Vox Populi
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Robert Cording: Reading Poems with David
(for David Ferry, 1924-2023)
Over the phone, David begins to read
and Mary, in old age, in a nursing home,
returns to life in David’s voice, voicing
her words, her questioning
of her own bafflement,
its imprisoning nonsense as he, too, questions
why he is still here, at ninety-eight,
ridiculous, as he says, but not now, not
as his old poem takes shape again,
dependent on a voice always asking
who am I and how can I ever know
who I am, a voice distinctive in its probing,
modifying as it asserts, circular by nature,
returning at the end of a line to a beginning
already begun, but never finished
because his voice has just announced,
Nobody knows the answers, but not
with resignation, and not without hope,
though his hope is not the hope
of finding the answers,
but the hope of words always reaching
towards what they cannot say,
and, being said, the possibility
of enlargement, as Mary is enlarged
in David’s poem, even if she is without
reason as to why her friend withholds
the answers she wants to her questions,
Why am I here? Will I be going home soon?
And now he asks me to read something new,
and I do because he has asked,
and because his wife, Anne, who was my teacher,
helped me become the teacher I became,
the someone who I was meant,
at least as much as I can tell, to be.
I read a poem about Tuscany, pausing
a little longer after each line
because David wants to hear the line breaks
and see the shape of the poem
his blindness prevents him from reading
on his own. In the poem there are almond trees
and their hillside profusion
of pinkish white flowers
and the unknowable connection,
these many years later, to the death
of my son. When I have finished
and we have arrived at the end
of our call, we both cry—
over the loss of his wife, over my son,
and for the past between us that is
still ongoing. After the call ends,
I remain sitting at my desk, aware,
at least for that moment,
of the timelessness held in David’s voice,
a voice I am still hearing in my mind
and for which I give thanks,
both for the long labor of David’s life
to find a way to regard, truly,
our lives in time, and for his acceptance
that, despite our every effort,
to one another and to ourselves,
we remain a bewilderment
Robert Cording is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross where he taught for 38 years and served as the Barrett Chair of English and Creative Writing. After his retirement, he worked for five years as a poetry mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA program. His many books include Heavy Grace (Alice James, 2022) and In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022).
Poem copyright 2025 Robert Cording
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A sad and deeply beautiful poem that I felt in my bones as I read it. Such love.
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Yes, we don’t see many poems these days about the love of men towards the men who mentored them.
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This is a stunning poem in so many ways I can’t articulate, not least the last line. I’ve enjoyed reading all the comments here too. Robert, please imagine the sound of applause!
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Robert: You have written such a fine poem I can’t read enough times to fill myself with. “…the hope of words always reaching
towards what they cannot say,” is its great subject. You should be proud of this loveliness put to the page!
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Oh, I adore this poignant poem–how it barely stops for a breath in that first stanza — thank you, Bob!
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A well-wrought “devotional” poem that’s both an homage to a fine teacher and translator – and a tender elegy, in so many ways. I studied with Robert Cording some years ago when he led a poetry session at Image Journal’s summer “Glen” workshops. Another mentor of his, of course, is George Herbert. I thank God for Cording’s humanity, his gift for teaching (so encouraging and helpful) and for his writing –
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Thank you all for your gracious comments. David Ferry is a wonderful poet (though he is known mostly for his award-winning translations) who should be even better known than he is. Everything he did was first-rate. His book Bewilderment is astonishingly good.
He was, as Laure-Anne and others point out, a generous, kind man. As was Kurt, who I met at Holy Cross years ago through Chris Merrill.
And thanks, Jim, for mentioning my book of essays.
Bob
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How I agree with you that Bewilderment is a beautiful collection, Robert. I so love “Everybody’s Tree” — a long, nostalgic, tender poem.
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Oh, I am weeping. What an utterly magnificent poem.
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Agreed!
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This is a poem to read and reread, then read again. I suddenly feel how painful the celebration of life can be. Beautiful poem.
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What a poem! Thank you, thank you. For a few years Kurt and I got to see David regularly. He and Kurt would talk so calmly and quietly about their profound love for poetry at our kitchen table in Cambridge’s Follen street — how learned David was! And kind. And so shyly generous.
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Thanks for this, Laure-Anne.
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I’ve never met the people in the poem, but the poem’s gratitude for those in Robert’s life moves me deeply. And so much of poetry, to use your words, Laure-Anne, is so shyly generous.
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Li Bai and DuFu in conversation not in a boat or pavilion but on the phone! I love this poem with its reported dialogue and its honoring of mentorship turned friendship during a long life. I reviewed David Ferry’s posthumous book Some Things I Said here: https://www.harvardreview.org/book-review/some-things-i-said/ Both Cording and Ferry are inspiring examples of a lifelong commitment to the art of the poem. Thanks for publishing this.
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Thanks, Richard. The comparison to the ancient Chinese poets is apropos.
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To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it. –Wendell Berry– This quoting of Berry heads the chapter: Mystery, in one of Professor Cording’s books: Finding the World’s Fullness.
Despite a world of bafflement and bewilderment, Robert Cording in today’s poem, Reading Poems with David, shows how to reach out to life with celebration, even while faced with life’s oftentimes blindness. His poem makes a loving response in its reaching toward enlargement.
As he mentors us in dealing with uncertainties, Cording shows a way to find connections, tracking down love’s miracles, pausing at our life’s line breaks, while we sense the glimmers on the edge of opaque reality.
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Thanks, Jim. Robert Cording’s poem celebrates both poetry and kindness. A link that is intuitively spot on.
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Transcendent. Thank you, Bob. And Vox Populi.
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Thanks, Suzanne. It’s nice to see you here!
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