National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. For the third year I am on Knopf's list of people to whom they send a poem a day during April. It's lovely to know my email will contain a poem each day. Today I'm going to quote a part of a longish poem by Galway Kinnell that I have recently come across all by myself. The title is When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone. There are eleven thirteen line sections, this is #8.

When one has lived a long time alone,
one likes alike the pig the who brooks no deferrment
of gratification, and porcupine, or thorned pig,
who enters the cellar but not the house itself
because of eating down the cellar stairs on the way up,
and one likes the worm, who by bunching herself together
and expanding rubs her way through the ground.
no less than the butterfly, who totters full of worry
among the day-lilies as they darken,
and more and more one finds one likes
any other species better than one's own,
which has gone amok, making one self-estranged,
when one has lived a long time alone.


This is a crochety older person poem, a bah-humbg poem, a hell in a handbasket attitude. Well said, Mr. K. Far better than I ever could.

But to return briefly to the ongoing -- let's not forget there are ongoing problems. Thanks to my favorite blogging American Buddhist monk stationed in Mongolia, Konchong; is the following link to click which will take you to the English section of a blog by a
Brazilian photographer and journalist in Kathmandu who went to a peaceful protest with a group of nun and reports with some pictures, how Tibetans are being treated in that country which has a most ambivalent attitude, thanks to pressures put on them by the Chinese, who, of coures make up their northern border. If Konchong says Heraldo is worth reading, you better believe it. If you want to check on Konchung, here's
his link
just click.