Yes

The word "yes" has many nuances. It can mean I'm listening or I'm following what you're saying or I agree. It can signal the beginning of an interaction, as when you enter a store and the salesperson says "Yes?" . In Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of James Joyce's book Ulysses, the recurring word "yes" moves from simply marking various memories to become the embodiment of the sensual.

In the Terry Adams poem "Breath" , the word "yes" signals the speaker's ever-increasing amazement at the experience of being alive and all its attendant complexities.

They told me when I awoke to this body
            each breath will taste my blood
with the tongue of every creature that has lived,
            and I said yes.
And the air I breathe will be torn by rocks
            abraded by fans and bruised in the factories
of steel, and I said yes.

The poem ratchets up its ecstatic (and perhaps apocalyptic) vision even more:

The air will stir the wet of my body
            in the ocean of bodies, and in shared bodies
of hives and cities, and in the poisons,
           and I said yes,

I will breathe air that has passed through the nail holes
            punched by children into jar lids
to save the lives of fireflies, and I say yes.

And just when you think the speaker couldn't possibly go any further, the poem concludes with 

            I will blow a cloud on the final mirror
of the dying, before the cistern of silence cracks,
and I will make a quick slate
            for fingers shouting behind cold glass,
saying yes.

A fine example of how the feeling of expansiveness is grounded in the body and in the facts of that world.

In W.S. Merwin’s under-punctuated poem “Yesterday,” the narrator starts out being a sympathetic listener as an acquaintance recounts a family incident:

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

But over the course of the poem, the narrator becomes uneasy with this story: 

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my [own] fathers hand the last time

Maybe the narrator no longer feels sympathetic:

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I dont want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am

The poem ends matter-of-factly with the cold truth of the acquaintance:  

he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do  

        Breath   (Terry Adams)

They told me when I awoke to this body
            each breath will taste my blood
with the tongue of every creature that has lived,
            and I said yes.
And the air I breathe will be torn by rocks
            abraded by fans and bruised in the factories
of steel, and I said yes.

And they said the ants have a right to this breath
            as much as I, and it erases their paths
as they walk and as easily,
            it erases mine.
They said my breath will read me from inside
            with its licking torch as if I were a cave,
and I said yes.

And the air will carry the breathless
            patience of stone and the seething heat
of asphalt and scatter me from the memories
                        as flickeringly as footsteps,
and I said yes,
The air will stir the wet of my body
            in the ocean of bodies, and in shared bodies
of hives and cities, and in the poisons,
           and I said yes,

I will breathe air that has passed through the nail holes
            punched by children into jar lids
to save the lives of fireflies, and I say yes.
           I will breathe the force that blows windrows
in snow, and rubs waves in the sand,
            strips topsoil from farmlands
and makes the cypress cringe from the sea.

Though it is sour with dreams and loud
            with sickness it will run beside my heart
                        like a young girl beside a horse,
it will forgive my legs for running,
            and chase my mind away
from its fear, and I say yes,
            I will blow into whirlwinds in the breath
of my lover, and into sea storms I will fly to be healed,

           and to the vastness inside clouds I will go
for rest, and I will wash out my tears
            with the mist blown from white caps,
and disperse my venom in daggers of sunlight,
            and I say yes,
I will torture my vision through
            with the everlasting scanning of seabirds, yes,
            I will breathe each layer from the horizon,
and hush my thoughts in  the deepest calm of caves,

           and ripple the slow, sunken rivers, like sleep,
then whistle through blow‑holes hidden in thickets
            linking the underground to the sky. 
I will whisper through the perforated coinage of sewer lids,
            I will lie down in hot valleys with the breath
of vegetables, and I will say yes.
I will breathe a clear cloud of silk around my heart,
            and wear a frayed scarf of fire,

I will breathe what determines the path
            of falling feathers,
and blows the snow from the seared summits
            of mountains. I will stay trapped
a thousand years in a tomb until a mouse will free me. 
            I will blow a cloud on the final mirror
of the dying, before the cistern of silence cracks,
and I will make a quick slate
            for fingers shouting behind cold glass,
saying yes.

        (from Adam's Ribs, Off the Grid Press, Somerville, MA © 2008)  

      Yesterday  (W.S. Merwin)

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my fathers hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I dont want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do

        (from Selected Poems, pages 257-258, Atheneum, New York, NY © 1988)   

 

Stones, pebbles, and a bonus poem

It's time to honor the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, who died on February 1st 2012 at age 88. The Nobel committee described her as the "Mozart of poetry" but with "something of the fury of Beethoven."  Her poem "Conversation with a Stone" is beguilingly simple yet reveals the complexity, not to mention the bravery, of facing one's poetic muse. After the speaker verbally wrestles with the stone in over ten stanzas, the poem ends

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in."

I don't have a door," says the stone.

Szymborska's compatriot Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) finds the lowly pebble to be just as inscrutable:

Pebbles cannot be tamed
to the end they will look at us
with a calm eye and very clear eye

though Herbert admits that a pebble's

ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity

In contrast to this poem-pair, the American poet laureate Charles Simic (who was born and spent his formative years in Yugoslavia) has an easier time getting at the essence of a stone. Here's the opening of this blog's "bonus poem":

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

 

       Conversation with a Stone  (Wislawa Szymborska)

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I want to enter your insides,

have a look round,

breathe my fill of you.”

“Go away,” says the stone.

“I’m shut tight.

Even if you break me to pieces,

we’ll all still be closed.

You can grind us to sand,

we still won’t let you in.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I’ve come out of pure curiosity.

Only life can quench it.

I mean to stroll through your palace,

then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.

I don’t have much time.

My mortality should touch you.”

“I’m made of stone,” says the stone.

“and must therefore keep a straight face.

Go away.

I don’t have the muscles to laugh.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I hear you have great empty halls inside you,

unseen, their beauty in vain,

soundless, not echoing anyone’s steps.

Admit you don’t know them well yourself.”

“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,

“but there isn’t any room.

Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste

of your poor senses.

You may get to know me, but you’ll never know me through.

My whole surface is turned toward you,

all my insides turned away.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I don’t seek refuge for eternity.

I’m not unhappy.

I’m not homeless.

My world is worth returning to.

I’ll enter and exit empty-handed

And my proof I was there

will be only words,

which no one will believe.”

“You shall not enter,” says the stone.

“You lack the sense of taking part.

No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.

Even sight heightened to become all-seeing

will do you no good without a sense of taking part.

You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,

only its seed, imagination.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.

I haven’t got two thousand centuries,

so let me come under your roof.”

If you don’t believe me,” says the stone,

“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.

Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.

And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.

I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,

although I don’t know how to laugh.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.”

“I don’t have a door,” says the stone.

        (from Poems New and Collected 1957–1997, pages 62-64, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt, Inc, Orlando, Florida © 1998) 

       Pebble  (Zbigniew Herbert)

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

with a scent that does not remind one of anything

does not frighten anyone away does not arouse desire

Its ardour and coldness

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse

when I hold it in my hand

and its noble body

is permeated by false warmth

            —Pebbles cannot be tamed

            to the end they will look at us

            with a calm and very clear eye

 

        (from Selected Poems, page 108, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ © 1968) 

       Stone  (Charles Simic)  

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it into a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fished come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill—

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the start-charts

On the inner walls.

        (from What the Grass Says, George Braziller, New York, NY © 1967)

"Fire"

In Mark Doty's poem "House of Beauty," the title phrase becomes a recurring echo at the end of each stanza. And like a growing fire, each succeeding stanza becomes one line longer as the poet reveals more and more about the fire-engulfed establishment.

What a treasure-trove of sonorous details the poet shares! And note how by the end of the poem, this particular House of Beauty has transformed into all instances of the beautiful-yet-threatened:

. . . in among the crèmes and thrones,
the helmets and clippers and combs . . .

In the dark recess beside the sink
—where heads lay back to be laved
under the perfected heads rowed along the walls—

. . . a new plume of smoke joining the others,
billow of dark thought rising
from that broken forehead of the House of Beauty

. . . jagged glass jutting like cracked ice
in the window frame . . .

. . . The world as it is (for which Jersey City stands in nicely)
torches the houses of beauty wherever it finds them.

While the beauty salon is destroyed by a fire, the main character in Lisa Allen Ortiz's poem manages to survive a blaze. Where Mark Doty's poem is conveyed by a disembodied observer, the Ortiz poem contains a whole cast of characters--he, my friend, we, a firefighter--including a tortoise with a considerable world-view, who by turns is both a philosopher and a wise-cracker. We learn what he says and what he doesn't say.

By the end of the poem, the focus shifts back to the speaker. She is quite willing to detach herself from the travails of the tortoise. But what about her own children?

I go home. He's not my problem. From my window
I see my children running in from school, their backpacks

bouncing. It is January. They are young.
I have lots of time.

House of Beauty (Mark Doty)

In Jersey City, on Tonnelle Avenue,

the House of Beauty is burning.

On a Sunday morning in January,

under the chilly shadow of the Pulaski Skyway,

the House of Beauty is burning.

Who lobbed the firebottle through the glass,

in among the crèmes and thrones,

the helmets and clippers and combs,

who set the House of beauty burning?

In the dark recess beside the sink

—where heads lay back to be laved

under the perfected heads rowed along the walls—

the hopeful photographs of possibility darken,

now that the House of Beauty is burning.

The Skyway beetles in the ringing cold,

trestle arcing the steel river and warehouses,

truck lots and Indian groceries,

a new plume of smoke joining the others,

billow of dark thought rising

from that broken forehead of the House of Beauty

—an emission almost too small to notice, just now,

the alarm still ringing, the flames new-launched

on their project of ruining an effort at pleasure,

jagged glass jutting like cracked ice

in the window frame, All things by nature,

wrote Virgil, are ready to get worse;

no surprise, then, that the House of Beauty is burning.

We do not live here, the Fire Department’s on the way,

so we’re at leisure to consider motive.

Personal enmity, arbitrary malice?

A will to pull down the forms of order,

hungry for an end? Or for equity:

If we can’t have beauty, you won’t have it either?

The world as it is (for which Jersey City stands in nicely)

torches the houses of beauty wherever it finds them.

        (from New and Selected Poems, pages 16-17:  HarperCollins, New York, NY, © 2008)

The Tortoise Survives the Fire (Lisa Allen Ortiz)

He’s at my friend’s house now.

In the driveway, we watch him

with our arms crossed, the beer-stained

winter light seeping through fence, vines.

He’s the size of a coffee table

80 years or so they say, dumb-ass slow

but with cinder-burn eyes.

He eats nasturtiums. We have our health

he says to us. Suffering and the end of suffering, he says.

He does not say carpe diem. He does

not say bombs away, bottoms up. Nor does

He say the Good Lord will provide.

He does not say I’ve been lucky. He does not say:

They had it coming.

The house was burned to rubble, ash,

skeletons of charred beams. The humans survived

because they were out. The bird

(exotic, singing, caged) died. A firefighter

found the tortoise in the ash, walking out the melted

garden gate, all blessed in soot.

He said: You think that was hot,

let me tell you about this South American tortoise I knew

in ’68. Not really. There’s nothing glib

about survival. Is there.

So either it was a miracle or a thick shell.

The tortoise shakes his head.

Everybody wants wings, he says, but not in a gloating way.

I go home. He’s not my problem. From my window

I see my children running in from school, their backpacks

bouncing. It is January. They are young.

I have lots of time.

        (from www.poems.com , © 2009)