Poem of the Week, by Philip Larkin
Once, at the end of a book club discussion held in the library of a women’s prison, the women (who are addressed as “offenders” on the prison P.A. system, as in, “Offenders, cell check in fifteen minutes”) took turns asking me personal questions from a list they had prepared. I remember only one of them: “If you had to choose one word to complete the sentence ‘She was ____’ on your tombstone, what would you want it to be?” “Kind,” I said. “That I was kind.”
The Mower, by Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
is always the same; we should be careful
of each other, we should be kind
while there is still time.
For more information about Philip Larkin, please click here.
When we were little my sisters and I used to press leaves and flowers between the tissuey pages of our big dictionary and then forget about them. They could still be in there, for all I know, wherever that big gray dictionary is now. Once in a while, inching along the rows of a used bookstore, I come across my own books on the M shelves. Sometimes I slide one out to read the dedication and the acknowledgments. They are reminders of where I was at that point in life. Most of the people I loved then I still love, although a few have fallen away or crossed over to that other world. Some of those books contain an inscription written at the request of a patient person who waited in line, book in hand, so that it could be personalized for them: To Cornelia on her birthday, with many happy returns, Alison. Once in a while I do recognize a name, or a nickname —To the one and only Booberry, with tons of love. My handwriting looks different in that case, lively and familiar and happy, if handwriting can look happy. Who knows how the book ended up here on this shelf, the hands it must have passed through.
Six saggy old cardboard boxes full of hundreds, maybe thousands, of handwritten or typed letters sit behind closed cupboard doors in my bedroom. These letters date back to high school. They’re from my mother, my grandmothers, my sisters, my brother, boys and men I loved, my best friend, other dear friends, and friends I barely remember but who were important to me at one point in my life. The envelopes, with those wavy lines across the canceled stamps, bear testament to all the places I’ve lived in my life. Unlike almost anything else in my life, I can’t throw them out. Sometimes they have lived in the dark trunk of my car until once again they are hauled into a different cupboard in a new house or apartment, where they rest in darkness next to their neighbors. The other day I opened a box at random and pulled out a letter from my grandmother. She had been to a movie with my parents and what an interesting, if confusing, movie it had been. Afterward they had gone to a Chinese buffet and my parents had treated her, how lovely of them. She was having trouble with that darned knee of hers. And then came this ending line, reminiscing about my grandfather, dead many years at this point: What a beautiful life we had together, but it wasn’t long enough. My grandmother, and that single, uncharacteristic sentence from her, written in the shaky Palmer script of her very old age, is why I love this poem so much.
When I was 20 I flew to Taipei with a plane ticket and the hope of finding a place to live and somewhere to study Chinese. I took a cab to a hotel, where I stayed for three days, mostly in the tall narrow box of a bathtub, too scared and lonely and unsure of everything to venture out. Starvation finally drove me down to the lobby. I said, having practiced it over and over, “Wo e si le. Fanguan zai nali?” which translates as “I’m dying of hunger. Where is a restaurant?” The three glasses-wearing Chinese men behind the counter leapt up with cries of concern, led me outside and pointed across the street. Once there I scanned the menu, scrawled on long tendrils of paper pinned to the walls, until I recognized the two characters for potstickers. I ordered 16, at a penny apiece, and ate them all. Those potstickers live in memory, visceral memory, like everything Adrienne Su describes in her wonderful poem below. I still dream about them. 
Last week the painter had a dream in which an old friend, dead in an instant two years ago now, appeared, smiling and so happy to see him. Do you think he came back because he died so fast and he wanted to say goodbye to you? I asked him when he told me about the dream. Who knows? Maybe, the painter said. Either way it was good to see him, happy and healthy. W.S. Merwin has always been a poet of dreams to me, what with his imagery and the way his unpunctuated poems float on the page. His calm voice drifts across the water, and sometimes one of his poems feels exactly right.
Dog lovers of the world, you are many and you are fabulous. I have loved putting together these dog of destiny posts. What began as a celebration of my new Percy, Dog of Destiny picture book has turned into a celebration of dogs in general. Soulful, hilarious, generous, slightly evil, sometimes scheming, always beautiful dogs. This is the last in the series. Enjoy!
Sometimes all I want is a poem that’s rhythm and rhyme, words placed and spaced so they turn into a song inside my head. Langston Hughes does that. So does Dylan Thomas. And so does Mr. Eliot, below. I memorized this poem so that it will always be with me. Poem, you are a voice shaken from the yew-tree, and here I am, replying.
This is Callie. She’s in dog heaven now, but in her glory days she excelled at searching out and gobbling down poop of indiscriminate sources. She also had a lovely, elegant habit of lying on the floor with her paws crossed in front of her. Rest in peace, sweet girl.
Alison McGhee 