#PoetryBreak: Anything Can Happen by Seamus Heaney

 

On the road to Teller, Alaska (M.A. Reilly, 2021j

Anything Can Happen

Seamus Heaney - 1939-2013

after Horace, Odes, I, 34.  

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
 
Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
 
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleeding on the next.
 
Ground gives. The heaven’s weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid.
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.

#PoetryBreak - Spring Morning

Spring (M.A. Reilly)

Spring Morning 

Marion Strobel

O day—if I could cup my hands and drink of you, 
And make this shining wonder be 
A part of me! 
O day! O day!
You lift and sway your colors on the sky 
Till I am crushed with beauty. Why is there 
More of reeling sunlit air 
Than I can breathe? Why is there sound 
In silence? Why is a singing wound 
About each hour? 
And perfume when there is no flower?
O day! O Day! How may I press 
Nearer to loveliness?