Poem: Glass of Water and Coffee Pot

Glass of Water and a Coffee Pot by Jean-Baptiste Simèon Chardin

after Chardin

These rooms of wood, of tongue-and-groove, open out
on a garden of white-washed walls and a maple tree,
a new Spring bright among the weathered stone and brick.
We find things that are old and used, well-made, well worn
and beautiful because of this. The balance
intimate between that glass of water’s clarity and light
and the pot’s grave darkness: an order so luminous
and fine you needn’t measure it with a rule, just look.
The papery whiteness of the garlic heads is the same light
held in the water glass, the same light lifting a gleam
from the blackened coffee pot that’s somehow managed
to make it through, to find harmony here
on this stone shelf, happiness of the hand and heart,
to keep its heat and still pour clean and true.

~ Robin Robertson

Poem: Glass of Water and Coffee Pot

Glass of Water and a Coffee Pot by Jean-Baptiste Simèon Chardin

after Chardin

These rooms of wood, of tongue-and-groove, open out
on a garden of white-washed walls and a maple tree,
a new Spring bright among the weathered stone and brick.
We find things that are old and used, well-made, well worn
and beautiful because of this. The balance
intimate between that glass of water’s clarity and light
and the pot’s grave darkness: an order so luminous
and fine you needn’t measure it with a rule, just look.
The papery whiteness of the garlic heads is the same light
held in the water glass, the same light lifting a gleam
from the blackened coffee pot that’s somehow managed
to make it through, to find harmony here
on this stone shelf, happiness of the hand and heart,
to keep its heat and still pour clean and true.

~ Robin Robertson

Your Hands

Image: Couple holding hands/penelopesoasis.com

I love your hands
which hold me,
held me,
for so many years
without
binding me,

hands which make
me master
without mastering me,

encircle
without
strangling me,

lift me
the way the drowning
man is lifted,

hands
whose cupped shells
change me

slowly slowly
into the pearl
they wanted
all the time.

~ Gevorg Emin
(translated by Diana Der Hovanessian)

Your Hands

Image: Couple holding hands/penelopesoasis.com

I love your hands
which hold me,
held me,
for so many years
without
binding me,

hands which make
me master
without mastering me,

encircle
without
strangling me,

lift me
the way the drowning
man is lifted,

hands
whose cupped shells
change me

slowly slowly
into the pearl
they wanted
all the time.

~ Gevorg Emin
(translated by Diana Der Hovanessian)

YOU BEGIN

Source: goodfon/Favim

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

~ Margaret Atwood
 

YOU BEGIN

Source: goodfon/Favim

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

~ Margaret Atwood