Jane Kenyon: "Philosophy in Warm Weather"

Now all the doors and windows
are open, and we move so easily
through the rooms. Cats roll
on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp
climbs the pane, pausing
to rub a leg over her head.

All around physical life reconvenes.
The molecules of our bodies must love
to exist: they whirl in circles
and seem to begrudge us nothing.
Heat, Horatio, heat makes them
put this antic disposition on!

This year's brown spider
sways over the door as I come
and go. A single poppy shouts
from the far field, and the crow,
beyond alarm, goes right on
pulling up the corn.

"Philosophy in Warm Weather" by Jane Kenyon. Text as published in The Boat Of Quiet Hours: Poems (Graywolf Press, 1986).

Art credit: "Sun Bathing Cat," photograph by Jason Irish.

Jane Kenyon: "Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow"

A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.
The one shrivelled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.
I happened to see it the moment it fell.

Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see you?

"Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow" by Jane Kenyon, from American Poetry Review (online edition, March/April 1985).

Art credit: "Apple in the Snow," photograph by Roger Lynn.

Jane Kenyon: "Happiness"

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

"Happiness" by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005.  

Image credit: "Prodigal Son," oil on canvas, by Oleg Korolev (originally color).

Jane Kenyon: "Peonies at Dusk"

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.

Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.

The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.

In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.

"Peonies at Dusk" by Jane Kenyon, from Constance: Poems. © Graywolf Press, 1993.

 Image credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Jane Kenyon: "Man Eating"

The man at the table across from mine
is eating yogurt. His eyes, following

the progress of the spoon, cross briefly
each time it nears his face. Time,

and the world with all its principalities,
might come to an end as prophesied
by the Apostle John, but what about
this man, so completely present

to the little carton with its cool,
sweet food, which has caused no animal
to suffer, and which he is eating
with a pearl-white plastic spoon.



"Man Eating" by Jane Kenyon, from Collected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005.

Photograph: Detail of an image by John Dowland (originally black and white).