An Adventure by Louise Gluck

I.

It came to me one night as I was falling asleep 
that I had finished with those amorous adventures 
to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love? 
my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries 
awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked 
to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed— 
surely this counted for something? 

2.

The next night brought the same thought, 
this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed 
various other passions and sensations were, in the same way, 
set aside forever, and each night my heart 
protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy. 
But these farewells, I said, are the way of things. 
And once more I alluded to the vast territory 
opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became 
a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart 
became the steed underneath me. 

3.

I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death,
though why this landscape was so conventional
I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long
while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain.
The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon
faces from the past appeared to me:
my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed,
finished what they had to say, though now
I could hear them because my heart was still. 

4.

At this point, I attained the precipice
but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side;
rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude
as far as the eye could see, though gradually
the mountain that supported it completely dissolved
so that I found myself riding steadily through the air—
All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them
obliterated by the task of responding to them—

5.

As we had all been flesh together,
now we were mist.
As we had been before objects with shadows,
now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.
Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know. 

6.

Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun
contentedly rising, the feather comforter
mounded in white drifts over my lower body.
You had been with me—
there was a dent in the second pillowcase.
We had escaped from death—
or was this the view from the precipice? 

"At what point should you ever stop trying?"

"Our love a difficult instrument we are learning to play. Practice, practice."

On Quitting by Edgar Albert Guest

How much grit do you think you’ve got? 

Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? 

You may talk of pluck; it’s an easy word, 

And where’er you go it is often heard; 

But can you tell to a jot or guess 

Just how much courage you now possess? 

You may stand to trouble and keep your grin, 

But have you tackled self-discipline? 

Have you ever issued commands to you 

To quit the things that you like to do, 

And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, 

Those rigid orders have you obeyed? 

Don’t boast of your grit till you’ve tried it out, 

Nor prate to men of your courage stout, 

For it’s easy enough to retain a grin 

In the face of a fight there’s a chance to win, 

But the sort of grit that is good to own 

Is the stuff you need when you’re all alone. 

How much grit do you think you’ve got? 

Can you turn from joys that you like a lot? 

Have you ever tested yourself to know 

How far with yourself your will can go? 

If you want to know if you have grit, 

Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit. 

It’s bully sport and it’s open fight; 

It will keep you busy both day and night; 

For the toughest kind of a game you’ll find 

Is to make your body obey your mind. 

And you never will know what is meant by grit 

Unless there’s something you’ve tried to quit.

Lucky by Stephen Dunn

Loyal obedience to the rules jointly defined 

and freely accepted.

-Albert Camus, on why his true lessons

in morality came from sports

Lucky that we didn't know the games we played
  were teaching us about boundaries
and integrity; it would have smacked of school,

we who long for recess. And lucky- when exiled
  to right field, or not chosen at all-
we didn't know the lesson was injustice,

just how much of it we could tolerate.
  But always there'd be the boys
who never got it, calling foul after foul

there wasn't, marking with an X spot
  where the ball didn't hit.
Where are they now? What are they doing?

Lucky that some of us who loved recess
  came to love school,
found the books that gave us a few words

for what the aggrieved already knew. Lucky
  that within rules
freely accepted we came to recognize a heart

can be ferocious, a mind devious and fair.

Temple On My Knees by Lisa Russ Spaar

When this day returns to me

I will value your heart, 

long hurt in long division,

over mine. Mouth above mine too —

say you love me, truth never more

meant, say you are angry.

Words, words we net with our mouths.

Soul is an old thirst but not as first

as the body’s perhaps,

though on bad nights its melancholy

eats us out, to a person.

True, time is undigressing.

Yet true is all we can be:

rhyming you, rhyming me.

I Hate by C.K. Williams

I hate how this unsummoned sigh-sound, sob-sound, 

not sound really, feeling, sigh-feeling, sob-feeling, 

keeps rising in me, rasping in me, not in its old disguise 

as nostalgia, sweet crazed call of the blackbird; 

not as remembrance, grief for so many gone, 

nor either that other tangle of recall, regret   

for unredeemed wrongs, errors, omissions, 

petrified roots too deep to ever excise; 

a mingling rather, a melding, inextricable mesh   

of delight in astonishing being, of being in being, 

with a fear of and fear for I can barely think what, 

not non-existence, of self, loved ones, love; 

not even war, fuck war, sighing for war, 

sobbing for war, for no war, peace, surcease; 

more than all that, some ground-sound, ground-note,   

sown in us now, that swells in us, all of us,   

echo of love we had, have, for world, for our world, 

on which we seem finally mere swarm, mere deluge, 

mere matter self-altered to tumult, to noise, 

cacophonous blitz of destruction, despoilment, 

din from which every emotion henceforth emerges, 

and into which falters, slides, sinks, and subsides: 

sigh-sound of lament, of remorse; sob-sound of rue,   

of, still, always, ever sadder and sadder sad joy