The eager note on my door ... / Frank O'Hara

Poem

The eager note on my door said “Call me,
call when you get in!” so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

~~
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
from Meditations in an Emergency, 1957

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Frank O'Hara biography

The Nightingales of Flanders / Grace Hazard Conkling

The Nightingales of Flanders

"Le rossignol n'est pas mobilisé."
– A French soldier

The nightingales of Flanders,
    They had not gone to war;
A soldier heard them singing
    Where they had sung before.

The earth was torn and quaking,
    The sky about to fall;
The nightingales of Flanders,
    They minded not at all.

At intervals we heard them
    Between the guns, he said,
Making a thrilling music
    Above the listening dead.

Of woodland and of orchard
    And roadside tree bereft,
The nightingales of Flanders
    Were singing, France is left!

~~
Grace Hazard Conkling (1878-1958)
from Wilderness Songs, 1920

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Grace Hazard Conkling biography

Marching Men / Marjorie Pickthall

Marching Men

Under the level winter sky
I saw a thousand Christs go by.
They sang an idle song and free
As they went up to calvary.

Careless of eye and coarse of lip,
They marched in holiest fellowship.
That heaven might heal the world, they gave
Their earth-born dreams to deck the grave.

With souls unpurged and steadfast breath
They supped the sacrament of death.
And for each one, far off, apart,
Seven swords have rent a woman's heart.

~~
Marjorie L.C. Pickthall
from The Wood Carver's Wife, and later poems, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom]

 Marjorie Pickthall biography

Autumn Movement / Carl Sandburg

Autumn Movement

from Redhaw Winds

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Carl Sandburg biography

Nothing Gold Can Stay / Robert Frost

Antti Pääkkönen, Fallen Maple Leaf, 2016.

 CC 1.0 public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from New Hampshire, 1923

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Robert Frost biography

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" from The Outsiders. Courtesy Creekmonsters.

(Poem begins at 0:40)

November's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for November 2021:

The New England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day,
by Lydia Maria Child

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-england-boys-song-about.html 

Penny's Top 20 / October 2021

        

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in October 2021:

  1.  Autumn Maples, Archibald Lampman

  2.  Winter Song, Elizabeth Tollet

  3.  The Witches' Song, William Shakespeare

  4.  An October Evening, William Wilfred Campbell

  5.  Skating, William Wordsworth
  6.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  7.  Advent of Today, William Carlos Williams

  8.  October's Party, George Cooper
  9.  In October, Bliss Carman
10.  October: A pastoral poem, William Perfect

11.  To a Moth That Drinketh of the Ripe October, Emily Pfeiffer 
12.  September Night, George J. Dance
13.  Maple Leaves, Thomas Bailey Aldrich
14.  A Trivial Day in Early Autumn, Pearl Andelson Sherry
15.  Christ Walks in this Infernal District Too, Malcolm Lowry
16.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
17.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff

18.  Spring Morning, A.E. Housman
19.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme

20. Mnemosyne, Trumbell Stickney

Source: Blogger, "Stats"