The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 8/21/06)

[RetroLounge]

The Spirit and the Soul

It should have been the family that lasted.
Should have been my sister and my peasant mother.
But it was not. They were the affection,
not the journey. It could have been my father,
but he died too soon. Gelmetti and Gregg
and Nogami lasted. It was the newness of me,
and the newness after that, and newness again.
It was the important love and the serious lust.
It was Pittsburgh that lasted. The iron and fog
and sooty brick houses. Not Aunt Mince and Pearl,
but the black-and-white winters with their girth
and geological length of cold. Streets ripped
apart by ice and emerging like wounded beasts when
the snow finally left in April. Freight trains
with their steam locomotives working at night.
Summers the size of crusades. When I was a boy,
I saw downtown a large camera standing in front
of the William Pitt Hotel or pointed at Kaufmann’s
Department Store. Usually around midnight,
but the people still going by. The camera set
slow enough that cars and people left no trace.
The crowds in Rome and Tokyo and Manhattan
did not last. But the empty streets of Perugia,
my two bowls of bean soup on Kos, and Pimpaporn
Charionpanith lasted. The plain nakedness of Anna
in Denmark remains in me forever. The wet lilacs
on Highland Avenue when I was fourteen. Carrying
Michiko dead in my arms. It is not about the spirit.
The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul
is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged
under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate.
The way a child knows the world by putting it
part by part into his mouth. As I tried to gnaw
my way into the Lord, working to put my heart
against that heart. Lying in the wheat at night,
letting the rain after all the dry months have me.

Jack Gilbert


*******************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[wildhorses]

1. yes, indeed LIFE is not measured by the minutes that pass

but, by the moments that linger in our soul. very nice:hi:

[RetroLounge]

4. indeed

But the soul
is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged
under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate.

:hi:

RL

[miss_american_pie]

2. Thank you

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

3. You are (always) welcome...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Good morning, my dear RetroLounge..........

...As I tried to gnaw
my way into the Lord, working to put my heart
against that heart...

Hmmm....this is puzzling, but beautiful......

I can see several ways of interpreting it.........

I love the lines I quoted above........

Thank you.........:hug:

[RetroLounge]

7. ...

:hi:

RL

[idgiehkt]

6. man this guy is ON it.

"What lasted is what the soul ate.
The way a child knows the world by putting it
part by part into his mouth."

wow. I'd give anything to be able to write something like that. Where do people come up with this stuff...I mean just thinking it, and then even the thought of how to express it in words, which aren't the same as thinking which you know if you've ever tried to pull the words out of your head and put them on paper...they kind of contort and vaporize sometimes.

Thanks for posting this.