Poem In Your Pocket Day

Today, April 17th, is Poem In Your Pocket Day. This is another event to mark National Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets wants us all to carry a poem in our pockets today, and they want us to unfold it in a public space and somehow share a few lines with the world. I think they should advertise this event by making a video clip: get Will Ferrell to dress up as Ron Burgundy or any of his washed-up sports guy personas and approach an uptight female with the line, "is that a poem in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" Because let's be honest, isn't that what we're all thinking? I cannot be the only one.

Nonetheless, the idea of carrying around a well-loved scrap of poetry does have a certain romance to it and I'm all for it. Here's the one I'm taking along today. It's a translation of a traditional Welsh verse from perhaps the 17th century, and is found in the book A Celtic Miscellany.

Longing

Tell me, men of learning, what is Longing made from?
What cloth was put in it, that it does not wear out with use?

Gold wears out, silver wears out, velvet wears out, silk
wears out, every ample garment wears out- yet Longing
does not wear out.

Great Longing, Cruel Longing is breaking my heart every
day; when I sleep most sound at night Longing comes and
wakes me.

Longing, Longing, back, back! do not weigh on me so
heavily; move over a little to the bedside and let me sleep
a while.

On the sea-shore is a smooth rock, where I talked with my
love; around it grows the lily and a few springs of rosemary.

May the mountain which covers Merioneth be under the
sea! Would that I had never seen it before my gentle heart
broke.

Longing has seized on me, between my two breasts and my
two brows; it weighs on my breast as if I were its nurse.

Comments

[iliana]

I love your idea for a commercial to get everyone on board with this. And, I think we should all carry around little bits of poetry. What a great idea.

[Greer]

Hi, Iliana! I really liked having a poem with me yesterday. I'm not so much a pocket person so I had the poem in my purse and it was pretty neat to see it while doing mundane tasks throughout the day. I didn't share it with anyone though, so I guess I only completed half the mission. But anyway, I'm going to keep the poem in there even though the day is past.