought 'Peace'!

One Veiled Arm

from Ghazal XV
By Ghalib

Almost none
of the beautiful faces
come back to be glimpsed for an instant in some flower

once the dust owns them

All day three stars
the Daughters of the Bier
hid in back of the light

then they step forth naked
but their minds are the black night

Sleep comes to him
peace belongs to him
the night is his

over whose arm your hair is spread

--Translated by W.S. Merwin