Hayden Carruth

[anirbas]

The Cardinal

Strands of her red hair
sweat-stuck to her forehead
and a cardinal shrieks

in the dooryard. She is a poet
cooking supper on the hottest
afternoon of summer, toiling

in the book-lined kitchen.
What can an old man do
in return but make little

poems that will disappear
like the cardinal's shriek
when the night breeze rises?

~Hayden Carruth
from the book
Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey.

[anirbas]

~Franconia

Old friend, you used to read your poems
to a few acquaintances, to the Abbot
in your drifting boat, to your neighbor, Mr. Li.

In Franconia in an old barn I read poems
with my beautiful young auburn-haired wife
to a couple of hundred students and townspeople.

How they loved us, we two. My wife's poems
are like old eastern sorrow-songs
from the lowland by the edge of the oily

sea. Sparrows chirped in the rafters, moths
wandered in and out among shafts of moonlight.
Home is wherever those odd moments

snag our raft on the slow river of exile.
I was as happy, as gratified, as I've been,
old friend, in all these seventy-two years.

I think of you in Chiang-tang, there beyond
the Wei, reading in the night to Li Po.
Nothing can be better than two poets together.

~Hayden Carruth
from Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey.