How could I skip Poetry Month?

My mind is coming unglued. I always, always celebrate Poetry Month!

so, a poem:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That opresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

-- Emily Dickinson

Whew! That was close!

Speaking of poetry, I've always thought T S Eliot's "April is the cruelest month" absolute rot. You want a cruel month, Tom? Try February in Nebraska. You'll find it way crueler than April. April is pretty. Flowering trees flower. Spring flowers spring.

Another poem, more cheerful this time:

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I used to like Hopkins more than I do now. I do like several of his poems, though.

Both these poets lived in obscurity--poetic obscurity, that is. Neither was published in his or her lifetime. That has got to suck, no? I would hate to be posthumously famous. However, there is no danger of this at present. For one thing, I am not dead.

By the way, it is also Occupational Therapy Month. Let's hear it for the OT workers!