Favorite & Noteworthy Poems

[djm]

I must read some more of his. I only know this and one or two others that are in an anthology I have at home (The Rattle Bag - excellent anthology btw).

I always liked Under Milk Wood, have a copy on tape somewhere (but sadly nothing to play it on).

My favourite Dylan Thomas quote went something like this though:

"Wales, land of my fathers - and they are welcome to it" :)

[Qfwfq]

I always liked Under Milk Wood, have a copy on tape somewhere (but sadly nothing to play it on).

My favourite Dylan Thomas quote went something like this though:

"Wales, land of my fathers - and they are welcome to it" :)

Is that from 'A Child's Christmas in Wales?'

My favourite is still 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion', though admittedly I first heard George Clooney recite it in Solaris.

What the hell, may as well post it.


And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

[somnium]

Is that from 'A Child's Christmas in Wales?'

My favourite is still 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion', though admittedly I first heard George Clooney recite it in Solaris.


Yes that's the other one I know. It's just... I don't even know how to describe it. Hair-raising in its intensity.

In all honesty, I should also confess that I haven't the slightest idea what it means.

[djm]

Yes that's the other one I know. It's just... I don't even know how to describe it. Hair-raising in its intensity.

In all honesty, I should also confess that I haven't the slightest idea what it means.

Thomas was kalied most of the time apparently, so it's quite possible neither did he :mellow:

I think it's a super poem anyway.

[Ferrus]

I always saw it as a paean for human subjectivity's existential power over death, through the construction of meaning in the deepest and most mysterious aesthetic elements of life and shared/lived experience. And that mesage is delivered metaphorically through the travails, and hardships of the sailors he knew well from Cornwall and Wales who lived a somewhat visceral life.

[dunno]

Emily Dickinson:

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
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 — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

I'm fond of saying, just as Shakespeare situated the self within society, Dickinson situated perception within self. Here's another one:

From Blank to Blank —
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet —
To stop — or perish — or advance —
Alike indifferent —

If end I gained
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed —
I shut my eyes — and groped as well
'Twas lighter — to be Blind —

And me reading it:

Emily Dickinson

[Alfredo]

The Late Passenger

The sky was low, the sounding rain was falling dense and dark,
And Noah's sons were standing at the window of the Ark.

The beasts were in, but Japhet said, 'I see one creature more
Belated and unmated there come knocking at the door.'

'Well let him knock,' said Ham, 'Or let him drown or learn to swim.
We're overcrowded as it is; we've got no room for him.'

'And yet it knocks, how terribly it knocks,' said Shem, 'Its feet
Are hard as horn--but oh the air that comes from it is sweet.'

'Now hush,' said Ham, 'You'll waken Dad, and once he comes to see
What's at the door, it's sure to mean more work for you and me.'

Noah's voice came roaring from the darkness down below,
'Some animal is knocking. Take it in before we go.'

Ham shouted back, and savagely he nudged the other two,
'That's only Japhet knocking down a brad-nail in his shoe.'

Said Noah, 'Boys, I hear a noise that's like a horse's hoof.'
Said Ham, 'Why, that's the dreadful rain that drums upon the roof.'

Noah tumbled up on deck and out he put his head;
His face went grey, his knees were loosed, he tore his beard and said,

'Look, look! It would not wait. It turns away. It takes its flight.
Fine work you've made of it, my sons, between you all to-night!

'Even if I could outrun it now, it would not turn again
--Not now. Our great discourtesy has earned its high disdain.

'Oh noble and unmated beast, my sons were all unkind;
In such a night what stable and what manger will you find?

'Oh golden hoofs, oh cataracts of mane, oh nostrils wide
With indignation! Oh the neck wave-arched, the lovely pride!

'Oh long shall be the furrows ploughed across the hearts of men
Before it comes to stable and to manger once again,

'And dark and crooked all the ways in which our race shall walk,
And shrivelled all their manhood like a flower with broken stalk,

'And all the world, oh Ham, may curse the hour when you were born;
Because of you the Ark must sail without the Unicorn!'

:joft:

[Ferrus]

The opening words of Western literature:


SING, celestial Muse! the destroying wrath of Achilles,
Peleus' son: which myriad mischiefs heaped on the Grecians,
Many a valiant hero's soul dismissing to Hades;
Flinging their corpses abroad for a prey to dogs and and to vultures,
And to each bird of the air. Thus Jove's high will was accomplished.
Ev'n from that fateful hour when opposed in angry contention
Stood forth Atreides, King of men, and godlike Achilles.

[Qfwfq]

Yes that's the other one I know. It's just... I don't even know how to describe it. Hair-raising in its intensity.

In all honesty, I should also confess that I haven't the slightest idea what it means.


I always saw it as a paean for human subjectivity's existential power over death, through the construction of meaning in the deepest and most mysterious aesthetic elements of life and shared/lived experience. And that mesage is delivered metaphorically through the travails, and hardships of the sailor's he knew well from Cornwall and Wales who lived a somewhat visceral life.

Ferrus evidently knows more about Dylan Thomas than I do, I never really knew his friends were sailors. I just understood it as memory succeeding death. Some of it does require a little interpretation though:

"Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;" I believe that's a reference to their tombstones.

"And the unicorn evils run them through;" That line I'm not so sure, it might be mocking religion.

[somnium]

Ferrus evidently knows more about Dylan Thomas than I do [...]

"And the unicorn evils run them through;" That line I'm not so sure, it might be mocking religion.

Ferrus knows so much more about so many things than I do, that I hardly dare engage in conversation with him.

A brief engagement with Google suggests that, whereas I'd thought "unicorn" was a reference to the mythical beast, it could simply be read as an adjective meaning "one-horned". That still leaves us with the problem of deciding what the "one-horned evils" could possibly be.

[Ferrus]

I really don't know nearly as much as people think. I just have a good memory. I wish I had more intellectual and reasoning skills and less fact-collecting skills, really. And in any case I don't know especially much about Dylan Thomas either.

As for the unicorn evils, it could be an equivocation. 'Run them through' strongly suggests a sword like motion, whereas the unicorn is a mythical beast. Or in other words, they have been slain in battle by mythical evils that seem at once powerful, but, when looked at from the light of truth and actuality, are merely myths that the truth of their innermost being outshines.

[Flatchett]

Question: What's up with poems with rhymes that don't....rhyme. Did the pronunciation of the words change since the poem was written or what?

Example:

Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.



Also, this is amusing...

You know where you did despise
(Tother day) my little Eyes,
Little Legs, and little Thighs,
And some things, of little Size,
You know where.

You, tis true, have fine black eyes,
Taper legs, and tempting Thighs,
Yet what more than all we prize
Is a Thing of little Size,
You know where.

[djm]

I can't recall seeing anything from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters in the thread thus far.

I like this one (but it's a super collection all round really):

Ernest Hyde
My mind was a mirror:
It saw what it saw, knew what it knew.
In my youth my mind was just a mirror
In a rapidly flying car,
which catches and loses bits of the landscape.
Then in time
Great scratches were made on the mirror,
Letting the outside world come in,
And letting my inner self look out.
For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,
A birth with gains and losses.
The mind sees the world as a thing apart
And the soul makes the world at one with itself
A mirror scratched reflects no image --
And this is the silence of wisdom

[MontyBrogan]

I find these words by Abraham Lincoln charming and poetic:

"Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye that charms to destroy."

[Ferrus]

Chaucer (The Former Age, influenced by Boethius)

A blisful lyf, a paisible and a swete,
Ledden the peples in the former age.
They helde hem payed of the fruites that they ete,
Which that the feldes yave hem by usage;
They ne were nat forpampred with outrage.
Unknown was the quern and eek the melle;
They eten mast, hawes, and swich pounage,
And dronken water of the colde welle.

Yit nas the ground nat wounded with the plough,
But corn up-sprong, unsowe of mannes hond,
The which they gnodded, and eete nat half ynough.
No man yit knew the forwes of his lond;
No man the fyr out of the fliny yit fond;
Unkorven and ungrobbed lay the vyne;
No man yit in the morter spyces grond
To clarre, ne to sause of galantyne.

No mader, welde, or wood no litestere
Ne knew; the flees was of his former hewe;
No flesh ne wiste offence of egge or spere;
No coyn ne knew man which was fals or trewe;
No ship yit karf the wawes grene and blewe;
No marchaunt yit ne fette outlandish ware;
No trompes for the werres folk ne knewe,
Ne toures heye and walles round or square.

What sholde it han avayled to werrye?
Ther lay no profit, ther was no richesse,
But cursed was the tyme, I dar wel seye,
That men first did hir swety bysinesse
To grobbe up metal, lurkinge in derknesse,
And in the riveres first gemmes soghte.
Allas! than sprong up all the cursednesse
Of coveytyse, that first our sorwe broghte!

Thise tyraunts putte hem gladly nat in pres
No wildnesse ne no busshes for to winne
Ther poverte is, as seith Diogenes,
Ther as vitaile is eek so skars and thinne
That noght but mast or apples is therinne.
But, there as bagges been and fat vitaile,
Ther wol they gon, and spare for no sinne
With al hir ost the cite for t'assaile.

Yit were no paleis-chaumbres, ne non halles;
In caves and wodes softe and swete
Slepten this blissed folk withoute walles,
On gras or leves in parfit quiete.
No doun of fetheres, ne no bleched shete
Was kid to hem, but in seurtee they slepte.
Hir hertes were al oon, withoute galles;
Everich of hem his feith to other kepte.

Unforged was the hauberk and the plate;
The lambish peple, voyd of alle vyce,
Hadden no fantasye to debate.
But ech of hem wolde other wel cheryce;
No pryde, non envye, non avaryce,
No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye;
Humblesse and pees, good feith, the emperice,

Yit was no Jupiter the likerous,
That first was fader of delicacye,
Come in this world; ne Nembrot, desirous
To regne, had nat maad his toures hye.
Allas, allas! now may men wepe and crye!
For in oure dayes nis but covetyse,
Doublenesse, and tresoun, and envye,
Poyson, manslauhtre, and modre sondry wyse.

1. paisible - peaceful
4. yave - gave
usage - by custom or habit
5. forpampered - overindulged
6. quern - a handmill
eek - also
melle - mill
7, 37. mast - nuts
hawes - hawthorne berries
swich - such
pounage - pig slop
9. Yit nas - not yet
10. unsowe - not sown by
11. gnodded - shelled, husked
12. "No man had yet plowed his fields."
13. fliny - flint
14. unkorven - unpruned
ungrobbed - untilled
16. clarre - spiced and sweetened wine
galantyne - a sauce
17. mader, welde, wood - plants for making dyes
litestere - dyer
18. former hewe - original color
19. egge - the edge of a sword
21. karf - cut, sailed through
22. fette - brought, brought to market
24. toures heye - high towers
25. werrye - wage war
29. grobbe - dig
32. coveytyse - covetousness
33. putte him gladly nat in pres - made no effort
36, 38. vitaile - food
46. kid - known
seurtee - security
47. galles - envy
49. hauberk - a chain mail tunic or shirt
plate - plates of metal, such as in plate mail
54. taylage - taxation
55-56. Line 56 has been lost to time.
56. likerous - lecherous
58. Nembrot - Nimrod (considered to be the founder of Babylon,
and hence the concept of a city)
63. modre - murder
Finit Etas Prima - Here ends the first age

[Within]

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence


To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

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.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

[somnium]

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence


Blake made an illuminated manuscript of that poem. I saw it many years ago in an exhibition. It was rather extraordinary.

[Ferrus]

In Praise of Darkness Borges

Old age (the name that others give it)
can be the time of our greatest bliss.
The animal has died or almost died.
The man and his spirit remain.
I live among vague, luminous shapes
that are not darkness yet.
Buenos Aires,
whose edges disintegrated
into the endless plain,
has gone back to being the Recoleta, the Retiro,
the nondescript streets of the Once,
and the rickety old houses we still call the South.
In my life there were always too many things.
Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes in order to think:
Time has been my Democritus.
This penumbra is slow and does not pain me;
it flows down a gentle slope,
resembling eternity.
My friends have no faces,
women are what they were so many years ago,
these corners could be other corners,
there are no letters on the pages of books.
All this should frighten me,
but it is a sweetness, a return.
Of the generations of texts on earth
I will have read only a few-
the ones that I keep reading in my memory,
reading and transforming.
From South, East, West, and North
the paths converge that have led me
to my secret center.
Those paths were echoes and footsteps,
women, men, death-throes, resurrections, days and nights,
dreams and half-wakeful dreams,
every inmost moment of yesterday
and all the yesterdays of the world,
the Dane's staunch sword and the Persan’s moon,
the acts of the dead,
shared love, and words,
Emerson and snow, so many things.
Now I can forget them. I reach my center,
my algebra and my key,
my mirror.
Soon I will know who I am.

[camille]

Leaving and Leaving You by Sophie Hannah

When I leave your postcode and your commuting station,
When I leave undone the things that we planned to do,
You may feel you have been left by association,
But there is leaving and there is leaving you.

When I leave your town and the club that you belong to,
When I leave without much warning or much regret,
Remember, there’s doing wrong and there’s doing wrong to
You, which I’ll never do and I haven’t yet,

And when I have gone, remember that in weighing
Everything up, from love to a cheaper rent,
You were all the reasons I thought of staying
And you were none of the reasons why I went

And although I leave your sight and I leave your setting
And our separation is soon to be a fact,
Though you stand beside what I’m leaving and forgetting,
I’m not leaving you, not if motive makes the act.

[Qfwfq]

Sometimes I like the smaller stepping stones you can relate to. Nice poem camille.

[Alfredo]

Leaving and Leaving You sure is a pretty way to say "It's not you, it's me". heh.

[somnium]

In Praise of Darkness


Why did you not give the name of the poet?

It's curious; I don't think it was just the reference to Buenos Aires, but something about the style suggests that it has been translated from Spanish, or perhaps Italian.

I like it.

[Ferrus]

Why did you not give the name of the poet?

It's curious; I don't think it was just the reference to Buenos Aires, but something about the style suggests that it has been translated from Spanish, or perhaps Italian.

I like it.
Ah sorry, I forgot. It was Borges. Who went blind (in case anyone didn't already know).

[Alfredo]

Fabula De La Sirena Y Los Borrachos


Todos estos señores estaban dentro
cuando ella entro completamente desnuda
ellos hab�an bebido y comenzaron a escupirla
ella no entend�a nada recien salia del rio
era una sirena que se habia extraviado
los insultos corr�an sobre su carne lisa
la inmundicia cubrio sus pechos de oro
ella no sabia llorar por eso no lloraba
no sabia vestirse por eso no se vestia
la tatuaron con cigarrillos y con corchos quemados
y reian hasta caer al suelo de la taberna
ella no hablaba porque no sabia hablar
sus ojos eran color de amor distante
sus brazos construidos de topacios gemelos
sus labios se cortaron en la luz del coral
y de pronto salio por esa puerta
apenas entro al rio quedo limpia
relucio como una piedra blanca en la lluvia
y sin mirar atras nado de nuevo
nado hacia nunca mas hacia morir.

-Pablo Neruda


Pardon the amateur translation:

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

The gentlemen looked past the tavern's heavy haze
to the haloed woman at the door.
Yellowed leers give way to escalating words

wet and thick, through inebriated breaths
Puzzled, she looks to where it lands

Far from familiar waters, her eyes begin to ask the gentlemen
only to be dignified with desecrating smiles.

Tobacco stained words drip down her smooth, glistening
Skin
Obscene taunts grop her golden
Breasts

her dry eyes foreigners lost in translation

Now artists, they tattoo her virgin skin
with freshly lit cigarettes and singed corks
crater white marble

lips, carved from light that played in coral,
pursed and defeated

eyes, broken colors of a distant love, dulled amidst the smoke

Perfect, just too perfect
She turns to leave

Hilarious, just too hilarious.
Drunken knees buckle and fall to the floor in ir-
reverent hysterics

These gentlemen

She walks back out and the doors swing shut
from grasping, rough
eyes
swing open
words
swing shut
smiles

first one foot, then the next, now waist deep
still sticking, still warm
Still deeper to wipe it all away

The surface of the river ripples back into calm.

-Pablo Neruda translated by me (I'm sorry, Pablo!)

[camille]

Leaving and Leaving You sure is a pretty way to say "It's not you, it's me". heh.

I don't take it as being so...fake.

Many times in my relationships, it was me, not them.

[Randwulf]

Hmm. I don't read very much poetry at all, but I've always liked this one.

The Star Splitter
Robert Frost

You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

"What do you want with one of those blame things?"
I asked him well beforehand. "Don't you get one!"
"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight," he said.
"I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it."
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it may as well be me."
After such loose talk it was no surprise
When he did what he did and burned his house down.
Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on,
And he could wait--we'd see to him to-morrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers,
But what we miss we go to him and ask for.
He promptly gives it back, that is if still
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad
About his telescope. Beyond the age
Of being given one's gift for Christmas,*
He had to take the best way he knew how
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was
He took a strange thing to be roguish over.
Some sympathy was wasted on the house,
A good old-timer dating back along;
But a house isn't sentient; the house
Didn't feel anything. And if it did,
Why not regard it as a sacrifice,
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?

Out of a house and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night to-night
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?

[camille]

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It's not that I'm curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I like to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How best discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How I am to become a legend, my dear? I've tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, "to keep the filth of life away," yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don't know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

"Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho' She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too.—Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her.—I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds."—Mrs. Thrale.

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. It's only afternoon, there's a lot ahead. There won't be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

[Qfwfq]

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y127/Dee_from_ott/empire.jpg

Above in her terrace, where early herring dive;
Below her, where wind, wave, and craft abide;
An empress casts her reflection in our newborn sails,
And in our shying eyes a gossamer sun ray.
She, kneeling over her terrace with a burdened pail,
Then poured the most righteous honey into the bay.

Embroidered with gold, our mother gently rocks we,
By the rising and falling tide of a lullaby deep.
All that dare inure is lost in her depths,
Despite her surface which shimmers in fleet.
For the bay's heartbeat in the hull of her breast,
Imbues us with repose under draped white sheets.

Wind maiden, enchantress, swing our cradle westerly,
Fill our broad mast and set our vessel free.
Come playful heretics whom we will call friends,
To laugh in our ears on the zephyr's whim.
We will sail from the red herring of heaven
Sail without a vain empress's sweet leaven.






-me :grin:
(took the pic while sailing and hacked it up)

[somnium]

I am having difficulty imagining how the cry of a herring (http://images.google.fr/images?q=herring) might sound. Are we talking about the same creatures?

[Qfwfq]

I am having difficulty imagining how the cry of a herring (http://images.google.fr/images?q=herring) might sound. Are we talking about the same creatures?

lol! for some reason I was under the impression it was bird. I was thinking of heron. that's pretty embarrassing :grin:.

poem adjusted.

[somnium]

poem adjusted.

That was quick.

There is always the herring gull, but then it wouldn't scan.

[Qfwfq]

That was quick.

There is always the herring gull, but then it wouldn't scan.

no... well, maybe with dull.

[Scarecrow]

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

- William Carlos Williams

_______________________________

I think Kipling's If (http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm) is one of the most motivational and encouraging things ever written.

Allen Ginsberg has a lot of good stuff too, particularly "America" and "Sunflower Sutra".

Shame that my French isn't good enough yet, otherwise I'd be reading their poetry in its original version. Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine are awesome. As for the surrealists, Eluard is the great standard and Pierre Reverdy (http://www.milkmag.org/reverdy.htm) is the insider tip.

As for poetry in Spanish, Federico Garcia Lorca owns everyone. He's written this great madrigal whose name I have forgotten but which had this beautiful recurring line, "Y el fondo un campo de nieve" - ingenious.

[djm]

Inexpensive Progress - John Betjeman

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.

[Ferrus]

Then again Betjeman was a lover of steam engines, which could be seen as much as an inversion of the natural order as any of that.

Although more aesthetically pleasing, I suppose.

[djm]

Then again Betjeman was a lover of steam engines, which could be seen as much as an inversion of the natural order as any of that.

Although more aesthetically pleasing, I suppose.

And Victorian architecture, which was rather modern in his youth. A bit like being a fan of 1960s buildings would be for myself (perish the thought).

Still he does have a certain dry wit that sits well with his penchant for nostalgia - like a more erudite poetic Alan Bennett. Also the 'train recordings' he did for BBC radio are an absolute joy to listen too.

[somnium]

Between djm and John Betjeman, I sense a certain grumpy-old-codger-esque sympathy.

[Qfwfq]

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ma' fuckas.



The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.




(those last two lines are sig-worthy.)

[Qfwfq]

I think Kipling's If (http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm) is one of the most motivational and encouraging things ever written.



Our civilization was built on words like this. Very Aristotelian, Makes me sit upright.

[djm]

Between djm and John Betjeman, I sense a certain grumpy-old-codger-esque sympathy.

I think the word you are seeking is curmudgeon, and it's a fair point I suppose.

I think Betjeman has a resonance for most Brits, as a nation we are predisposed towards a rose tinted nostalgia for the recent past that always has us bemoaning the lost world of yesteryear. I strongly suspect even in the 10th century the typical Midlander was grumbling over a flagon of ale about how Athelstan was a bit too modern compared to good old days of Edward and Alfred 50 years previously. Probably whinging about Mercia subsidising 'England' and waxing lyrical about being better off out of it.

In any event I am no lover of modernity, I honestly think the pre industrial world was a far better place for the most part and would far rather the industrial revolution had not happened.

[Hermione]

I don't really understand anyone NOT being a curmudgeon to be honest. It goes against logic.

[djm]

I don't really understand anyone NOT being a curmudgeon to be honest. It goes against logic.

Quite, when called a curmudgeon (as from time to time happens) I consider it a compliment.

[IsotropicSpin]

Czeslaw Milosz: So Little
(From The Rising of the Sun)

I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn’t keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know
What in all that was real.

— Berkeley, 1969

(Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallec)

Photo by G. Paul Bishop…

[IsotropicSpin]

A poem about poems!

Lines horizontal like blinds
Each one crowds the vision
Each word focuses the eyes
Narrows thought
Focuses what you breathe-n-leaves
Parcels of what is there
Free'd for the minds creation.

[kuranes]

"Superman in the Nursing Home" - Rusty Russell

It started with the flying.
I just had to get away.
I thought I was going crazy, hearing things.
voices, sirens, water running behind walls,
and the crying, someone always crying behind closed doors.
It was that super hearing. I had it then.
So some nights I'd fly out of the city
until I couldn't hear them anymore,
way out over the ocean where I could see the earth turning
and the sun rising over the edge of the next day.
Miraculous; made me feel like the only man ion earth,
but I wasn't a man. I was a freak.
Then came all those years
of changing clothes in dirty phone booths;
chewing gum on the floor getting stuck in my pants,
cigarette butts, and the smell of winos and urine.
Sometimes the phone would ring while I was in there
and it always gave me the creeps.
Think about it - an anonymous telephone
in the middle of the night on a deserted street
and its ringing for someone. Anyone.
I never picked it up. i didn't want to hear it.
Lives pulled thin over a phone wire,
stories of pockets with holes,
bad breath whistling through bad teeth.
What could I do ?
Someone sobbing and sloppy drunk in a bar somewhere
picks up a phone, dials a number at random
and gets Superman
with his pants down in a phone booth
Believe it or not, this Superman thing started out modestly,
no cape no tights.
Just lifting automobiles off trapped motorists,
or catching falling babies before they hit the sidewalk.
But it felt so good, the applause,
the way the Earth girls looked at me,
and it all got out of hand.
I should have stopped after the first bank robbery.
There would never be any cash reward in all of this
for an indestructible guy like me.
Just "Thanks, Superman."
and the bankers smiling as I flew away.
All the time they were thinking
"What a fucking tool." and they were right.
Hell, it was all insured.
If I'd quit then, and done something with myself
forgotten this super hero thing and got a realtor's licesnse
or just a full time job with benefits,
maybe I wouldn't be waiting for the TV hour
here in the dayroom of the County Home.
I never saved anyone from this. No one could.

But in a way, it's true, what they say,
that every moment lasts forever,
because I still dream about those first nights
when I was young, before it all started,
flying out of Metropolis in my pajamas
with the moon overhead and the silver ocean below,
and the billboards left behind
like a cry for help I can finally ignore.

[proverbs6:13]

He never came to me when I would call
Unless I had a tennis ball,
Or he felt like it,
But mostly he didn't come at all.

When he was young
He never learned to heel
Or sit or stay,
He did things his way.

Discipline was not his bag
But when you were with him things sure didn't drag.
He'd dig up a rosebush just to spite me,
And when I'd grab him, he'd turn and bite me.

He bit lots of folks from day to day,
The delivery boy was his favorite prey.
The gas man wouldn't read our meter,
He said we owned a real man-eater.

He set the house on fire
But the story's long to tell.
Suffice it to say that he survived
And the house survived as well.

On the evening walks, and Gloria took him,
He was always first out the door.
The Old One and I brought up the rear
Because our bones were sore.

He would charge up the street with Mom hanging on,
What a beautiful pair they were!
And if it was still light and the tourists were out,
They created a bit of a stir.

But every once in a while, he would stop in his tracks
And with a frown on his face look around.
It was just to make sure that the Old One was there
And would follow him where he was bound.

We are early-to-bedders at our house--
I guess I'm the first to retire.
And as I'd leave the room he'd look at me
And get up from his place by the fire.

He knew where the tennis balls were upstairs,
And I'd give him one for a while.
He would push it under the bed with his nose
And I'd fish it out with a smile.

And before very long
He'd tire of the ball
And be asleep in his corner
In no time at all.

And there were nights when I'd feel him
Climb upon our bed
And lie between us,
And I'd pat his head.

And there were nights when I'd feel this stare
And I'd wake up and he'd be sitting there
And I reach out my hand and stroke his hair.
And sometimes I'd feel him sigh
and I think I know the reason why.

He would wake up at night
And he would have this fear
Of the dark, of life, of lots of things,
And he'd be glad to have me near.

And now he's dead.
And there are nights when I think I feel him
Climb upon our bed and lie between us,
And I pat his head.

And there are nights when I think
I feel that stare
And I reach out my hand to stroke his hair,
But he's not there.

Oh, how I wish that wasn't so,
I'll always love a dog named Beau.

by James Stewart