Poems and prompts for the month of April. The poems are chosen from www.poetryfoundation.org and from www.poemhunter.com. The prompts appear below each poem.

Pebble

The pebble
is a perfect creature

equal to itself
mindful of its limits

filled exactly
with a pebbly meaning

with a scent that does not remind one of anything
does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

its ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse
when I hold it in my hand
and its noble body
is permeated by false warmth

--Pebbles cannot be tamed
to the end they will look at us
with a calm and very clear eye

Zbigniew Herbert :

http://www.poemhunter.com/

Prompt: April 1, 2014:

Small Things: (write a list poem—you can be inventive with your list)

Summer in Calcutta

What is this drink but
The April sun, squeezed
Like an orange in
My glass? I sip the
Fire, I drink and drink
Again, I am drunk
Yes, but on the gold
Of suns, What noble
Venom now flows through
My veins and fills my
Mind with unhurried
Laughter? My worries
Doze. Wee bubbles ring
My glass, like a bride’s
Nervous smile, and meet
My lips. Dear, forgive
This moment’s lull in
Wanting you, the blur
In memory. How
Brief the term of my
Devotion, how brief
Your reign when I with
Glass in hand, drink, drink,
And drink again this
Juice of April suns.

Kamala Das

www.poemhunter.com

Poetry Prompt: April 2, 2014: “the little Tippler / Leaning against the – Sun!” ED. What are you drunk on?

When Autumn Came

by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
translated by Naomi Lazard

This is the way that autumn came to the trees:

it stripped them down to the skin,

left their ebony bodies naked.

It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,

scattered them over the ground.

Anyone could trample them out of shape

undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams

were exiled from their song,

each voice torn out of its throat.

They dropped into the dust

even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.

Bless these withered bodies

with the passion of your resurrection;

make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.

Let one bird sing.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19348#sthash.VxJfMpQ5.dpuf

Poetry Prompt for April 3, 2014: Write an ode to your favorite season.

Ode to My Socks

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Pablo Neruda

Poetry prompt for April 4, 2014: The truth about ______(fill in the blank).

An Eye, Open

by Paul Celan

Hours, May-coloured, cool.

The no more to be named, hot,

audible in the mouth.

No one’s voice, again.

Aching depth of the eyeball:

the lid

does not stand in its way, the lash

Does not count what goes in.

The tear, half,

the sharper lens, movable,

brings the images home to you.

Poetry Prompt for April 5, 2014: “Every pair of eyes facing you hasprobably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

Poem by: Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by: Sholeh Wolpé
Sky
The Wind will Blow Us Away
Inside my little night, alas,
the wind has a rendezvous with the leaves;
inside my little night, there is fear
and dread of desolation.
Listen.
Hear the darkness blow like wind?
I watch this prosperity through alien eyes.
I am addicted to my despair.
Listen.
Hear the darkness blow?
This minute, inside this night,
something’s coming to pass. The moon
is troubled and red; clouds
are a procession of mourners waiting
to release tears upon this rooftop,
this rooftop about to crumble, to give way.
A moment,
then, nothing.
Beyond this window, the night quivers,
and the earth once again halts its spin.
From beyond this window, the eyes
of the unknown are on you and me.
May you be green, head to toe—
put your hands like a fevered memory in mine…
these hands that love you.
And cede your lips
like a life-warmed feeling
to the caress of my lovesick lips.
The wind will one day blow us away.
The wind will blow us away.

Poetry prompt for April 6, 2014: like wind in the dunes

Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison

by Nazim Hikmet
translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing

If instead of being hanged by the neck

        you're thrown inside

        for not giving up hope

in the world, your country, and people,

        if you do ten or fifteen years

        apart from the time you have left,

you won't say,

               "Better I had swung from the end of a rope

                                              like a flag"--

you'll put your foot down and live.

It may not be a pleasure exactly,

but it's your solemn duty

        to live one more day

                       to spite the enemy.

Part of you may live alone inside,

               like a stone at the bottom of a well.

But the other part

        must be so caught up

        in the flurry of the world

             that you shiver there inside

     when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves.

To wait for letters inside,

to sing sad songs,

or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling

                              is sweet but dangerous.

Look at your face from shave to shave,

forget your age,

watch out for lice

                       and for spring nights,

       and always remember

              to eat every last piece of bread--

also, don't forget to laugh heartily.

And who knows,

the woman you love may stop loving you.

Don't say it's no big thing:

it's like the snapping of a green branch

                                             to the man inside.

To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,

to think of seas and mountains is good.

Read and write without rest,

and I also advise weaving

and making mirrors.

I mean, it's not that you can't pass

        ten or fifteen years inside

                                       and more--

               you can,

               as long as the jewel

               on the left side of your chest doesn't lose its luster!

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15821#sthash.TypZhjyz.dpuf

Poetry prompt for April 7, 2014: A ripple you created…

Two Poems by Wang Ping

from The River in Our Blood

A Sonnet Crown

The geese are painting the sky with a V, my lord

The Mississippi laughs with its white teeth

How fast winter flees from the lowland, my lord

And how’s the highland where songs forever seethe?

At the confluence, I sing of the prairie, my lord

My joy and sorrow soar with rolling spring

Its thunder half bird, half mermaid, my lord

No poppies on hills, only ghost warriors’ calling

Today is chunfeng—share of spring, my lord

Two spirits, one on phoenix wings, one on lion’s seat

Across the sea, kindred spirits, my lord

Prayer through breaths, laughing children on the street

Let’s open our gift, acorn of small things

Let river move us without wants or needs

Moon on river’s bend, long day of mayfly

No sound or word from Damascus’ desert

Limestone ridge along Silk Route—face of Dubai

Crumbles—wind in hyssop, thyme, wild mustard

This flayed land, so raw, parched, only seeds fly

To take roots in the conquerors’ footprints

Dusk weeps like sand through hands, pulling first cry

From Azan’s throat, a black slave as god’s imprints

Home under the ash cloud, darting swallows

From hospitals, roses on broken walls

Tanks at the border. Shadows at ghettos

Remorse in maze—the last muezzin calls

The Dervish whirls, palm to earth, palm to sky

Who gave us the hand to feel your sublime?

Poetry prompt for April 8, 2014: “The cracks that begin around her eyes / Spread beyond her skin” (Arun Kolatkar, “Jejuri”).

The Muse

By Anna Akhmatova

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

as I wait for her whom no one can command.

Whatever I cherish most—youth, freedom, glory—

fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.

And look! She comes. . . she tosses back her veil

staring me down, serene and pitiless.

“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate

the lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”

1924 (Poetry)

Poetry Prompt for April 9, 2014: The seed in me…

Epigram

By Anna Akhmatova

Could Beatrice have written like Dante,

Or Laura have glorified Love’s pain?

I set the style for women’s speech.

God help me shut them up again.

1960 (Poetry)

Poetry Prompt for April 10, 2014: Today my muse is…

Ramadan

By Kazim Ali

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,

and have to choose between the starving month’s

nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.

The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?

If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets

into the air and harvest the fog.

Hunger opens you to illiteracy,

thirst makes clear the starving pattern,

the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses,

the angel stops whispering for a moment—

The secret night could already be over,

you will have to listen very carefully—

You are never going to know which night’s mouth is sacredly reciting

and which night’s recitation is secretly mere wind—

Poetry prompt for April 11, 2014: “My name is Kazim. Which means patience.”—“Home” by Kazim Ali. What does your name mean?

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

By Pablo Neruda

Translated By Mark Eisner

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Poetry prompt for April 12, 2014: “At six I lived for spells:/how a few Hawaiian words could call/up the rain, could hymn like the sea…” Garrett Hongo, “What For”

Vita Nova

By Louise Glück

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.

Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,

laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,

something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.

Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.

And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;

perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial

sounds or gestures like

a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother

holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed

in no detail, the moment

vivid, intact, having never been

exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age

hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green

pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time

not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet

it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

Prompt for April 13, 2014: “There is something joyous in the elegies / Of birds.” “Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock,” Galway Kinnell.

I would not paint — a picture — (348)

By Emily Dickinson

I would not paint — a picture —

I'd rather be the One

It's bright impossibility

To dwell — delicious — on —

And wonder how the fingers feel

Whose rare — celestial — stir —

Evokes so sweet a torment —

Such sumptuous — Despair —

I would not talk, like Cornets —

I'd rather be the One

Raised softly to the Ceilings —

And out, and easy on —

Through Villages of Ether —

Myself endued Balloon

By but a lip of Metal —

The pier to my Pontoon —

Nor would I be a Poet —

It's finer — Own the Ear —

Enamored — impotent — content —

The License to revere,

A privilege so awful

What would the Dower be,

Had I the Art to stun myself

With Bolts — of Melody!

Poetry prompt for April 14, 2014: Your pet writes you a letter.

Poetry Prompt for April 18, 2014: "And that has made all the difference."

Poems by Lal Ded
Poetry Prompt for April 19, 2014: arriving

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15529#sthash.PMGBnO9L.dpuf

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
W.B. Yeats
Poetry Prompt for April 20, 2014: "alone in the bee-loud glade"

Stretch out Your Hands to Me

Bei Dao trans. Bonnie McDougall

Stretch out your hands to me

don’t let the world blocked by my shoulder

disturb you any longer

if love is not forgotten

hardship leaves no memory

remember what I say

not everything will pass

if there is only one last aspen

standing tall at the end of the road

like a gravestone without an epitaph

the falling leaves will also speak

fading paling as they tumble

slowly they freeze over

holding our heavy footprints

of course no one knows tomorrow

tomorrow begins from another dawn

when we will be fast asleep

Poetry Prompt for April 21, 2014: A variation on a proverb (ex. “Better one airplane on the ground than a hundred flying” Teresa de Jesus

The Long Evenings of Their Leavetakings

By Eavan Boland

My mother was married by the water.

She wore a gray coat and a winter rose.

She said her vows beside a cold seam of the Irish coast.

She said her vows near the shore where

the emigrants set down their consonantal n:

on afternoon, on the end of everything, at the start of ever.

Yellow vestments took in light.

A chalice hid underneath its veil.

Her hands were full of calla and cold-weather lilies.

The mail packet dropped anchor.

A black-headed gull swerved across the harbor.

Icy promises rose beside a crosshatch of ocean and horizon.

I am waiting for the words of the service. I am waiting for

keep thee only and all my earthly.

All I hear is an afternoon’s worth of never.

Poetry Prompt for April 22, 2014: What is your country? (You can interpret this creatively)

Becoming Anne Bradstreet

By Eavan Boland

It happens again

As soon as I take down her book and open it.

I turn the page.

My skies rise higher and hang younger stars.

The ship's rail freezes.

Mare Hibernicum leads to Anne Bradstreet's coast.

A blackbird leaves her pine trees

And lands in my spruce trees.

I open my door on a Dublin street.

Her child/her words are staring up at me:

In better dress to trim thee was my mind,

But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.

We say home truths

Because her words can be at home anywhere—

At the source, at the end and whenever

The book lies open and I am again

An Irish poet watching an English woman

Become an American poet.

Poetry prompt for April 23, 2014: a woman who appears in your poems

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Poetry prompt for April 24, 2014: Does your experience of love match what the Bard says in this sonnet?

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.
If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters
on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn't a snowman.
Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.
Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets
oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He's an illegal.
I'm an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove
of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no
tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words
he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.
He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,
to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba
Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.
Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken
once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.
If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez
wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

Eduardo C. Corral

Poetry prompt for April 25, 2014:”All that glitters isn’t music” Eduardo Corral

A Letter of Recommendation

By Yehuda Amichai

Translated By Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

On summer nights I sleep naked

in Jerusalem. My bed

stands on the brink of a deep valley

without rolling down into it.

In the daytime I walk around with the Ten

Commandments on my lips

like an old tune someone hums to himself.

Oh touch me, touch me, good woman!

That’s not a scar you feel under my shirt, that’s

a letter of recommendation, folded up tight,

from my father:

“All the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.”

I remember my father waking me for early prayers.

He would do it by gently stroking my forehead, not

by tearing away the blanket.

Since then I love him even more.

And as his reward, may he be wakened

gently and with love

on the Day of the Resurrection.

Poetry prompt for April 26, 2014: “My life is the gardener of my body” Yehuda Amichai

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

By James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year’s horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

Poetry prompt for April 27, 2014: Wear a costume and write in the voice of your character (use fabric from your closet to create your character)

The Laughter Of Women

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

Lisel Mueller

Poetry prompt for April 28, 2014: “the odds against us are endless,/our chances of being alive together/
statistically nonexistent;/ still we have made it…” Liesel Mueller

Poetry

2014 National Poetry Month: poems and prompts