As long as you
know you don’t know,
not knowing’s not
what hurts,

it’s what

you don’t know you
don’t know that
finally gets
to you, right
in the old
solar plexis.

Philip Booth, Ganglia

And then he would lift this finest
of furniture to his big left shoulder
and tuck it in and draw the bow
so carefully as to make the music

almost visible on the air. And play
and play until a whole roomful of the sad
relatives mourned. They knew this was
drawing of blood, threading and rethreading

the needle. They saw even in my father’s
face how well he understood the pain
he put them to—his raw, red cheek
pressed against the cheek of the wood…

Stanley Plumly, Out-of-the-Body Travel

The taste
of rain
—Why kneel?

Jack Kerouac, Haiku

How often I went in for warmth and a doze
The newspaper room whilst my world outside froze
And I took out my sardine sandwich feast.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.
And the tramps and the madman and the chattering crone.
The smell of their farts could turn you to stone
But anywhere, anywhere was better than home.

The joy to escape from family and war.
But how can you have dreams?
you’ll end up on the floor.
Be like your brothers, what else is life for?

You’re lost and you’re drifting, settle down, get a job.
Meet a nice Jewish girl, work hard, earn a few bob.
Get married, have kids; a nice home on the never
and save up for the future and days of rough weather.

Come back down to earth, there is nothing more.
I listened and nodded, like I knew the score.
And early next morning l crept out the door.

Outside it was pouring
I was leaving forever.

I was finally, irrevocably done with this scene,
The trap of my world in Stepney Green.
With nowhere to go and nothing to dream

A loner in love with words, but so lost
and wandering the streets, not counting the cost.
I emerged out of childhood with nowhere to hide
when a door called my name
and pulled me inside.

And being so hungry I fell on the feast.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.

And my brain explodes when I suddenly find,
an orchard within for the heart and the mind.
The past was a mirage I’d left far behind

And I am a locust and I’m at a feast.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.

And Rosenberg also came to get out of the cold
To write poems of fire, but he never grew old.
And here I met Chekhov, Tolstoy, Meyerhold.
I read all their worlds, their dark visions of gold.

The reference library, where my thoughts were to rage.
I ate book after book, page after page.
I scoffed poetry for breakfast and novels for tea.
And plays for my supper. No more poverty.
Welcome young poet, in here you are free
to follow your star to where you should be.

That door of the library was the door into me

And Lorca and Shelley said “Come to the feast.”
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.

Bernard Kops, Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East

[Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war
and the grand opera were proof’s enough of civilization’s and
France’s progress, in his day.]

A lesser proof than old Voltaire’s, yet greater,
Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,
To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,
Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land and tide,
Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,
Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,
A bunch of orange buds by mail from Florida.

Walt Whitman, Orange Buds by Mail from Florida

There’s a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire—
He likes it ‘cause it’s cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He’s nibbling the noodles,
He’s munching the rice,
He’s slurping the soda,
He’s licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he’s in there—
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

Shel Silverstein, Bear In There

I have become very hairy all over my body.
I’m afraid they’ll start hunting me because of my fur.

My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love —
it looks like an air photo of a railway station.

At night my body is open and awake under the blanket,
like eyes under the blindfold of someone to be shot.

Restless I shall wander about;
hungry for life I’ll die.

Yet I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed,
and tranquil, like a full cemetery.

Yehuda Amichai, I Have Become Very Hairy

Early summer rain—
houses facing the river,
two of them

Yosa Buson, Early Summer Rain

Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing me a song, O Please!
A song of ships, and sailor men,
And parrots, and tropical trees,
Of islands lost in the Spanish Main
Which no man ever may find again,
Of fishes and corals under the waves,
And seahorses stabled in great green caves.
Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing of the things you know so well.

Amy Lowell, Sea Shell

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night