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305505, Post a Poem That You Love Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 12:56 PM
It can be a poem by a famous poet or an unknown poet. It can even be a piece of your own.
If it moves you, and you think it will have an affect on others, post it here.
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305511, Gregory Corso: Marriage Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:11 PM
Marriage
Should I get married? Should I be good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-
When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where's the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap- O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then? Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter but we're gaining a son- And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just wait to get at the drinks and food- And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife? And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue! I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha! And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on- Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climactic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce-
But I should get married I should be good How nice it'd be to come home to her and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen aproned young and lovely wanting my baby and so happy about me she burns the roast beef and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf! God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married! So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky! And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him When are you going to stop people killing whales! And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-
Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn, up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me, finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup- O what would that be like! Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records Tack Della Francesca all over its crib Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father Not rural not snow no quiet window but hot smelly tight New York City seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job! And five nose running brats in love with Batman And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired like those hag masses of the 18th century all wanting to come in and watch TV The landlord wants his rent Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking- No! I should not get married! I should never get married! But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
O but what about love? I forget love not that I am incapable of love It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes- I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married And I don't like men and- But there's got to be somebody! Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married, all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible then marriage would be possible- Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.
-- Gregory Corso
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305515, Walt Whitman: Poets to Come Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:20 PM
Poets to Come
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse—for you must justify me—you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.
--Walt Whitman
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305522, Vladimir Mayakovsky: Conversation w/ a Tax Collector About Poetry Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:24 PM
Because of the unusual formatting of this poem, I couldn't cut and paste it.
Here's a link: http://sye.freeshell.org/Mayakovsky.txt
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305528, Allen Ginsberg: Death to Van Gogh's Ear (mp3 audio link) Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:29 PM
http://www.allenginsberg.org/library/Audio/9963.mp3
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305529, Wallace Stevens: Bantams in Pine Woods Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:32 PM
Bantams in Pine-Woods
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Damned universal cock, as if the sun Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal. Your world is you. I am my world.
You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat! Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs, And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
-- Wallace Stevens
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305530, James Wright: Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:34 PM
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes.
All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home. Their women cluck like starved pullets, Dying for love.
Therefore, Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.
-- James Wright
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305531, John Berryman: The Ball Poem Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:35 PM
The Ball Poem
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over–there it is in the water! No use to say 'O there are other balls': An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down All his young days into the harbour where His ball went. I would not intrude on him, A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now He senses first responsibility In a world of possessions. People will take balls, Balls will be lost always, little boy, And no one buys a ball back. Money is external. He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes, The epistemology of loss, how to stand up Knowing what every man must one day know And most know many days, how to stand up And gradually light returns to the street A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight, Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere, I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move With all that move me, under the water Or whistling, I am not a little boy.
-- John Berryman
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305533, William Butler Yeats: To a Child Dancing in the Wind Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:38 PM
To a Child Dancing in the Wind
I
DANCE there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind? II
Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue. O you will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.
-- William Butler Yeats
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305540, T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 01:58 PM
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 per ciò che giammai di questo fondo Non tornò 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 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 ... 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 windowpanes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes 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, 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; 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; 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 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-- (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 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, 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-- 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? 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!) Is it perfume from a dress 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 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! 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? 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, 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, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-- 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, 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: 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."
. . . . .
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, 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 . . . 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.
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 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-- T. S. Eliot _______________________________________________________________________________
<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305549, not a fan of poetry but i always thought this was amazing Posted by jasonprague, Fri Aug-03-07 02:27 PM
PEACE
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305544, James Tate: Fuck the Astronauts Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Fri Aug-03-07 02:03 PM
Fuck the Astronauts
I
Eventually we must combine nightmares an angel smoking a cigarette on the steps of the last national bank, said to me. I put her out with my thumb. I don’t need that cheap talk I’ve got my own problems. It was sad, exciting, and horrible. It was exciting, horrible, and sad. It was horrible, sad, and exciting. It was inviting, mad, and deplorable. It was adorable, glad, and enticing. Eventually we must smoke a thumb cheap talk I’ve got my own angel on the steps of the problems the bank said to me I don’t need that. I will take this one window with its sooty maps and scratches so that my dreams will remember one another and so that my eyes will not become blinded by the new world.
II
The flames don’t dance or slither. They have painted the room green. Beautiful and naked, the wives are sleeping before the fire. Now it is out. The men have returned to the shacks, slaved creatures from the forest floor across their white stationwagons. That just about does it, says the other, dumping her bucket over her head. Well, I guess we got everything, says one, feeling around in the mud, as if for a child. Now they remember they want that mud, who can’t remember what they got up for. They parcel it out: when they are drunk enough they go into town with a bucket of mud, saying we can slice it up into windmills like a bloated cow. Later, they paint the insides of the shack black, and sit sucking eggs all night, they want something real, useful, but there isn’t anything.
III
I will engineer the sunrise they have disassembled our shadows our echoes are erased from the walls your nipples are the skeletons of olives your nipples are an oriental delight your nipples blow away like cigarette papers your nipples are the mouths of mutes so I am not here any longer skein of lightning memory’s dark ink in your last smile where the stars have swallowed their train schedule where the stars have drowned in their dark petticoats like a sock of hamburger receiving the lightning into his clitoris red on red the prisoner confesses his waltz through the corkscrew lightning nevermind the lightning in your teeth let’s waltz I am the hashish pinball machine that rapes a piano.
-- James Tate
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<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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305546, Nikki Giovanni: Beautiful Black Men Posted by earthqueen, Fri Aug-03-07 02:11 PM
Beautiful Black Men (with compliments and apologies to all not mentioned by name) Nikki Giovanni
i wanta say just gotta say something bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight black men with they afros walking down the street is the same ol danger but a brand new pleasure
sitting on stoops, in bars, going to offices running numbers, watching for their whores preaching in churches, driving their hogs walking their dogs, winking at me in their fire red, lime green, burnt orange royal blue tight tight pants that hug what i like to hug
jerry butler, wilson pickett, the impressions temptations, mighty mighty sly don't have to do anything but walk on stage and i scream and stamp and shout see new breed men in breed alls dashiki suits with shirts that match the lining that compliments the ties that smile at the sandals where dirty toes peek at me and i scream and stamp and shout for more beautiful beautiful beautiful black men with outasight afros
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306596, I like that one too Posted by SuiteLady, Tue Aug-07-07 06:23 PM
be proud of who you are.
I believe that my life's gonna see, The love I give, Return to me. ~ John Mayer
http://www.myspace.com/suitie
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305551, Denis Johnson- Upon Waking Posted by crow, Fri Aug-03-07 02:39 PM
at the far edge of earth, night is going away. another poem begins. slumped over
the typewriter i must get this exactly, i want to make it clear this morning that your
face,as it opens from its shadow, is more perfect than yesterday;and
that the light, as it hesitates over the approach of your smile, has given this
aching bed more than warmth, more than poems; somewy
a generous rose, or a very delicate arrangements of sounds, has come to peace in this new room.
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305592, Pier Paolo Pasolini - Roman Evening Posted by King_Friday, Fri Aug-03-07 05:55 PM
ROMAN EVENING by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Where are you going through the streets of Rome in buses or trolleys full of people going home, hurried and preoccupied as if routine work were waiting for you, work from which others are now returning? It is right after supper, when the wind smells of warm familial misery lost in a thousand kitchens, in the long, illuminated streets spied on by brighter stars. In the bourgeois quarter there's a peace which makes everyone contented, vilely happy, a contentment everyone wants their lives to be full of, every evening, Ah, to be different--in a world which is indeed guilty--that is, not at all innocent. . . Go, down the dark crooked street to Trastevere: There, motionless and disordered, as if dug from the mud of other eras-- to be enjoyed by those who can steal one more day from death and grief-- there you have all Rome at your feet. . .
I get off and cross the Garibaldi bridge, keeping to the parapet with my knuckles following the worn edge of the stone, hard in the warmth that the night tenderly exhales onto the arcades of warm plane trees. On the opposite bank flat, lead-colored attics of ochre buildings fill the washed-out sky like paving-stones in a row. Walking along the broken bone-like pavement I see, or rather smell, at once excited and prosaic-- dotted with aged stars and loud windows-- the big family neighborhood: the dark, dank summer gilds it with the stench which the wind raining down from Roman meadows sheds on trolley tracks and facades.
And how the embankment smells in a heat so pervasive as to be itself a space: from the Sublicio bridge to the Gianicolo the stench blends with the intoxication of the life that isn't life. Impure signs that old drunks, ancient whores, gangs of abandoned boys have passed by here: impure human traces, humanly infected, here to reveal these men, violent and quiet, their innocent low delights, their miserable ends.
-translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Francesca Valente
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305633, Forugh Farrokhzad - Another Birth Posted by King_Friday, Fri Aug-03-07 09:45 PM
ANOTHER BIRTH by Forugh Farrokhzad
My whole being is a dark chant which will carry you perpetuating you to the dawn of eternal growths and blossoming in this chant I sighed you sighed in this chant I grafted you to the tree to the water to the fire.
Life is perhaps a long street through which a woman holding a basket passes every day
Life is perhaps a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch life is perhaps a child returning home from school.
Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette in the narcotic repose between two love-makings or the absent gaze of a passerby who takes off his hat to another passerby with a meaningless smile and a good morning.
Life is perhaps that enclosed moment when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes and it is in the feeling which I will put into the Moon's impression and the Night's perception.
In a room as big as loneliness my heart which is as big as love looks at the simple pretexts of its happiness at the beautiful decay of flowers in the vase at the sapling you planted in our garden and the song of canaries which sing to the size of a window.
Ah this is my lot this is my lot my lot is a sky which is taken away at the drop of a curtain my lot is going down a flight of disused stairs a regain something amid putrefaction and nostalgia my lot is a sad promenade in the garden of memories and dying in the grief of a voice which tells me I love your hands.
I will plant my hands in the garden I will grow I know I know I know and swallows will lay eggs in the hollow of my ink-stained hands.
I shall wear a pair of twin cherries as ear-rings and I shall put dahlia petals on my finger-nails there is an alley where the boys who were in love with me still loiter with the same unkempt hair thin necks and bony legs and think of the innocent smiles of a little girl who was blown away by the wind one night.
There is an alley which my heart has stolen from the streets of my childhood.
The journey of a form along the line of time inseminating the line of time with the form a form conscious of an image coming back from a feast in a mirror
And it is in this way that someone dies and someone lives on.
No fisherman shall ever find a pearl in a small brook which empties into a pool.
I know a sad little fairy who lives in an ocean and ever so softly plays her heart into a magic flute a sad little fairy who dies with one kiss each night and is reborn with one kiss each dawn.
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306266, um, that was amazing Posted by UncleClimax, Mon Aug-06-07 06:35 PM
whoever that poet is has a new fan.
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306574, RE: um, that was amazing Posted by King_Friday, Tue Aug-07-07 04:51 PM
>whoever that poet is has a new fan.
Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967)
Great poet from Iran. She died much too young--at age 32--in a car accident. You can read a lot of her work and find more information about her here: http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/ and here: http://www.foroughfarrokhzad.org/ (note the very slight difference in the web addresses)
Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is Black". It's a cinema-poem more than anything. I love it and highly recommend it. It's available on region 1 DVD.
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306583, yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night Posted by UncleClimax, Tue Aug-07-07 05:34 PM
>>whoever that poet is has a new fan. > >Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) > >Great poet from Iran. She died much too young--at age 32--in >a car accident. You can read a lot of her work and find more >information about her here: http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/ >and here: http://www.foroughfarrokhzad.org/ (note the very >slight difference in the web addresses) > she's fantastic. do you own any of her books? and not to bag on you for this, but the translation of that poem you posted seems very awkward. i saw an excerpt from the same poem on iranian.com and it was so much more fluid and lovely. but thats not ur fault..just wondering where you got that translation from so i can avoid it :)
>Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is >Black". It's a cinema-poem more than anything. I love it and >highly recommend it. It's available on region 1 DVD. >
is it the one about the leprosy house? sounds like something i wouldnt enjoy
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306608, RE: yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night Posted by King_Friday, Tue Aug-07-07 07:39 PM
>she's fantastic. do you own any of her books?
No, actually. . . I've never been able to get my hands on one. And I think it was only recently that web sites dedicated to her started to appear. Seems like for a while you just couldn't find *anything* about her.
>the translation of that poem you posted >seems very awkward. i saw an excerpt from the same poem on >iranian.com and it was so much more fluid and lovely. but >thats not ur fault..just wondering where you got that >translation from so i can avoid it :)
Yeah, that came from the forughforrokhzad.org website. They also have a version of one of her poems translated as "The Wind Will Take Us" but I much prefer the translations I've seen that have it called "The Wind Will Carry Us".
You might recall that Abbas Kiarostami called one of his films "The Wind Will Carry Us" and I think someone recited the poem in it as well.
> >>Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is >>Black". >is it the one about the leprosy house? sounds like something >i wouldnt enjoy
lol. Yeah, that's the one. But it's not as bad as you might think as far as leprosy movies go.
Oddly enough, not a lot of works made in the "leprosy genre".
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305634, Muriel Rukeyser: Waiting for Icarus Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 09:50 PM
Waiting for Icarus
He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge of a new relation He said he would never again cringe before his father He said that he was going to invent full-time He said he loved me that going into me He said was going into the world and the sky He said all the buckles were very firm He said the wax was the best wax He said Wait for me here on the beach He said Just don't cry
I remember the gulls and the waves I remember the islands going dark on the sea I remember the girls laughing I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer. I would have liked to try those wings myself. It would have been better than this.
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305635, Randall Jarrell: The Woman at the Washington Zoo Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 09:54 PM
line breaks and spacing are lost w/ my copy and paste job.
a link:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15310
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305637, Rita Dove: Snow King Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 10:08 PM
Snow King
In a far far land where men are men and women are sun and sky The Snow King paces. And light throws a gold patina on the white spaces where sparrows lie frozen in hallways.
And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers: Where is the summer that lasts forever, with night as soft as antelope eyes? The Snow King roams the lime-filled spaces his cracked heart a slow fire, a garnet.
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305639, Christopher Smart: Jubilate Agno Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 10:18 PM
Jubilate Agno
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1945.html
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305645, W.B. Yeats: Sailing To Byzantium Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 10:50 PM
Sailing to Byzantium
I.
That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.
II.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
III.
O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
IV.
Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
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305646, Robert Frost: The Figure a Poem Makes Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 11:04 PM
http://www.mrbauld.com/frostfig.html
it's a sloppy transcript but i'm too lazy to search for another link.
"...More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."
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305650, Pamela White Hadas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bitch Posted by jane eyre, Fri Aug-03-07 11:49 PM
**the poem loses some meaning if it's not spaced and italicized as hadas meant for it to be. i couldn't find a link to the poem anywhere. i almost didn't post it for that reason but i like the poem and i like hadas. young bitch and other interesting hadas poems are in "self-evidence: a selection of verse 1977-1997"
helpful information:
the quote from the rhyming dictionary is italicized and so is the title of the dictionary. in the final four line stanza, listens, skill, self, person, stealth and coffin are italicized. AS IF is italicized. the last two lines of the poem are jutted to the far right.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bitch
-elf: delf, elf, Guelph, pelf, self, shelf... Random House Vest Pocket Rhyming Dictionary
She owns such a sad little life. She writes about it all the time. She whines. She is no body's wife. And she would make that rhyme.
Or else she's Queen of Heroines: "Some genius should write about me How curious, how scrupled my sins..." (She sighs) "...what delicate irony
I'd like to provoke." She loves a man, And she has left him, too. She's apt to make fun, as much as she can, Of the ruins she's capered through.
She studies the books on her shelves, The ones she thinks might translate her Wonder to order, yield slants on her selves, Or morally tag her with words as obscure
And ashamed as her own. She pays In hard-earned coin the market price For sainthood: willful despair and disgrace. She'd love to spend forty days in some nice
Hot desert: exile, mangling, hood. "Let me go for broke, cracked belle Of despair; let my halo ring wide Of my dome, Saturnian ruffle."
She listens for unlikely rhymes, as if a skill could mask self in person, stealth rattle soft music from coffin; sound tune bone to reason;
AS IF: her epitaph.
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305660, sylvia plath: mad girl's love song Posted by ScandalousWoman, Sat Aug-04-07 02:03 AM
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
*********************** it was good for me, too, lover. 50yearsfromnow.blogspot.com "Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts." ~ Nikki Giovanni
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305662, dorothy parker: rainy night Posted by ScandalousWoman, Sat Aug-04-07 02:07 AM
Ghosts of all my lovely sins, Who attend too well my pillow, Gay the wanton rain begins; Hide the limp and tearful willow.
Turn aside your eyes and ears, Trail away your robes of sorrow, You shall have my further years- You shall walk with me tomorrow.
I am sister to the rain; Fey and sudden and unholy, Petulant at the windowpane, Quickly lost, remembered slowly.
I have lived with shades, a shade; I am hung with graveyard flowers. Let me be tonight arrayed In the silver of the showers.
Every fragile thing shall rust; When another April passes I may be a furry dust, Sifting through the brittle grasses.
All sweet sins shall be forgot; Who will live to tell their siring? Hear me now, nor let me rot Wistful still, and still aspiring.
Ghosts of dear temptations, heed; I am frail, be you forgiving. See you not that I have need To be living with the living?
Sail, tonight, the Styx's breast; Glide among the dim processions Of the exquisite unblest, Spirits of my shared transgressions,
Roam with young Persephone. Plucking poppies for your slumber . . . With the morrow, there shall be One more wraith among your number.
*********************** it was good for me, too, lover. 50yearsfromnow.blogspot.com "Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts." ~ Nikki Giovanni
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305682, Allen Ginsberg: America Posted by cereffusion, Sat Aug-04-07 10:08 AM
AMERICA by Allen Ginsberg America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I'm sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I'm trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. I won't say the Lord's Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me. I haven't got a chinaman's chance. I'd better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions. I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes. America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys. America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers' Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. America you don't really want to go to war. America it's them bad Russians. Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct? I'd better get right down to the job. It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Berkeley, January 17, 1956
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <--- Don't Slander Me
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305683, Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est Posted by cereffusion, Sat Aug-04-07 10:10 AM
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 disappointed shells 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 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'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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <--- Don't Slander Me
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305689, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Posted by After_Words, Sat Aug-04-07 10:45 AM
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's 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.
This poem was posted in my 8th grade English class and I used to just stare at the last stanza and for some reason, it just stuck out at me.
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305691, Because I Could not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson Posted by After_Words, Sat Aug-04-07 10:52 AM
Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess—in the Ring— We passed the fields of Gazing Grain— We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed Us— The Dews drew quivering and chill— For only Gossamer, my Gown— My Tippet—only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground— The Roof was scarcely visible— The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity—
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305692, Larissa Szporluk - A Memory Palace Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 11:10 AM
Memory Palace
A cloud takes a lifetime to smother the sun. It's finally
a crime, but it's also a glory, the lining sizzling gold,
the afternoon's image occulted. Truth is I don't
have an art. One pulls the other one down. I know
there's a blue-purple hill. I know all the girls
disappear. I don't break a sweat. I sit
the whole year with a bird on my lap. The firmament
wobbles. Their deep purple feet. Asleep, it comes
back, fast, but late there were poisonous leaves
and salt on the path like an alphabet.
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305693, Olena Kalytiak Davis - Thirty Years Rising Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 11:17 AM
Thirty Years Rising I needed to point to the buildings, as if they all stood for something, as if Detroit could rise against into its own skyline, filled in as it always is inside me: each cracked sidewalk, each of the uniformed girls, braided and quiet as weeds, each bicycled boy, each man with a car and a wife, the ones I slept with and arranged, neatly, like a newly laid subdivision. But I was driving with my brother who doesn't like to think of the thirty years rising inside us, the leavened truth. He's arrived at the heavy black X of destination on the inside of his forehead and he doesn't want to see me looking like this: open-palmed and childishly dressed, with hipbones instead of children, aching to put my sneakered feet on his new leather dash. He doesn't want to hear me say something fucked-up, something like: It's in my bones. My sternum runs like Woodward Avenue, it's pinnate, parked on, full of dirt, holding women in wigs and cigarettes, bars with pooltables and ashtrays. My ribs are holding up factories and breweries, two-bedroom houses and multi-storied lives, this strip, this city, these sidestreets, a bony feather. He's live here all his life. But I gave up these streets for so many others. I hopped turnstiles to ride the Metro, memorized EL tracks and Muni stations until I had a huge worn subway map on the inside of me head, but couldn't get off at any stop, couldn't begin to live in any city, and couldn't sleep with anybody but myself. I gave up this body for so many others. I've been both an exaggeration of myself and someone who looks just like me but sounds different. But now I'm back to visit both, and I need to point to my first hotel room; to the mortuary above which my tall half-chinese half-german punkrockboyfriend fingered me like a book in his little bed; and to the hospital where our bonemother died so late or so early that we were both sound asleep. I didn't say it, but: My sternum is breaking with this, it's sinking like Woodward as Detroit rises around my brother's turn, rises and falls. Falls not at all like this light summer rain but hard, like someone else's memory, insistent, unwanted, but suddenly, and again, being claimed.
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305694, Charles Wright - Deep Measure Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 11:22 AM
Deep Measure
Shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light Undercard of a short month, February Sunday Wordlessness of the wrong world In the day's dark niche, the patron saint of what-Goes-Down
Shuffles her golden deck and deals on for you and one for me... And that's it, a single number -- we play what we get My hand says measure, doves on the wire and the first bulb blades Edging up through the mulch-mat, Inside-out of the winter gum trees, A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes,
Deep measure, deep measure that runnels beneath the bone, That sways our attitude and sets our lives to muse; Deep measure, down under and death drawn Pilgrim, homeboy of false time, Listen and set your foot down, listen and step lightly
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305696, Nathaniel Mackey - Glenn on Monk's Mountain Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 11:35 AM
*spacing is off*
Glenn on Monk's Mountain
Glenn on Monk’s Mountain —“mu” twenty-fourth part— Next it was Austria we were in. Unexpected rain soaked our shoes, unexpected snow froze our feet. A bitter book took us there... A bitter book in our stomachs, an aftertaste on our tongues, a book based on another Glenn, Monk’s Mountain not the Monk’s we took it for. A book of overlay, a book about death at fifty-one, a book we lay awake at night reading, a book we read wanting to wake up from... So it was another Monk’s Mountain we haunted. Sat upside it crosslegged, lotusheaded, humphed, heads encased in crystal it seemed... Bits of straw like unexpected snow filled the sky. Stars were bits of straw blown about in the crystal we were in, the rags on our backs a bolt of black, star-studded cloth, the jukebox dressed us in gabardine, burlap, scratched our skin with raw silk... A bit of straw caught in my eye made it water, water filled my head with salt... Straw, ridden by water, filled my head, my throat, my chest, salt filled my head with sound. A sound of bells not of bells but of pounded iron, the Falasha spoken to by Ogun... I played “Asaph,” the horn’s bell a swung censer, wafted scent the furtive sound I sought... Liturgical ambush... Fugitive straw... Limbic ambush... Nastic address... Pads and keys cried out for climb, clamor, something yet to arrive we called rung. Rickety wood, split reed, sprung ladder. More splinters the more steps we took... Rung was a bough made of air, an unlikely plank suddenly under our feet we floated up from, rung was a loquat limb, runaway ladder, bent miraculous branch, thetic step... Flesh beginning to go like wax, we sat like Buddha, breath an abiding chime, chimeless, bells had we been rung
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305697, Marianne Moore - The Fish Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 11:38 AM
The Fish
wade through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps adjusting the ash-heaps; opening and shutting itself like
an injured fan. The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the
sun, split like spun glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices- in and out, illuminating
the turquoise sea of bodies. The water drives a wedge of iron throught the iron edge of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink rice-grains, ink- bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green lilies, and submarine toadstools, slide each on the other.
All external marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice- all the physical features of
ac- cident-lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes, these things stand out on it; the chasm-side is
dead. Repeated evidence ahs proved that it can live on what can not revive its youth. The sea grows old in it.
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305711, Charles Wright - Clear Night Posted by spivak, Sat Aug-04-07 01:48 PM
Clear Night
Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky. Moon-fingers lay down their same routine On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys. Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.
I want to be bruised by God. I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out. I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed. I want to be entered and picked clean.
And the wind says “What?” to me. And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me. And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark. And the gears notch and the engines wheel.
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305723, Emily Bronte (2)-- Posted by SepiaSylph, Sat Aug-04-07 03:02 PM
The Old Stoic:
Riches I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn; And lust of fame was but a dream, That vanished with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal: 'Tis all that I implore ; In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.
The Horrors of Sleep:
Sleep brings no joy to me, Remembrance never dies, My soul is given to mystery, And lives in sighs.
Sleep brings no rest to me; The shadows of the dead My wakening eyes may never see Surround my bed.
Sleep bring no hope to me, In soundest sleep they come, And with their doleful imag'ry Deepen the gloom.
Sleep brings no strength to me, No power renewed to brave I only sail a wilder sea, A darker wave.
Sleep brings be friend to me To soothe and aid to bear; They all gaze on, how scornfully, And I despair.
Sleep brings no wish to fret My harassed heart beneath; My only wish is to forget In endless sleep of death.
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305725, Yusef Komunyakaa- "My Father's Love Letters' (audio link) Posted by SepiaSylph, Sat Aug-04-07 03:04 PM
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/my_father\'s_love_letters.php
On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams" Never made the swelling go down. His carpenter's apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences . . . The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but he'd look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say.
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305726, Gwendoly Brooks- "My Dreams, My Works..." Posted by SepiaSylph, Sat Aug-04-07 03:05 PM
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell
I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.
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305727, Gwendolyn Brooks- "A Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat" Posted by SepiaSylph, Sat Aug-04-07 03:11 PM
This is a placeholder until I unpack tomorrow and get the book out. But this poem is really awesome, so I'm mentioning it now.
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305739, William Ernest Henley: Invictus Posted by am12marauder, Sat Aug-04-07 04:51 PM
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 or 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
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357227, I just got "Invictus" tattoo'd down the back of right arm Posted by crow, Wed Mar-12-08 01:18 PM
Because of this poem and all it represents for me. The last stanza specifically is how I've tried to live my life.
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305741, William Stafford - A Story That Could Be True Posted by Paranoid Android, Sat Aug-04-07 05:00 PM
If you were exchanged in the cradle and your real mother died without ever telling the story then no one knows your name, and somewhere in the world your father is lost and needs you but you are far away.
He can never find how true you are, how ready. When the great wind comes and the robberies of the rain you stand on the corner shivering. The people who go by-- you wonder at their calm.
They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, "Who are you really, wanderer?"-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: "Maybe I'm a king."
William Stafford
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306049, Alexander Blok - I Apprehend You Posted by grape, Mon Aug-06-07 07:48 AM
I apprehend you. Even after all the passing years. I apprehend you in the same form.
All the horizon is on fire--and painfully clear, I wait in silence--longing and loving.
All the horizon is on fire, the appearance is near, But I am afraid--you will change your form.
An irreverent suspicion arises; You will abandon your familiar form.
Oh, I shall fall, sorrowfully and low, with no escape from the deadly dreams!
How clear is all the horizon! The radiance approaches, But I am afraid--you will change your form.
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306090, Wallace Stevens: The Man With the Blue Guitar Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Mon Aug-06-07 11:42 AM
The Man With the Blue Guitar
I
The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are."
II
I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero's head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
III
Ah, but to play man number one, To drive the dagger in his heart,
To lay his brain upon the board And pick the acrid colors out,
To nail his thought across the door, Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,
To strike his living hi and ho, To tick it, tock it, turn it true,
To bang it from a savage blue, Jangling the metal of the strings...
IV
So that's life, then: things are they are? It picks its way on the blue guitar.
A million people on one string? And all their manner in the thing,
And all their manner, right and wrong, And all their manner, weak and strong?
And that's life, then: things as they are, This buzzing of the blue guitar.
V
Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground,
Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. There are no shadows in our sun,
Day is desire and night is sleep. There are no shadows anywhere.
The earth, for us, is flat and bare. There are no shadows. Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place Of empty heaven and its hymns,
Ourselves in poetry must take their place, Even in the chattering of your guitar.
VI
A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;
Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place
Of things as they are and only the place As you play them, on the blue guitar,
Placed so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere;
For a moment final, in the way The thinking of art seems final when
The thinking of god is smoky dew. The tune is space. The blue guitar
Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar.
VII
It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.
When shall I come to say of the sun, It is a sea; it shares nothing;
The sun no longer shares our works And the earth is alive with creeping men,
Mechanical beetles never quite warm? And shall I then stand in the sun, as now
I stand in the moon, and call it good, The immaculate, the merciful good,
Detached from us, from things as they are? Not to be part of the sun? To stand
Remote and call it merciful? The strings are cold on the blue guitar.
VIII
The vivid, florid, turgid sky, The drenching thunder rolling by,
The morning deluged still by night, The clouds tumultuously bright
And the feeling heavy in cold chords Struggling toward impassioned choirs,
Crying among the clouds, enraged By gold antagonists in air--
I know my lazy, leaden twang Is like the reason in a storm;
And yet it brings the storm to bear. I twang it out and leave it there.
IX
And the color, the overcast blue Of the air, in which the blue guitar
Is a form, described but difficult, And I am merely a shadow hunched
Above the arrowy, still string, The maker of a thing yet to be made;
The color like a thought that grows Out of a mood, the tragic robe
Of the actor, half his gesture, half His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk
Sodden with his melancholy words, The weather of his stage, himself.
X
Raise reddest columns. Toll a bell And clap the hollows full of tin.
Throw papers in the streets, the wills Of the dead, majestic in their seals.
And the beautiful trombones -- behold The approach of him whom none believes,
Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.
Roll a drum upon the blue guitar. Lean from the steeple. Cry aloud,
"Here am I, my adversary, that Confront you, hoo-ing the slick trombones,
Yet with a petty misery At heart, a petty misery,
Ever the prelude to your end, The touch that topples men and rock."
XI
Slowly the ivy on the stones Becomes the stones. Women become
The cities, children become the fields And men in waves become the sea.
It is the chord that falsifies. The sea returns upon the men,
The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught,
Wingless and withered, but living alive. The discord merely magnified.
Deeper within the belly's dark Of time, time grows upon the rock.
XII
Tom-tom, c'est moi. The blue guitar And I are one. The orchestra
Fills the high hall with shuffling men High as the hall. The whirling noise
Of a multitude dwindles, all said, To his breath that lies awake at night.
I know that timid breathing. Where Do I begin and end? And where,
As I strum the thing, do I pick up That which momentously declares
Itself not to be I and yet Must be. It could be nothing else.
XIII
The pale intrusions into blue Are corrupting pallors...ay di mi,
Blue buds of pitchy blooms. Be content -- Expansions, diffusions -- content to be
The unspotted imbecile revery, The heraldic center of the world
Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins, The amorist Adjective aflame...
XIV
First one beam, then another, then A thousand are radiant in the sky.
Each is both star and orb; and day Is the riches of their atmosphere.
The sea appends its tattery hues. The shores are banks of muffling mist.
One says a German chandelier -- A candle is enough to light the world.
It makes it clear. Even at noon It glistens in essential dark.
At night, it lights the fruit and wine, The book and bread, things as they are,
In a chiaroscuro where One sits and plays the blue guitar.
XV
Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard Of destructions," a picture of ourselves,
Now, an image of our society? Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,
Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon, Without seeing the harvest or the moon?
Things as they are have been destroyed. Have I? Am I a man that is dead
At a table on which the food is cold? Is my thought a memory, not alive?
Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood And whichever it may be, is it mine?
XVI
The earth is not earth but a stone, Not the mother that held men as they fell
But stone, but like a stone, no: not The mother, but an oppressor, but like
An oppressor that grudges them their death, As it grudges the living that they live.
To live in war, to live at war, To chop the sullen psaltery,
To improve the sewers in Jerusalem, To electrify the nimbuses--
Place honey on the altars and die, You lovers that are bitter at heart.
XVII
The person has a mould. But not Its animal. The angelic ones
Speak of the soul, the mind. It is An animal. The blue guitar--
On that its claws propound, its fangs Articulate its desert days.
The blue guitar a mould? That shell? Well, after all, the north wind blows
A horn, on which its victory Is a worm composing on a straw.
XVIII
A dream (to call it a dream) in which I can believe, in face of the object,
A dream no longer a dream, a thing, Of things as they are, as the blue guitar
After long strumming on certain nights Gives the touch of the senses, not of the hand,
But the very senses as they touch The wind-gloss. Or as daylight comes,
Like light in a mirroring of cliffs, Rising upward from a sea of ex.
XIX
That I may reduce the monster to Myself, and then may be myself
In face of the monster, be more than part Of it, more than the monstrous player of
One of its monstrous lutes, not be Alone, but reduce the monster and be,
Two things, the two together as one, And play of the monster and of myself,
Or better not of myself at all, But of that as its intelligence,
Being the lion in the lute Before the lion locked in stone.
XX
What is there in life except one's ideas. Good air, good friend, what is there in life?
Is it ideas that I believe? Good air, my only friend, believe,
Believe would be a brother full Of love, believe would be a friend
Friendlier than my only friend, Good air. Poor pale, poor pale guitar...
XXI
A substitute for all the gods: This self, not that gold self aloft,
Alone, one's shadow magnified, Lord of the body, looking down,
As now and called most high, The shadow of Chocorua
In an immenser heaven, aloft, Alone, lord of the land and lord
Of the men that live in the land, high lord. One's self and the mountains of one's land,
Without shadows, without magnificence, The flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone.
XXII
Poetry is the subject of the poem, From this the poem issues and
To this returns. Between the two, Between issue and return, there is
An absence in reality, Things as they are. Or so we say.
But are these separate? Is it An absence for the poem, which acquires
Its true appearances there, sun's green, Cloud's red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?
From these it takes. Perhaps it gives, In the universal intercourse.
XXIII
A few final solutions, like a duet With the undertaker: a voice in the clouds,
Another on earth, the one a voice Of ether, the other smelling of drink.
The voice of ether prevailing, the swell Of the undertaker's song in the snow
Apostrophizing wreaths, the voice In the clouds serene and final, next
The grunted breath serene and final, The imagined and the real, thought
And the truth, Dichtung und Wahrheit, all Confusion solved, as in a refrain
One keeps on playing year by year, Concerning the nature of things as they are.
XXIV
A poem like a missal found In the mud, a missal for that young man,
That scholar hungriest for that book, The very book, or, less, a page
Or, at the least, a phrase, that phrase, A hawk of life, that latined phrase:
To know; a missal for brooding-sight. To meet that hawk's eye and to flinch
Not a the eye but at the joy of it. I play. But this is what I think.
XXV
He held the world upon his nose And this-a-way he gave a fling.
His robes and symbols, ai-yi-yi -- And that-a-way he twirled the thing.
Sombre as fir-trees, liquid cats Moved in the grass without a sound.
They did not know the grass went round. The cats had cats and the grass turned gray
And the world had worlds, ai, this-a-way: The grass turned green and the grass turned gray.
And the nose is eternal, that-a-way. Things as they were, things as they are,
Things as they will be by and by... A fat thumb beats out ai-yi-yi.
XXVI
The world washed in his imagination, The world was a shore, whether sound or form
Or light, the relic of farewells, Rock, of valedictory echoings,
To which his imagination returned, From which it sped, a bar in space,
Sand heaped in the clouds, giant that fought Against the murderous alphabet:
The swarm of thoughts, the swarm of dreams Of inaccessible Utopia.
A mountainous music always seemed To be falling and to be passing away.
XXVII
It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air.
It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.
This gloom is the darkness of the sea. Geographers and philosophers,
Regard. But for that salty cup, But for the icicles on the eaves --
The sea is a form of ridicule. The iceberg settings satirize
The demon that cannot be himself, That tours to shift the shifting scene.
XXVIII
I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks,
Gesu, not native of a mind Thinking the thoughts I call my own,
Native, a native in the world And like a native think in it.
It could not be a mind, the wave In which the watery grasses flow
And yet are fixed as a photograph, The wind in which the dead leaves blow.
Here I inhale profounder strength And as I am, I speak and move
And things are as I think they are And say they are on the blue guitar.
XXIX
In the cathedral, I sat there, and read, Alone, a lean Review and said,
"These degustations in the vaults Oppose the past and the festival.
What is beyond the cathedral, outside, Balances with nuptial song.
So it is to sit and to balance things To and to and to the point of still,
To say of one mask it is like, To say of another it is like,
To know that the balance does not quite rest, That the mask is strange, however like."
The shapes are wrong and the sounds are false. The bells are the bellowing of bulls.
Yet Franciscan don was never more Himself than in this fertile glass.
XXX
From this I shall evolve a man. This is his essence: the old fantoche
Hanging his shawl upon the wind, Like something on the stage, puffed out,
His strutting studied through centuries. At last, in spite of his manner, his eye
A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole Supporting heavy cables, slung
Through Oxidia, banal suburb, One-half of all its installments paid.
Dew-dapper clapper-traps, blazing From crusty stacks above machines.
Ecce, Oxidia is the seed Dropped out of this amber-ember pod,
Oxidia is the soot of fire, Oxidia is Olympia.
XXXI
How long and late the pheasant sleeps... The employer and employee contend,
Combat, compose their droll affair. The bubbling sun will bubble up,
Spring sparkle and the cock-bird shriek. The employer and employee will hear
And continue their affair. The shriek Will rack the thickets. There is no place,
Here, for the lark fixed in the mind, In the museum of the sky. The cock
Will claw sleep. Mourning is not sun, It is this posture of the nerves,
As if a blunted player clutched The nuances of the blue guitar.
It must be this rhapsody or none, The rhapsody of things as they are.
XXXII
Throw away the lights, the definitions, And say of what you see in the dark
That it is this or that it is that, But do not use the rotted names.
How should you walk in that space and know Nothing of the madness of space,
Nothing of its jocular procreations? Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand
Between you and the shapes you take When the crust of shape has been destroyed.
You as you are? You are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you.
XXXIII
That generation's dream, aviled In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,
That's it, the only dream they knew, Time in its final block, not time
To come, a wrangling of two dreams. Here is the bread of time to come,
Here is its actual stone. The bread Will be our bread, the stone will be
Our bed and we shall sleep by night. We shall forget by day, except
The moments when we choose to play The imagined pine, the imagined jay.
-- Wallace Stevens
_______________________________________________________________________________
<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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306091, Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Mon Aug-06-07 11:44 AM
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
-- Wallace Stevens
_______________________________________________________________________________
<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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357226, V of this I think is one of the best stanzas Posted by crow, Wed Mar-12-08 01:17 PM
In all of poetry. The line just resounds with me for some reason.
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306124, When I was one-and-twenty...By A.E. Housman Posted by UncleClimax, Mon Aug-06-07 12:58 PM
When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, 'Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.' But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, 'The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.' And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
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306133, Pablo Neruda: I Have Gone Marking Posted by UncleClimax, Mon Aug-06-07 01:23 PM
I have gone marking the atlas of your body with crosses of fire. My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide. In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
Stories to tell you on the shore of evening, sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad. A swan, a tree, something far away and happy. The season of grapes, the ripe and fruitful season.
I who lived in a harbor from which I loved you. The solitude crossed with dream and with silence. Penned up between the sea and sadness. Soundless, delirious, between two motionless gondoliers.
Between the lips and the voice something goes dying. Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion. The way nets cannot hold water. My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling. Even so, something sings in these fugitive words. Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth. Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.
Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman. My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once? When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.
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306224, James Tate: Teaching the Ape to Write Poems Posted by TurkeylegJenkins, Mon Aug-06-07 04:48 PM
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
They didn't have much trouble teaching the ape to write poems: first they strapped him into the chair, then tied the pencil around his hand (the paper had already been nailed down). Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear: "You look like a god sitting there. Why don't you try writing something?"
-- James Tate
_______________________________________________________________________________
<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.
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306449, John Berryman: Eleven Addresses to the Lord Posted by jane eyre, Tue Aug-07-07 10:41 AM
3.
Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting.
Forsake me not when my wild hours come; grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams; achieve in me patience till the thing be done, a careful view of my achievement come.
Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder. When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey. Empty my heart toward Thee. Let me pace without fear the common path of death.
Cross am I sometimes with my little daughter: fill her eyes with tears. Forgive me, Lord. Unite my various soul, sole watchman of the wide & single stars.
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306453, Adrienne Rich: Diving into the Wreck Posted by jane eyre, Tue Aug-07-07 10:56 AM
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.
There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment.
I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.
First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed
the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
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306458, e.e. cummings: may i feel said he Posted by jane eyre, Tue Aug-07-07 11:03 AM
may i feel said he (i'll squeal said she just once said he) it's fun said she
(may i touch said he how much said she a lot said he) why not said she
(let's go said he not too far said she what's too far said he where you are said she)
may i stay said he (which way said she like this said he if you kiss said she
may i move said he is it love said she) if you're willing said he (but you're killing said she
but it's life said he but your wife said she now said he) ow said she
(tiptop said he don't stop said she oh no said he) go slow said she
(cccome?said he ummm said she) you're divine! said he (you are Mine said she)
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306462, William Shakespeare: Sigh No More Posted by jane eyre, Tue Aug-07-07 11:08 AM
Sigh No More
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blith and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy. Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.
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306465, Richard WIlbur: The Writer Posted by jane eyre, Tue Aug-07-07 11:14 AM
The Writer
In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder.
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306581, Mary Oliver: Singapore Posted by janey, Tue Aug-07-07 05:24 PM
In Singapore, in the airport, A darkness was ripped from my eyes. In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open. A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl. Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket. A poem should always have birds in it. Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings. Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees. A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain rising and falling. A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. When the woman turned I could not answer her face. Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and neither could win. She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this? Everybody needs a job. Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough. She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as hubcaps, with a blue rag. Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing. She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river. Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird. I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life. And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river. This probably won’t happen. But maybe it will. If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Of course, it isn’t. Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only the light that can shine out of a life. I mean the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth, The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
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306582, W.S. Merwin: Listen Posted by janey, Tue Aug-07-07 05:26 PM
with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water looking out in different directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the back door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us like the earth we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is
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306590, I am a Black Woman ~ Mari Evans Posted by SuiteLady, Tue Aug-07-07 05:57 PM
I am a Black Woman
I am a black woman the music of my song some sweet arpeggio of tears is written in a minor key and I can be heard humming in the night Can be heard humming in the night
I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath from my issue in the canebrake I lost Nat's swinging body in a rain of tears and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio for Peace he never knew....I learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill in anguish Now my nostrils know the gas and these trigger tire/d fingers seek the softness in my warrior's beard
I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible Look on me and be renewed
be proud of who you are.
I believe that my life's gonna see, The love I give, Return to me. ~ John Mayer
http://www.myspace.com/suitie
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306595, Resignation by Nikki Giovanni Posted by SuiteLady, Tue Aug-07-07 06:15 PM
Resignation
I love you because the Earth turns round the sun because the North wind blows north sometimes because the Pope is Catholic and most Rabbis Jewish because winters flow into spring and the air clears after a storm because only my love for you despite the charms of gravity keeps me from falling off the Earth into another dimension I love you because it is the natural order of things I love you like the habit I picked up in college of sleeping through lectures or saying I'm sorry when I get stopped for speeding because I drink a glass of water in the morning and chain-smoke cigarettes all through the day because I take my coffee Black and my milk with chocolate because you keep my feet warm through my life a mess I love you because I don't want it any other way I am helpless in m love for you It makes me so happy to hear you call my name I am amazed you can resist locking me in an echo chamber where your voice reverberates through the four walls sending me into spasmatic ecstasy I love you because it's been so good for so long that if I didn't love you I'd have to be born again and that is not a theological statement I am pitiful in my love for you The Dells tell me Love is so simple the thought though of you sends indescribably delicious multitudinous thrills throughout and through-in my body I love you because no two snowflakes are alike and it is possible if you stand tippy-toe to walk between the raindrops I love you because I am afraid of the dark and can't sleep in the light because I rub my eyes when I wake up in the morning and find you there because you with all your magic powers were determined that I should love you because there was nothing for you but that I would love you I love you because you made me want to love you more than I love my privacy my freedom my commitments and responsibilities I love you `cause I changed my life to love you because you saw me one friday afternoon and decided that I would love you I love you I love you I love you
be proud of who you are.
I believe that my life's gonna see, The love I give, Return to me. ~ John Mayer
http://www.myspace.com/suitie
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357078, In the silence by Stephany Posted by SuiteLady, Tue Mar-11-08 09:20 PM
In the silence Of the city night When the lonely Watch the sky In yearning
I at rest Beside you Lie in peace
I searched a thousand skies before you came
And in the morning when the world is new, the lonely turn away
as I turn to you beside me
And in the quiet of the afternoon when the lonely roam,
I turn inside and you are with me still
I roamed A thousand miles Before you came.
be proud of who you are.
I believe that my life's gonna see, The love I give, Return to me. ~ John Mayer
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357105, Pablo Neruda - If you forget me Posted by JungleSouljah, Tue Mar-11-08 11:38 PM
As it's being read at my wedding in 6 weeks (!!) I had to include it here.
I want you to know one thing.
You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
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357228, Langston Hughes: Theme for English B Posted by deacon, Wed Mar-12-08 01:18 PM
The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you--- Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York too.) Me---who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white--- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me--- although you're older---and white--- and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
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357241, Love Song for Antonia by Langston Hughes Posted by Jelligirl, Wed Mar-12-08 01:54 PM
If I should sing All of my songs for you And you would not listen to them, If I should build All of my dream houses for you And you would never live in them, If I should give All of my hopes to you And you would laugh and say: I do not care, Still I would give you my love Which is more than my songs, More than any houses of dreams, Or dreams of houses- I would still give you my love Though you never looked at me.
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357434, Keats: When I have fears that I may cease to be Posted by magilla vanilla, Thu Mar-13-08 07:09 AM
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
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357435, Keats: La Belle Dame sans Merci Posted by magilla vanilla, Thu Mar-13-08 07:11 AM
I.
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.
II.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done.
III.
I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.
IV.
I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful - a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.
V.
I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look’d at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery’s song.
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said - «I love thee true.»
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four.
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream’d - Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream’d On the cold hill’s side.
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried - «La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!»
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.
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439424, Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses Posted by sl_onIce, Sat Mar-07-09 04:29 AM
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees.All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea.I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-- And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life!Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,-- Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone.He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom 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 honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends. 'T is 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.
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439529, ^ certified banger Posted by The Damaja, Sat Mar-07-09 07:06 PM
i like this one the most though
The Lotus-Eaters “COURAGE!” he said, and pointed toward the land, “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.” In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 5 Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, 10 Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops, 15 Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger’d low adown In the red West; thro’ mountain clefts the dale 20 Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem’d the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, 25 Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them 30 And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake, 35 And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore 40 Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, “We will return no more;” And all at once they sang, “Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” 45 CHORIC SONG I
There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 50 Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro’ the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 55 And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. II
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, 60 We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown; Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, 65 Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, “There is no joy but calm!”— Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III
Lo! in the middle of the wood, 70 The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow 75 Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days 80 The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. 85 Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labor be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? 90 All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? 95 All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence—ripen, fall, and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem 100 Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other’s whisper’d speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, 105 To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, 110 With those old faces of our infancy Heap’d over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives 115 And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change; For surely now our household hearths are cold, Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange, And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold 120 Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. 125 The Gods are hard to reconcile; ’Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labor unto aged breath, 130 Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. VII
But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet—while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly— With half-dropped eyelids still, 135 Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine— 140 To watch the emerald-color’d water falling Thro’ many a woven acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine. VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, 145 The Lotos blows by every winding creek; All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone; Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 150 Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. 155 For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 160 Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, 165 Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 170 Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
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439607, Langston Hughes-When Susan Wears Red Posted by kevgalaxy, Sun Mar-08-09 01:11 PM
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439633, Margaret Walker: For my people.... Posted by vee-lover, Sun Mar-08-09 03:47 PM
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and their jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years, and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging alone never gaining never reaping never knowing never understanding
For my cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood.
For the boys and girls who grew up in spite of these things to be Man and Woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;
For my people thronging 47th street in Chicago and Lennox Avenue in New York and Rampart street in New Orleans, lost disinherited and dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people's pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something--something all our own;
For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied and shackled and tangled amongst ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;
For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, prayed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer.
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the face, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations;
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirit and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.
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439640, Mother to Son by Langston Hughes Posted by MosCommonThought, Sun Mar-08-09 04:47 PM
Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
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439676, Justin Banks - Techno City Blues Posted by Madvillain 626, Sun Mar-08-09 07:17 PM
Faces buried in the wires Pistons grind till souls are tired To and fro with minds dimmed low Push the gears with nowhere to go
Down they march with sore-tipped shoes Eyes peer down, they don't know who Hands rotate on un-set clocks Wait to be woke by fine-tuned shocks
As time salts soil on land of dreams A precise, unflinching life unfolds The conqueror smirks with eyes that gleam As doldrums pulsate in spirits cold
A face down turned just cannot see The wonder of Earth that ceased to be Emotion, a curse in Babylons of new The Techno City Blues
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439682, The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd, Walter Raleigh Posted by Caz_Nova, Sun Mar-08-09 07:50 PM
If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold When rivers rage and rocks grow cold, And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten In folly ripe, in season rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love. _______________________________________ <--- Everett Thomas A.K.A. Synch
Now That's What's Up
What am I, if I can't be yours...
S.Y.L.S.B.
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439938, Adam Posted by jane eyre, Mon Mar-09-09 06:12 PM
by Anthony Hecht
Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?
"Adam my child, my son, These very words you hear Compose the fish and starlight Of your untroubled dream. When you awake, my child, It shall all come true. Know that it was for you That all things were begun."
Adam, my child, my son, Thus spoke Our Father in heaven To his first, fabled child, The father of us all. And I, your father, tell The words over again As innumerable men From ancient times have done.
Tell them again in pain, And to the empty air. Where you are men speak A different mother tongue. Will you forget our games, Our hide-and-seek and song? Child, it will be long Before I see you again.
Adam, there will be Many hard hours, As an old poem says, Hours of loneliness. I cannot ease them for you; They are our common lot. During them, like as not, You will dream of me.
When you are crouched away In a strange clothes closet Hiding from the one who's "It" And the dark crowds in, Do not be afraid-- O, if you can, believe In a father's love That you shall know some day.
Think of the summer rain Or seed pearls of the mist; Seeing the beaded leaf, Try to remember me. From far away I send my blessing out To circle the great globe. It shall reach you yet.
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