Poetry. (1 Viewer)

[inasero]

tread sofylt indeed

I can't believe the desiderata was not posted....but for your conveneice:

The Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,

even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble,

it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life,

keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

A nineteen century vision of apocalypse that still holds relevance, and serves as a fine example of blank verse.

Lord Byron-Darkness [1816]
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd and the stars
Did wander darkling in the external space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolationl and all hearts
Were chill'd inot a selfish prayer for light
And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch;
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd; the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And glap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing but stingless--they were slain for food;
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;-- a mean was brought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom; no love was left;
All earth was but one thought-- and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assaill'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himelf sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-- he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw; and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful--was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay,
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-- She was the universe.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Ted Hughes-Wind
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Til day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminious and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. I dared once to look it up--
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hill drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fires blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

 

[huck fenn]

for a pretty much descriptive poem, almost solely about some strong wind, 'Wind' is incredible. How can wind be a mad eye? Yet it seems to work so intensly well. One of my favourite poems.

 

[Serpentia]

ahhh desiderata is a classic, such beautiful language, very striking, very true.......

Voices at the Window By Sir Phillip Sidney


WHO is it that, this dark night,
Underneath my window plaineth?
It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.

Why, alas, and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changd?
Dear, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estrangd,
Let my change to ruin be.

Well, in absence this will die:
Leave to see, and leave to wonder.
Absence sure will help, if I
Can learn how myself to sunder
From what in my heart doth lie.

But time will these thoughts remove;
Time doth work what no man knoweth.
Time doth as the subject prove:
With time still the affection groweth
In the faithful turtle-dove.

What if you new beauties see?
Will not they stir new affection?
I will think they pictures be
(Image-like, of saints perfection)
Poorly counterfeiting thee.

But your reasons purest light
Bids you leave1 such minds to nourish.
Dear, do reason no such spite!
Never doth thy beauty flourish
More than in my reasons sight.


My favourite stanza is this poem is

But time will these thoughts remove;
Time doth work what no man knoweth.
Time doth as the subject prove:
With time still the affection groweth
In the faithful turtle-dove.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

T.S Elliot-The Waste Land
Note;Due to the length of this poem, I'm not posting the entirety. The full text may be found online at;
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/ [With comprehensive footnoting.]

The following, final section is my favourite, and I'll attempt to provide translations when necessary (Courtesy of the Norton Anthology Of English Literature, Vol.Two.) For extra effect, try reading the conclusion aloud, and remember that the poem's disjointed nature is intentional, reflecting Elliot's vision of a fragmented, decaying society.

V. What the Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home,
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence,
Then spoke the thunder
DA[1]
Datta[2]: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam[3]: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata[4]: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affima[5]
Quando fiam uti chelidon[6]--O swallow swallow
Le prince d'Aquitaine a la your abolie[7]
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hierynymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih.[8]


[1] Reference to a Hindu fable in which men, gods and demons seperately ask their father Prajapati "Speak to us O Lord.", only to be told DA. The three differing interpretations are seen throughout this stanza.
[2]Datta-Hindu for 'To give alms'
[3]Dayadhvam-Hindu for 'To have compassion'
[4]Damyata-Hindu for 'To practise self-control'
[5]He hid himself in the fire that redeems them [Dante-Purgatorio]
[6]When shall I be as the swallow? [Anon-Vigil of Venus]
[7]French for The Prince of Aquitaine in the ruined tower.
[8]Hindu, roughly translating to "The peace which passeth understanding [Elliot]

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Wilfred Owen-Apologia Pro Poemate Meo
I, too, saw God through mud,--
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled,
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh then--
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder,
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off Fear--
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exhaltation--
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour, thought they were foul.

I have made fellowships--
Untold of happy lovers in an old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips--
But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips,
Knit in the webbing of the rifle-throng,

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight
Heard music, in the silentness of duty,
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate,

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth;
You shall not come to think them well content
But any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

 

[Lexicographer]

Don't expect me to post the entire Inferno, though believe me I would love to. I tried writing some poetry but all of it was crap so nothing from me. Sorry.

 

[Serpentia]

Originally posted by Lexicographer
Don't expect me to post the entire Inferno, though believe me I would love to.

I agree with you on that one

 

[Sush]

40. (Carrion Comfort) By Gerard Manley Hopkins


NOT, Ill not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwistslack they may bethese last strands of man
In me r, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me 5
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, 10
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cher.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fot trd
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

W.B Yeats-Among School Children
1.
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way--the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

2.
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy--
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

3.
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age--
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage--
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild;
She stands before me as a living child.

4.
Her present image floats into the mind--
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once--enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

5.
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainity of his setting forth?

6.
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard;
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

7.
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts--O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise--
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise.

8.
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil,
O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the hole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

 

[Gregor Samsa]

This thread needed a revival, I feel.

Dylan Thomas-The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the nourishing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

William Wordsworth-The world is too much with us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not,-- Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

 

[the questions]

For all us HSC prisoners!!!!!

There Are Days

There are days when
one should be able
to pluck off one's head
like a dented or worn
helmet, straight from
the nape and collarbone
(those crackling branches!)

and place it firmly down
in the bed of a flowing stream.
Clear,clean, chill currents
coursing and spuming through
the sour and stale compartments
of the brain, dimmed eardrums,
bleared eyesockets,filmed tongue.

And then set it back again
on the base of the shoulders:
well tamped down, of course,
the laved skin and mouth,
the marble of the eyes
rinsed and ready
for love;for prophecy?

John Montague

 

[gloria*]

Before a Depature in Spring; W.S. Merwin


Once more it is April with the first light sifting
through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors
remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree
the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowned bronze
of the kamani and the blue day opening
as the sunlight descends through it all like the return
of a spirit touching without touch and unable
to believe it is here and here again and awake
reaching out in silence into the cool breath
of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain
it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling
to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash
of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it
we watch without touching any of it and we
can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning
this never happened before and we both remember it

 

[Serpentia]

You can never go past ee cummings

between the breasts

between the breasts
of bestial
Marj lie large
men who praise

Marj's cleancornered strokable
body these men's
fingers toss trunks
shuffle sacks spin kegs they

curl
loving
around
beers

the world has
these men's hands but their
bodies big and boozing
belong to

Marj
the greenslim purse of whose
face opens
on a fatgold

grin
hooray
hoorah for the large
men who lie

between the breasts
of bestial Marj
for the strong men
who

sleep between the legs of Lil

 

[sugared plum]

The Addict // Anne Sexton

Sleepmonger,
deathmonger,
with capsules in my palms each night,
eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.
I'm the queen of this condition.
I'm an expert on making the trip
and now they say I'm an addict.
Now they ask why.
Why!

Don't they know
that I promised to die!
I'm keping in practice.
I'm merely staying in shape.
The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I'm on a diet from death.

Yes, I admit
it has gotten to be a bit of a habit
blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,
hauled away by the pink, the orange,
the green and the white goodnights.
I'm becoming something of a chemical
mixture.
That's it!

My supply
of tablets
has got to last for years and years.
I like them more than I like me.
Stubborn as hell, they wont let go.
It's a kind of marriage.
It's a kind of war
where I plant bombs inside
of myself.

Yes
I try
to kill myself in small amounts,
an innocuous occupatin.
Actually I'm hung up on it.
But remember I don't make too much noise.
And frankly no one has to lug me out
and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.
I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie
eating my eight loaves in a row
and in a certain order as in
the laying on of hands
or the black sacrament.

It's a ceremony
but like any other sport
it's full of rules.
It's like a musical tennis match where
my mouth keeps catching the ball.
Then I lie on my altar
elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

What a lay me down this is
with two pink, two orange,
two green, two white goodnights.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
Now I'm borrowed.
Now I'm numb.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Bought 'Dylan Thomas: Collected Poems 1934-1953' yesterday, and figured posting a couple of his poems would be in order.

Dylan Thomas-Light breaks where no sun shines
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs;
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds
Like some pitch moon, the limits of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the air,
When logics die,
The secrets of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts,

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Dylan Thomas-The hand that signed the paper.
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath
Doubled the globe of death and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed a treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

 

[virgin^sexy]

Originally posted by spin spin sugar
a personal favourite poem of mine- quite simple but sooo eloquent.

the quiet world - by jeffrey mcdaniel

in an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
the government has decided to allot
each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

when the phone rings, i put it
to my ear without saying hello.
in the restaurant i point
at chicken noodle soup. i am
adjusting well to the new way.

late at night, i call my long-
distance lover and proudly say:
i only used fifty-nine today.
i saved the rest for you.

when she doesn't respond, i know
she's used up all her words,
so i slowly whisper i love you,
thirty-two and a third times.
after that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

i love that so much