Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Blog

God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

and~

My favorite poem is “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.  It’s a poem that I see as a “sacred” text of literature (used it in my doctoral dissertation), but especially powerful to me is that though “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;/And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil…” that “…for all of this, nature is never spent.”

Dr. Mary Warner
Associate Professor of English
Director of the English Credential Program, SJSU
San Jose

God’s Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Windhover
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jerry Dyer, 54
Teacher for East Side Union High School District
San Jose

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The Doves of Vasona
by Parthenia Hicks.

Denise Leffers
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Los Gatos

The Doves of Vasona

the purple-throated doves sit
round and full
under the girders of Highway 17
undaunted by tons of steel
rushing over their nests
of nicks and nacks
sitting two by two
tucked along
the lips of green metal

one slim white mother
speckled with large black spots
stands out from the
smooth soft grey,
a spaniel of a dove,
she eyes me
warily, sizes me up, then
flies to her raftered nest,
lets me see the bobbing heads,
their peeps and pulls

here, she says, here
underneath the Avenue of the Larks
just off the freeway
we fly the same exit home
to the hidden cities beneath the city
beyond county lines
and sub-divisions

here, she calls, here
to the walkers and cyclists
the joggers and the hypnotized
drivers,
to the poets who stumble
in the dark following the symphony
of the roo-coo-coo
as it bounces off the steel
in the chilly, chilly night

Parthenia M. Hicks

Invictus
by William Ernest Henley

Caroline Blackwood
Technical Writer
Cupertino

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley
(1849-1903)

The Rain Stick
by Seamus Heaney

Erica Goss
50 years old, Poet
Los Gatos

The Rain Stick

Up-end the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who care if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

Seamus Heaney

Untitled
by Hanshan, Tang Dynasty poet

Lisa Tam
Age 53, Poet
San José

Untitled

Man, living in the dust,
Is like a bug trapped in a bowl.
Alll day he scrabbles round and round,
But never escapes from the bowl that holds him.
The immortals are beyond his reach,
His cravings have no end,
While months and years flow by like a river
Until, in an instant, he has grown old.

Hanshan
(translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson)

The Barracuda
by John Gardner

Kelly Harrison
Instructor, SJSU
San José

The Barracuda

Slowly, slowly, he cruises
And slowly, slowly, he chooses
Which kind of fish he prefers to take this morning;
Then without warning
The Barracuda opens his jaws, teeth flashing,
And with a horrible, horrible grinding and gnashing,
Devours a hundred poor creatures and feels no remorse.
It’s no wonder, of course,
That he really ought, perhaps, to change his ways.
“But,” (as he says
With an evil grin)
“It’s actually not my fault, you see:
I’ve nothing to do with the tragedy;
I open my mouth for a yawn and —ah me!—
They all
swim
in.”

John Gardner