In honor of World Poetry Day 2025, here are two of my favorite poems.
The first is by West Virginia poet Tom Andrews, who in addition to being a great poet was also a first-generation hemophiliac who died way too young of blood-borne disease, as all too many hemophiliacs do. He grew up in an evangelical home, and questions about faith are frequent topics for him to interrogate with his poetry. This is drawn from his collection The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle.
PRAYING WITH GEORGE HERBERT IN LATE WINTER
By Tom Andrews
1
In fits and starts, Lord,
our words work
the other side of language
where you lie if you can be said
to lie. Mercy upon
the priest who calls on you
to nurture and to terrorize
him, for you oblige.
Mercy upon you, breath’s engine
returning what is to what is.
Outside, light swarms
and particularizes the snow;
tree limbs crack with ice
and drop. I can say
there is a larger something
inside me. I can say,
“Gratitude is
a strange country.” But what
would I give to live there?
2
Something breaks in us,
and keeps breaking. Charity,
be severe with me.
Mercy, lay on your hands.
White robes on
the cypress tree. Sparrows
clot the fence posts;
they hop once and weave
through the bleached air.
Lord, I drift on the words
I speak to you —
the words take on
and utter me. in what
language are you not
what we say you are?
Surprise me, Lord, as a seed
surprises itself…
3
Today the sun has the inward look
of the eye of the Christ Child …
Grace falls at odd angles from heaven
to earth: my sins are bright sparks
in the dark of blamelessness.
Yes. From my window I watch a boy step
backwards down the snow-covered road,
studying his sudden boot tracks.
The wedding of his look and the world!
And for a moment, Lord, I think
I understand about you and silence…
But what a racket I make in telling you.
The second is from W.B. Yeats, perhaps best known for his rather apocalyptic “The Second Coming.” But I love his more personal verse, especially “Her Praise,” which tells a story of desperate, unrequited love. Drawn from his collection The Wild Swans at Coole.
HER PRAISE
W.B. Yeats
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I have gone about the house, gone up and down
As a man does who has published a new book
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook
Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,
A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,
A man confusedly in a half dream
As though some other name ran in his head.
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I will talk no more of books or the long war
But walk by the dry thorn until I have found
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there
Manage the talk until her name come round.
If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,
Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.
Sorry I don’t have a W.H. Auden poem for you to go with these, but I have written about him here previously.