#65256
04/12/2002 2:00 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
In honor of National Poetry Month in the US (April), I thought I'd start a new poetry thread...it's been awhile.
ABOUT THESE POEMS
by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
On pavements I shall trample them
With broken glass and sun in turn.
In winter I shall open them
For the peeling ceiling to learn.
The garret will start to declaim
With a bow to the window frame.
Calamities, eccentricities
Will leapfrog to the cornices.
The blizzard will not month after month
Scour ends and beginnings with snow.
I shall remember: there is the sun.
And see: the light changed long ago.
When Christmas with a jackdaw glint
Peeps out, the day will suddenly
Brighten, revealing many things
Unnoticed by my love and me.
Shielding my face at the window
And scarfed against the rasping air,
I shall shout to the kids: Hey, you,
What century is out there?
Who beat a pathway to the door,
To the entrance walled up with snow,
While I was smoking with Byron
And drinking with Edgar Poe?
Received in Darial as a friend,
As in the armoury or hell,
I dipped my life, like Lermontov's
Passion, like lips in alcohol.
1917
from Selected Poems, © 1983 by Peter France
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65257
04/12/2002 2:20 AM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
Oh boy, I love these threads.
I have two that go together. The original classic (one of my favorite poems) and a modern humorous response that I encountered recently.
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life by Anthony Hecht (b. 1922)
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormousd beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right.
We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as the come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.
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#65258
04/12/2002 2:24 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
THE SONG OF THE BLODEUWEDD
From THE MABINOGION
Anonymous, Welsh -- c. 1063
Not of father nor of mother
Was my blood, was my body.
I was spellbound by Gwydion,
Prime enchanter of the Britons,
When he formed me of nine blossoms,
.......Nine buds of various kind:
From primrose of the mountain,
Broom, meadow-sweet and cockle,
........Together intertwined,
From the bean in its shade bearing
A white spectral army
.....Of earth, of earthy kind,
From blossoms of the nettle,
Oak, thorn and bashful chestnut--
Nine powers of nine flowers,
......Nine powers in me combined,
............Nine buds of plant and tree.
Long and white are my fingers
............As the ninth wave of the sea.
translated by Robert Graves(Welcome back, mav!  ) Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65259
04/12/2002 2:53 AM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
possibly my favourite pome of all time (bar only T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) Love Calls Us to the Things of This World by Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels. Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing; Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven." Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colours
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises, "Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance." (Q: why, o why, won't this effing discussion board program let me put in the spaces as they occur in the poem? how are others managing it? I've tried tabs, I've tried using the space bar, and neither appears to be working, if the post preview is to be believed. It is DAMNED FRUSTRATING. )
EDIT: Okay, thanks tsuwm....Have used the <pre> and </pre> formatting to fix up this 'ere pome 'ere. Discovered something irritating when I did - that configuration adds a blank line at the end, but within the brackets does NOT allow blank lines - so at the end of each verse I had to close the format and start it again on the next line (if you follow me). Still - good to know....
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#65260
04/12/2002 4:06 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
(here is an old gem, a tribute to words, as it were) THE SONG OF THE HAPPY SHEPHERD
From CROSSWAYS, 1889
by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
‘The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks.’—William Blake
To A. E.
The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers?—By the Rood
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass—
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs—the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth.
Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell,
And to its lips thy story tell,
And they thy comforters will be,
Rewarding in melodious guile
Thy fretful words a little while,
Till they shall singing fade in ruth
And die a pearly brotherhood;
For words alone are certain good:
Sing, then, for this is also sooth.
I must be gone: there is a grave
Where daffodil and lily wave,
And I would please the hapless faun,
Buried under the sleepy ground,
With mirthful songs before the dawn.
His shouting days with mirth were crowned;
And still I dream he treads the lawn,
Walking ghostly in the dew,
Pierced by my glad singing through,
My songs of old earth’s dreamy youth:
But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!
For fair are poppies on the brow:
Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
© 1938 by William Butler Yeatsmg, I've had the same problem and it drives me crazy, because preserving the poet's intended form is imperative to me. I tried the [pre] code but can't get it to work correctly. So I just settled on whiting out dots for indentations. This board and others I've frequented all seem to shove everything flush left...even at the Poetry Archives. If there's a technical trick to this I'm missing I'd also appreciate someone clueing us in. Thanks.  Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65261
04/12/2002 4:56 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
From SONG OF MYSELF
Walt Whitman
48.
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65262
04/12/2002 12:00 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
this is one of my favorite Whitman poems: When I heard the Learn’d AstronomerWHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer,
where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
I came back and edited the poem.. did you notice, each line got longer, and drearier, till you got to line four.
and line four, is very long. it drones on like the learn'd astronomer.. each line every worder, creating sense of dreary boring words, piled one on top of an other..
break the line, and you lose a lot of that.. the first word of every line is bold now.
but i was asked to edit, and i did, WO'N, whitman it doing loop de loops in his grave, i'll have you know.!
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#65263
04/12/2002 12:51 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Spring and Fall
(to a young child)
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems: 1876-1889. Copied from http://www.daytips.com/pages/poemaday.htmlIt's amazing for me to think that some joker several thousand miles away scribbled something 130 years ago that I still today can read and love. k
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#65264
04/12/2002 2:59 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320 |
The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream
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#65265
04/12/2002 3:21 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
Too long to post but well worth it and amusing throughout is Nothing to Wear by William Allen Butler. You can find it in bartleby, at http://www.bartleby.com/102/157.html[also mentioned just now in the "nude/naked" thread]
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#65266
04/13/2002 2:22 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
Talk about a wordsmith. Edgar Poe's transcendent ability to weave the english language into a coherent syntax of rhyme, meter, meaning, and story, is Genius - period. -mw The Conqueror Worm -Edgar PoeLo! tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly- Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Woe! That motley drama- oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore, By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out- out are the lights- out all! And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man," And its hero the Conqueror Worm. *************** Listen...
...a crawling shape intrudes!
A blood red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! - it writhes! - with mortal pangs,
The mimes become its food Don't you just love it?
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#65267
04/13/2002 2:51 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
W'ON, thanks for the alert!
Here's my offering, and kind of honoring 2 poets in a sense.
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
W. H. Auden
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by The Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Copyright © 1997-2002 by The Academy of American Poets
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#65268
04/13/2002 4:18 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
BELATED PALINODE FOR DYLAN THOMAS
In Wales at Laugharne at last I stand beside
..his cliff-perched writing shed
....above the coursing waters
......where the hawk hangs still
........above the cockle-strewn shingle
Where he walked in a glory of all his days
....(before the weather turned around)
And aie! aie! a waterbird far away
....cries and cries again
......over St. Johns Hill
And in his tilted boathouse now
....a tape of himself is playing --
......his lush voice
........his plush voice
..........his posh accent
............(too BBC-fulsome, cried the Welsh)
..............now echoes through his little
................upstairs room
And aie! aie!
.....echo the waterbirds once again
Beyond his sounding shed
....a fig tree hides the sea
......A fishboat heeled over
........a grebe afloat far out
..........a coracle abandoned
............a rusted coaler out of Cardiff still
..............a bold green headland lost in sun
Beyond which lie (across an ocean and a continent)
....San Francisco's white wood houses
......and a poet's sun-bleached cottage
........on Bolinas' far lagoon
..........with its wind-torn Little Mesa
............(so very like St. Johns Hill)
A single kestrel soars over
....riding the salt wind
........'high tide and the heron's call'
.........................................still echoing
...........(Aie! aie! it calls and calls again)
As in his listing boathouse now
....his great recorded voice runs out
......(grave as a gravedigger in his grave)
........leaving a sounding void of light
..........for poets and herons to fill
(Drowned down in New York's White Horse Tavern
....he went not gentle into his good night)
And Far West poets calling still
....over St. Johns Hill
......to the loveliest poet of all our days
........sweet singer of Swansea
..........lushed singer of Laugharne
............Dylan of all our days
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, These Are My Rivers
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#65269
04/13/2002 4:22 AM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
When You Are Old W.B. Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. I did that mostly from memory - had to look up the punctuation and one line....There was a time when I decided to start memorizing poetry, and I got quite a few down before I became lax and gave it up. Now this one is the principal one that remains in my head (as well as lines and fragments from Love Calls Us to the Things of This World, and from Prufrock). It was nice while it lasted, though....Think I'll try again. I love this poem, too.....Eh, there are sooo many pomes to love. Have been enjoying reading others' choices, too - interesting to see what different people choose. Whit, I WONDERED why you had some white dots in amongst your purple pome! I am too lazy to go back and fix "Love...." tonight - maybe another time. It IS crazy-making - as you said, the poet created the lines a certain way and we should respect that. The line breaks and indents do add a lot to the way a poem reads.
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#65270
04/13/2002 5:40 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
but i was asked to edit, and i did, WO'N, whitman it doing loop de loops in his grave, i'll have you know.!Yes, thanks Helen ...you know how it kills me to do that, and especially to Whitman. But, when the only alternative is a wide thread here, what else can we do? Trying to read wide is maddening. And you're right...Walt probably is doing loop de loops in his grave...sorry guy.  Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65271
04/13/2002 10:51 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
To Shakespeare
After Three Hundred Years
Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display'dst a life of commonplace,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,
Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.
Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,
Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on
In harmonies that cow Oblivion,
And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect
Maintain a sway
Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.
And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note
The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour,
The Avon just as always glassed the tower,
Thy age was published on thy passing-bell
But in due rote
With other dwellers' deaths accorded a like knell.
And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe,
And thereon queried by some squire's good dame
Driving in shopward) may have given thy name,
With, 'Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do;
Though, as for me,
I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, 'tis true.
'I' faith, few knew him much here, save by word,
He having elsewhere led his busier life;
Though to be sure he left with us his wife.'
--'Ah, one of the tradesmen's sons, I now recall. . . .
Witty, I've heard. . . .
We did not know him. . . . Well, good-day. Death comes to all.'
So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find
To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile,
Then vanish from their homely domicile--
Into man's poesy, we wot not whence,
Flew thy strange mind,
Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence.
Thomas Hardy
1916
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#65272
04/13/2002 1:18 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320 |
I love this poem; it's so moving and at the same time so very funny.
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman,
for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a
headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole familites shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corrridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermrket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
I hate the way this thing refuses to indent and space properly. Well, the words are still there.
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#65273
04/13/2002 3:39 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
In several of the pems recently posted, the poet refers by name to other poets. I'll offer two more in that theme.
A word is in order on the first, The Poets at Tea by Barry Pain. Pain imagines ten poets conversing over tea; in each section of the poem, one poet speaks in his characteristic voice. To keep this post brief I've included only three of the ten, Macauley (abbreviated), Poe, and Walt Whitman. (omitting Tennyson, Swinburne, Cowper, Browning, Wordsworth, Rossetti and Burns)
Pour, varlet, pour the water,
The water steaming hot!
A spoonful for each man of us,
Another for the pot! ...
Whiter than snow the crystals
Grown sweet 'neath tropic fires,
More righ the herb of China's field,
The pasture-lands more fragrance yield;
Forever let Britania wield
The teapost of her sires!
Here's a mellow cup of tea -- golden tea!
What a world or rapturous thought its fragance brings to me!
Oh, from out the silver cells
How it wells!
How it smells!
Keeping tune, tune, tune,
To the tintinnabulation of the spoon.
And the kettle on the fire
Boils its spout off with desire,
With a desperate desire
And a crystalline endeavor
Now, now to sit, or never,
On the top of the pale-faced moon,
But he alwyays came home to tea, tea, tea, tea, tea,
Tea to the n-th.
One cup for my self-hood,
Many for you. Allons, camerados, we will drink together,
O hand-in-hand! That tea-spoon, please when you've done with it.
What butter-colored hair you've got. I don't want to be personal.
All right, then, you needn't. You're a stale-cadaver.
Eigthteen-pence if the bottles are returned.
Allons, from all bat-eyed formulas.
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#65274
04/13/2002 3:57 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
And the second, a biting sonnet by James Kenneth Stephen
Wordsworth
Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times,
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst;
At other times -- good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A, B, C,
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.
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#65275
04/14/2002 1:27 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 4,189 |
Robert Graves served with the British Army in the Royal Welch Fusiliers druring WWI, seeing some of the most brutal battles of the war.
THE NEXT WAR
by Robert Graves (1895-1985)
You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father’s hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you’re bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of father’s loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
...Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you’ll have to play, all in;
It’s the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don’t change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.
© 1917 by Robert Graves
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65276
04/14/2002 7:08 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
I have posted this before, but it is brief, so please pardon my yarting vanity...
Generic Haiku
by Alex Williams and Jimi Evans, 1987
Five syllables here
Something about the seasons
This line is real deep
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#65277
04/14/2002 8:34 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320 |
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
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#65278
04/15/2002 1:53 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
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Posts: 872 |
I hope this thread survives the Ides of April, what with the gloom of the happy cats down at the I, R, and S. But a rich diet of even the most expensive poems needs a refreshingly moderately-priced, tone-wine to clear the jaded palate. So here I offer an interlude, a sampling, such as it am, of my selections of the most pleasing, or the most sonorous, extracts from mankind's poetry. And sup til times and times are done
the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.
-Yeats
If the red slayer thinks that he has slayed
And the slain believes that he is slain
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep,
I turn, and pass, and live again.
- Emerson
When robot mice and robot men run 'round in robot towns.
- Bradbury
the bird of time has but a short way to flutter
And Lo, the bird is on the wing.
- Omar
Damsel with a dulcimer ...etc.
- Coleridge
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...
-King James Bible.
Over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow
Ride boldly ride, the Shade replied, if you seek for Eldorado.
-Poe.And so forth...
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#65279
04/15/2002 2:50 AM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
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Posts: 833 |
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
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#65280
04/15/2002 4:42 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
I like the idea of a few samplings there, Milo. APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T. S. Eliot, from The Wasteland
The contradiction in every act,
The infinite task of the human heart.
Delmore Schwartz, from The One Who Would Take Man's Life in His Own Hands
We love the things we love for what they are.
Robert Frost, from Hyla Brook
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
William Blake, from Auguries of Innocence (all punctuation and letter case his)
Expect poison from the standing water.
Joys impregnate. Sorrow brings forth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
William Blake, from Proverbs of Hell
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson, from My Life Closed Twice
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A quiet bower for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats, from Endymion
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65281
04/15/2002 5:01 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
ODE
by Arthur O'Shaugnessy (1844-1881)
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
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#65282
04/19/2002 6:23 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
HEY ! One thing is true that can't be taken from (US): We have 10 days left in National [ Poetry] Month (US). ___________________________ Ever-so-often this month, I will post a lessor poem by a major poet or a major poem by a lessor poet, least either be forgotten. Aren't I nice?
YOUR TEARS
I DARE not ask your very all:
I only ask a part.
Bring me - when dancers leave the hall -
Your aching heart.
Give other friends your lighted face,
The laughter of the years:
I come to crave a greater grace -
Bring me your tears!
Edwin Markham
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#65283
04/19/2002 9:23 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
——— Sea Fever ———
I must go down to the sea again,
... to the lonely sea and the sky
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song
... and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face,
... and a grey dawn breaking,
I must go down to the seas again,
... for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
... and the sea-gulls crying
I must go down to the seas again,
... to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way
... where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
John Masefield
I tried o break the lines so the post will not go wide on us all. I may have posted this before but I do love it!
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#65284
04/19/2002 9:30 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
Okay, milum, gems of obscurity it is! Here's one of my favorite lesser known scribblings: ON THE EVE OF HIS EXECUTION
by Chidiock Tichborne (1558?-1586)
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
my feast of ioy is but a dish of paine:
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
and al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I liue, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
my fruite is falne, & yet my leaues are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I liue, and now my life is done.
I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I liue, and now my life is done. Tichborne was executed because he got caught up in one of those English Throne conspiracy things...and he died rather gruesomely. Here's a link for the story if anyone is interested: http://www.etsu.edu/english/sites/bowens.htmThe Only WO'N!
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#65285
04/19/2002 9:41 PM
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Another obscure poet Hints of SpringLast night I heard an owl
Hoot a lovesong to the night.
No answer came, but I'm sure it will.
Then I saw a waning moon
Rise just before dawn
To look down on my fields so dark and still.
I've caught other hints of spring
In a streak of living red
That chased a herd of shadows from my woods,
And a little shaft of morning
That came dancing down the hill
And started romancing with some buds.-Max Ellison That was a quick edit, amigo!
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#65286
04/19/2002 9:46 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Nell Flaherty’s Drake
MY NAME it is Nell, right candid I tell,
And I live near a dell I ne’er will deny,
I had a large drake, the truth for to spake,
My grandfather left me when going to die;
He was merry and sound, and would weigh twenty pound,
The universe round would I rove for his sake.
Bad luck to the robber, be he drunken or sober,
That murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.
His neck it was green, and rare to be seen,
He was fit for a queen of the highest degree.
His body so white, it would you delight,
He was fat, plump, and heavy, and brisk as a bee.
This dear little fellow, his legs they were yellow,
He could fly like a swallow, or swim like a hake,
But some wicked habbage, to grease his white cabbage,
Has murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake!
May his pig never grunt, may his cat never hunt,
That a ghost may him haunt in the dark of the night.
May his hens never lay, may his horse never neigh,
May his goat fly away like an old paper kite;
May his duck never quack, may his goose be turned black
And pull down his stack with her long yellow beak.
May the scurvy and itch never part from the britch
Of the wretch that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake!
May his rooster ne’er crow, may his bellows not blow,
Nor potatoes to grow—may he never have none—
May his cradle not rock, may his chest have no lock,
May his wife have no frock for to shade her backbone.
That the bugs and the fleas may this wicked wretch tease,
And a piercing north breeze make him tremble and shake.
May a four-years’-old bug build a nest in the lug (ear)
Of the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his pipe never smoke, may his tea-pot be broke,
And to add to the joke may his kettle not boil;
May he be poorly fed till the hour he is dead.
May he always be fed on lobscouse and fish oil.
May he swell with the gout till his grinders fall out,
May he roar, howl, and shout with a horrid toothache,
May his temple wear horns and his toes carry corns,
The wretch that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake,
May his dog yelp and howl with both hunger and cold,
May his wife always scold till his brains go astray.
May the curse of each hag, that ever carried a bag,
Light down on the wag till his head it turns gray.
May monkeys still bite him, and mad dogs affright him,
And every one slight him, asleep or awake.
May wasps ever gnaw him, and jackdaws ever claw him,
The monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
But the only good news I have to diffuse,
Is of Peter Hughes and Paddy McCade,
And crooked Ned Manson, and big-nosed Bob Hanson,
Each one had a grandson of my beautiful drake.
Oh! my bird he has dozens of nephews and cousins,
And one I must have, or my heart it will break.
To keep my mind easy, or else I’ll run crazy;
And so ends the song of my beautiful drake.
By that prolific writer : Anon.
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#65287
04/21/2002 12:27 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
GREEN CANDLES
"There's someone at the door" said gold candlestick:
"let her in quick!, let her in quick!"
"there's a small hand groping at the handle:
"Why don't you turn it?" asked green candle.
"Don't go, don't go," said the Heppelwhite chair.
"lest you find a strange lady there."
"Yes, stay where you are," whispered the white wall.
"There is nobody there at all."
"I know her little foot," gray carpet said:
"Who but I should know her light tread?"
"She shall come in." answered the open door.
"And not," said the room, go out any more."
-Humbert Wolfe
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#65288
04/21/2002 9:28 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
GHOST HOUSE
by Robert Frost
I DWELL in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. 5
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed. 10
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart; 15
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out. 20
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar. 25
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had. 30
"...and the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow"
...walking on a gently undulating road in Connecticut
a few summers back, I spotted purple stems. Stopped
to look, and, sure enough, there were the stems
and leaves of the raspberry. I felt Frost was there,
peeking over my shoulder, him thinking, "I made you stop,
didn't I? Me with my use of purple-stemmed and rolling
rhythm..."
That's why I like it--all
of the best of it--it makes us stop
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#65289
04/21/2002 4:43 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
Can anyone help here? I periodically stumble across this in my handwritten notes notes from my college days (ancient history!). I have no idea who wrote it. Can anyone help? The tanned blonde
in the green print sack
in the center of the subway car
standing
though there are seats
has had it from
1 teen-age hood
1 lesbian
1 envious housewife
4 men over fifty
(& myself), in short
the contents of this half of the car Our notations are:
long legs, long waist, high breasts (no bra), long
neck, the model slump
the handbag drape and how the skirt
cuts in under a very handsome
set of cheeks
‘stirring dull roots with spring rain’ sayeth the preacher Only a stolid young man
with a blue business suit and the New York Times
does not know he is being assaulted So.
She has us and we her
all the way to downtown Brooklyn
Over the tunnel and through the bridge
to DeKalb Avenue we go
all very chummy She stares at the number over the door
and gives no sign
yet the sign is on her.
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#65290
04/21/2002 6:38 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
Keiva, isn't this apt: "April is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with Spring rain."
-- T.S. Eliot I was able to find, by googling "in the green print sack" that it's apparently a poem called The Once Over by one Paul Blackburn. http://english.rutgers.edu/comic.htm
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#65291
04/21/2002 9:49 PM
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
RUNAWAY HOLLYHOCKS
for Veloise
Two hollyhocks that I saw stood
Knee deep in grass beside a woods.
Hand in hand they seemed to say,
"Just look at us! We've run away!"
I've seen hollyhocks before
Standing by some country door,
Curtsying shadows in the lane,
Peeking in some kitchen pane,
Or doing sentry by the gate,
But these were lost, and it was late.
I can't believe that any fiend
Would turn them out, or be so mean
As when they bloomed to come and say,
"We don't want hollyhocks today."
I think, perhaps, some love instead,
For one was white, and one was red,
Caused them through the night to say,
"When morning comes, we'll run away."
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#65292
04/22/2002 12:27 AM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
Jazzo, thank you! That's been gnawing at the back of my mind for years. [My googling efforts had included text from the end of the poem. slapping own worhead in disgust at self -e] And in all these years I'd never noted the T.S. Eliot reference. [slapping again -e]
Let me register that IMHO, April is not the cruelest month:
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
-- William Watson
There's a collegiate story, jazzo, behind that poem you found for me. Remind me to tell you by PM; it's too long to write out now.
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#65293
04/22/2002 2:15 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
SIMPLES
O bella, biolnda
sei come l'onda
Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child
Gathers the simple salad leaves.
A moon-dew stars her hanging hair,
And moonlight touches her young brow;
And, gathering, she sings an air:
"Fair as the wave is, fair art thou."
Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear
To shield me from her childish croon;
And mine a shieled heart for her
Who gathers simples of the moon.
James Joyce
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#65294
04/22/2002 2:50 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
obscure
BEWARE
by Cydias (Greek - c. 400 B.C.)
Beware. There are fawns
who, facing the lion,
die of fright just thinking
the lion might be hungry.
translated by Sam Hamill
The Only WO'N!
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#65295
04/22/2002 5:02 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
THE TIRED MAN
I am a quie gentleman,
And I would sit and dream;
But my wife is on the hillside,
Wild as a hill-stream.
I am a quiet gentleman,
And I would sit and think;
But my wife is walking the whirlwind
Through night as black as ink.
Oh, give me a woman of my race
As well controlled as I,
And let us sit by the fire,
Patient till we die.
Anna Wickham
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