Favorite Poet and Poem?

[Moriarty]

I was inspired by the thread inquiring about INTJs that wrote poetry.

Favorite poet: Robert Frost

Favorite poem: Sooo many great ones to choose from, but if I could keep only one:

IN A DISUSED GRAVE YARD

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

[pallasathena]

That was nice, Moriarty. I never heard that one by Frost. I like that famous one by him about the road less traveled and that other one about the person who has an accident in the woods (I think that he wrote it).

Here's one of my favorite poems. I tend to like poems that rhyme.

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Moriarty]

*clap* I haven't read that one in so long, I'd forgotten who wrote it! Thanks for reintroducing me to that old friend.

Here are links to The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, since you're a fan.

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[Zilal]

My favorite poet is Housman, though my favorite poem is probably the red wheelbarrow. But I will put up one of Housman's.

Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

[Tual]

The only poet I kind of like is Baudelaire, this is my favorite, I do not know why... (translation below):

Charles Baudelaire - Une Charogne

Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,

Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint;

Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe
Comme une fleur s'épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l'herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir.

Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,
D'où sortaient de noirs bataillons
De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
Le long de ces vivants haillons.

Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague
Ou s'élançait en pétillant;
On eût dit que le corps, enflé d'un souffle vague,
Vivait en se multipliant.

Et ce monde rendait une étrange musique,
Comme l'eau courante et le vent,
Ou le grain qu'un vanneur d'un mouvement rythmique
Agite et tourne dans son van.

Les formes s'effaçaient et n'étaient plus qu'un rêve,
Une ébauche lente à venir
Sur la toile oubliée, et que l'artiste achève
Seulement par le souvenir.

Derrière les rochers une chienne inquiète
Nous regardait d'un oeil fâché,
Epiant le moment de reprendre au squelette
Le morceau qu'elle avait lâché.

— Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
À cette horrible infection,
Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion!

Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,
Apres les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l'herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements.

Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine
Qui vous mangera de baisers,
Que j'ai gardé la forme et l'essence divine
De mes amours décomposés!

— Charles Baudelaire

A Carrion

Do you remember the thing we saw, my soul,
That summer morning, so beautiful, so soft:
At a turning in the path, a filthy carrion,
On a bed sown with stones,

Legs in the air, like a lascivious woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
Opened carelessly, cynically,
Its great fetid belly.

The sun shone on this fester,
As though to cook it to a turn,
And to return a hundredfold to great Nature
What she had joined in one;

And the sky saw the superb carcass
Open like a flower.
The stench was so strong, that you might think
To swoon away upon the grass.

The flies swarmed on that rotten belly,
Whence came out black battalions
Of spawn, flowing like a thick liquid
Along its living tatters.

All this rose and fell like a wave,
Or rustled in jerks;
One would have said that the body, fun of a loose breath,
Lived in this its procreation.

And this world gave out a strange music,
Like flowing water and wind,
Or a winnower's grain that he shakes and turns
With rhythmical grace in his basket.

The forms fade and are no more than a dream,
A sketch slow to come
On the forgotten canvas, and that the artist completes
Only by memory.

Behind the boulders an anxious bitch
Watched us with angry eyes,
Spying the moment to regain in the skeleton
The morsel she had dropped.

— And yet you will be like this excrement,
This horrible stench,
O star of my eyes, sun of my being,
You, my angel, my passion.

Yes, such you will be, queen of gracefulness,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grasses and fat flowers,
Moldering amongst the bones.

Then, my beauty, say to the vermin
Which will eat you with kisses,
That I have kept the shape and the divine substance
Of my decomposed loves!

[Danneh]

The Stars have not dealt me the Worst that they could do,
My pleasures are many, my troubles but two.
But my two troubles- they reeve me of my rest,
the brains in my head and the heart in my breast.

Oh give me the right that is given so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me!
That relish their victuals and rest in the bed,
with flint in the bosom and guts in the head.

A.E. Housman

[Moriarty]

Keep em coming. There is some beautiful stuff here so far.

[prometheus]

MY favorite is a little long to post it all: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Here's a taste, though.

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean.
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

My favorite Poet would have to be Robert Service.

[JMX]

My favorite poet is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
My favorite poem is "A Psalm of Life."

I'll quote the first verse and the rest can be read here:
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

[Pinkie]

My favourite poet is e.e.cummings and I have about ten different favourite poems by him. One of them is:


if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)


But I love 'i carry your heart with me' as well. So beautiful. I also really like Louis Macneice. His stuff's really special.

[raconteur213]

If
IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;

If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

[pallasathena]

:thumbsup: "If" is one of my all-time favorites. I also like Invictus by Henley.

[yondyr]

Endure

Sequestered in this chilled and chilling cell,
My body wracked, my spirit still burns bright.
A recusant searching for a wayward soul
Or a mendicant without the gift of sight.

This flickering light, my supplicating hands
Take on the aspect of the old gnarled roots
Of the oak and olive trees I roamed among,
'Fore heart, mind and will began disputes.

Without these vast austere enclosing walls
The other world and worlds call silently.
Beckons the familiar and the strange,
Choose I must and now and diligently.

Each guttering candle marks a measured time,
Damnation or deliverance matters not,
For within, there burns a balm of golden peace.
And gods or god are easily forgot.

Stern feet advance upon my little realm,
I'm judged and yet I judge myself the more,
No temporal questions could I give an answer,
I will embrace my fate, I will endure.

[BadMojo]

THE SISTERS OF CHARITY

The young man whose eye is bright, whose skin is brown,
the handsome twenty-year-old body which should go naked,
and which, its brow circled with copper, under the moon,
would have been worshipped in Persia by an unknown Genie;

impetuous, with a softness both virginal
and dark, proud of his first obstinacies,
like the young seas, tears of summer nights,
turning on beds of diamonds;

the young man face to face with the ugliness of this world,
shudders in his heart, generously provoked;
and, filled with the deep unhealing wound,
begins to desire his sister of charity.

But O Woman, heap of bowels, sweet compassion,
you never are the Sister of charity, never:
neither your dark look, nor your belly where sleeps a russet shadow,
nor your light fingers, nor splendidly shaped breasts.

Blind one, unawakened, with enormous irises,
the whole of our union is only a questioning;
it is you who hang on us, O bearer of breasts;
it is we who nurse you, charming, grave Passion.

Your hatreds, your unmoving torpors, your failings,
and your brutalizations suffered long ago,
you give everything back to us, O Night still without malevolence,
like an excess of blood which is shed every month.

- When Woman, taken on for an instant, terrifies him;
love, the call of life and song of action;
they come, the green Muse and burn-ing Justice,
to tear him to pieces with their august obsessions.

Ah! thirsting without cease for splendours and calms,
forsaken by the two implacable Sisters, whimpering
fondly after knowledge whose arms are full of nourishment,
he brings to nature in flower his forehead covered with blood.

But dark alchemy and sacred study
are repugnant to the wounded one, the sombre scholar of pride;
he feels marching towards him atrocious solitudes.
Then, and still handsome, without disgust of the coffin,

he must believe in vast purposes, in immense Dreams or
Journeys across the night of Truth,
and he must call you in his soul and sick limbs,
O mysterious Death, o sister of charity!


Arthur Rimbaud (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), June 1871 *English translation

[dandylion]

I don't have a favorite poet, but this is my favorite poem:


On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

[PortInStorm]

Edgar Allan Poe

To One in Paradise:
Thou wast that all to me, love
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed in fairy fruits and flowers
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more- no more- no more-"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

[pallasathena]

I love Poe's poetry also. My favorites are The Bells and A Demon In My View. :)

[PortInStorm]

Tennyson's Ulysses:

A portion (my favorite part):
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Sme work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinnkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by tie and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.





2ndtimestudent added to this post, 16 minutes and 47 seconds later...

Of course, Wordsworths' Tintern Abbey

[Capt57]

Many of the ones listed are my personal favs: Tintern Abbey, Ulysses, Invictus, Frost, Psalm To Life I have memorized, love it. Here are two great ones by Rilke my all time favorite poet.

The Panther

His tired gaze -from passing endless bars-
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.

His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.

But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.


Black Cat


A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.





Capt57 added to this post, 4 minutes and 3 seconds later...

I would also add "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, the last 17 lines are stunning.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[PortInStorm]

Dover is amazing.

I had never read Rilke, his Panther actually hurts me- like a narrative of slow death.

[Capt57]

Dover is amazing.

I had never read Rilke, his Panther actually hurts me- like a narrative of slow death.

Sometimes I feel like that at work. Your insight and perception are powerful.





Capt57 added to this post, 22 minutes and 14 seconds later...

This poem is mind blowing and horrifying. Emily Dickinson is not an easy poet. Her work is the most cognitively original of any American poet yet manages to look simple. Two pieces of medical information to keep in mind while reading the first:

1) A death rattle is a gurgling or rattle-like noise produced shortly before or after death by the accumulation of excessive respiratory secretions in the throat.
2) Hearing is the last sense to go before you die.

I heard a fly buzz when I died

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

I felt a funeral in my brain


I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then--

[PortInStorm]

Very kind. Yes, Dickenson! Such short verse, so potent.

Another vein of verse, I just found it again today. My Last Duchess by Browning. Clever, so full of undercurrent, dark. Wonderful.

The man talking is an aristocrat desiring marriage with another young woman of high class. He is discussing a painted portrait of his former wife (painted by Fra Pandolf), whom he is strongly suspected of poisoning, with an emissary of the hopeful new wife. The duke wishes to make him aware of expectations re: her behaviour .... :suspicious:

"My Last Duchess"

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace---all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,---good! but thanked
Somehow---I know not how---as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech---(which I have not)---to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"---and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
---E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

[ElstonGunn]

Her bouquet cleaved his hardened shell,
and fondled his muscled heart.
He imbibed her glistening spell,
just before the other shoe fell.

It's by an unknown 20th century poet named Newman.

[Capt57]

Very kind. Yes, Dickenson! Such short verse, so potent.

Another vein of verse, I just found it again today. My Last Duchess by Browning. Clever, so full of undercurrent, sarcastic, dark. Wonderful.

Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is very dark. I think Stephen King based his Dark Tower books on that poem.

This guy gives a nice reading of "My Last Duchess"
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[Tinmaiden]

"Sea Canes," by Derek Walcott.

Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion

of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.

The sea-canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes

brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

from Sea Grapes, 1971

[deicruxified]

e. e. cummings...

[somewhere i have never travelled]


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

[yondyr]

I see some of our poetry loves are dark and moving. Herewith another Emily Dickinson...I adore the mental image.


I DIED for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

(I forgot to credit 'Endure' posted earlier. It's by me)

[PortInStorm]

*stand and applauds*

Well done! It was beautiful!

[raconteur213]

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.


1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock




S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse


A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,


Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.


Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo


Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,


Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.





LET us go then, you and I,


When the evening is spread out against the sky


Like a patient etherised upon a table;


Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,


The muttering retreats
5

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels


And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:


Streets that follow like a tedious argument


Of insidious intent


To lead you to an overwhelming question …
10

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”


Let us go and make our visit.





In the room the women come and go


Talking of Michelangelo.





The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
15

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes


Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,


Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,


Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,


Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
20

And seeing that it was a soft October night,


Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.





And indeed there will be time


For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,


Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
25

There will be time, there will be time


To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;


There will be time to murder and create,


And time for all the works and days of hands


That lift and drop a question on your plate;
30

Time for you and time for me,


And time yet for a hundred indecisions,


And for a hundred visions and revisions,


Before the taking of a toast and tea.





In the room the women come and go
35

Talking of Michelangelo.





And indeed there will be time


To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”


Time to turn back and descend the stair,


With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
40

[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]


My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,


My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—


[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]


Do I dare
45

Disturb the universe?


In a minute there is time


For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.





For I have known them all already, known them all:—


Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
50

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;


I know the voices dying with a dying fall


Beneath the music from a farther room.


So how should I presume?





And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
55

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,


And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,


When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,


Then how should I begin


To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
60

And how should I presume?





And I have known the arms already, known them all—


Arms that are braceleted and white and bare


[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]


It is perfume from a dress
65

That makes me so digress?


Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.


And should I then presume?


And how should I begin?
. . . . .


Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
70

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes


Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…





I should have been a pair of ragged claws


Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .


And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
75

Smoothed by long fingers,


Asleep … tired … or it malingers,


Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.


Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,


Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
80

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,


Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,


I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;


I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,


And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
85

And in short, I was afraid.





And would it have been worth it, after all,


After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,


Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,


Would it have been worth while,
90

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,


To have squeezed the universe into a ball


To roll it toward some overwhelming question,


To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,


Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
95

If one, settling a pillow by her head,


Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.


That is not it, at all.”





And would it have been worth it, after all,


Would it have been worth while,
100

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,


After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—


And this, and so much more?—


It is impossible to say just what I mean!


But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
105

Would it have been worth while


If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,


And turning toward the window, should say:


“That is not it at all,


That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
110

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;


Am an attendant lord, one that will do


To swell a progress, start a scene or two,


Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,


Deferential, glad to be of use,
115

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;


Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;


At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—


Almost, at times, the Fool.





I grow old … I grow old …
120

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.





Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?


I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.


I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.





I do not think that they will sing to me.
125




I have seen them riding seaward on the waves


Combing the white hair of the waves blown back


When the wind blows the water white and black.





We have lingered in the chambers of the sea


By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
130

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

[PortInStorm]

Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is very dark. I think Stephen King based his Dark Tower books on that poem.

This guy gives a nice reading of "My Last Duchess"
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I just read it for the first time... chilling is the word, for sure. How he triggers such vivid imagery of such an ephemeral world, is beyond me.





2ndtimestudent added to this post, 6 minutes and 8 seconds later...

Re: The Love Song.... how amazing "I measured out my life with coffee spoons" makes you think.

[Capt57]

Endure

my supplicating hands
Take on the aspect of the old gnarled roots
Of the oak and olive trees I roamed among

I wish I could write like that, good stuff!

[searcher]

Here's my favourite. Had to act it out once. I was the guy who was died on.

Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggers under sacks
knock-kneed, coughing like hags we cursed through sludge
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
and towards our distant rest began to trudge
men marched asleep - many had lost their boots
but limped on, bloodshod, all went lame, all blind,
drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
of dissapointed shells that dropped behind

GAS! gas! quick boys - an ecstacy of fumbling
fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
but someone was still yelling out and stumbling
and floundering like a man in fire or lime
dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
as under a green sea, I saw him drowning

In all my dreams - before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning

if in some smothering dreams you too could pace
behind the wagon that we flung him in
and watch the white eyes writhing in his face
his hanging face, like a devil sick of sin
if you could hear, at every jolt
the blood come gargling from froth corrupted lungs
obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children desperate for some ardent glory
the old lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est
pro patria mori

I also like most other war poems, free verse and Robert Frost.

[azelismia]

Robert frost is my absolute favorite poet too.

I think my favorites are to earthward and the lockless door, in neglect, nothing gold can stay ( I am very partial to all of his little poems, fire and ice fragmentary blue,dust of snow) my November guest.

I got docked a couple grades in my English class for arguing with the teacher over the meaning of acquainted with the night. (I still think I was right and she was wrong)

another favorite poem is Mark strands eating poetry

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I am also exceedingly fond of Edward Gorey.

someone else mentioned maria rainer rilke the panther is a fantastic poem. I prefer the German version, the cadence is lost or at least reduced in translation which is very important for the over all import of the poem. it echoes the pacing of the panther in it's cell.

I also like TS Elliot but I don't have the same passion for him that I do the other three.

[curiousjane]

I don't know why I like this so much, but I do.

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[Erika Redmark]

I really like the Roman poet Catullus. I had to read a lot of his poems for AP Latin a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. Some of my favourites are the one about the dead brother (the one that ends "ave atque vale"), the ones about the sparrow, "Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire", and some of the shorter witty ones where he makes fun of people or makes some pithy comment about love.

I also like Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!"

[ShaiGar]

Shai Gar

Discover the unknown and evolve,
live thy life to the very edge of thy soul.
Nothing restricts thee but thy own will,
be fluid, be forceful and be always still
Dance lightly in the sun on the hills.
Contemplate the way the world interacts,
and be ever learning when you relax.
-
Grinning brightly at the sun
Never knowing when you're done
Never giving up on fun
Because life is never done

Lying in the shadow
Starring at the clouds
Seeing dwarves, elves and gnomes
Always living brightly, never knowing how

Age eternal, changing kernel
On an ever swimming turtle
Through the dark expanse of space
With a smile on its face
-
I have no more wings for earthly flight
as I've fallen far from hallowed light
all I've left to me is my earthly might
while i ponder penance in my hallowed plight
-
“You cannot know me any more than myself,
even I do not claim that, I too need help.
When deciphering writing you only know the then,
that which lives like lightning, immortalised by pen.
What once was true is not eternally so,
as I rarely commit truth into my prose.
You do not know me, I do not ask you to.
Insight is not, and never free. Please accept in lieu,
the Facade and gifts that i need to float in rifts
and determine my style. So Seek Thyself for a while”

[sriv]

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.


1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Definitely my favorite. And a must-read for INTs.

[png1977]

Is it a coincidence that one of my favorite poems is by Robert Frost as well? Here it is:

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud--
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.

Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, "I burn."

But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.

It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

--"Something Like a Star"
Robert Frost

[replicant]

William Butler Yeats

"Into the Twilight"


OUT-WORN heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young, 5
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood 10
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight, 15
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

Nikki Giovanni

"A Greater Love of God and Country"

There is no reason to ask
WHY? since to ask "WHY" is to enter some dark and crazy spot
where one presumes there is REASON and A REASON that will
make sense which is not to say there is a craziness: I don't believe
this is crazy but rather mean.... hateful.... ugly-though not ignorant
because there is knowledge here and there is a purpose here
but there is knowledge here and there is a purpose here
but there is
NO REASON
People who will burn a cross will burn a church
The building my be rebuilt but the creak
of a stair... the smell of the polish in the pews
the old kitchen where Sunday dinners were reheated
the icebox where the iced tea was kept... the too narrow
steps leading to the damp and dusky basement... the leaky
window that could not always keep the cold at bay... the knowing
that this building was built by these hands to worship this God who
has Delivered us..................... No..... that cannot be rebuilt
The people who have burned crosses will burn a church
Something will be lost and the world just a bit sadder
for the loss of the building.... But the people who sift through
ashes know that fire is a friend and that fire can be a foe
But the people who use fire are lowdown.....
And the people who know that some people are lowdown will watch
the fires..... will forgive the trespasses..... and will go right on
thanking their God for His powerful..... magnificent
Deliverance

Allen Ginsberg

"In The Back of Real"

railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.

A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World.

San Jose, 1954

[Rudy]

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Briefly, in background, it refers to an Irish airman in WWI where, unlike in the second world war, there is no easy way to say one side or the other was good and evil. Bear in mind that the Irish had no love for the English at this time, and nothing against Germany, and you will better understand the third and fourth lines. I love it's poignancy, it's rhyming scheme (especially the last four lines,) and how it talks about doing things for your own sake, and not because of duty or tradition. Also the calm, philosophical acceptance of one's death is very compelling to me.

[demaugustus]

Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there.
I do not sleep. I am the winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on the snow.
I am the sun light on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die

- Unknown (If anyone knows please tell me)

[Rudy]

- Unknown (If anyone knows please tell me)

It seems to be attributed to Mary Frye, though it seems it's origin is not absolutely certain.

[Merle]

Mine are "Vertue" by George Herbert:
VERTUE.

SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie :
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My musick shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives ;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

And "Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers" by Emily Dickinson:

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers —
Untouched by Morning
And untouched by Noon —
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection —
Rafter of satin- And Roof of stone!

Grand go the years-in the crescent- above them-
Worlds scoop their arcs-
And Firmaments- row-
Diadems- drop- and Doges- surrender-
Soundless as dots- on a Disc of Snow-

Also, all of Marvell's Mower poems and his "The Garden", and Eliot's "Four Quartets".

With Herbert it's quite difficult for me to say why I love it... it's not so much the meaning of the poem as the beauty of its construction, the sound it makes and the line " a box where sweets compacted lie".
With Dickinson, it's the final stanza with the huge sweep of time and the apocalyptic sense of an earth purged of human life... and also the sound of that last line with its sibilant hush into nothingness. Oh man... I sound like SUCH a geek when I talk about poetry.

Edit: I just this moment realised that my two favourite poems deal with very similar themes... and present exactly opposite conclusions about them.. how very odd.

[Nikita]

One of my favorites:

Résumé
by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

[Estelore]

Alas, the majority of my favourite poetry is in Welsh, which does not flow so smoothly into English words. Ahhh, Eisteddfod!

As English/American poetry goes, I most enjoy Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson, allowing that the three are terribly dissimilar. "Mending Wall" I love much (Frost).

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It is a terribly long piece, so I provide a link, if you wish to read it.

[floramacivor]

The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson

...Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott...

...Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott..."

I don't know why I like it, I just do.

[Anreader]

The Brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

Emily Dickinson





Anreader added to this post, 2 minutes and 44 seconds later...

I also like William Cullen Bryan's 18. Forest Hymn. Verse expresses spirituality to me in some way.

[Arcani]

Alas, the majority of my favourite poetry is in Welsh, which does not flow so smoothly into English words. Ahhh, Eisteddfod!

As English/American poetry goes, I most enjoy Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson, allowing that the three are terribly dissimilar. "Mending Wall" I love much (Frost).

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It is a terribly long piece, so I provide a link, if you wish to read it.

I second Mending Wall. Frost is one of my favorite 20th Century poets. Another favorite of mine is Eliot, particularly Prufrock and Other Observations (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). I also enjoy some of Byron's work; Darkness (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) is a good one.

But one of my all time favorite poems is Robert Browning's narrative Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.

Also, if you like Childe Roland, you may want to read Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) for some interesting contrasts (be warned though, it's quite long and the language is a bit difficult at times). I haven't had a chance to read the whole poem yet, but the excerpts that were put into my literature anthology are interesting.

(Sorry, they're all kind of long...)

[nacht]

Because One is Always Forgotten, Carolyn Forché


When Viera was buried we knew it had come to an end,
his coffin rocking into the ground like a boat or a cradle.

I could take my heart, he said, and give it to a campesino
and he would cut it up and give it back:

you can't eat heart in those four dark
chambers where a man can be kept for years.

A boy soldier in the bone-hot sun works his knife
to peel the face from a dead man

and hang it from the branch of a tree
flowering with such faces.

The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands.

[HackerX]

I'm not big into poetry, but I like these. (Those that know what I listen to, musically, will probably know them/where they're from)

Alone - Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were---I have not seen
As others saw---I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I loved alone.
Then---in my childhood---in the dawn
Of a most stormy life---was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold---
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by---
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.


The Sorrow Of Love* - William Butler Yeats

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

*It seems this poem has two versions (I'm not up with the history of it) Originally:

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the eversinging leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships
And all the burden of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The crumbling moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

[OmegaPsi]

I normally do not like poetry because it never seems to get in my head and make me go "Huh."
Though I thoroughly enjoyed 'Thanatopsis' by William Cullen Bryant.

[Frodis]

Not a great poetry buff, but I've been reciting this one since childhood...

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[SteveJrII]

I am a bigger fan of prose, but there is some poetry which I like, Edgar Allan Poe and Allen Ginsberg I enjoy. America is good, but a little long, here is another one by Ginsberg.

A Supermarket in California
"What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?"
-Allen Ginsberg

[RoadieRich]

Hmm... where to start? I'm a big fan of anything nonsensical.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the Monkeys all say Boo!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!
The mice go Clang!

What a noisy place to belong,
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!
(Spike Milligan)

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, 'You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
'O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, 'How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
'O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, 'How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
(Edward Lear)

There is one other poem I call up regularly. Most people recognise it once I get to the fourth stanza:

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
(Laurence Binyon)

[SRVcardsfan27]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise man at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

He wrote this about his dying father. It speaks to me because of the passion that is created. It is very well articulated, and something that gives me strength when I'm down. No matter what, you cannot give up and you must stick it out. For it is the only way, because if you don't give it your all, you're wasting it all away and the inevitable is guaranteed, and sooner than expected.

[auriga vega]

From the book Please Understand Me II

If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances,

Try not to ask me to feel other than I do.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me.

That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend or your colleague.
If you will allow me any of my wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions,
Then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong and might finally appear right to you as right - for me.

To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.

Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness.

And in understanding me you might come to prize my difference from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences

by David Keirsey


I LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

[Mozzes]

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

[nowandzen]

"Dans les plus sombres yeux se ferment les plus clairs."

Paul Eluard

[Zombicide]

Can't decide which one but some epic poem e.g. Beowulf or maybe something Spoken Word

[BostonIan]

"If", by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise...

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

[LaoTzu]

The Tao Te Ching of course! :P

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

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[lambpox]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-- e. e. cummings

[loosefanbelt]

•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.


In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.



Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.

- William Shakespeare -


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.



let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

e. e. cummings


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.



Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing. ~ Arundhati Roy


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.




I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

~Sarah Teasdale


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.


A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south.

Because his son is asleep on his shoulder, no car must splash him, no car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo, but he's not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say, "Fragile, handle with care."

His ears fill up with breathing.

He hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him.

We're not going to be able to live in this world if we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another.

The road will only be wide, the rain will never stop falling.

~Naomi Shihab Nye



•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.



Ring the bells than still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen


•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.




When pain arrives side by side with your love,
I promise not to flee.
When you ask me for my life, I promise not to fight.
I'm holding a cup in my hand but, God,
if you do not come till the end of time,
I promise not to pour out the wine nor to drink a sip.
Your bright face is my day.
Your dark curls bring the night.
If you do not let me near you,
I promise not to go to sleep nor rise.
Your magnificence has made me a wonder.
Your charm has taught me the way of love.
I am the progeny of Abraham.
I'll find my way through fire.



The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn that?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings.



Be melting snow.
Cleanse yourself of yourself.



Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open
the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.



The language of companionship is a unique one.
To reach someone through the heart is other than
reaching them through words.
Besides words, illusions, and arguments,
the heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.



Listen to the story told by the reed of being separated.
Since I was cut from the reed bed,
I have made this crying sound.
Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.
Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.
At any gathering, I'm there,
lingering and laughing and grieving,
a friend to each, but few will hear
the secrets hidden within the notes.
No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit, spirit out from body,
no concealing that mixing.
But it's not given us to see,
so the reed flute is fire, not wind.
Leave that empty.



Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.


--Rumi




•:*¨¨*:•. K .•:*¨¨*:•.


Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Cocoa]

Parental Haiku from "my Family"
Which is composed by Ben to his Daughter at university.

Enclosed this cheque,
you bleed me dry,
stop it.

[LaoTzu]

I had this idea of making sheet music out of definable patterns you might see in everyday life...just to see how the music would sound. (a skyline for example...a group of stars perhaps...)

However I can't read or write in music :P A year or two later, and then I hear this poem read by the author ...

Lyrics to Hopeless (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) :
I played connect the dots with your beauty marks
And I ended up with picture perfect sheet music
I read your musical notes with a composer's eyes
And heard out song for the first time
My spine is still tingling, mental images of your fine tune
is what I've been nodding my head to lately
Every now and then you can catch me humming
your nudity under my heavy breath
I heavily suggest you resurrect
your ancient neglected dust collector
If you distrust the distance in my seldom plucked heart strings
Sit stripped before your full length
Perform your reflection backwards
Maybe then you will understand the rhythm in my movement
Listen when the news is sent
Extend when the rules are bent
I'll be waiting to take your leave
Make me a victim of your two step
Make me an apprentice of your body parts
Teach me to dance to your beauty marks

I cut it short, because I dont like all of it :P

[laserist]

if up's the word; and a world grows greener
minute by second and most by more --
if death is the loser and life is the winner
(and beggars are rich but misers are poor)
--let's touch the sky:
with a to and a fro
(and a here there where) and away we go

in even the laziest creature among us
a wisdom no knowledge can kill is astir --
now dull eyes are keen and now keen eyes are keener
(for young is the year, for young is the year)
--let's touch the sky:
with a great (and a gay
and a steep) deep rush through amazing day

it's brains without hearts have set saint against sinner;
put gain over gladness and joy under care --
let's do as an earth which can never do wrong does
(minute by second and most by more)
--let's touch the sky:
with a strange (and a true)
and a climbing fall into a far near blue

if beggars are rich (and a robin will sing his
robin a song) but misers are poor --
let's love until no one could quite be (and young is
the year, dear) as living as i'm and as you're
--let's touch the sky:
with a you and a me
and an every who's any who's some) one who's we
-E. E. Cummings

The lower case thing was just a book jacket idea...

[Monte314]

The Owl and the Pussycat
by Edward Lear

I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II
Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III
'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.


The Raven
by E. A. Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

[ElstonGunn]

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría
despertando al albor de la mañana,
a la tarde serán lástima vana
durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría.

-Pedro Calderón de la Barca

(Yeah, I'm going with a foreign language one, sans translation. Gotta keep my hipster cred up.)

[loosefanbelt]

Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

--Edna St.Vincent Millay

[ReasoningMind]

Invictus
-William Ernest Henley-

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

[probity]

To A Mouse - Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
What makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell -
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me;
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects dreaer!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

[Godzilla]

Renaissance by Edna St. Vincent Milay (my great great second cousin or something lol) It's beautiful. Or maybe Howl by Alan Ginsburg, or like anything by him, he was a genius.
My favorite short story (I don't remember what it's called) but it's one we had to read for LA about how everyone was equal, but that meant they had to be brought down to the lowest level, so everyone had to wear chain to like hold them down and stuff, it just like stuck with me. Oh and I also love the Snow Queen, that stuck with me from childhood.

[jazziejazzay]

To Leslie,

Captain L.C Hossle, killed in action, France; August 1916

Sleep deep,
Sleep well...
Your requiem knell,
The whine and drone of passing shell

Come cold...
Come rain...
Their grip is vain
For you have passed beyond all pain

Sleep deep,
Sleep well....

Sleep sound,
Sleep deep....
Our watch we keep,
And little chance have we to sleep

Your watch is done,
Your rest begun....
The long, long rest you've nobly won

Sleep sound,
Sleep deep....

I can't find it anywhere, but I remember it.

[Kisai]

To the Reader
by Charles Baudelaire

Folly, error, sin and parsimony
Preoccupy our spirits and work on our bodies
Feeding our consciences
Like beggars nourishing their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our repentance weak
We make ourselves pay handsomely for each confession
And happily rejoin the muddy path
Believing our base tears can wash away the stains.

On the pillow of evil, Satan Trismegistus
Cradles at length our enchanted soul
And the rich metal of our will
Is boiled away by that artful chemist.

It is the Devil who holds the threads that move us!
It is in hateful objects that we find peace;
Each day, one step further towards Hell
Without horror, through the stinking shadows.

Like a poor sinner who kisses and consumes
The tortured breast of an ancient whore,
We steal in passing a clandestine joy
We squeeze as strongly as a withered fruit.

Serried, seething, like a million ants
In our brains riots a Demon horde
And, when we breathe, Death in our lungs
Descends, a sightless river, with deaf moans.

If rape and poison, arson and the knife
Have not yet woven their pleasant designs
On the dull canvas of our lowly destinies
It is because our soul, alas, is not yet bold enough!

But among the jackals, panthers and chimerae
The monkeys, scorpions, vultures and the snakes
The monsters yelping, shouting, grunting, crawling
In the ill-famed menagerie of all our vices

Is one more ugly, evil, fouler than the rest
Making no grand gestures or great cries
Yet it would gladly lay waste to the earth
And with a yawn would swallow up the world

And it is Boredom! Eye laden with involuntary tears,
Dreaming of scaffolds, pulls upon its pipe
You know it, reader, this delicate monster
- Hypocrite reader, - my likeness, - my brother!

[Merle]

Holy Sonnet 14, John Donne:

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.


THE WORLD.
by Henry Vaughan

I SAW Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright ;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
Driv'n by the spheres 5
Like a vast shadow mov'd ; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain ;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights, 10
Wit's sour delights ;
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure,
All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flow'r. 15

2.

The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, mov'd there so slow,
He did nor stay, nor go ;
Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl
Upon his soul, 20
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digg'd the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Work'd under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey ; but one did see 25
That policy :
Churches and altars fed him ; perjuries
Were gnats and flies ;
It rain'd about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free. 30
3.

The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves. 30
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugg'd each one his pelf ;*
The downright epicure plac'd heav'n in sense,
And scorn'd pretence ;
While others, slipp'd into a wide excess 35
Said little less ;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave ;
And poor, despisèd Truth sate counting by
Their victory. 40
4.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring ;
But most would use no wing.
O fools—said I—thus to prefer dark night
Before true light ! 45
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way ;
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God ;
A way where you might tread the sun, and be 50
More bright than he !
But as I did their madness so discuss,
One whisper'd thus,
“This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
But for His bride.”





Merle added to this post, 5 minutes and 13 seconds later...

oooh, Baudelaire: I like The Fountain of Blood but I don't really like any of the translations at all, they completely fail to capture the rhythm properly which is the most brilliant thing about it...so, I guess it'll have to be French:

La Fontaine de Sang

Il me semble parfois que mon sang coule à flots,
Ainsi qu'une fontaine aux rythmiques sanglots.
Je l'entends bien qui coule avec un long murmure,
Mais je me tâte en vain pour trouver la blessure.

À travers la cité, comme dans un champ clos,
Il s'en va, transformant les pavés en îlots,
Désaltérant la soif de chaque créature,
Et partout colorant en rouge la nature.

J'ai demandé souvent à des vins captieux
D'endormir pour un jour la terreur qui me mine;
Le vin rend l'oeil plus clair et l'oreille plus fine!

J'ai cherché dans l'amour un sommeil oublieux;
Mais l'amour n'est pour moi qu'un matelas d'aiguilles
Fait pour donner à boire à ces cruelles filles!

[Algol]

I would not say it's my favorite but it's one I like and it jumped into my mind.

Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[Brittle]

The Beckoning

Death beckons me
A darkly shrouded figure, softly whispers

…beckoning…

A bleak hand steals
From beneath Death’s shadowy cloak

…beckoning…

…beckoning…

I hear my name float from somewhere

An ancient tomb
Somewhere lost

Somewhere forgot

Death knows my name
And beckons me

I reach… into the calling darkness

Death knows no satisfaction
Save, the loss of innocence

And as I grow numb
I feel the smile of the Beckoner
The chilling air
Blast from His nostrils

Ice fills my heart
Lead fills my gut
Knowledge complete
Fills my mind

And now, in my madness
Shall I beckon thee?

[fomatizer]

What is your favorite poem/short story? Why?Thanks for asking. As it turns out, I share many of azelismia's favs (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) so to avoid duplicates, here's my favorite poet/poem of the moment that I didn't notice anyone mentioning yet: Li-Young Lee.

To answer why, it's because I love the way Li-Young Lee captures the feeling and sensation of pure contentment and living in the moment when all is right and good and tangible as a delicious peach. ...Yet there is the echo afterward like an afterthought or a reminder that it will not always be so. As children, we can forget it but as adults, this knowledge we carry with us always, always, always. It's kindof a drag, man. I think this is why so many pine for their lost innocence. It's a yearning to once again, live in the moment without cares or worries.
"From Blossoms"
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.


Here's another by him with a different tone:


"This Hour And What Is Dead"

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking
through the bare rooms over my head,
opening and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
What could he possibly need there in heaven?
Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches?
His love for me feels like spilled water
running back to its vessel.

At this hour, what is dead is restless
and what is living is burning.

Someone tell him he should sleep now.

My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes in the knees
of five pairs of boy's pants.
His love for me is like his sewing:
various colors and too much thread,
the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces
clean through with each stroke of his hand.

At this hour, what is dead is worried
and what is living is fugitive.

Someone tell him he should sleep now.

[thederelict]

AUTUMN DAY
Rainer Maria Rilke (This is nicer in the original German)

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

[Trenchant1]

I have to agree with BostonIan, If by Rudyard Kipling. Also, Gunga Din by Kipling. My grandmother taught me the whole poem and I could recite it when I was three, so I'm told.

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
"You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
"Hi! Slippy hitherao!
"Water, get it! Panee lao
"You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted " Harry By!"
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
"You put some juldee in it
"Or I'll marrow you this minute
"If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick' on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire,"
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green.
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen"
"'E's chawin' up the ground,
"An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink" sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!


Note on vernacular expressions
bhisti - water-carrier
hitherao - come here
panee lao - bring water
Harry By - O Brother
juldee - quickly
marrow - hit

[uncon]

Bluebird
Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

[Goethe]

Prometheus by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Why? ... It will speak for itself, like all great poems. I prefer the original but, for the convenience of those who are not competent in the German language, I will post my favorite translation:

Cover your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapors
And like a boy
beheading thistles
Practice on oaks and mountain peaks--
Still you must leave
My earth intact
And my small hovel, which you did not build,
And this my hearth
Whose glowing heat
You envy me.

I know of nothing more wretched
Under the sun than you gods!
Meagerly you nourish
Your majesty
On dues of sacrifice
And breath of prayer
And would suffer want
But for children and beggars,
Poor hopeful fools.

Once too, a child,
Not knowing where to turn,
I raised bewildered eyes
Up to the sun, as if above there were
An ear to hear my complaint,
A heart like mine
To take pity on the oppressed.

Who helped me
Against the Titans' arrogance?
Who rescued me from death,
From slavery?
Did not my holy and glowing heart,
Unaided, accomplish all?
And did it not, young and good,
Cheated, glow thankfulness
For its safety to him, to the sleeper above?

I pay homage to you? For what?
Have you ever relieved
The burdened man's anguish?
Have you ever assuaged
The frightened man's tears?
Was it not omnipotent Time
That forged me into manhood,
And eternal Fate,
My masters and yours?

Or did you think perhaps
That I should hate this life,
Flee into deserts
Because not all
The blossoms of dream grew ripe?

Here I sit, forming men
In my image,
A race to resemble me:
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy, to be glad--
And never to heed you,
Like me!

(transl. Michael Hamburger)

[Jonathan Brewer]

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

[callmemigs]

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

SECONDED. :thumbsup:

Robert Frost is really amazing.

[halfcrazed]

I love Prufrock, and I love quite a few of Frost's poems. After Apple-Picking and Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening in particular send shivers through me sometimes. Here are a couple more. The last, incidentally, is by a Singaporean poet:

Family Reunion

My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.

When he saw how we drank, my sister
shredding the black labels into her glass
while his remaining grandchildren
dragged their think bunk bed mattress

first out to the lawn to play
then farther up the field to sleep next to her.
I think it was then that he changed,
something in him died. He's gentler now,

quiet, losing weight though every night
he eats the same ice cream he always ate
only now he's not drinking
he doesn't fall asleep with the spoon in his hand,

he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.

- Catherine Barnett.

The Illiterate

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

- William Meredith.

Placenames

So late in his life
my father starts naming the vanished places:
Buffalo Road, Robinsons,
The Arcade and Satay Club,
places now remote as the stars
in a galaxy already extinct.
He draws on his cigarette
but his breath is cold,
his voice ashen
as if he is already dead.
The night listens to the reel of names,
to the echo behind, to the blanks
in the man's geography.
I don't know if it's the dead places
calling him to come home
or my father summoning them
for a last walk. He intones
Johnson Pier, Malacca Street,
Old World, New World,
as if piecing together the alleys,
the streets and neighborhood
of his body, reassembling
the ruined city
of his vanished self.
His cigarette has gone out
and the ash dangles.
Soon his name will be erased
like the street names
and I will take over the chant:
Raffles Place, Change Alley,
calling the dead places
and my father home.

- Boey Kim Cheng.

[searcher]

Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Winterstorm]

"He Wishes For The Clothes of Heaven" W. B. Yeats

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"

Especially the last three verses. Beautiful.

[gestalt]

you said you didn't care
you said you'd be gone
you've left your guitar
broken strings reborn
I left you standing with your heart at your knees
Through fire and flames girl we've paid our fees
They didn't tell us much, the birds and the bees
Yet we are all made of dust, we used to smoke trees
Angle of Light, tonight your raiment is in our sight
Angel of Darkness, today your mantle we sing of might
of Been, but alas no more. Take our safari
and dry it, dry it out. Hail Mary, full of grace
Let our hearts race querously, two hearts, too fast
around the world of word and Ahh Ahh Aii cannot
sing of what was, only what may be. Beltaine
tree and ribbons in her hair, everything that a man doth dare
Free-form consciousness, the heaven and the stars gestalt
like chocolate malts between ama-zing peoples, jungle fathers, jungle queens
Sound-missiles restless and undone, for our children we have none

Wrote that last night, little bit of free-form expression. Not very good but favorite at the moment.

[Winterstorm]

It sounds like a lyric for a song, I like it.

[nacht]

The City in the Sea, Edgar Allen Poe:


Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

[Viktor]

So often, now, I feel the hours
Of my life a-rushing by.
Still young, I bear some withering flowers;
Those early years from me did fly.
And when I feel my life is starting,
I look behind me where it flew,
Unto the ground alike a drop of dew,
It is already departing
And I ought to prize each day,
Before my dew-drop hits the soil,
When life will pass and fly away,
And I am doffed from mortal coil.

[Prunesquallor]

Some of the many:

Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


Rhapsody on a Windy Night - T.S. Eliot

Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium...

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,
Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”

The last twist of the knife.

And

Walking Around -Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

(obv, this is a translation from the Spanish).

[Stratego]

Several! (Former English Major, here).

1. Emily Dickinson / The World is Not Conclusion

This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond—
Invisible, as Music—
But positive, as Sound—
It beckons, and it baffles—
Philosophy—don't know—
And through a Riddle, at the last—
Sagacity, must go—
To guess it, puzzles scholars—
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown—
Faith slips—and laughs, and rallies—
Blushes, if any see—
Plucks at a twig of Evidence—
And asks a Vane, the way—
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit—
Strong Hallelujahs roll—
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul—

2. Robert Frost / Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

3. Shakespeare / Hamlet (3/1)

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause...

4. Robert Browning / Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
a long one, but worth it for every divine line..

Gr-r-r-there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps —
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
— Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As I do, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp —
In three sips the Arian frustrate
While he drains his at one gulp.


Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us eager to get a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails.
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel,
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan! — one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss it till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r — you swine!

5. Robert Browning / caliban Upon Setebos

Too long to reproduce here, but check it out sometime. It's excellent.

[Feral]

Robert Frost's Fire and Ice-

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

And Poe's Dream Within a Dream, especially the second verse

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[loosefanbelt]

Two lines tonight from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

[ntwady]

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost

[Brion]

ROCOCO

Take hand and part with laughter;
Touch lips and part with tears;
Once more and no more after,
Whatever comes with years.
We twain shall not remeasure
The ways that left us twain;
Nor crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.

We twain once well in sunder,
What will the mad gods do
For hate with me, I wonder,
Or what for love with you?
Forget them till November,
And dream there's April yet,
Forget that I remember,
And dream that I forget.

Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.

Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.

We have heard from hidden places
What love scarce lives and hears:
We have seen on fervent faces
The pallor of strange tears:
We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,
Whence, ripe to steam and stain,
Foams round the feet of pleasure
The blood-red must of pain.

Remembrance may recover
And time bring back to time
The name of your first lover,
The ring of my first rhyme:
But rose-leaves of December
The frosts of June shall fret,
The day that you remember,
The day that I forget.

The snake that hides and hisses
In heaven we twain have known;
The grief of cruel kisses,
The joy whose mouth makes moan;
The pulses' pause and measure,
Where in one furtive vein
Throbs through the heart of pleasure
The purpler blood of pain.

We have done with tears and treasons
And love for treason's sake;
Room for the swift new seasons,
The years that burn and break,
Dismantle and dismember
Men's days and dreams, Juliette;
For love may not remember,
But time will not forget.

Life treads down love in flying,
Time withers him at root;
Bring all dead things and dying,
Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,
Where, crushed by three days' pressure
Our three days' love lies slain;
And earlier leaf of pleasure,
And latter flower of pain.

Breathe close upon the ashes,
It may be flame will leap;
Unclose the soft close lashes,
Lift up the lids and weep.
Light love's extinguished ember,
Let one tear leave it wet
For one that you remember
And ten that you forget.

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]

************

Why art thou silent?
Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that
the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care -
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For naught
but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak! - though this soft warm heart,
once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine - Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]


PARTING

Too fair, I may not call thee mine:
Too dear, I may not see
Those eyes with bridal beacons shine;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
Empty and hushed, and safe apart, -
One little corner of thy heart.

Thou wilt be happy, dear! and bless
Thee: happy mayst thou be.
I would not make thy pleasure less;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
My life to light, my lot to leaven, -
One little corner of thy Heaven.

Good-by, dear heart! I go to dwell
A weary way from thee;
Our first kiss is our last farewell;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
Who wander outside in the night, -
One little corner of thy light.

Gerald Massey [1828-1907]





Brion added to this post, 13 minutes and 36 seconds later...

He who wins her love shall lose her
He who loses her shall gain
For still the spirit pursues her
The memories without the pain

He loses her who gains her
who watches day by day
The dust of time that stains her
The griefs that leave her grey

Oh, Happier he who gains not
The love that some seem to gain
The joy of memory stains not
and shall with him remain

In dreams she grows not older
Her kisses become more pure
Though all the world wax colder
She shall never lose her allure





Brion added to this post, 1 minutes and 36 seconds later...

And for sake of humility and to have my name mentioned with the likes of the great ones above...

The Door

The soul’s sweet mixture of Love is Pleasure and Pain…
Too near to Touch…
Too far to hold…
You can hear her outside the door,
Sliding her back down the solid oak barrier as the mirror to your own actions
from the other side.
Sitting so close together, with faces turned outward so far apart,
The mind bends thoughts together with words the lips cannot sweetly serenely express…
At precisely the same moment, each head rests against updrawn knees,
Kneeling in a fetal position, seeking the warmth of your own body…
Two hearts that can be seen reaching out beyond the doors of our mortal toils
And on into the boundless realms of space and time,
Thoughts fly too fast, too free
Each knows the other is there, sitting on the other side,
NOTHING
But a door
A dead life
Between them
EVERYTHING
In life
Keeping them apart.

Knowing and longing, someone stands,
Touches an open palm on the door as if to feel the heat,
The beating of a heart through the wood skin itself,
The other one stops their silent tears,
They know,
Just know the other person is standing there…
For a moment in time everything is suspended…
Space, time, fate, destiny, all hangs in the balance,

A thousand years pass,
Futures and kids,
Battles and monuments,
Hopes and dreams,
One.
Second.
More.
One.
Life.
Less.

Two mirrored hands slide down the handle of their future,
Fearing and hating
Knowing and loving
What unknown worlds are on the other side
The knob slowly begins to turn
Loving becomes hating,
Fearing becomes knowing.
Inch by inch the knob gives way, cold metal, warm hands, breathing stopped…..
Expectancy, hope, the heart rises in blessed anguish,
Two troubled souls begin to weep, the eyes begin to anticipate the sight,
The heart knows who it will see…
With the full expectancy of a child’s Christmas dreams,
A Gentle push is given on the door….
…
…
…
…
…
The knob is turned to the full open position,
But
The door does not yield,
The metal locks coldly hold itself fast…
Metal locks,
Unfeeling,
Cold,
They do not understand the hearts
And lives the beat and breathe in the balance
They only respond to
Man made keys of logic

That logic is lost on the hand that turns the knob,
The knob yielded to the touch
The heart grew in its expectancy
Love alone should be opening the door
Each can hear the other breathing and
With a sad and resigned half smile
With the same loss of innocence that a child has when
Discovering a magacian’s trick.
One remembers that Santa Clause isn’t real,
And wishing on a star doesn’t matter
And mothers cannot always make everything alright

A last look at the door,
The hand falls away from the golden knob
The body turns to the side to go,
Wonders for a moment if anyone was really behind that door
Lets the fingers slide away from the knob,
Leaving a steamy wet impression on the knob itself
Which evaporates quickly
Without the warmth of its nurturer
consumed by that which it was nourished by

The traveler picks up his baggage
Left beside the door
And with wayward bent back
Begins his journey
To nowhere
Once again
Feet fall further
Go farther
He hears many voices
Many doors
Opening
Closing

He stops at the final elevator
He knows he heard his door open,
The door where he waited,
It is too late,
He is too far away to go back,
He wishes it were different
But someone is expecting this baggage
He must travel to nowhere in a hurry

He travels often and thinks he sees her in
Unknown courtyards…
On high white church steeples
Under blue oceans
And climbing the mountains of life’s existence…
He always approaches, to find a faded scent of what was
And he thinks back to that door…

By: Brion

[Stratego]

ROCOCO

Take hand and part with laughter;
Touch lips and part with tears;
Once more and no more after,
Whatever comes with years.
We twain shall not remeasure
The ways that left us twain;
Nor crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.

We twain once well in sunder,
What will the mad gods do
For hate with me, I wonder,
Or what for love with you?
Forget them till November,
And dream there's April yet,
Forget that I remember,
And dream that I forget.

Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.

Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.

We have heard from hidden places
What love scarce lives and hears:
We have seen on fervent faces
The pallor of strange tears:
We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,
Whence, ripe to steam and stain,
Foams round the feet of pleasure
The blood-red must of pain.

Remembrance may recover
And time bring back to time
The name of your first lover,
The ring of my first rhyme:
But rose-leaves of December
The frosts of June shall fret,
The day that you remember,
The day that I forget.

The snake that hides and hisses
In heaven we twain have known;
The grief of cruel kisses,
The joy whose mouth makes moan;
The pulses' pause and measure,
Where in one furtive vein
Throbs through the heart of pleasure
The purpler blood of pain.

We have done with tears and treasons
And love for treason's sake;
Room for the swift new seasons,
The years that burn and break,
Dismantle and dismember
Men's days and dreams, Juliette;
For love may not remember,
But time will not forget.

Life treads down love in flying,
Time withers him at root;
Bring all dead things and dying,
Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,
Where, crushed by three days' pressure
Our three days' love lies slain;
And earlier leaf of pleasure,
And latter flower of pain.

Breathe close upon the ashes,
It may be flame will leap;
Unclose the soft close lashes,
Lift up the lids and weep.
Light love's extinguished ember,
Let one tear leave it wet
For one that you remember
And ten that you forget.

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]

************

Why art thou silent?
Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that
the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care -
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For naught
but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak! - though this soft warm heart,
once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine - Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]


PARTING

Too fair, I may not call thee mine:
Too dear, I may not see
Those eyes with bridal beacons shine;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
Empty and hushed, and safe apart, -
One little corner of thy heart.

Thou wilt be happy, dear! and bless
Thee: happy mayst thou be.
I would not make thy pleasure less;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
My life to light, my lot to leaven, -
One little corner of thy Heaven.

Good-by, dear heart! I go to dwell
A weary way from thee;
Our first kiss is our last farewell;
Yet, Darling, keep for me -
Who wander outside in the night, -
One little corner of thy light.

Gerald Massey [1828-1907]





Brion added to this post, 13 minutes and 36 seconds later...

He who wins her love shall lose her
He who loses her shall gain
For still the spirit pursues her
The memories without the pain

He loses her who gains her
who watches day by day
The dust of time that stains her
The griefs that leave her grey

Oh, Happier he who gains not
The love that some seem to gain
The joy of memory stains not
and shall with him remain

In dreams she grows not older
Her kisses become more pure
Though all the world wax colder
She shall never lose her allure





Brion added to this post, 1 minutes and 36 seconds later...

And for sake of humility and to have my name mentioned with the likes of the great ones above...

The Door

The soul’s sweet mixture of Love is Pleasure and Pain…
Too near to Touch…
Too far to hold…
You can hear her outside the door,
Sliding her back down the solid oak barrier as the mirror to your own actions
from the other side.
Sitting so close together, with faces turned outward so far apart,
The mind bends thoughts together with words the lips cannot sweetly serenely express…
At precisely the same moment, each head rests against updrawn knees,
Kneeling in a fetal position, seeking the warmth of your own body…
Two hearts that can be seen reaching out beyond the doors of our mortal toils
And on into the boundless realms of space and time,
Thoughts fly too fast, too free
Each knows the other is there, sitting on the other side,
NOTHING
But a door
A dead life
Between them
EVERYTHING
In life
Keeping them apart.

Knowing and longing, someone stands,
Touches an open palm on the door as if to feel the heat,
The beating of a heart through the wood skin itself,
The other one stops their silent tears,
They know,
Just know the other person is standing there…
For a moment in time everything is suspended…
Space, time, fate, destiny, all hangs in the balance,

A thousand years pass,
Futures and kids,
Battles and monuments,
Hopes and dreams,
One.
Second.
More.
One.
Life.
Less.

Two mirrored hands slide down the handle of their future,
Fearing and hating
Knowing and loving
What unknown worlds are on the other side
The knob slowly begins to turn
Loving becomes hating,
Fearing becomes knowing.
Inch by inch the knob gives way, cold metal, warm hands, breathing stopped…..
Expectancy, hope, the heart rises in blessed anguish,
Two troubled souls begin to weep, the eyes begin to anticipate the sight,
The heart knows who it will see…
With the full expectancy of a child’s Christmas dreams,
A Gentle push is given on the door….
…
…
…
…
…
The knob is turned to the full open position,
But
The door does not yield,
The metal locks coldly hold itself fast…
Metal locks,
Unfeeling,
Cold,
They do not understand the hearts
And lives the beat and breathe in the balance
They only respond to
Man made keys of logic

That logic is lost on the hand that turns the knob,
The knob yielded to the touch
The heart grew in its expectancy
Love alone should be opening the door
Each can hear the other breathing and
With a sad and resigned half smile
With the same loss of innocence that a child has when
Discovering a magacian’s trick.
One remembers that Santa Clause isn’t real,
And wishing on a star doesn’t matter
And mothers cannot always make everything alright

A last look at the door,
The hand falls away from the golden knob
The body turns to the side to go,
Wonders for a moment if anyone was really behind that door
Lets the fingers slide away from the knob,
Leaving a steamy wet impression on the knob itself
Which evaporates quickly
Without the warmth of its nurturer
consumed by that which it was nourished by

The traveler picks up his baggage
Left beside the door
And with wayward bent back
Begins his journey
To nowhere
Once again
Feet fall further
Go farther
He hears many voices
Many doors
Opening
Closing

He stops at the final elevator
He knows he heard his door open,
The door where he waited,
It is too late,
He is too far away to go back,
He wishes it were different
But someone is expecting this baggage
He must travel to nowhere in a hurry

He travels often and thinks he sees her in
Unknown courtyards…
On high white church steeples
Under blue oceans
And climbing the mountains of life’s existence…
He always approaches, to find a faded scent of what was
And he thinks back to that door…

By: Brion

Excellent list, Brion, very broad--

[Brion]

OUTGROWN

Nay, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle; her love she has simply outgrown:
One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own.

Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There is much that my heart would say; And you know we were children together, have quarreled and "made up" in play.

And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth, - As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth.

Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the selfsame plane, Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls should be parted again.

She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom, of her life's early May; And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day.

Nature never stands still, nor souls either: they ever go up or go down; And hers has been steadily soaring - but how has it been with your own?

She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year:
The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere!

For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago, Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves is to grow.

Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer: but their vision is clearer as well; Her voice has a tender cadence, but is pure as a silver bell.

Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked:
The white robes she wears are less white than the spirits with whom she has walked.

And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too, aspired and prayed?
Have you looked upon evil unsullied? Have you conquered it undismayed?

Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and the years have rolled on?
Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph of victory won?

Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood?

Go measure yourself by her standard; look back on the years that have fled:
Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that the love of her girlhood is dead.

She cannot look down to her lover: her love, like her soul, aspires; He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holy fires.

Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship I have ventured to tell you the truth, As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly as I might in our earlier youth.

Julia C. R. Dorr [1825-1913]

[Brion]

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, 5
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay, 10
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man. 20

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head 25
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's

[3am]

I don't have any one favorite poem (or a favorite "anything", for that matter), but in light of Carol Ann Duffy becoming Britain's first female Poet Laureate, I came across "Valentine" - which now holds the position of my /current/ favorite:

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

I'm a sucker for ironically pragmatic love poems.

[ShunnedSenator]

The love song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

[tarabelle]

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824

She walks in Beauty

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

[loosefanbelt]

Giving up one of my few "freedom posts" to a certain somebody...

Lady i will touch you

Lady, i will touch you with my mind.
Touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene

(lady i will
touch you with my mind.) Touch
you, that is all,

lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite care

the poem which i do not write.


by E. E. Cummings.

[Seriously]

How Will You Kiss?


Lilt me your lips,
our lost breath intermingling.

Synchronize our silence
as lazy hours ease by.

Waft cocoa, hazelnut, cinnamon,
scents around me.

Tremble with me
in paralyzing pauses.

I may no longer breathe
without breathing you.


- Judith Pordon





Seriously added to this post, 6 minutes and 46 seconds later...

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

[Dolores]

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight

Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night

From Auguries of Innocence (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) by William Blake

[Mogura]

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

-Pablo Neruda

[Jonathan Brewer]

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."


-Will Allen Dromgoole

[Quite8the8bell]

I read a lot of poetry so there isn't such a thing as a favorite for me but here's one of my favorites:


Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court it glows
And shines like rotten wood,
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting, by others' action;
Not lov'd unless they give;
Not strong, but by affection.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition;
Their practice only hate.
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who in their greatest cost
Like nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it meets but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In fickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is prevention;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood, shakes off pity;
Tell virtue, least preferred.
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing;
Because to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing:
Stab at thee, he that will,
No stab thy soul can kill!

The Lie - Sir Walter Ralegh

[Baccara]

Admittedly I'm not that much into poetry. Just off the top of my head, I do enjoy E.A. Poe for his phantasms, Robert Browning for his subtle psychology, and TS Eliot for his boldness. Someone on this thread also mentioned "He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven" by Yeats; I've always liked that one too. Oh, and Shel Silverstein, of course.

For short stories, again EA Poe, and probably Roald Dahl.

[Xanthippe]

Well, in Latin I love Catullus, simply because he is so genuine and funny. I'd probably be in love with him, actually. Couldn't pick a favourite poem, though. On a totally different note, I love Baudelaire, but again, no favourites. I just love the way his French sounds. My favourite poet in English is Edna St. Vincent Millay. "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" is among the few works that can actually move me to something resembling tears, but my favourite is probably "Rendezvous":

Rendezvous

Not for these lovely blooms that prank your chambers did I come. Indeed,
I could have loved you better in the dark;
That is to say, in rooms less bright with roses, rooms more casual, less aware
Of History in the wings about to enter with benevolent air
On ponderous tiptoe, at the cue, "Proceed."
Not that I like the ash-trays over-crowded and the place in a mess,
Or the monastic cubicle too unctuously austere and stark,
But partly that these formal garlands for our Eighth Street Aphrodite are a bit too Greek,
And partly that to make the poor walls rich with our unaided loveliness
Would have been more chic.

Yet here I am, having told you of my quarrel with the taxi-driver over a line of Milton, and you laugh; and you are you, none other.
Your laughter pelts my skin with small delicious blows.
But I am perverse: I wish you had not scrubbed--with pumice, I suppose--
The tobacco stains from your beautiful fingers. And I wish I did not feel like your mother.

Sigh. Millay's poetry makes me wistful for things that don't exist.

[The Creature]

Spinster by Sylvia Plath

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.


My favorite poem. My other favorite Sylvia Plath poem is Lady Lazarus, especially the end lines "Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air."

My second favorite poem is "The Lesson of the Moth" by Don Marquis.

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

[Antares]

l(a by ee cummings

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

Poem by Donald Justice

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forge the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.

I can't believe I'm posting modernist poems chosen by my English teacher.

[SongofSeptember]

e e cummings has always been my favorite poet, below is one of my favorite poems by him. I also enjoy most of Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and probably a million others I can't remember right now.

pity this busy monster,manunkind, by e e cummings

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victum(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if-listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go

[Antares]

I mainly liked Poem because it puts things into perspective; nothing is everlasting, we are, in reality, insignificant. I don't know if that's what Justice means to convey, but to me, it seems, some people need to get over themselves.

[Infinite Grey]

There are so many good poems here. Many already said I adore greatly. But here is one more.

Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well!
Thomas H. Bayly

1. Shades of ev’ning close not o’er us,
Leave our lonely Bark awhile!
Morn alas will not restore us,
Yonder dim and distant Isle;
Still my fancy can discover,
Sunny spot where friends may dwell;
Darkness shadows round us hover,
Isle of Beauty, Fare thee well!

2. ’Tis the hour when happy faces,
Smile around the taper’s light;
Who will fill our vacant places!
Who will sing our songs to night!
Through the mist that floats above us
Faintly sounds the Vesper bell,
Like a voice from those who love us,
Breathing fondly “Fare thee well”!

3. When the waves are round the breaking,
As I pass the dock alone,
And my eye in vain is seeking
Some green leaf to rest upon,
What would I not give to wander,
Where my old companions dwell;
Absence makes the heart grow founder,
Isle of Beauty, Fare thee well!

[legato]

This is the second stanza of "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens. It's about a woman who finds her own meaning outside of church ("the dead"). I read these lines almost every day.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

[refuse]

My favorite is poem the love song of j alfred prufrock

but seeing as it was already posted, heres a sara teasdale that is also beautiful


The inn of earth

I came to the crowded Inn of Earth,
And called for a cup of wine,
But the Host went by with averted eye
From a thirst as keen as mine.

Then I sat down with weariness
And asked a bit of bread,
But the Host went by with averted eye
And never a word he said.

While always from the outer night
The waiting souls came in
With stifled cries of sharp surprise
At all the light and din.

“Then give me a bed to sleep,” I said,
“For midnight comes apace”
But the Host went by with averted eye
And I never saw his face.

“Since there is neither food nor rest,
I go where I fared before”
But the Host went by with averted eye
And barred the outer door.

[nowt]

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with flutt'ring whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battlename:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, why have you left me alone?

-James Joyce

[WoodsWoman]

I Have a Rendezvous With Death

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

By Alan Seeger 1888-1916

On behalf of an INTJ friend.

[theunstrungharp]

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

Denise Levertov

[Hobbesrevenge]

This is mine!


anyone lived in a pretty how town


anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
with by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

ee cummings


Or at least one of them...

Anywhos, what's your favorite, who's your favorite? My INTJ Boyfriend has some awesome ones. I personally love ee cummings, curious who everyone else on here enjoys!

[burwin]

I don't read much poetry but off all poets I have read, the best so far seems to be Charles Bukowski. His worldview is pretty much like mine.

[Elena]

The Early Purges

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

Seamus Heaney - He lived near my city and went to school here. I must post some others by him at a later stage.

[GSMv2]

I cant be the only INTJ thats a fan of Robert Frost. Anyone ever read "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or "Acquainted with the Night"? Both are dark and deep... and what about "The Road not Taken" it seems to depict and feeling of ambivalence that seems to lend it self to the plight of the INTJ perfectly!

[Liason]

Erm, this is my favourite poem that I myself have wrote. not to be redundant, I shall simply link it, since it is already on my blog on the forums.

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[WoodsWoman]

One of my favorites - posted here (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

[Merle]

I've just been reading through Auden's collected works for an essay I'm writing, and I was reminded how much I love this poem:

This Lunar Beauty
By W.H. Auden

This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early,
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this,
For time is inches
And the heart’s changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost’s endeavor
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease,
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

[Anton]

your icy voice put out the stars
it cracked my heart, and broke it in splinters
your tone as cold as Colorado winters

but I promise to soon forget
the contract we almost made . . . you'll feel
the swift response of an equal
.....as the dream begins to fade
I'll drown you in pseudo kindness
and a casual, friendly glance
I can almost imagine your blindness
.....as I watch and wait
for the chance
to suddenly -cruelly- make you know
how easy it was to let you go*

.....It's called The Sting of the Scorpion. It wasn't easy for him to let her go. It tore him apart. But he hid the pain of his own grief beneath the frozen features of the Scorpio detachment.
-Linda Goodman

[Chshrkat09]

That was a really cool poem. Thanks for sharing it! :)

[Labyrinth]

WOW! Neat Poem, I am still trying to fully understand it. Interesting, you did not note what you thought of it yourself...

[blueback]

So, she broke his heart and he tried to return the favor by pretending she didn't mean anything to him? That sounds familiar. Except in my case I think it would be more like an internal scorpion; the feelings would be compartmentalized and I'd be the one looking at a scorpion (inside me) and so I would honestly have nothing to show her externally.

[Synamon]

redweather explained in the chatroom that their name was from this poem and I quite liked it so I'm posting it here to share:

Disillusionment Of Ten O'clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.


Wallace Stevens

[redweather]

Thanks, Synamon. :) I'm so glad you liked it; it's an old favorite. Here are two more that I love:

Blandeur
If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.
-Kay Ryan

----------------------

Survivorman
Here's a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror.

While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you're probably wrong.
-Sherman Alexie

[tzeqin]

Echoes by Pink Floyd (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

"Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine
And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the where's or why's
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can
And no one calls us to move on
And no one forces down our eyes
And no one speaks
And no one tries
And no one flies around the sun

Cloudless every day you fall
Upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning
And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky."

[katrin]

How can anyone pick only one poem? :thinking: They're like jewels or chocolates...

Here's one fav:

William Butler Yeats
The Hosting of the Sidhe

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

[GouldFan]

This is a great thread! :lovestruck:

I Am Cherry Alive
by Delmore Schwartz

“I am cherry alive,” the little girl sang,
“Each morning I am something new:
I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited
As the boys who made the Hallowe’en bang:
I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:
When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,
Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:
I can be someone else whenever I think who,
And I want to be everything sometimes too:
And the peach has a pit and I know that too,
And I put it in along with everything
To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:
And I sing It is true; it is untrue;
I know, I know, the true is untrue,
The peach has a pit, and the pit has a peach:
And both may be wrong when I sing my song,
But I don’t tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,
And I want them to laugh just like I do
Because they grew up and forgot what they knew
And they are sure I will forget it some day too.
They are wrong. They are wrong. When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!
I am red, I am gold, I am green, I am blue,
I will always be me, I will always be new!”

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

---------- Post added 07-11-2010 at 01:28 PM ----------

Arithmetic
by Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.
Arithmetic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply -- and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

[kazzamunga]

A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

My new favourite poem (thanks to OwenF!) - just interested to see peoples' interpretation of it? Particularly the last stanza, in which the mood of the poem changes. My sister and I were reading it yesterday and both had completely different views about the whole thing:

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten on the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

[Blue Moon]

My immediate reaction would be that the poem is using the rabbit/cat relationship as a way to explore difficulties Stevens has with his own poetic voice. At the end of the poem, his voice is in a position of power or inspiration where other things cease to matter (but maybe only temporarily so). How did you interpret it?

[katrin]

Marina Tsvetaeva
"We shall not escape Hell"
1915

We shall not escape Hell, my passionate
sisters, we shall drink black resins--
we who sang our praises to the Lord
with every one of our sinews, even the finest,

we did not lean over cradles or
spinning wheels at night, and now we are
carried off by an unsteady boat
under the skirts of a sleeveless cloak,

we dressed every morning in
fine Chinese silk, and we would
sing our paradisal songs at
the fire of the robbers' camp,

slovenly needlewomen, (all
our sewing came apart), dancers,
players upon pipes: we have been
the queens of the whole world!

first scarcely covered by rags,
then with constellations in our hair, in
gaol and at feasts we have
bartered away heaven,

in starry nights, in the apple
orchards of Paradise.
--Gentle girls, my beloved sisters,
we shall certainly find ourselves in Hell!

[Elwood92]

Heidenröslein
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn,
Röslein auf der Heiden,
War so jung und morgenschön,
Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn,
Sahs mit vielen Freuden.
Röslein, Röslein. Röslein rot,
Röslein auf der Heiden.

Knabe sprach: Ich breche dich,
Röslein auf der Heiden!
Röslein sprach: Ich steche dich,
Daß du ewig denkst an mich,
Und ich wills nicht leiden.
Röslein, Röslein. Röslein rot,
Röslein auf der Heiden.

Und der wilde Knabe brach
's Röslein auf der Heiden;
Röslein wehrte sich und stach,
Half ihm doch kein Weh und Ach,
Mußt es eben leiden.
Röslein, Röslein. Röslein rot,
Röslein auf der Heiden.

Translation:

Passing lad a rose blossom spied,
Blossom on the heath growing,
'Twas so fair and of youthful pride,
Raced he fast to be near its side,
Saw it with joy o'erflowing.
Blossom, blossom, blossom red,
Blossom on the heath growing.

Said the lad: I shall pick thee,
Blossom on the heath growing!
Blossom spoke: Then I'll prick thee,
That thou shalt ever think of me,
And I'll not be allowing.
Blossom, blossom, blossom red,
Blossom on the heath growing.

And the lusty lad did pick
The blossom on the heath growing;
Blossom, in defense, did prick,
'Twas, alas, but a harmless nick,
Had to be allowing.
Blossom, blossom, blossom red,
Blossom on the heath growing.

[Megalomania]

I don't really have a favorite poet, but my some of my favorite poems are:

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
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The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
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and this poem by Tolkien is also one of my favorites
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[katrin]

^ I'll second "The Second Coming". -- Yeats groupie

Here's my favorite anti-war, lost generation poem...

e. e. cummings
"my sweet old etcetera"
1926

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

[Blue Moon]

Raven & Eclipse
Srikanth Reddy

The raven we'd trained to say Love stretched one bony black foot to the scale. You said it looked like a tipsy mortician boarding a lifeboat. I laughed but I wanted to see what it weighed. Later we prodded until it stopped moving. As usual the X-rays were inconclusive though beautiful & made a fine sunshade for viewing the next day's eclipse. I asked what exactly would be blotting out what, but you said it depends. Can't see a thing, can't feel a thing. Think Spring & things singing things. Did somebody say Nevermore? If even the sky's darkest plumage keeps flashing fresh streaks of lilac and hummingbird-green, how can I finish her likeness with only this ocean my inkpot?


Turtle, Swan
Mark Doty

Because the road to our house
is a back road, meadowlands punctuated
by gravel quarry and lumberyard,
there are unexpected travelers
some nights on our way home from work.
Once, on the lawn of the Tool

and Die Company, a swan;
the word doesn't convey the shock
of the thing, white architecture
rippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin,
beak lifting to hiss at my approach.
Magisterial, set down in elegant authority,

he let us know exactly how close we might come.
After a week of long rains
that filled the marsh until it poured
across the road to make in low woods
a new heaven for toads,
a snapping turtle lumbered down the center

of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet.
His long tail dragged, blunt head jutting out
of the lapidary prehistoric sleep of shell.
We'd have lifted him from the road
but thought he might bend his long neck back
to snap. I tried herding him; he rushed,

though we didn't think those blocky legs
could hurry-- then ambled back
to the center of the road, a target
for kids who'd delight in the crush
of something slow with the look
of primeval invulnerability. He turned

the blunt spear point of his jaws,
puffing his undermouth like a bullfrog,
and snapped at your shoe,
vising a beakful of-- thank God--
leather. You had to shake him loose. We left him
to his own devices, talked on the way home

of what must lead him to new marsh
or old home ground. The next day you saw,
one town over, remains of shell
in front of the little liquor store. I argued
it was too far from where we'd seen him,
too small to be his... though who could tell

what the day's heat might have taken
from his body. For days he became a stain,
a blotch that could have been merely
oil. I did not want to believe that
was what we saw alive in the firm center
of his authority and right

to walk the center of the road,
head up like a missionary moving certainly
into the country of his hopes.
In the movies in this small town
I stopped for popcorn while you went ahead
to claim seats. When I entered the cool dark

I saw straight couples everywhere,
no single silhouette who might be you.
I walked those two aisles too small
to lose anyone and thought of a book
I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"
in which a man simply walked away,

at a picnic, and was,
in the act of striding forward
to examine a flower, gone.
By the time the previews ended
I was nearly in tears-- then realized
the head of one-half the couple in the first row

was only your leather jacket propped in the seat
that would be mine. I don't think I remember
anything of the first half of the movie.
I don't know what happened to the swan. I read
every week of some man's lover showing
the first symptoms, the night sweat

or casual flu, and then the wasting begins
and the disappearance a day at a time.
I don't know what happened to the swan;
I don't know if the stain on the street
was our turtle or some other. I don't know
where these things we meet and know briefly,

as well as we can or they will let us,
go. I only know that I do not want you
--you with your white and muscular wings
that rise and ripple beneath or above me,
your magnificent neck, eyes the deep mottled autumnal colors
of polished tortoise-- I do not want you ever to die.

[masterpeach]

Favourite poet: J. W. Goethe
Unfortunately, the beauty of his language and thoughts doesn't translate into English, so I spare you to read a long poem in German.

But I like E. A. Poe, too.

[GouldFan]

Carpe Diem
Robert Frost

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited, (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing-
Too present to imagine.

[Seraphim]

There are far too many fine works for there to be a favorite - each have strengths and weaknesses - but "Samhain" has lodged in my mind as a fine example of voice, meter and rhythm, and repetition, and Annie's use of half rhyme and enjambment does much to keep the lines flowing smoothly.


SAMHAIN

In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days,
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.

I turn my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my young mind across another,
I have met my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms having answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.

*

*

Copyright©2006 Annie Finch

[Findley]

Favorites: Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and Sharon Olds.

Six Significant Landscapes by Wallace Stevens (I love the sixth...)


I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.

II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.

III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.

IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.

V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.

VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

[Onigumo13]

Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came

by Robert Browning
(1812-1889)
I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III.

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (``since all is o'er,'' he saith,
``And the blow falIen no grieving can amend;'')

VI.

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ``The Band''---to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps---that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now---should I be fit?

VIII.

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

X.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers---as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

XI.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. ``See
``Or shut your eyes,'' said nature peevishly,
``It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
``'Tis the Last judgment's fire must cure this place,
``Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.''

XII.

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness?'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

XIII.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

XIV.

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards---the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

XVII.

Giles then, the soul of honour---there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good---but the scene shifts---faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII.

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof---to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of route despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI.

Which, while I forded,---good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
---It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

XXII.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage---

XXIII.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV.

And more than that---a furlong on---why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel---that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood---
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

XXVI.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap---perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains---with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,---solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when---
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts---you're inside the den!

XXX.

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII.

Not see? because of night perhaps?---why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,---
``Now stab and end the creature---to the heft!''

XXXIII.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,---
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet, each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ``Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.''

[storm eyes]

The Thread of Life
by Christina Rossetti


1

The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me: —
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self—chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand?—
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak.

2

Thus am I mine own prison. Everything
Around me free and sunny and at ease:
Or if in shadow, in a shade of trees
Which the sun kisses, where the gay birds sing
And where all winds make various murmuring;
Where bees are found, with honey for the bees;
Where sounds are music, and where silences
Are music of an unlike fashioning.
Then gaze I at the merrymaking crew,
And smile a moment and a moment sigh
Thinking: Why can I not rejoice with you ?
But soon I put the foolish fancy by:
I am not what I have nor what I do;
But what I was I am, I am even I.

3

Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live,
And still mine own despite Time's winnowing.
Ever mine own, while moons and seasons bring
From crudeness ripeness mellow and sanative;
Ever mine own, till Death shall ply his sieve;
And still mine own, when saints break grave and sing.
And this myself as king unto my King
I give, to Him Who gave Himself for me;
Who gives Himself to me, and bids me sing
A sweet new song of His redeemed set free;
He bids me sing: O death, where is thy sting?
And sing: O grave, where is thy victory?

[psykhe]

Favorite Poet: Robert Frost

Favorite Poem: soooo many of them really but am sharing this unforgettable poem (my INTP ex gave it to me in a 'painting' form)


Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-
masks that I'm afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake, don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness my game,
that the water's calm
and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me. Please!

My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my
weaknesses
and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my masks
to hide behind.
They're nonchalant, sophisticated facades
to help me pretend,
To shield me from the glance that
knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
my only salvation,
and I know it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
and if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself
from my own self-built prison walls

I dislike hiding, honestly
I dislike the superficial game I'm playing,
the superficial phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine and me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold
Even though my masks would tell you otherwise
That glance from you is the only thing that assures me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.

But I don't tell you this.
I don't dare.
I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing,
that I'm just no good
and you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game
With a facade of assurance without,
And a trembling child within.
So begins the parade of masks,

The glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's nothing
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying
Please listen carefully and try to hear
what I'm not saying
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I can not say.

It will not be easy for you,
long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
you wonder who I am
you shouldn't
for I am everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.

[SirJamesIII]

I've always been a William Blake fan. English poets have always interested me except a few like Shakespeare (god Shakespeare) But most of the "poetry" I get comes from music. Mostly Iron Maiden \m/.

Revelations

Oh, God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die

The walls of gold entomb us
The swords of scorn divide
Take not thy thunder from us
Take away our pride

(this part is from an English Hymnal I believe)

Just a babe in a black abyss
No reason for a place like this
Walls are cold, souls cry out in pain

An easy way for the blind to go
A clever path for the fools who know
The secret of the hanged man, the smile on his lips

The light of the blind, you'll see
The venom tears my spine
The eyes of the Nile are opening, you'll see

Came to me with a serpents kiss
As the eye of the sun rose on her lips
Moonlight catches silver tears that I cry

So we lay in a black embrace
And the seed is sown in a holy place
And I watched and I waited for the dawn, oh

The light of the blind, you'll see
The venom tears my spine
The eyes of the Nile are opening, you'll see

Bind all of us together
Ablaze with hope and pain
No storm or heavy weather
Will rock the boat you'll see

The time has come to close your eyes
Still the wind and rain
For the one who will be king
The watcher in the ring

Most Iron Maiden songs are bursting at the seams with allusion. especially this one.

[Megalomania]

I've always been a William Blake fan. English poets have always interested me except a few like Shakespeare (god Shakespeare) But most of the "poetry" I get comes from music. Mostly Iron Maiden \m/.

Revelations

Oh, God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die

The walls of gold entomb us
The swords of scorn divide
Take not thy thunder from us
Take away our pride


The first two Stanzas are from G.K. Chesterton's poem "A Hymn". Check out Jerusalem by Bruce Dickinson for some William Blake poetry used in a song if you haven't already. Revelations is one of my favorites.

[SirJamesIII]

yeah that is one of my favorite william blake poems. The album art to chemical wedding is one of Blake's wood carvings.

[RedOrange823]

All Things Will Die by Lord Alfred Tennyson (not my favourite poet, but a great poem)

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d-we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die

[Merle]

Here are a couple of lovely ones that re-surfaced for me while I was reading through all my collections in preparation for the Lit' GRE (not that either would ever be on it... but, it's dangerous to let me loose in a room full of poetry books - I'll happily drown)

In den Einstieglucken zur Warheit
beten die Spürgeräte,

bald kommen die Mauern geflogen
zu den Verhandlungstischen,

die Embleme palavern
sich Blut ab,

Eine Krähe setzt
ihren halbgesichtigen
Peil-Flügel auf
halbmast.
- Paul Celan

One translation I have renders it as:

In the entry hatches to truth
the scanners are praying,

soon walls touch down at
conference tables,

the emblems jaw-jaw
blood,

a crow sets
its half-faced
compass wing to
half-mast.


Celan is just incomparable for me, the density of his language is amazing - his poems just have this extraordinary texture.

Another (not Celan):

All across the northern perimeter, all
Tentered across with fresh mackerel skies,
the hours of isoglucose symmetry
rush right-handed across the face
And melt down. And yes,
come clean Irene, those dippy birds so scuttled
along the pediment are for sure
making their mark. Stone and sky
in the free mid-morning light,
pale hands folded on little wrists,
we skip the breeze with loops of plenitude.
The pediment joins charged clouds over
to its lightning earth, cathode
protection of the whole body,
the attic swaps salt for molasses. Get ready
to uh shed a tear here, for soft
rocking cretaceous aspersion.
- J.H. Prynne

Edit: uhhhhh, why does my formatting not show up?! I painstakingly entered the second poem as it is on the page - i.e. with a sort of meandering shape - lines beginning at different places, but this doesn't show up when I publish it to the forum....ahh well.

[Onigumo13]

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

[Farruco]

My favorite poem is ROMANCE SONÁMBULO by Garcia Lorca. It is hart to translate: You can even find 11 possbile translations for the first line: is "verde" subject or object? Is it adjective or adverb?

I had to read it some time until I understood the meaning and even wrote about it in german Flamenco magazine. If you are interested I can give an interpretation,

[Fooglehammer]

"Evolution" by Sherman Alexie

[ascii]

Favorite Poet: William Blake

Favorite Poem: A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

[AlfredSchnittke]

I am not one for poetry, but I saw this on some fellows blog once and something about it appealed to me, sadly I've forgotten the name of the blog. I 'm not really sure why I saved this, but here it is:


Truth and horror mix
In imitation of pancreatic
Cancers of the psyche...
Ineffably slovenly,
Barbarically heavenly
They creep into dementia
Asking of the self

"Where has essence got to?"

I've got to Thoreau my "self"…
Thinks the it, the id, the tits,
As a dog coifs his curls in sunlight
On Autumn's tongue.

Warm succotash on a small stove
Lit with roving letters of homelessness
In bitter opal groves, where singing toves
Grow dripping with the underpinnings
Of brow sweat cast in copper
Falling off of stallions' tin hooves
As chrome sun sets in the nettle of the grooves
Following the scent of a silk alligator tooth,
And a broken viola operator
Talks to Emerson about grass books.

An old woman with china stockings,
And a silk plate gropes at the succotash
Burning on the perennially gassing glass,
Fearless and quaking without a quaver.
Watch the self savoring…savor, savor, savor!

Watch the grass books read themselves
As copper sweat forms their letters
Of incest, and indigestion…"the Good Book"
Says the Savior, coming from the violet valley;
violet in violence, as the rays penetrating our
Alienated souls…

Dash of salt and pepper never kept her...
Weeping, a young man pulls at his curls
Cutting his glass collarbone, beneath the shards
Of thirteen decks of clairvoyant cards.
The self finds its id in remorse, and selfish
Hope to bring forth a second coming
Awash in the vibrant tope of a Postal Scene.

White horses hooves flail in Spring
In despair of truth, tin turned to ice
In the vicious, viscous sunlight.
Insatiable petals of homeless chrome
Bore savagely into singing throats.
Books burn ferociously at the behest
Of white whales mediating mediocrity.
A savior splits u/s into nothing…
Opal tombs turned to stone glow
In the ever growing forest of chrome.
In a distant past that is now,
A silk alligator sheds tears of ammonia.

[sehnsucht]

My favorite poem is ROMANCE SONÁMBULO by Garcia Lorca. It is hart to translate: You can even find 11 possbile translations for the first line: is "verde" subject or object? Is it adjective or adverb?

I had to read it some time until I understood the meaning and even wrote about it in german Flamenco magazine. If you are interested I can give an interpretation,

I looked up your poem in English and Spanish...very lush and beautiful.....thanks for sharing!!!

Awaiting with interest the ruling of the moderators on your posting...although I see their point about the difficulties of screening posts in other languages, it seems odd that in a forum of supposed superior intellect and insight one cannot find a ready translation of foreign literary works (I found yours by title in seconds). Hope that the ruling will allow artistic freedom regardless of language....if not, I would be tempted to deem it "censorship for convenience."


Here is but one of my favorites - from Sonnets from the Portuguese (it's an English poem - no worries!) :)

XXVI


I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come—to be,
Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[idem]

Many of my favorites have been mentioned in this thread already (Frost, Invictus, Do not go gentle into that good night, etc.)

I generally don't like Walt Whitman at all, but for whatever reason these few lines from Song of Myself really resonated with me reappeared in my head months after I read the poem for the first time.


Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.


Also:
Dust of Snow, Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

[envirodude]

Then he crept down the chimney
A rather tight pinch
But if Santa could do it
Then so could the Grinch.
He got stuck only once
For a moment or two
Then he stuck his head out
Of the fireplace flue.

Seuss

[jak001]

a number of my favorites have already been given, but luckily for me, i use the term 'favorites' broadly and have no shortage of them :)

here are a few more i really like:



I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.



Fain, we ask Erin.
Faring o'er oceans.
Motions to mountains,
fountains and bowers.
Showers, rills rushing.
Gushing waves welling.
Swelling streams calling,
Falling foam thunder,
Under lakes filling
Willing - (abiding
Riding rounds, holding,
Olden fairs meetly) -
Fleet to lift loyal
Royal king's towers
bowers for crowning;
Frowning foes over -
Rover Mil's warlike
Starlike sons therin
Erinn shall longer,
Stronger show honour,
On our Milesians -
Wishing, in trouble,
Noble Isle’s wooing,
Suing, we stay here; -
Pray here to sail in,
Wailing maids royal!
Loyal chief leaders,
Pleaders, blend pray'r in.
So we seek Erinn -



Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

(original and modern irish versions, as well as several translations/versifications can be found here (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).)


---------- Post added 03-14-2012 at 08:50 PM ----------

I looked up your poem in English and Spanish...very lush and beautiful.....thanks for sharing!!!

Awaiting with interest the ruling of the moderators on your posting...although I see their point about the difficulties of screening posts in other languages, it seems odd that in a forum of supposed superior intellect and insight one cannot find a ready translation of foreign literary works (I found yours by title in seconds). Hope that the ruling will allow artistic freedom regardless of language....if not, I would be tempted to deem it "censorship for convenience."

i found it interesting to see a number of posts that contained foreign language that came earlier in this very thread that are unedited (e.g. 1 (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), 2 (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), 3 (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)). perhaps the mod's familiarity with the language, or the number of posts a person has given, or some other element that offsets the enforcement of the rule?

[awalkingcliche]

I believe I've just discovered my favorite thread *wipes stray tear from her cheek, takes a deep breath, then plunges into the linguistic abyss* This, my friends, is delightful drowning.

[mieu]

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

e.e. cummings

[LiamN]

The time has come to air the voice of reason
In a world gone mad, adrift on banal seas
For all the feel that lies have had their season
And whose hearts cry our instead for honesty
For all the weary souls grown bored with dreaming
Whose thirst for beauty and knowledge goes unslaked
For all that want to wake from what is dreaming
to know whats real and what is real to embrace
For all who've watched with mounting horror
evils reign upon this world grow ever clear
For all who've prayed in vein
emancipators wheeling swords of truth
and laughing without fear.
-Bill Hicks

[Selene]

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

[Dancingqueen]

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

I can't believe this one's not in here yet!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

My favorite anti-poet

Ani Difranco:

virtue

virtue is relative at best
there's nothing worse than a sunset
when you're driving due west
and i'm afraid that my love
is gonna come up short
that there is no there there
i guess i'm scared
'cuz i want to have good news to report
every time i come up for air

now i'm cruising through a chromakey blue sky
but i know that in an hour or three
the sun is gonna be in my eyes
and i know that sometimes all i can see
is how i feel
like the whole world is on the other side
of a dirty windshield
and i'm trying to see through the glare
yes i'm struggling just to see what is there

the one person who really knows me best
says i'm like a cat
the kind of cat that you just can't pick up
and throw into your lap
no, the kind that doesn't mind being held
only when it's her idea
yeah, the kind that feels what she decides to feel
when she's good and ready to feel it

now i am prowling through the backyard
and i am hiding under the car
i have gotten out of everything
i've gotten into so far
i eat when i am hungry
and i travel alone
and just outside the glow of the house
is where i feel most at home

but in the window you sometimes appear
and your music is faint in my ears...

[hi5yourface]

Like the essence of a song I understand you
I understood your language right from the beginning
Someone writes your words in your eyes
I understand as soon as your glance flies towards me
I read you in every verse of the book of emotions
I feel you, I understand you more than I can express.

- Nahid Yousefi

[Megalomania]

De Profundis
Alfred Tennyson

The Two Greetings.
I.
OUT of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirl’d for a million æons thro’ the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light—
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro’ all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescent—her dark orb
Touch’d with earth’s light—thou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live, and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee, O young life
Breaking with laughter from the dark; and may
The fated channel where thy motion lives
Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy course
Along the years of haste and random youth
Unshatter’d; then full-current thro’ full man:
And last in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,
By quiet field:, a slowly-dying power,
To that last deep where we and thou are still.

II.

I.
OUT of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
From that great deep, before our world begins,
Whereon the Spirit of God moves as he will—
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
From that true world within the world we see,
Whereof our world is but the bounding shore—
Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep,
With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun
Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.

II.
For in the world, which is not ours, They said
‘Let us make man’ and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows. O dear Spirit half-lost
In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign
That thou art thou—who wailest being born
And banish’d into mystery, and the pain
Of this divisible-indivisible world
Among the numerable-innumerable
Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space
In finite-infinite Time—our mortal veil
And shatter’d phantom of that infinite One,
Who made thee unconceivably Thyself
Out of His whole World-self and all in all—
Live thou! and of the grain and husk, the grape
And ivyberry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro’ life and life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world.



The Human Cry.

I.
HALLOWED be Thy name—Halleluiah!—
Infinite Ideality!
Immeasurable Reality!
Infinite Personality!
Hallowed be Thy name—Halleluiah!

II.
We feel we are nothing—for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something—that also has come from Thee;
We know we are nothing—but Thou wilt help us to be.
Hallowed be Thy name—Halleluiah!

[Uncle Mort]

Philip Larkin ~ Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.


The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.


This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.


And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.


Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

[Starbucks]

Opposition


In my youth
I was opposed to school.
And now, again,
Im opposed to work.

Above all it is health
And righteousness that I hate the most.
Theres nothing so cruel to man
As health and honesty.

Of course Im opposed to the Japanese spirit
And duty and human feeling make me vomit.
Im against any government anywhere
And show my bum to authors and artists circles.

When Im asked for what I was born,
Without scruple, Ill reply, To oppose.
When Im in the east
I want to go to the west.

I fasten my coat at the left, my shoes right and left.
My hakama I wear back to front and I ride a horse facing its buttocks.
What everyone else hates I like
And my greatest hate of all is people feeling the same.

This I believe: to oppose
Is the only fine thing in life.
To oppose is to live.
To oppose is to get a grip on the very self.


Kaneko Mitsuharu
1895-1975

[psykhe]

OASIS

1

Your skin,
a delicate
melange of sand and sun,
the slightest taste of cinnamon
and salt.

2

Your hair
spills through my hands;
I think of a savage
kneeling beside a dark river --
quenching.

3

Your eyes,
liquid clay-brown,
mold my nomadic thoughts
into the Islamic shape of
your eyes.

~ Tom Greer

[Bia]

Correspondances is a fairly trippy one.


Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Especially the first two stanzas.

[slackyb]

"1939" by W.H. Auden

[Rhian]

"The Hyphen" by John Wayne, Omnia's covers of Lewis Caroll's "Fairytale", Poe's "Raven", and "Dulaman", and this one:
Alone, Edgar Allen Poe:
From Childhood's hour I have not been
As others were - I have not seen
As others saw - I could not bring
My passions from a common spring-
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow - I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone-
And all I loved - I loved alone.

[The Frozen One]

Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Particularly the last several lines.

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

[Anemoi]

Elevation


Above the lakes, above the vales,
The mountains and the woods, the clouds, the seas,
Beyond the sun, beyond the ether,
Beyond the confines of the starry spheres,
My soul, you move with ease,
And like a strong swimmer in rapture in the wave
You wing your way blithely through boundless space
With virile joy unspeakable.

Fly far, far away from this baneful miasma
And purify yourself in the celestial air,
Drink the ethereal fire of those limpid regions
As you would the purest of heavenly nectars.

Beyond the vast sorrows and all the vexations
That weigh upon our lives and obscure our vision,
Happy is he who can with his vigorous wing
Soar up towards those fields luminous and serene,
He whose thoughts, like skylarks,
Toward the morning sky take flight
— Who hovers over life and understands with ease
The language of flowers and silent things!

Baudelaire.

[catzama]

What, no Roethke? Allow me to remedy that:

"The Waking"

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

[Autumnleaf]

Travel - Robert Louis Stevenson

[aparester]

Spirits Of The Dead by Poe always sends a little tremble down my spine.

Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.



Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness- for then

The spirits of the dead, who stood

In life before thee, are again

In death around thee, and their will

Shall overshadow thee; be still.



The night, though clear, shall frown,

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in the Heaven

With light like hope to mortals given,

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.



Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne'er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more, like dew-drop from the grass.



The breeze, the breath of God, is still,

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token.

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!


_______________

I also rather enjoyed Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy.