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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
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I posted this poem in the Spanish only version some time ago. I learned it by heart because the first time I ever heard it said was at the circle up North by a guy who mangled the Spanish so badly that I just had to tell him so. His reaction?"You learn the Spanish, then, and we'll say it together." By the time I got it learned, he had moved to California and we have never, in 15 years, said this poem together. I still remember it in hopes...  (I just can't remember the dang title!)Tu vientre sabe mas Que tu cabeza Pero no tanto Como tus musclos Esa Es la fuerza bella Negra De tu cuerpo desnudo Signo de selva El tuyo Con tus collares rojos Tus brazeletes de oro curvo Y ese caiman Nadando en el Zambeze De tus ojos. -Nicolas Guiellen Your belly knows more Than your head But not as much As your thighs That Is the beautiful black force Of your naked body Sign of the jungle Yours With your red necklaces Your curved bracelets of gold And that alligator Swimming in the Zambeze Of your eyes.
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Joined: Nov 2000
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Duncan Large, in anticipation of Remembrance Day, posted Wilfred Owens' best-known poem.
Today is Nov. 11, Armistice Day, as older USns call it. So herewith the quintessential WWI poem and another one, more controversial, from the same era.
In Flanders Fields (1915)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
in Flanders fields.
-- John McCrae
Recessional
God of our fathers, known of old --
Lord of our far-flung battle-line --
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies --
The captains and the kings depart --
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
Far-call'd our navies melt away --
On dune and headland sinks the fire --
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe --
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard --
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard --
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Have Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
-- Rudyard Kipling
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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BIRCHES
Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
>From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
*Note from WW: Not that I'm wishing an ice storm on anyone, but, if all are safe, ice storms are lovely.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Max, I think much of poetry has to do with turning the flame down, as Hemingway said, to the point just before it flashes out. He was writing about prose. Sylvia Plath said it just as well, and I paraphrase roughly: "Prose is an open hand; poetry is a closed fist." The enemy is death, so to wave a cape before its nose, most particularly in autumn and winter, is a daring feat. And in that daunting challenge probably lies much of the fascination. Sam Clemens wrote that the best way to defeat the devil is to laugh at him; poets prance around him.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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As Max says, "A pox on all your bottom-dwelling melancholy!"  The Maze, by W. H. Auden:Anthropos apteros for days Walked whistling round and round the maze, Relying happily upon His temperament for getting on. The hundredth time he sighted, though, A bush he left an hour ago, He halted where four alleys crossed And recognised that he was lost. "Where am I? Metaphysics says No question can be asked unless It has an answer, so I can Assume this maze has got a plan. "If theologians are correct, A Plan implies an Architect: A God-built maze would be, I'm sure, The Universe in miniature. "Are data from the world of sense, In that case, valid evidence? What, in the universe I know, Can give directions how to go? "All Mathematics would suggest A steady straight line as the best, But left and right alternately Is consonant with History. "Aesthetics, though, believes all Art Intends to gratify the heart: Rejecting disciplines like these, Must I, then, go which way I please? "Such reasoning is only true If we accept the classic view, Which we have no right to assert According to the introvert, "His absolute presupposition Is: Man creates his own condition. This maze was not divinely built But is secreted by my guilt. "The centre that I cannot find Is known to my unconscious mind; I have no reason to despair Because I am already there. "My problem is how not to will; They move most quickly who stand still: I'm only lost until I see I'm lost because I want to be. "If this should fail, perhaps I should, As certain educators would, Content myself with this conclusion: In theory there is no solution. "All statements about what I feel, Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal: My knowledge ends where it began; A hedge is taller than a man." Anthropos apteros, perplexed To know which turning to take next, Looked up and wished he were a bird To whom such doubts must seem absurd.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
My favorite e e cummings poem is about my favorite season:
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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SPRING POOLS
by Robert Frost
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
These trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods--
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The Idea of Order at Key West
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there was never a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of sea
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
W. H. Auden
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