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April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill
A Selected Poems of James Merrill (1926-1995) is now available in paperback, edited by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser. As ever, his range astounds, and the poem below, from 1985, reminds us how timeless and timely his work is.
Page from the Koran
A small vellum environment
Overrun by black
Scorpions of Kufic script—their ranks
All trigger tail and gold vowel-sac—
At auction this mild winter morning went
For six hundred Swiss francs.
By noon, fire from the same blue heavens
Had half erased Beirut.
Allah be praised, it said on crude handbills,
For guns and Nazarenes to shoot.
“How gladly with proper words,” said Wallace Stevens,
“The soldier dies.” Or kills.
God’s very word, then, stung the heart
To greed and rancor. Yet
Not where the last glow touches one spare man
Inked-in against his minaret
—Letters so handled they are life, and hurt,
Leaving the scribe immune?
Read more poems from Selected Poems.
View the Table of Contents.
One Response to “April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill”
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Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2011
April 1: The opening lines of Amy Tan's "I Love a Broad Margin"April 2: Philip Levine's "Unholy Saturday"
April 3: Deborah Digges's "The Coat"
April 4: David Young's "The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon"
April 5: W.S. Merwin's "The Folding Cliffs"
April 6: Cynthia Zarin's "Late Poem"
April 7: Leonard Cohen's "These Heroics"
April 8: Marge Piercy's "Wellfleet Shabbat"
April 9: Anthony Hecht's "Devotions of a Painter"
April 10: Emily Dickinson Letters
April 11: Kevin Young's "Ash Wednesday"
April 12: Edward Hirsch's "Happiness Writes White"
April 13: Amy Clampitt's "Green"
April 14: Walt Whitman's "The Artilleryman’s Vision"
April 15: Wallace Stevens's "A Dove in the Belly"
April 16: James Merrill's "The Candid Decorator"
April 17: Emily Brontë's "No coward soul is mine"
April 18: Julia Hartwig's "Yet We Desire It above All"
April 19: Kenneth Koch's "To My Fifties"
April 20: Stephen Sondheim's "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"
April 21: Stan Rice's "Tornado at Night"
April 22: Kwon Homun's "Two Poems On Fishing"
April 23: Franz Wright's "Rooms"
April 24: Brooks Haxton’s “Three Lilies”
April 25: C.P. Cavafy's "The Mirror in the Entrance"
April 26: W. B. Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens"
April 27: Peter Davison's "The Level Path"
April 28: Sharon Olds's "True Love"
April 29: Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama"
April 30: Farewell, with poems by Jane Hirshfield and Simon Armitage
Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2010
April 1: Edward Hirsch’s “Self-portrait”April 2: Marge Piercy’s “Seven Horses”
April 3: Dan Chiasson’s “Banquette” and “Next”
April 4: Marie Ponsot’s “Transport”
April 5: Alexander Neubauer’s Poetry in Person, featuring Derek Walcott
April 6: Mark Strand’s “Mirror”
April 7: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring”
April 8: Philip Levine’s “MY FATHERS, THE BALTIC”
April 9: Vera Pavlova’s “A Remedy for Insomnia”
April 10: Stan Rice’s “The Fragment of Statue”
April 11: Marina Tsvetayeva’s “Poems Grow”
April 12: Kevin Young’s “EYES + EGGS [1983]“
April 13: Janusz Szuber’s “About a Boy Stirring Jam”
April 14: Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”
April 15: Franz Wright’s "My Pew"
April 16: Mary Jo Salter’s “Welcome to Hiroshima”
April 17: Yehuda Halevi’s “A man in your fifties—and you still would be young?”
April 18: Langston Hughes’s “Black Workers” and “Black Dancers”
April 19: W. S. Di Piero’s “In Our Room”
April 20: Robert Wrigley’s “Kissing a Horse”
April 21: Sharon Olds’s “When He Came for the Family” and “The Signal”
April 22: Irving Feldman’s “Stretched Out at Length”
April 23: W.S. Merwin’s “The Furrow”
April 24: David Lehman’s “Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard”
April 25: John Keats’s “This Living Hand”
April 26: Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes
April 27: Garrett Hongo’s “Volcano House”
April 28: Wallace Stevens’s “Large Red Man Reading”
April 29: Izumi Shikibu’s love poems
April 30: Deborah Digges's "Write a Book a Year"
Knopf's Poem-a-Day 2009
April 1: Half Moon, Small Cloud by John UpdikeApril 2: Going Back to Bed by J.D. McClatchy
April 3: Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes by Ruth Padel
April 4: Waiting On Elvis, 1956 by Joyce Carol Oates
April 5: Exile’s Child by D. Nurkse
April 6: A Summer Outing by Du Fu
April 7: Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky
April 8: Sweet Voices and Voices by C.P. Cavafy
April 9: On the Jetty by C.P. Cavafy
April 10: Fragment on Dissembling by Lucie Brock-Broido
April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill
April 12: Spring Song II by Jean Garrigue
April 13: Ode to Pepper Vinegar by Kevin Young
April 14: Greeter of Souls by Deborah Digges
April 15: You’re Beautiful by Simon Armitage
April 16: Two Short Poems by Mark Strand
April 17: To See My Mother by Sharon Olds
April 18: Wallace Stevens and Donald Justice
April 19: Robert Lowell’s Poetry Class by Stephanie Hemphill
April 20: Storm by Brooks Haxton
April 21: A Good List by Brad Leithauser
April 22: The Pond by Jim Powell
April 23: Impressions of Africa by Kenneth Koch
April 24: Notes For Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary by Jane Mayhall
April 25: Some Playthings by John Hollander
April 26: There is No City that Does Not Dream by Anne Michaels
April 27: Description of Her Eyes by Franz Wright
April 28: Some Different Kinda Books by Sapphire
April 29: The Mistake by Jack Gilbert
April 30: Creeper and Fine Point by John Updike
May 1: Written Late at Night by Janusz Szuber
Unclear poem, unless the mention of scorpions on the cover of the Koran book: ” black Scorpions of Kufic script,” hint at some of the dangerous poison inside the book. Do the lines: “Allah be praised for guns…” and “God’s very word, then, stung the heart To greed and rancor,” bear the same message?
Is James Merrill subtly pointing to the fact that the Koran has a page, and even more than a page, mentioning that “Unbelievers” – that is, all who are not of the Islamic faith – should be killed by the sword? If so, the poet should not be afraid to openly and clearly criticise extremes in the Koran, or in any other religion.