I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees.
Here's another one
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
How he is able construct such powerful verse out of simple words and concepts always blows me away. Though it looks easy I've never seen a good imitation of his style.
Then there's this poem by Phillip Larkin that I like.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Shakespeare's sonnets are good.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Classical poetry is just really hardcore when you consider how hard it is to write within the constraints of rhyme , meter and the chosen form. It's definitely in the hacker spirit of doing things like the JS1K contest , or maybe crazy assembly optimised demos.
"I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees." I've never seen that in english, so I looked it up (http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/neruda/poema14-sp-en.htm...) I guess it goes without saying, but english really doesn't do him justice, rhyming trees with kisses is pretty poor compared to cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme. But I suppose poetry is about the most difficult thing to translate b/c of the many levels from phonetical to subtle contextual and semantical differences that are all overlayed and compacted into a few small verses. I certainly wouldn't want to / couldn't translate it.
In english I just nerd out on the old the stuff and for some reason never really got into anything newer... I like chaucer, spencer, milton, shakespeare, plus just reading through all those in the original is so cool after a couple pages you slip into another world and time, nice escapism.
I would like to become more "cultured" and just aware of more words, forming sentences, communicating, and have more to call on for expressing my feelings.
What is the best way to get into poetry more? Read a couple a day or something? I would actually really like to read Shakespeare, but most seem to be of the mind that you really need a class or something to really get the translation.
well, if you want to get into the older stuff like shakespeare I would suggest just diving in. At first, just lookup the words you dont know and after maybe one play you should have already learned enough to understand his style and language and "get" his works on their face value.
as far as literary references go - aka john milton - (basically the only reason you'd need a class), I really think you'd just have to read/know most of the greek/roman classics and the bible to be able to get most of them. But no worries, if you enjoy reading the classics are a blast, the hebrew old testament is packed with pretty cool stories (the mad king Nebuchadnezzer) and it doesn't get much better than the iliad and odyssey.
> rhyming trees with kisses is pretty poor compared to cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme
I read the spanish version from the link you posted and, although I don't speak spanish, it doesn't look like there is any other rhyme at all in the whole poem. Am I right? Do you think that this was intentional - does it mean something in spanish/latin american poetry?
No there's rhyming all over the place in this one, just not always on the end of the line. But first and second stanzas, in the 4th just take for example:
"Pasan huyendo los pájaros. El viento. El viento"
huyendo rhymes with viento, pasan alliterates with pajaros, and the "l" en los and "o" in pajaros fits very nicely with the "l" and "o" in the repition of "el viento".
In english you see the translator trying to get it somewhat with birds and by :
Since letters in Spanish have only one sound, '-izos' and '-esos' cannot be made to rhyme without distorting the pronunciation of one of the words. I don't see how that makes 'perfect' rhyme.
I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency before ever coming across Coleridge's Kubla Khan and spent quite a bit of time (this was before I was on the Internet) trying to find the rest of the poem. I was quite disappointed once I figured things out but on the plus side I understood what happened in the book afterwards.
I love many poets and poetry.Two that I would like to share with HN commuity at this time would be - Rumi and Gulzar
Rumi said things like
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
Rumi: Meet you there
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.I 'll meet you there.
Rumi: Silence
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
Gulzar: Dil toh bachcha hai ji
(hindi) Dil toh bachcha hai ji
(english) Heart is such a child
Gulzar: Your name
(hindi)
Nazm uljhi hui hai seene mein
misare atke hue hain hothon par
udate phirte hain titaliyon ki tarah
lafz kaagaz pe baithate hi nahin
kab se baithaa hun main jaanam
saade kaagaz pe likh ke naam tera
bas tera naam hi mukammal hai
isse behtar bhi nazm kyaa hogi
(english)
A poem is entangled in my heart.
lines are stuck on my lips.
Fluttering like butterflies,
words refuse to settle on paper.
I have labored
for hours my darling,
writing your name on this blank sheet of paper.
Your name itself suffices;
What other poem can excel that ?
I love it, mostly Rumi. It's like motivational poetry, for the nerds from 800 years ago.
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” - Rumi
“Sit, be still, and listen,
because you're drunk
and we're at
the edge of the roof.”
― Rumi
If you ever take a Sufi Islam class, it is introductions to quotes of Rumi like these that will ruin you forever.
God I love his work. There is a whole school of Sufi sects known as drunk Sufis, drunk on their love of God, so to speak, and Rumi is a fantastic artistic characterization of their mindset.
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
This is one of my favorite quotes - first came across it while reading "And the Mountains Echoed". I'll definitely have to check out more of Rumi's works.
I absolutely agree. He is a true poet. He started his career in 1957 and he is still going! And the amazing thing about his poetry is that it caters to everyone. I and my father both enjoy listening to his poems(see the age difference) and it never gets old!
I love Neruda, specially "No culpes a nadie". It helped me a lot to stop complaining. C&P a possibly wrong translation
## Don't Blame Anyone
Never complain about anyone, nor anything,
because basically you have done
what you wanted in your life.
Accept the difficulty of improving yourself
and the courage to start changing yourself.
The triumph of the true man emerges from
the ashes of his mistake.
Never complain about your loneliness or your
luck, face it with courage and accept it.
In one way or another it is the outcome of
your acts and the thought that you always
have to win.
Don't be embittered by your own failure or
blame it on another, accept yourself now or
you'll keep making excuses for yourself like a child.
Remember that any time is
a good time to begin and that nobody
is so horrible that they should give up.
Don't forget that the cause of your present
is your past, as well as the cause of your
future will be your present.
Learn from the bold, the strong,
those who don't accept situations, who
will live in spite of everything. Think less in
your problems and more in your work and
your problems, without eliminating them, will die.
Learn how to grow from the pain and to be
greater than the greatest of those
obstacles. Look at yourself in the mirror
and you will be free and strong and you will stop
being a puppet of circumstances because you
yourself are your own destiny.
Arise and look at the sun in the mornings
and breathe the light of the dawn.
You are part of the force of your life;
now wake up, fight, get going, be decisive
and you will triumph in life. Never think about
luck because luck is
the pretext of losers.
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER’S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it
it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden
of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
you have to be continually drunk.
But on what?
Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
Baudelaire is an incredibly powerful poet. My favorite is "L'Albatros", this poem leaves me speechless every time.
The Albatross
Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.
Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.
That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!
The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.
I studied this poem back in high school (in France).
I have mixed feeling about it. I said "studied", but I really meant "had to study". There's something about school's treatment of the subject that just robs the poem of any power. Maybe it's because as teenagers we likely didn't have the life experience for it to resonate with us. Even now, I can vaguely sense it but am numb to it. On the other hand, I'm glad I have been introduced to such poetry, as I think it helps me later in life to appreciate the finer things.
Also, did you know Baudelaire's translation of Poe's work brought it french recognition? (I earlier got it the wrong way around, thinking Poe had translated Baudelaire)
I had to study a corpus of 30 texts for the bac as well a couple months ago. I certainly understand how you feel... (I am glad to be done with high-school)
I don't blame the teachers because it is true that most literary masterpieces are hard to tackle the "right way" especially when there is a standard final examination that students have to be prepared for.
I was lucky enough to have a very passionate teacher during my senior year of high-school who introduced me to some really exciting readings, and had enough charisma to capture the imagination of a room full of troubled teenagers. That is one of my fondest memory so far.
As far as I can remember, I always liked L'Albatros. Although I have to admit that the original version resonates a lot more with myself.
The slower pace of the last few sentences are like a kiss of death, a condemnation at the end of a trial: unquestionable and absolute.
You can almost feel the tears tearing Baudelaire apart. It's glorious in its very own morbidity. I just love it :)
> I had to study a corpus of 30 texts for the bac as well a couple months ago. I certainly understand how you feel... (I am glad to be done with high-school)
Bravo! I'm curious though: 15 years ago the french part was done a year earlier than the rest. Is it common to do everything together nowadays, or was your curriculum a bit different?
Wine can conceal a sordid room
In rich, miraculous disguise,
And make such porticoes arise
Out of its flushed and crimson fume
As makes the sunset in the skies.
Opium the infinite enlarges,
And lengthens all that is past measure.
It deepens time, and digs its treasure,
With sad, black raptures it o'ercharges
The soul, and surfeits it with pleasure.
Neither are worth the drug so strong
That you distil from your green eyes,
Lakes where I see my soul capsize
Head downwards: and where, in one throng,
I slake my dreams, and quench my sighs.
But to your spittle these seem naught —
It stings and burns. It steeps my thought
And spirit in oblivious gloom,
And, in its dizzy onrush caught,
Dashes it on the shores of doom.
Ωtranslated by Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
Le Poison
Le vin sait revêtir le plus sordide bouge
D'un luxe miraculeux,
Et fait surgir plus d'un portique fabuleux
Dans l'or de sa vapeur rouge,
Comme un soleil couchant dans un ciel nébuleux.
L'opium agrandit ce qui n'a pas de bornes,
Allonge l'illimité,
Approfondit le temps, creuse la volupté,
Et de plaisirs noirs et mornes
Remplit l'âme au delà de sa capacité.
Tout cela ne vaut pas le poison qui découle
De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts,
Lacs où mon âme tremble et se voit à l'envers...
Mes songes viennent en foule
Pour se désaltérer à ces gouffres amers.
Tout cela ne vaut pas le terrible prodige
De ta salive qui mord,
Qui plonge dans l'oubli mon âme sans remords,
Et charriant le vertige,
La roule défaillante aux rives de la mort!
Yes, I'm French and I agree. The message is well translated, but the original is made with much more precision, and it is more gracious. But English has some nice poetry, I like Whitman and e. e. cummings. When it comes to French, I'd recommend this classic from Victor Hugo, Tomorrow at dawn, it's simple but human, and the translation is fair, it's dedicated to his daughter:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/972635-tomorrow-at-dawn-the...
There's also this poem of Baudelaire about female homosexuality, which I like, Damned women, also called Delphine and Hippolyta. His whole book "Les fleurs du mal" (The Flowers of Evil) was heresy at the time (1860), it was about the beauty of evil, well, in part. There are English versions there but it's not easy to translate: http://fleursdumal.org/poem/180
I don't find it strange to claim that this is Baudelaire's work. Of course the style and the rhymes makes it very different compared to the original version. I also think that translation has altered the poem's beauty but the message is still here, the story is the same and it leaves me with the same humbled feelings.
Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
It's set to music in the fantastic Doctor Atomic by John Adams, with a superb recording available from http://www.metopera.org
Edits: still not good at HN formatting, should be good now.
here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?”
― Matt Harvey
Belfast man checking in, poetry is one of the main traditions here and has a thriving local community, so I thought I would recommend some of my favourites from this part of the world.
Paul Muldoon,
Maybe something of a "poet's poet" but certainly worth checking out. His style is a casual one, but bursts with sidelong allusions to history, literature, art and etymological punnery. Perhaps of particular interest to people here, might be his novel-length poem Madoc, an hallucinogenic journey through time and place, in which "[he] supposes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey took up their (actual) fancy of founding a Pantisocratic community in North America."
Ciaran Carson,
Took a break from writing through most of the 70s to travel with his wife playing traditional music and steep himself in the Irish storytelling tradition. His books since then have been an, at time excitingly precarious, marriage of traditional storytelling and a modernist mock pedanticism. Worth checking out is his Belfast Confetti, a mix of essays and poems which explore the psychological relationship one has to one's city.
Leontia Flynn,
A much younger poet, of the generation of artists who have had to deal with adapting to life and working in the 21st Century. Her last book, from 2011, Profit & Loss is a striking meditation on the changing role of memory in pre- and post- Internet society.
And for something different that I would particularly recommend to the HN crowd,
Sam Riviere,
An English poet of the current generation who deals with the cognitive fallout of the ever varied linguistic and cultural deluge one experiences day to day in 2015. I don't want to say too much about his writing as he is still so young, but certainly seek out his latest book, Kim Kardashian's Marriage.
I stumbled across this in a high school magazine left in a youth hostel in Maroochydore, Queensland in 1986, and have never seen another reference to it since. It's attribution was 'anonymous', and googling key lines bring up nothing.
I've always liked it, and posting it here might give it some longevity beyond that of my hard drive.
Running on the front line
Leading the way to uncertainty.
With the shadow of a dream to guide you,
Following a gleaming ray
Picked from another’s closed mind.
Why will you lead the way while
Others show no taste for adventure?
Alone and self-exiled
In the midst of a crowd
Something not quite a thought flickers and is gone
Leaving just enough to tell it came
But not enough to remember.
Somehow it is connected
To what you don’t know
But must find out.
Go forward, relish the unusual,
And question the normal.
Push yourself always to the edge
And the edge will move with you.
A blur of consciousness, knowledge,
Experience, prediction, guesses and lies
The elusive unknown and
The excitingly uncertain.
-
Anonymous
I don't particularly enjoy poetry (or poets for that matter), but I always liked reading "Algorhyme" by Radia Perlman, the inventor of spanning tree network protocol
Algorhyme
I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.
A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.
A tree that must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.
First, the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.
Least-cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree, these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me,
Then bridges find a spanning tree.
- Radia Perlman
I wish I had a better answer than "I make one up as needed", but I have more of a filking ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music ) background than any actual musical training.
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.
Aside from Tolkien's poetry in-world poetry, my favorite is probably Tennyson. Ulysses in particular is awesome. This is the final stanza.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Great to see Heaney mentioned by several people here! Recently voted Ireland's favourite poet of the last 100 years. This poem is a great example of his talent to document the small but evocative, quintessential elements of Irish experience. I'm having some wonderful childhood flashbacks of days on the bog right now :)
For me it's Sir John Betjeman. Very English of course. But...
A man on his own in a car
Is revenging himself on his wife;
He open the throttle and bubbles with dottle
and puffs at his pitiful life
She's losing her looks very fast,
she loses her temper all day;
that lorry won't let me get past,
this Mini is blocking my way.
"Why can't you step on it and shift her!
I can't go on crawling like this!
At breakfast she said that she wished I was dead-
Thank heavens we don't have to kiss.
"I'd like a nice blonde on my knee
And one who won't argue or nag.
Who dares to come hooting at me?
I only give way to a Jag.
"You're barmy or plastered, I'll pass you, you bastard-
I will overtake you. I will!"
As he clenches his pipe, his moment is ripe
And the corner's accepting its kill.
What's my great fear?
I'll tell you; come near...
To lay down in death
with so much left.
Passion not spent -
Oh cowardly regret!
For fear of others?
The thousand deaths.
I'm afraid to die
With no twinkle in my eye -
To pass meagerly by
Yet hidden inside.
To walk through life
Not truly alive,
And to pass in the night
With an unfelt "goodbye".
I have this one tacked up on my wall. Not only is it inspirational, but I am impressed by the syllabic structure of the poem (alternating 11/10 syllables, iambic). Having never really studied poetry before, I found this really cool.
If, by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
~~~ The Palace ~~~
by Rudyard Kipling, 1902
When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled --
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.
There was no worth in the fashion -- there was no wit in the plan --
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran --
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."
Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread;
Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.
Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart.
As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand
The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.
When I was a King and a Mason -- in the open noon of my pride,
They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.
They said -- "The end is forbidden." They said -- "Thy use is fulfilled.
"Thy Palace shall stand as that other's -- the spoil of a King who shall build."
I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers.
All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
Only I cut on the timber -- only I carved on the stone:
"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!"
That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Don’t Play it Safe
Don’t stand idle
at the side of the road
don’t hold off on happiness
don’t love with half a heart
don’t play it safe now
or ever
don’t play it safe
don’t fill up with calm
don’t take cover from the world
in a quiet corner
don’t let your eyelids come down
like a weighty sentence
don’t forget you have lips
don’t sleep but to rest
don’t ignore the blood in your veins
don’t think you have no time
but if
in any case
you can’t help it
and hold off on happiness
and love with half a heart
and play it safe now
and fill up with calm
and take cover from the world
in a quiet corner
and let your eyelids come down
like a weighty sentence
and dry up without lips
and sleep not to rest
and ignore the blood in your veins
and think you have no time
and stand idle
at the side of the road
and play it safe
in that case
don’t hold on to me.
Among English poems, I rather like this one by Laurie Lee:
A golden fish like a pint of wine
Rolls the sea undergreen,
Glassily balanced on the tide
Only the skin between.
Fish and water lean together,
Separate and one,
Till a fatal flash of the instant sun
Lazily corkscrews down.
Did fish and water drink each other?
The reed leans there alone;
As we, who once drank each other's breath,
Have emptied the air, and gone.
And of course W.H. Auden:
...I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Yeats, The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming. It is beyond extraordinary. The power of the images is utterly breathtaking.
However, your version does not have the words of the poem as it's generally published. I've never seen your version. Italics below show the more common wording.
"When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi /
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert /
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, /
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,..."
You're right... I copied it from the top search result (http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html), which seems to be the 1920 version. There have been others since, and Wikipedia uses the newer wording.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the Shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
I always loved Invictus. it was also my Father's favorite, and I remember how I felt "offended" when I learned Timothy McVeigh had chosen it for his last words.
Do you mind sharing the original author's name? It sounds gorgeous, but I can only read Japanese, so I'm not sure if I'm just completely wrong in getting the images from the Chinese.
Search engine yielded both the rest of the poem and the identity of the author.
少小離家老大回，鄉音無改鬢毛衰。
兒童相見不相識，笑問客從何處來。
(as above)
離別家鄉歲月多，近來人事半消磨。
惟有門前鏡湖水，春風不改舊時波。
I have left home for so long, society has lost its meaning.
There are only the waters of Mirror Lake before the door, and the spring winds cannot change the ripples of the past. [my translation]
The author is Hè Zhīzhāng (賀知章), a Tang Dynasty poet. The poem comes from the second part of his book Images of Homecoming (回鄉偶書). He is one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (ie. alcohol-loving Tang poets): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. by redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
we can break through marriage into marriage.
by insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
we must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
but going back toward childhood will not help.
the village is not better than pittsburgh.
only pittsburgh is more than pittsburgh.
rome is better than rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. love is not
enough. we die and are put into the earth forever.
we should insist while there is still time. we must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.
-Jack Gilbert
The poetic reference to Rome being better than Rome reminds me of Edmund Spenser's adaptation of Bellay's poem about Rome. http://www.bartleby.com/153/23.html
I think the most famous stanza (an excerpt from a much, much longer poem) is
Thou stranger, which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all,
These same olde walls, olde arches, which thou seest,
Olde palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Behold what wreake, what ruine, and what wast,
And how that she, which with her mightie powre
Tam’d all the world, hath tam’d herselfe at last,
The pray of Time, which all things doth devowre.
Rome now of Rome is th’ onely funerall,
And onely Rome of Rome hath victorie;
Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall
Remaines of all: O worlds inconstancie!
That which is firme doth flit and fall away,
And that is flitting doth abide and stay.
Bellay (and Spenser) claim that the only city that was ultimately able to conquer ancient Rome is ... modern Rome. I found that a striking observation.
Wislawa Syzmborska, for me. When lighthearted, she has depth, and when dark, she keeps a glimmer of light.
The Joy of Writing
Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."
Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.
Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.
They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.
Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
And, of course being a Scot, Robert Burns:
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
and:
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!—
Let us do or die!
[Apologies for the bloodthirsty nature of Scots Wha Hae - but I was taught this stuff from an early age and it kind of stuck even though it's describing events of 700 years ago.]
Edit:
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
But gin the auld fowks' tales are richt
An ghaists come hame on Hallow nicht,
O freend o' freends! what wad I gie
To feel ye rax yer hand to me
Atween the dark an' caun'le licht?
Awa in France, across the wave,
The wee lichts burn on ilka grave,
An' you an' me their lowe hae seen--
Ye'11 mebbe hae yer Hallowe'en
Yont, whaur ye're lyin' wi' the lave.
My party piece:
I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick
conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves
beyond its means, and dies, I say the story
of my life -
dates and places, torches I carried,
a cast of names and faces, those
who showed me love, or came close,
the changes I made, the lessons I learnt -
then somehow still find time to stall and blush
before I'm bitten by the flame, and burnt.
A warning, though, to anyone nursing
an ounce of sadness, anyone alone:
don't try this on your own; it's dangerous,
madness.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
All in the town were still asleep,
When the sun came up with a shout and a leap.
In the lonely streets unseen by man,
A little dog danced. And the day began.
All his life he'd been good, as far as he could,
And the poor little beast had done all that he should.
But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor
And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand it no more!
So his prayer he got granted—to do just what he wanted,
Prevented by none, for the space of one day.
"Jam incipiebo, sedere facebo,"
In dog-Latin he quoth, "Euge! sophos! hurray!"
He fought with the he-dogs, and winked at the she-dogs,
A thing that had never been heard of before.
"For the stigma of gluttony, I care not a button!" he
Cried, and ate all he could swallow—and more.
He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps,
And mangled the errand-boys—when he could get 'em.
He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies,
And followed the cats up the trees, and then ate 'em!"
They thought 'twas the devil was holding a revel,
And sent for the parson to drive him away;
For the town never knew such a hullabaloo
As that little dog raised—till the end of that day.
When the blood-red sun had gone burning down,
And the lights were lit in the little town,
Outside, in the gloom of the twilight grey,
The little dog died when he'd had his day.
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Plumb
Dormeau adanc sicriele de plumb,
Si flori de plumb si funerar vesmant -
Stam singur in cavou ... si era vant ...
Si scartaiau coroanele de plumb.
Dormea intors amorul meu de plumb
Pe flori de plumb, si-am inceput sa-l strig -
Stam singur langa mort ... si era frig ...
Si-i atarnau aripile de plumb.
Lead
The coffins of lead were lying sound asleep,
And the lead flowers and the funeral clothes -
I stood alone in the vault ... and there was wind ...
And the wreaths of lead creaked.
Upturned my lead beloved lay asleep
On the lead flower ... and I began to call -
I stood alone by the corpse ... and it was cold ...
And the wings of lead drooped.
Translating poems is pretty hard. That was an ok translation. It doesn't quite sound quite right.
One of the 'beat poets' and pioneer of the "cut up", a semi-randomized collage of slicing, duplicating, and splicing media. The effect seems to create awareness of the medium itself.
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, about poetry itself (sorry, Spanish is my language, still wanted to share):
No digáis que agotado su tesoro,
de asuntos falta enmudeció la lira:
podrá no haber poetas, pero siempre
habrá poesía.
Mientras las ondas de la luz al beso
palpiten encendidas,
mientras el sol las desgarradas nubes
de fuego y oro vista,
mientras el aire en su regazo lleve
perfumes y armonías,
mientras haya en el mundo primavera,
¡habrá poesía!
Mientras la ciencia a descubrir no alcance
las fuentes de la vida,
y en el mar o en el cielo haya un abismo
que al cálculo resista,
mientras la humanidad siempre avanzando
no sepa a do camina,
mientras haya un misterio para el hombre,
¡habrá poesía!
Mientras se sienta que se ríe el alma
sin que los labios rían,
mientras se llore, sin que el llanto acuda
a nublar la pupila,
mientras el corazón y la cabeza
batallando prosigan,
mientras haya esperanzas y recuerdos,
¡habrá poesía!
Mientras haya unos ojos que reflejen
los ojos que los miran,
mientras responda el labio suspirando
al labio que suspira,
mientras sentirse puedan en un beso
dos almas confundidas,
mientras exista una mujer hermosa,
¡habrá poesía!
Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.
When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.
Ah, we were thinking of the same one. It's worth noting that his brother, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James , wrote some of the most lyrical philosophy and psychology works of the late 19th century.
Wallace Stevens is a favorite of mine. His work has been described as "rigorous", which I would agree with. He is an inspiration to me due to his ability to straddle two worlds: his day job was mainly as an insurance executive, but he flowered late and won a Pulitzer for his poetry. I particularly like "The Emperor of Ice Cream":
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.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
A few mentions of Hopkins in this thread, but too few examples.
So, Heaven Haven:
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
And then: "The Habit of Perfection":
ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
He was the US Poet Laureate for a few years. He is from Nebraska, and writes about Midwestern life, among other things. His most recent volume just came out, and I thought it was great.
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half
… and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife and her fork in their proper places,
then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
I always come back to Frost's "The Road Not Taken"
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I'm a Frost fan as well. My favorite is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Presumptuous Maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch'd, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulph between;
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.)
The slippery verge her feet beguil'd;
She tumbled headlong in.
Omar Khayyam is wonderful. I have the first stanza of the Rubaiyat painted and framed in khatam style.
This quatrain makes me think Khayyam was a HN reader:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
not really a favorite poet, but a favorite poem : 'Cat in an empty apartment'
Die--you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here
but nothing is the same.
Nothing's been moved
but there's more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.
Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.
Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.
Every closet's been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.
Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.
-- Wislawa Szymborska
A big locomotive has pulled into town,
Heavy, humungus, with sweat rolling down,
A plump jumbo olive.
Huffing and puffing and panting and smelly,
Fire belches forth from her fat cast iron belly.
Poof, how she's burning,
Oof, how she's boiling,
Puff, how she's churning,
Huff, how she's toiling.
She's fully exhausted and all out of breath,
Yet the coalman continues to stoke her to death.
Numerous wagons she tugs down the track:
Iron and steel monsters hitched up to her back,
All filled with people and other things too:
The first carries cattle, then horses not few;
The third car with corpulent people is filled,
Eating fat frankfurters all freshly grilled.
The fourth car is packed to the hilt with bananas,
The fifth has a cargo of six grand pi-an-as.
The sixth wagon carries a cannon of steel,
With heavy iron girders beneath every wheel.
The seventh has tables, oak cupboards with plates,
While an elephant, bear, two giraffes fill the eighth.
The ninth contains nothing but well-fattened swine,
In the tenth: bags and boxes, now isn't that fine?
There must be at least forty cars in a row,
And what they all carry -- I simply don't know:
But if one thousand athletes, with muscles of steel,
Each ate one thousand cutlets in one giant meal,
And each one exerted as much as he could,
They'd never quite manage to lift such a load.
First a toot!
Then a hoot!
Steam is churning,
Wheels are turning!
More slowly - than turtles - with freight - on their - backs,
The drowsy - steam engine - sets off - down the tracks.
She chugs and she tugs at her wagons with strain,
As wheel after wheel slowly turns on the train.
She doubles her effort and quickens her pace,
And rambles and scrambles to keep up the race.
Oh whither, oh whither? go forward at will,
And chug along over the bridge, up the hill,
Through mountains and tunnels and meadows and woods,
Now hurry, now hurry, deliver your goods.
Keep up your tempo, now push along, push along,
Chug along, tug along, tug along, chug along
Lightly and sprightly she carries her freight
Like a ping-pong ball bouncing without any weight,
Not heavy equipment exhausted to death,
But a little tin toy, just a light puff of breath.
Oh whither, oh whither, you'll tell me, I trust,
What is it, what is it that gives you your thrust?
What gives you momentum to roll down the track?
It's hot steam that gives me my clickety-clack.
Hot steam from the boiler through tubes to the pistons,
The pistons then push at the wheels from short distance,
They drive and they push, and the train starts a-swooshin'
'Cuz steam on the pistons keeps pushin' and pushin';
The wheels start a rattlin', clatterin', chatterin'
Chug along, tug along, chug along, tug along! . . . .
Julian Tuwim
If I think and act like you do
The world would die
From not seeing something new
And if I don't speak on how I feel
The world would lose out on
What's really real
And if should die before I wake
I pray my music will take my place
The World
The Relevant
Сергей Есенин and Immortal Technique:
Love...doesn't need a complicated metaphor
And sometimes nothing needs to be said at all
Sometimes a person you with is not your one and only
And you just fuck with them because you afraid to be lonely
And when you come back its too late
So you overcompensate
Like victims of rape
Full of self hate
Lost in the affection to strangers around you
Instead of the only person that ever gave a fuck about you
Ghalib[0], whose every poem is like a heartbreaking Koan, although it's very hard to find good English translations:
Let awareness spread wide its net of comprehension,
In my world of words, meaning is a bird of dreams.
A thousand wishes thus, that each demands a life,
I've done the best I could, but couldn't do too much.
I've always enjoyed Blake's poems. One of my favourites from that collecion is The Fly:
Little Fly
Thy summer's play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink & sing;
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength & breath;
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
Jenny Kissed Me
by Leigh Hunt
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!
T.S. Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" perfectly captures the essence of a middle-aged man's insecurities, and Eliot wrote it when he was 23.
I recently reread Christopher Alexander's foreword to "Patterns of Software" and remembered his mention of this poem. He asks, with something that could be called optimism:
"Can you write a program which overcomes the gulf between the technical culture of our civilization, and which inserts itself into our human life as deeply as Eliot's poems of the wasteland or Virginia Woolf's The Waves?"
Eliot is amazing; folks who love his work do themselves a disservice, however, if they aren't also reading Ezra Pound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound ) for a very different perspective on most of the same inspirations that made Eliot's early work so powerful.
Georgia Dusk (by Jean Toomer)
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.
Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .
Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars . .
O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
I've been reading a lot of Aleksa Šantić for the past few years, but I haven't seen any translations to English that really do him justice (not that I've been looking for them).
Last night, returning from the warm hamam
I passed by the garden of the old Imam
And lo, in the garden, in the shade of a jasmine,
There with a pitcher in her hand stood Emina.
What beauty! By iman I could swear,
She would not be ashamed if she were at the sultan’s!
And the way she walks and her shoulders move...
-- Not even an Imam’s amulet could help me!
I offered her salaam, but by my dīn,
Beautiful Emina would not even hear it.
Instead, scooping water in her silver pitcher,
Around the garden she went to water the roses.
A wind blew from the branches down her lovely shoulders
Unraveling those thick braids of hers.
Her hair gave off a scent of blue hyacinths,
Making me giddy and confused!
I nearly stumbled, I swear by my faith,
But beautiful Emina did not come to me.
She only gave me a frowning look,
Not caring, the naughty one, that I am crazy for her!
This entry contains links to articles explaining some of the more archaic words:
For people who live in Brooklyn or have connections to it, you might be interested in Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" where he emphasizes his power to, through his poetry, be mentally or spiritually united with future generations crossing the East River:
It's one of the more intensely second-person poems I've come across, with its repeated focus on the reader's presence and what the reader has in common with the poet.
I learned about this poem from the novel 10:04 by Ben Lerner, in which it figures prominently. The novel is an interesting meditation on nostalgia, modernity, introspection, and being a writer (although I fear readers might like it much less if they don't share some of the author's nostalgias).
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life conquering plough!
The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food
You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!
Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I stilll stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen.
His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.
Thats a tough question to answer. Between bukowsky , Edgar Alan Poe, Shakespeare, a few of miltons work, Gulzar, Tolkien, you can imagine the choice to be tough!
But here is an unlikely candidate I find particularly interesting because of his simplicity and yet intricacy of expression. Vikram Seth.
His work "golden gate" is just a masterpiece with so many hidden gems. To have a story spannig a good 700pages in verse itself is astounding.
Here are some of his smaller beauties
Awake
*Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling
Through the unsettled stillness of the night
He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling
That dawn has come and gone and brought no light.*
And this, which happens to be the name of the small book of his selected short poems
*All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -
Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.*
PS: pardon the bad formatting. Long form text entry via a tiny screen is still a pain point :)
The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German tanks on horses.
Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day.
Question the bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled.
But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.
I've always enjoyed the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. It is full of emotive gibberish that creates wonderful imagery and feeling out of meaningless sounds.
Which is all poetry really is in the end!
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I've always been fond of Albert Goldbarths' "Budget Travel Through Time and Space". He's an old timer with modern sensibilities, narratives that criss-cross eras with ease and a cosmological perspective. Science is inflected in a lot of his work.
"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye"
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.
Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep.
Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then. [...]
The following was written a few days before his death and is an expression of his experience as a medic after the battle of Gródek in the first world war (translated from german by Eric Plattner & Joseph Suglia):
Grodek
This evening the autumn woods are alive
with exploding arms, the golden fields
and blue lakes—and above it all the sun
unfurls the dark. Night surrounds
the dying men, the unhinged moan
of crushed mouths.
And still, in the willows,
the red cloud, the abiding God, bloodshed itself,
begins the harvest in mute fury, the moon’s coolness.
All roads rupture into black rot.
Under the golden spray of night and stars
the sister’s shadow staggers across the acquiescent grove
to greet the ghosts of heroes, their blossoming skulls.
And beyond human ears the dark flutes of autumn whisper.
O noble mourning!—you brazen altars,
the searing flame of the spirit nurtures a vaster ache,
the grandsons unborn.
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
I don't actually liken the poem to god's grandeur... more the seemingly unending bounty of the world, and its perseverance in spite of a harsh and unforgiving universe.
I love this poem. It's also one of my favorites. As a non-religious person, the poem inspires me to always look for hope, no matter what. Thanks for posting!
I love Kipling, especially his more humorous work. Case in point:
I go to concert, party, ball --
What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
They burn before her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is forty-nine.
I cannot check my girlish blush,
My color comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
And sometimes to my nose.
But She is white where white should be,
And red where red should shine.
The blush that flies at seventeen
Is fixed at forty-nine.
I wish I had Her constant cheek;
I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I'm very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen
While She is forty-nine.
The young men come, the young men go
Each pink and white and neat,
She's older than their mothers, but
They grovel at Her feet.
They walk beside Her 'rickshaw wheels --
None ever walk by mine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is foty-nine.
She rides with half a dozen men,
(She calls them "boys" and "mashers")
I trot along the Mall alone;
My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine
From ten to two A.M. Ah me!
Would I were forty-nine!
She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,"
And "sweet retiring maid."
I'm always at the back, I know,
She puts me in the shade.
She introduces me to men,
"Cast" lovers, I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to foty-nine.
But even She must older grow
And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on forever so
At concerts, balls and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine.
Some really inspiring versification in here, and it would be difficult to surpass the aesthetic and philosophic achievements already mentioned.
However, for sheer technical brilliance, perhaps a word should be said for the ElectroBard from Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, whose verbal virtuosity was such that when challenged:
“compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!"
Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet is by far my favorite. His writings are absolutely riveting and awe-inspiring!! He was so ahead of his time and genius polymath as well.
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it-it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less-
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars-on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Ode by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy.
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 an empire down.
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish -- you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
I discovered The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran around 2009 and it quickly became and has remained one of my favorites. I appreciate the descriptiveness and beauty of the language along with the continuing relevance of the advice. It's very easy reading and enjoyable to pick up for a short time and enjoy in small bits or read straight through.
While hardly a pleasant person himself, Berthold Brecht had some compelling ones (especially as an antidote for all the roses and moons and lips ;))
THE CRUTCHES
Seven years I could not walk a step.
When I to the great physician came
He demanded: Why the crutches?
And I told him: I am lame.
He replied: That's not surprising.
Be so good and try once more.
If you're lame, it's those contraptions.
Fall then! Crawl across the floor!
And he took my lovely crutches
Laughing with a fiend's grimace
Broke them both across my back and
Threw them in the fireplace.
Well, I'm cured now: I can walk.
Cured by nothing more than laughter.
Sometimes, though, when I see sticks
I walk worse for some hours after.
My favorite single book of poetry was actually written by my best friend. It's called God's Livestovk Policy, and it's a completely brilliant commentary on how we relate to each other and power figures. It's brutally funny as well as beatiful language.
My favourite poet is K. P. Cavafy and my favorite poem is Ithaca:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
This translation is by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Cavafy is a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria in the beginning of the century. He was very shy, he never sold any of his poets. He made copies and distributed his poetry to friends only. He was a perfectionists. Reports say that he would literally work up to 20 years to a single poem, changing words, syllables or entire lines accordingly. His poetry greatly improved as he grew older. Personally, I enjoyed this version[1] by Sir Sean Connery.
Then I also admire deeply Shakespeare. To me Shakespeare is like a crossroad between, poetry, philosophy, love, wisdom. An unbelievably refreshing, well-made cocktail of thought and art.
Those two poets are the ones that touch my spirit the most :-)
As this is my favourite poem as well and you beat me to sharing it, I may as well add some context to it for the people not familiar with names and situations:
Ithaca[1] is where Odysseus[2], one of the greek heroes in the Trojan War, came from. After the war was over he set, along with his crew, to return home but this took him ten whole years and Homer wrote about his adventures and misfortunes in the epic that is known as Odyssey[3].
Now, as this consists of dangerous situations, very bad luck, betrayal and a couple of other bad things, the word "odyssey" has become one with which modern greeks describe a long and difficult period until something (a goal, a destination, etc) is reached. However, Kavafis (greek for Cavafy) turned this around and is describing all the great things that one can benefit from during such journeys: new harbours, Phoenician goods, Egyptian cities - all these pictures are used to demonstrate how rich one will be after an "odyssey" even if he/she has to face Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidons.
In the end, Kavafis tells us about what Ithaca really is about: not reaching your destination but experiencing the journey.
High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Edna St. Vincent Millay is certainly one of my favorites. Here's one:
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Poetry often goes way beyond just the naked words. Understanding the context around the writer, including background on his or her place and time matters a lot.
I really don't know what to do with this. It's from a Spanish poet, I discovered it in French and got to prefer the Spanish original. I haven't been able to find the English translation.
DEDICATORIA
Más allá de donde
aún se esconde la vida, queda
un reino, queda cultivar
como un rey su agonía,
hacer florecer como un reino
la sucia flor de la agonía:
yo que todo lo prostituí, aún puedo
prostituir mi muerte y hacer
de mi cadáver el último poema.
– Leopoldo María Panero
Of course it's Spanish and about sex, indirectly. I think I prefer the German poets and their poems about nature, the human struggle, etc. (I'm sure someone will provide some examples of German poets that write about sex)
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?
Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.
Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;
Only we can convert the infidel tonight.
Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.
He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.
He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.
In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.
No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.
God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.
Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.
The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.
My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
At dawn, the moon,
like a creature of fantasy,
stole into my room
and woke me from some
lazy and unproductive sleep.
Her face quickly illuminated
the underside of my soul
and my own being stood
revealed in the naked light.
Sighing in wonder,
I faced my Self, which said:
"Your life so far has chased
the illusion of control:
You will not meet me on that path.
One flash of my glance
is worth a thousand years of piety."
Overcome by waste and loss,
my soul endarkened itself with shame.
But my moon-faced Self,
whose radiance equaled the sun,
filled a cup of Direct Experience
and urged me to drown my despair:
"No bouquet... no flavor...
but this wine can wash away
your being's whole historical library."
I finished the cup in one gulp,
and, intoxicated by its purity,
fell to the earth.
Since then I am not sure
whether I am here or not.
Neither sober nor drunk,
sometimes I feel the joy of
my soul's eyes looking through mine.
Other times I feel the curl of its hair
and my life bobs and weaves.
Sometimes, from sheer habit,
I'm back on the compost heap.
And sometimes,
when that glance finds me again,
I am back in the Rose Garden.
Faiz:
Your feet bleed, Faiz, something surely will bloom
as you water the desert simply by walking through it.
Ahmad Faraz:
...
All those with outspoken mouths
have become torn bodies.
Those with unbowed heads
have been led to the gallows and the rope.
All the Sufis and saints, every Sheikh and Imam
hope to find favour at the court of the rulers.
The dignitaries of the law courts
wait to take oaths like beggars squatting at the side of the road.
...
Look at the principles of those
unworldly loyalists who are with you look around!
So the condition of saving your life is
to place your pen and slate in the killing fields.
If not you will be the only target of the archers this time.
Therefore surrender your integrity.
Seeing the treaty I spoke to the messenger.
He does not know what history teaches.
When the night martyrs the sun the morning sculpts a new one.
...
My pen does not commend that protector
who is proud of besieging his own city.
My pen is not the bowl of the simple fool
who renders praise-poems to the usurpers.
My pen is not the tool of the housebreaker
who makes a hole in the roof of his own home.
My pen is not the friend of the midnight thief
who scales the walls of lamp less houses.
My pen is not the prayer beads of the missionary
who always keeps account of his worshipful deeds.
My pen is not the scale of the judge
who places a double veil over his face.
My pen is the pious gift of my people.
My pen is the court of my conscience.
...
AH POVERTIES, WINCINGS, AND SULKY RETREATS.
AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the
old, the incessant war?)
You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest
of all!)
You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of
any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis!
Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come
forth,
It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You’d care to join us? In a pig’s arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I’m afraid—
Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who’s read nothing but Which;
Just think of all the spare time that has flown
Straight into nothingness by being filled
With forks and faces, rather than repaid
Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,
And looking out to see the moon thinned
To an air-sharpened blade.
A life, and yet how sternly it’s instilled
All solitude is selfish. No one now
Believes the hermit with his gown and dish
Talking to God (who’s gone too); the big wish
Is to have people nice to you, which means
Doing it back somehow.
Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines
Playing at goodness, like going to church?
Something that bores us, something we don’t do well
(Asking that ass about his fool research)
But try to feel, because, however crudely,
It shows us what should be?
Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course—
Lullaby
W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
Recently been into Bukowski, alongside Shelley, Frost and Tennyson remain favs
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
– Percy Shelley
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.
go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.
if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.
do it, do it, do it.
do it.
all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.
Thank you so much for reminding me of his writing. I fell in love with a Greek woman on Crete many years ago. It was one of the most painful times of my life when I realized that I could not stay there with her, or she with me. Cavafy's poem Ithaca has haunted me whenever I'm reminded of it:
O Nature! I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy choir, -
To be a meteor in thy sky,
Or comet that may range on high;
Only a zephyr that may blow
Among the reeds by the river low;
Give me thy most privy place
Where to run my airy race.
In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
Let me sigh upon a reed,
Or in the woods, with leafy din,
Whisper the still evening in:
Some still work give me to do, -
Only - be it near to you!
For I'd rather be thy child
And pupil, in the forest wild,
Than be the king of men elsewhere,
And most sovereign slave of care;
To have one moment of thy dawn,
Than share the city's year forlorn.
Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman
It's a long one so here is the first part:
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers! ...
"what I like about you
she told me
is that you're crude --
look at you sitting there
a beercan in your hand
and a cigar in your mouth
and look at
your dirty hairy belly
sticking out from
under your shirt.
you've got your shoes off
and you've got a hole
in your right stocking
with the big toe
sticking out.
you haven't shaved in
4 or 5 days.
your teeth are yellow
and your eyebrows
hang down
all twisted
and you've got enough
scars
to scare the shit
out of anybody.
there's always
a ring
in your bathtub
your telephone
is covered with
grease
and
half the crap in
your refrigerator is
rotten.
you never
wash your car.
you've got newspapers
a week old
on the floor.
you read dirty
magazines
and you don't have
a tv
but you order
deliveries from the
liquor store
and you tip
good.
and best of all
you don't push
a woman to
go to bed
with you.
you seem hardly
interested
and when I talk to you
you don't
say anything
you just
look around
the room or
scratch your
neck
like you don't
hear me.
you've got an old
wet towel in
the sink
and a photo of
Mussolini
on the wall
and you never
complain
about anything
and you never
ask questions
and I've
known you for
6 months
but I have
no idea
who you are.
you're like
some
pulled down shade
but that's what
I like about
you:
your crudeness:
a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can't go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.
you've got to
be
the best thing
that ever
happened
to
a girl
who's between
one guy
and the next
and has nothing
to do
at the moment.
this fucking
Scotch is
great.
let's play
Scrabble."
One day somebody sent me this. It still gets me every time.
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will become any object,
I don’t care what—
I will be this speeding train.
This smoke
or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.
A human body is defenseless
on earth.
It’s a piece of fire-wood.
Ocean water hits it.
Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.
And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit
lives
inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator.
But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.
I will be an eyelash.
A sponge washing your neck-hairs.
Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word
slightly lights your cheek.
What happened? Nothing.
Something visited? Nothing.
What was there you cannot whisper.
No smoke without fire, they whisper.
I will be a handful of smoke
over this lost city of Moscow.
I will console any man,
I will sleep with any man,
under the army’s traveling horse carriages.
-- Polina Barskova
Favourite? I don't know... Blake? Poe? Various Japanese classics? Currently reading "Paradise Lost" by Milton. But what I've probably listened to most, lately, is Kate Tempest:
I know now, first hand,
That regretting love will empty you
Of all that makes you love
And all that lovers pay attention to.
(Verse from "Best Intentions", Kate Tempest)
It's interesting to see that many seem to have fallen in love with poetry that's been translated to English. While there's nothing wrong with translation, I do think it is a little curious that some seem to prefer translated poetry, to native language authors (Much as it'd be a bit curious to hold up Blake as one's favourite poet in Spanish). At least one should make note of not just the original author, but also the translator -- as the end result is very much a team effort.
The lives of small men are like spiders' webs;
they are studded with minute skeletons of greatness.
Excerpt from House of Hunger
THE BAR-STOOL EDIBLE WORM
I’m against everything
Against war and those against
War. Against whatever diminishes
Th’ individual’s blind impulse.
Shake the peaches down from
The summer poem, Rake in ripe
Luminosity; dust; taste. Lunchtime
News – pass the Castor Oil, Alice.
THERE’S A DISSIDENT IN THE ELECTION SOUP!
I have no ear for slogans
You may as well shut up your arse
I run when it’s I LOVE YOU time
Don’t say it I’ll stick around
I run when it’s A LUTA time
I run when it’s FORWARD time
Don’t say it we’ll fuck the whole night
The moon won’t come down
At first awkwardly, excruciatingly embarrassing
But with Venus ascending, a shout and leap of joy
When the sheets are at last silent
Don’t ask “What are you thinking?”
Don’t ask “Was it good?”
Don’t feel bad because I’m smoking
They ask and feel bad who are insecure
Who say after the act “Tell me a story”
And you may as well know
Don’t talk of “MARRIAGE” if this reconciliation
is to last.
SHOCK: FOR BETTINA
Like meteorites, through my long
Isolated heart-atmosphere, you
Burst incandescent over my platinum history.
My future in earthquake reeled; my present only on
Seismograph could point to the cataclysm – no
Evidence of you attached to my stone and flesh,
Only nightmarish passions which I can still hear
When you shake your head. Shake it vigorously.
Nuclear tests of underground love!
Not my absolute favorite poem but one I always liked.
Madame quel est votre mot
Et sur le mot et sur la chose
On vous a dit souvent le mot
On vous a fait souvent la chose
Ainsi de la chose et du mot
Vous pouvez dire quelque chose
Et je gagerais que le mot
Vous plaît beaucoup moins que la chose
Pour moi voici quel est mon mot
Et sur le mot et sur la chose
J'avouerai que j'aime le mot
J'avouerai que j'aime la chose
Mais c'est la chose avec le mot
Mais c'est le mot avec la chose
Autrement la chose et le mot
A mes yeux seraient peu de chose
Je crois même en faveur du mot
Pouvoir ajouter quelque chose
Une chose qui donne au mot
Tout l'avantage sur la chose
C'est qu'on peut dire encore le mot
Alors qu'on ne fait plus la chose
Et pour peu que vaille le mot
Mon Dieu c'est toujours quelque chose
De là je conclus que le mot
Doit être mis avant la chose
Qu'il ne faut ajouter au mot
Qu'autant que l'on peut quelque chose
Et que pour le jour où le mot
Viendra seul hélas sans la chose
Il faut se réserver le mot
Pour se consoler de la chose
Pour vous je crois qu'avec le mot
Vous voyez toujours autre chose
Vous dites si gaiement le mot
Vous méritez si bien la chose
Que pour vous la chose et le mot
Doivent être la même chose
Et vous n'avez pas dit le mot
Qu'on est déjà prêt à la chose
Mais quand je vous dis que le mot
Doit être mis avant la chose
Vous devez me croire à ce mot
Bien peu connaisseur en la chose
Et bien voici mon dernier mot
Et sur le mot et sur la chose
Madame passez-moi le mot
Et je vous passerai la chose
It's by an 18th century libertine priest who was called l'Abbé de Lattaignant.
"The noble horse with courage in his eye,
clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst:
away fly the images of the shires
but he puts the pipe back in his mouth.
Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88;
it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance.
I saw him crawling on the sand, he said
It's most unfair, they've shot my foot off."
In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haggle, laugh, make love
as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
and many years have passed,
on a new Campo dei Fiori
rage will kindle at a poet's word.
Warsaw, 1943
I'm partial to Larkin and Heaney, but I have to say my favourite poem is this one by Lawrence Raab -
Attack of the Crab Monsters
Even from the beach I could sense it---
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it's gone. And look
at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked
like fate and I wanted to say, "Don't you see?
So what if you're a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story."
Sure, we're on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling
into caves, and you're out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligée.
Yes, we're way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until
nothing's left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I'd like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I've lost
my voice. I'm not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It's the old story, predictable
as fallout---the re-arrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.
Hilarious, sad, and sweet. It wasn't until decades after I first read this that I found out that this wasn't just metaphor, it's pretty much an accurate synopsis of the Roger Corman film of the same name.
Did a quick search for a few poets (the usual, Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Lorraine Neidecker, Robert Zukofsky), thinking about trying to champion at least one of them (Neidecker, probably).
Then I remembered, this is hacker news, these are programmers. Before I was a programmer, I was a poet and a poetry teacher.
One of the things that started drawing me towards programming and technology were poets like bpNichol and his fantastic "First Screening". He wrote it on an Apple IIe using BASIC in 83-84 and folks have been "translating" it throughout the past 30 years to keep it accessible on newer PCs.
There's a lot of poetry and hacker ethos coming together to keep this little gem alive:
I recommend the .mov[1] version as the Javascript[2] version is a bit too nice (fonts, no flickering, etc), but you can also run the original code[3] in an emulator.
Or, for an entirely different experience, read the source code[4].
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 the dull and the 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 and 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 is 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 with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
As I age, I grow ever fonder of Tennyson, particularly his "Ulysses", from which:
...Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Always dear to me was this lonely hill,
And this hedge, which from me so great a part
Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze.
But as I sit and watch, I invent in my mind
endless spaces beyond, and superhuman
silences, and profoundest quiet;
wherefore my heart
almost loses itself in fear. And as I hear the wind
rustle through these plants, I compare
that infinite silence to this voice:
and I recall to mind eternity,
And the dead seasons, and the one present
And alive, and the sound of it. So in this
Immensity my thinking drowns:
And to shipwreck is sweet for me in this sea.
Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred.
Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the afflicted (by craving). Amidst afflicted men we dwell free from affliction.
Happy indeed we live, free from avarice amidst the avaricious. Amidst the avaricious men we dwell free from avarice.
Happy indeed we live, we who possess nothing. Feeders on joy we shall be, like the Radiant Gods.
Victory begets enmity; the defeated dwell in pain. Happily the peaceful live, discarding both victory and defeat.
There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates (of existence) and no bliss higher than the peace (of Nibbana). [17]
Hunger is the worst disease, conditioned things the worst suffering. Knowing this as it really is, the wise realize Nibbana, the highest bliss.
Health is the most precious gain and contentment the greatest wealth. A trustworthy person is the best kinsman, Nibbana the highest bliss.
Having savored the taste of solitude and peace (of Nibbana), pain-free and stainless he becomes, drinking deep the taste of the bliss of the Truth.
Good is it to see the Noble Ones; to live with them is ever blissful. One will always be happy by not encountering fools.
Indeed, he who moves in the company of fools grieves for longing. Association with fools is ever painful, like partnership with an enemy. But association with the wise is happy, like meeting one's own kinsmen.
Therefore, follow the Noble One, who is steadfast, wise, learned, dutiful and devout. One should follow only such a man, who is truly good and discerning, even as the moon follows the path of the stars.
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
"The star wept rose-colored [. . .]"
The star wept rose-colored in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to your loins
The sea turned ruddy at your vermilion nipples
And Man bled black on your sovereign flank.
Another:
"The wolf howled under the leaves [. . .]"
The wolf howled under the leaves
As he spat out the fine feathers
Of his meal of fowl:
Like him I consume myself.
Lettuce and fruit
Wait only to be picked;
But the spider of the hedge
Eats only violets.
Let me sleep! Let me boil
At the altars of Solomon.
Boiling water courses over the rust,
And mixes with the Kidron.
These are translated from the French by Wallace Fowlie.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head
The recently passed Tomas Tranströmer, I love his writing. He can go from personal headspace to outer space in a cherry blossom in a moment during a car crash:
--
After a Death
(translated by Robert Bly)
Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.
One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.
It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things — earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars —
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality —
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant — to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
Sunlight in every room.
The two of us walking by the sea naked.
Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
Unsure of what comes next.
Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,
With birds circling over our heads,
The dark pines strangely still,
Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.
We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
Clouds of almost human appearance
Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.
The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
The dark pines and grasses strangely still.
Japan by Billy Collins
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
Almost all of the poetry I know well came from a single audio collection that I was happily exposed to many years ago; it's called Exact Change and each track is still available on the U.Penn web site [0]. All of the poets are well-known in their fields, some well-known enough to be known to the public, and I have wound up taking many to heart. Among my favorites are the ones by Jack Spicer, John Godfrey, and Kamau Brathwaite. Take a moment to listen, it's very revealing to hear a poem read by its author.
I adore the nonsense poems of Edward Lear. He's most famous for The Owl and The Pussycat, but The Nutcracker and The Sugartongs is one of my favourites to read aloud: http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/nutcrackers.html
When read aloud, the rhythm is impeccable and almost addictive.
Famously she descended, her red hair
Unbound and bronzed by sea-reflections, caught
Crinkled with sea-pearls. The fine slender taut
Knees that let down her feet upon the air,
Young breasts, slim flanks and golden quarries were
Odder than when the young distraught
Unknown Venetian, painting her portrait, thought
He'd not imagined what he painted there.
And I too commenced with that golden cloud:
Lipped her delicious hands and had my ease
Faring fantastically, perversely proud.
All loveliness demands our courtesies.
Since she was dead I praised her as I could
Silently, among the Barberini bees.
Yes I know that doesn't answer your question. I've been reading and enjoying John Clare the past few days. One of his poems, read by the guy above, is in this video: https://vimeo.com/121024561 I love the poem and the music but I don't think the footage connects that well.
I've been reading poetry ever since I read one by Cocteau that physically moved me. Yes, I felt it in my body, not only in my mind. Since then, I've read too many. Here are some of my favorites. Delve deep into the greats and then the lesser known, you'll find the ones that move you.
Fernando Pessoa (if he were a french or english poet, he would be considered, I have absolutely no doubt about it, one of the greatest poets to have ever written)
W.H. Auden
Robert Desnos
Homer
Ovid
I'm not that much of a fan of beat poetry, but I recently got a hold of Mexico City Blues by Kerouac and discovered how much more I like his poetry than his prose.
Definitely, Brodsky. Unfortunately, not many of his poems were written in English, and only a few were translated.
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.
Ek herhaal jou
Ek herhaal jou
sonder begin of einde
herhaal ek jou liggaam
Die dag het ’n smal skadu
en die nag geel kruise
die landskap is sonder aansien
en die mense ’n ry kerse
terwyl ek jou herhaal
met my borste
wat die holtes van jou hand namaak
- Ingrid Jonker
The poem is in Afrikaans and the poet is South African.
For those who are interested, an English language Dutch film about her was made a few years ago called Black Butterflies.
I can however not say that I have seen any translations that do justice to the original.
All the "classics" have been listed already, so I'll mention someone more modern who I think programmers would enjoy: Christian Bök. Check out Crystallography and Eunoia.
I love Edgar Allen Poe, but one particular reason is because of his essay "The Philosophy of Composition".[1] It's a long piece basically describing the methodical and mathematical way he developed The Raven. It's a really cool look at his process for creation.
Plus it pisses off your run-of-the-mill literary types.
Hexis-a-plexis, A-
-lexis Ohanian
Started a website with
His best friend Steve.
Then after selling it,
Conde Nast management's
Ultrashortsightedness
Forced them to leave
David E. Howerton. He's not well known but one of my favorites.
tajpe’ joj ‘oy’wI’Daq
boS yabwImey
legh choSmeyDaq
nuqDaq Hon e’be’ pa’
Qoy ghoghmey tun
retlh HeH yabmey
ghIH nuqDaqvIpbe’
And the translation:
Torn between pains,
the gathering of my mind,
seeing shadows move,
which aren’t there.
Hear the voices whispering
along the edge of minds
coming out of nowhere.
My ex-girlfriend (not Portuguese) when she wanted to "paper cut me" used to say that every Portuguese is a poet. Seeing Portugal with the distance of an expat this is (un)fortunately true.
The most relevant of us is certainly Fernando Pessoa.[1]
~~~
De jeunes bourgeoises circulent entre les rayonnages
du Monoprix, élégantes et sexuelles comme des oies.
Il y a probablement des hommes, aussi; je m'en fiche
pas mal. On a beau ne plus imaginer de mots possibles
entre soi et le reste de l'humanité, le vagin reste
une ouverture.
~~~
To wonder as we wander through this world of mysteries many, is to fulfill the purpose of man's creation and destiny; and he who does not wonder, or the mysteries have not moved, should be interred in the dampest earth, for he is dead and never lived.
(Source: the author of a very old Penguin book I once had on relativity)
One of my favourite poems is by Charles Bukowski and it has this wonderful recursive quality to it. It's called "Oh Yes".
there are worse things than
being along
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
Richard Wilbur has done exquisite translations, like this one...
Everness, Jorge Luis Borges
One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
Everything is: the shadows in the glass
Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you
Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
And everything is part of that diverse
Crystalline memory, the universe;
Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
And only from the sunset’s farther side
Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.
Der Zauberlehrling
Hat der alte Hexenmeister
Sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
Und nun sollen seine Geister
Auch nach meinem Willen leben.
Seine Wort´ und Werke
Merkt ich und den Brauch,
Und mit Geistesstärke
Tu ich Wunder auch.
Walle! walle
Manche Strecke,
Daß, zum Zwecke,
Wasser fließe
Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.
Und nun komm, du alter Besen!
Nimm die schlechten Lumpenhüllen;
Bist schon lange Knecht gewesen:
Nun erfülle meinen Willen!
Auf zwei Beinen stehe,
Oben sei ein Kopf,
Eile nun und gehe
Mit dem Wassertopf!
Walle! walle
Manche Strecke,
Daß, zum Zwecke,
Wasser fließe
Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.
Seht, er läuft zum Ufer nieder,
Wahrlich! ist schon an dem Flusse,
Und mit Blitzesschnelle wieder
Ist er hier mit raschem Gusse.
Schon zum zweiten Male!
Wie das Becken schwillt!
Wie sich jede Schale
Voll mit Wasser füllt!
Stehe! stehe!
Denn wir haben
Deiner Gaben
Vollgemessen! -
Ach, ich merk es! Wehe! wehe!
Hab ich doch das Wort vergessen!
Ach, das Wort, worauf am Ende
Er das wird, was er gewesen.
Ach, er läuft und bringt behende!
Wärst du doch der alte Besen!
Immer neue Güsse
Bringt er schnell herein,
Ach! und hundert Flüsse
Stürzen auf mich ein.
Nein, nicht länger
Kann ichs lassen;
Will ihn fassen.
Das ist Tücke!
Ach! nun wird mir immer bänger!
Welche Miene! welche Blicke!
O, du Ausgeburt der Hölle!
Soll das ganze Haus ersaufen?
Seh ich über jede Schwelle
Doch schon Wasserströme laufen.
Ein verruchter Besen,
Der nicht hören will!
Stock, der du gewesen,
Steh doch wieder still!
Willsts am Ende
Gar nicht lassen?
Will dich fassen,
Will dich halten
Und das alte Holz behende
Mit dem scharfen Beile spalten.
Seht, da kommt er schleppend wieder!
Wie ich mich nur auf dich werfe,
Gleich, o Kobold, liegst du nieder;
Krachend trifft die glatte Schärfe.
Wahrlich! brav getroffen!
Seht, er ist entzwei!
Und nun kann ich hoffen,
Und ich atme frei!
Wehe! wehe!
Beide Teile
Stehn in Eile
Schon als Knechte
Völlig fertig in die Höhe!
Helft mir, ach! ihr hohen Mächte!
Und sie laufen! Naß und nässer.
Wirds im Saal und auf den Stufen.
Welch entsetzliches Gewässer!
Herr und Meister! hör mich rufen! -
Ach, da kommt der Meister!
Herr, die Not ist groß!
Die ich rief, die Geister
Werd ich nun nicht los.
"In die Ecke,
Besen! Besen!
Seids gewesen.
Denn als Geister
Ruft euch nur, zu seinem Zwecke,
Erst hervor der alte Meister."
I like extended figures, but also sumptuous language and formal rigor. Ah heck, I love each poet for their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. Stephen Dobyns. John Bricuth. Wallace Stevens. Weldon Kees.
"The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say, but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment."
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet ;
Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.
Un éclair... puis la nuit ! - Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !
I rely on you
like a Skoda needs suspension
like the aged need a pension
like a trampoline needs tension
like a bungee jump needs apprehension
I rely on you
like a camera needs a shutter
like a gambler needs a flutter
like a golfer needs a putter
like a buttered scone involves some butter
I rely on you
like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
like an HGV needs endless derv
like an outside left needs a body swerve
I rely on you
like a handyman needs pliers
like an auctioneer needs buyers
like a laundromat needs driers
like The Good Life needed Richard Briers
I rely on you
like a water vole needs water
like a brick outhouse needs mortar
like a lemming to the slaughter
Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter
I rely on you
Sekou Sundiata blew my mind when I was introduced to his work in the mid-90s.
To me he's the bridge from Ginsberg, kerouac, Boroughs etc to more modern stuff like Saul Williams, Buddy Wakefield, etc
WH Auden. I can't quote, but he has a poem in which he is thankful for a well developed super ego. I wanted to find a poem of his for our wedding, but he is too cynical even as he is moral.
Langston Hughes is the only poet to get me interested in poetry. I'm surprised that not a single other person here has mentioned him. Perhaps I shouldn't be.
Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra and Pablo Picasso (he wrote great prose poems). I also like Fransisco de Quevedo and Miguel de Cervantes (yes, Cervantes was also a poet).
As measured by lines remembered, I suppose that Yeats has to top the list. In no particular other order, Eliot, Ransom, Wyatt, Hardy, J.V. Cunningham, Bunting.
Philip Larkin has been mentioned already in this thread. The following two poems by Larkin inspire me in a backwards sort of way.
This first one, "Next, Please" reminds me that we can't just wait for something amazing to happen in our lives, thinking that some day it surely will all on its own. We need to be proactive and make things happen.
Next, Please
Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,
Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!
Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,
Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last
We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:
Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.
Second is Larkin's Poem "To Failure", which remindes me that I likely will not fail spectacularly, but slowly everyday, almost without notice, when I let the day slip away without achieving at least one small step towards a goal.
To Failure
You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne,
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.
It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Instal you at my elbow like a bore.
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.
Finally, as technical people, we can get so absorbed in what we are doing that we forget the importance of fostering the relationships around us with those we love:
Without Mercy, the Rains Continued (by David St. John)
There had been
A microphone hidden
Beneath the bed
Of course I didn't realize it
At the time & in fact
Didn't know for years
Until one day a standard
Khaki book mailer
Arrived & within it
An old
Stained cassette tape
Simply labeled in black marker
"Him / Me / September 1975"
& as I listened I knew something
Had been asked of me
Across the years & loneliness
To which I simply responded
With the same barely audible
Silence that I had chosen then
I'm nothing.
I'll allways be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dream inside me.
Windows of my room,
The room of just one of the millions in the world nobody
knows
(And what would they know, if they knew that?),
You open on the mistery of a street people are constantly
crossing,
A street blocked off to all though,
A street that's real, impossibly real, and right,
unconsciously right,
With the mistery of things lying under live beings and
stones,
With death spreading darkness on walls and white hair on
heads,
With fate driving the cart of everything down nothingness
road.
Today I'm bowled over, as though hit by the truth.
Today I'm clearheaded, as though I were going to die,
Having no more brotherly feeling for things
Than to say good-bye, turning this house and this side of
the street
Into a line of coaches in a long train with its whistle
shrieking good-bye
From inside my head,
And a nerve-wracking, bone-cracking jerk as it moves off.
Today I'm mixed up, like someone who thought
something and grasped it, then lost it.
Today I'm torn between the allegiance I owe
Something real outside me - The Tobacco Shop across
the street,
And something real inside me - the feeling that it's all a
dream.
I failed in everything.
Since I was up to nothing, maybe it was all really
nothing.
From learning and training for anything useful I escaped
By slipping off to the country with great plans,
By found only grass and threes there,
And when there were people, they were just like any
others.
I leave the window, sit down in a chair. What should I
think about?
[....]
(Eat your chocolates, little girl!
Eat your chocolates!
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth but chocolates.
Look, all religions on earth have nothing more to teach
us than a candy store does.
Eat, dirty little girl, eat them up!
If I could gobble down those chocolates as trustily
as you do!
But I think, peeling off the silver wrapper, it's only
tinfoil,
And toss it in the floor, just as I've tossed away my life.)
But at least, out of my bitterness at what I'll never be,
There's the quick calligraphy of these lines,
The broken archway to the Impossible.
And at least I reserve for myself this dry-eyed contempt-
Noble, at least, in the great gesture I make
Flinging out the dirty clothes I am, with no laundry list,
into the drift of things,
And stay at home, shirtless.
Daremne żale - próżny trud,
Bezsilne złorzeczenia!
Przeżytych kształtów żaden cud
Nie wróci do istnienia.
Świat wam nie odda, idąc wstecz,
Znikomych mar szeregu -
Nie zdoła ogień ani miecz
Powstrzymać myśli w biegu.
Trzeba z żywymi naprzód iść,
Po życie sięgać nowe...
A nie w uwiędłych laurów liść
Z uporem stroić głowę.
Wy nie cofniecie życia fal!
Nic skargi nie pomogą -
Bezsilne gniewy, próżny żal!
Świat pójdzie swoją drogą.
I love the rhytm of this poem. My rough translation.
Useless remorses, toil in vain
Impotent spells and curses.
Outlived shapes won't be back.
There will be no miracles.
World won't return you,
going back,
translucent ghosts and spirits.
Neither with sword nor with fire
you'll stop a thought that's running.
You're to go forward with alive ones
You're to reach for a new life.
Instead of wearing stubbornly
withered crown of laurels.
You won't turn back the waves of life
Complains won't be of help.
Impotent angers, remorse in vain
World will go its own way.
Also Jacek Kaczmarski songs are great. And I loved the poems in Stanisław Lem "Cyberiad". Translated by Michael Kandel.
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Smile, Smile, Smile
Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, "When this war is done
The men's first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, --
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
(Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.
A more pleasant piece by Sir Philip Sydney:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
[anyone lived in a pretty how town] (e.e. cummings):
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
To One In Paradise (Edgar Allen Poe):
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more- no more- no more-"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
Do not stand at my grave and weep (by Mary Elizabeth Frye):
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
Krakatau split with a blinding noise
and raised from gutted, steaming rock
a pulverized black sky, over water walls
that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam,
the last known member of Equus quagga,
the southernmost subspecies of zebra, died.
Most of the wild ones, not wild enough,
grazing near the Cape of Good Hope,
had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters.
When a spider walked on cooling Krakatau's skin,
no quagga walked anywhere. While seeds
pitched by long winds onto newborn fields
burst open and rooted, perhaps some thistle
flourished on the quagga's discarded innards.
The fractured island greened and hummed again;
handsome zebras tossed their heads
in zoos, on hired safari plains.
Who needs to hear a quagga's voice?
Or see the warm hide twitch away a fly,
see the neck turn, curving its cream and chestnut stripes
that run down to plain dark haunches and plain white legs?
A kind of horse. Less picturesque than a dodo. Still,
we mourn what we mourn.
Even if, when it sank to its irreplaceable knees,
when its unique throat closed behind a sigh,
no dust rose to redden a whole year's sunsets,
no one unwittingly busy
two thousand miles away jumped at the sound,
no ashes rained on ships in the merciless sea.
Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart
or the culture of death, which really has it out
for whoever has seen better days
but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,
you, or your beleaguered caregiver
stirring dark witch’s brews of resentment
inside what had been her happy life,
should turn to page seven where you can learn,
assuming higher cognitive functions
were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,
how to leave the house for the first time in two years.
An important first step,
with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.
When not an outright impossibility
or form of neurological science fiction,
sexual congress will either be with
tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy,
performing an act of sadistic charity;
with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
or with someone blindly feeling their way
through an extended power outage
caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.
Page twelve instructs you how best
to be inspiring to Magnus next door
as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit
above Alberta. And to Betty
in her dark charm confiding a misery,
whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent to yours.
The curl of her hair that her finger knows
better and beyond what you will,
even in the hypothesis of heaven
when you sleep. This guide is intended
to prepare you for falling down
and declaring détente with gravity,
else you reach the inevitable end
of scaring small children by your presence alone.
Someone once said of crushing
helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.
We agree with that wisdom
but gleaming motorcycles are hard
to turn down or safely stop
at speeds that melt aluminum. Of special note
are sections regarding faith
healing, self-loathing, abstract hobbies
like theoretical spelunking and extreme atrophy,
and what to say to loved ones
who won’t stop shrieking
at Christmas dinner. New to this edition
is an index of important terms
such as catheter, pain, blackout,
pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,
magnetic resonance imaging,
loss of friends due to superstitious fear,
and, of course, amputation
above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.
It is our hope that this guide
will be a valuable resource
during this long stretch of boredom and dread
and that it may be of some help,
however small, to cope with your new life
and the gradual, bittersweet loss
of every God damned thing you ever loved.
Nice! I grew up near him and my dad used to act in his plays. He was such a great artist and interesting person. I like this line "A hissing swarm of hair bugs has got the baby and its rugs" from the evil garden.
Goethe (german), here's a translation of the Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
That old sorcerer has vanished
And for once has gone away!
Spirits called by him, now banished,
My commands shall soon obey.
Every step and saying
That he used, I know,
And with sprites obeying
My arts I will show.
Flow, flow onward
Stretches many
Spare not any
Water rushing,
Ever streaming fully downward
Toward the pool in current gushing.
Come, old broomstick, you are needed,
Take these rags and wrap them round you!
Long my orders you have heeded,
By my wishes now I've bound you.
Have two legs and stand,
And a head for you.
Run, and in your hand
Hold a bucket too.
Flow, flow onward
Stretches many,
Spare not any
Water rushing,
Ever streaming fully downward
Toward the pool in current gushing.
See him, toward the shore he's racing
There, he's at the stream already,
Back like lightning he is chasing,
Pouring water fast and steady.
Once again he hastens!
How the water spills,
How the water basins
Brimming full he fills!
Stop now, hear me!
Ample measure
Of your treasure
We have gotten!
Ah, I see it, dear me, dear me.
Master's word I have forgotten!
Ah, the word with which the master
Makes the broom a broom once more!
Ah, he runs and fetches faster!
Be a broomstick as before!
Ever new the torrents
That by him are fed,
Ah, a hundred currents
Pour upon my head!
No, no longer
Can I please him,
I will seize him!
That is spiteful!
My misgivings grow the stronger.
What a mien, his eyes how frightful!
Brood of hell, you're not a mortal!
Shall the entire house go under?
Over threshold over portal
Streams of water rush and thunder.
Broom accurst and mean,
Who will have his will,
Stick that you have been,
Once again stand still!
Can I never, Broom, appease you?
I will seize you,
Hold and whack you,
And your ancient wood
I'll sever,
With a whetted axe I'll crack you.
He returns, more water dragging!
Now I'll throw myself upon you!
Soon, 0 goblin, you'll be sagging.
Crash! The sharp axe has undone you.
What a good blow, truly!
There, he's split, I see.
Hope now rises newly,
And my breathing's free.
Woe betide me!
Both halves scurry
In a hurry,
Rise like towers
There beside me.
Help me, help, eternal powers!
Off they run, till wet and wetter
Hall and steps immersed are Iying.
What a flood that naught can fetter!
Lord and master, hear me crying! -
Ah, he comes excited.
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I've cited
My commands ignore.
"To the lonely
Corner, broom!
Hear your doom.
As a spirit
When he wills, your master only
Calls you, then 'tis time to hear it."
Gerard Manley Hopkins[1], G.K. Chesterton[2] and John Bradburne[3].
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 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, 1880
A Little Litany
When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven—and saw the earth.
Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.
Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.
Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.
Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
Or your tall body climbed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.
– Chesterton
Love
Love is a short disease, a long desire,
A strong and lasting healing; love is like
An angler landing fish, a hand at lyre,
A roadhog flogging home his motor-bike;
Love is a deep unsleeping thing, leaps time
And steeps amidst eternity for rest
And love is like three candles lighting rhyme
And metre I am making for the best;
An Alleluiatic sequence shows
A little of love's eloquence that lasts;
Love has three lights, one to another glows,
A third proceeds between: naught overcasts
True love because it knows that it possesses,
Being possessed, a zest above distresses.
– Bradburne, 1971
There are a couple of rare recordings of John Bradburne reciting his own poetry[4]. Much of his work was completely unknown until after his death in 1979 – he wrote about 6,000 poems.
Lots of other people have suggested Neruda, which makes me happy, because he's fantastic.
I think my favorite poem is probably "Under Milk Wood", by Dylan Thomas (folks have posted some of his other work, which sheepishly I don't really like). I love this poem so much that even hearing it in a VW ad didn't diminish it. It's quite long, but the beginning is my favorite part:
To begin at the beginning:
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-
black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-
rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black,
crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the
snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled
middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the
Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and
dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen
and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the
undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, \
policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie
bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood.
The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and
the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in
the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed
yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and
needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn
minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the
Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,
the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow
musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass
growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in
Milk Wood.
Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and
brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing
like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in
the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse
with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour.
It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its
hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and
trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog
and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of
babies.
Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter, the fold
Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense
nor delusion nor dream,
No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its silence
supreme.
I sit, and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless
lust
Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust,
To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air,
To abolish the air with a flash of the final, the fulminant
flare.
All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ
of my thought;
I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my
being to Naught.
Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am?
It is lost.
As I utter the Word, I am cleft by the last swift spear of
the frost.
Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still;
They are perished, the phantoms, and past; they were
born of my weariness-will
When I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist
Precurser of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow
had kissed,
And brought into life all the shapes that confused the
clear space with their marks,
Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of
ruinous sparks,
No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in
sickness of lust,
Delirium born of disease-ah, whence was the master,
the "must"
Imposed on the All? is it true, then, that
something in me
Is subject to fate? Are there two, after all,
that can be?
I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole.
Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this
homologous Whole?
I have stripped every garment from space; I have
strangled the secret of Time,
All being is fled from my face, with Motion's inhibited
rime.
Stiller and stiller I sit, till even Infinity fades;
'Tis an idol-'tis weakness of wit that breeds, in inanity,
shades!
Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and
steadiest Naught,
Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being
and thought.
Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past,
All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the
last,
It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the
seed of a name:
Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible
Aim.
I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate!
And Fate determines me "I"; and I have the Will to create.
Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the pettiest
star.
And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are.
Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and
of Mist.
Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clouds ineluctably dare
to exist-
I have made the Voyage of Thought, the Voyage of Vision,
I swam
To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of
the Spring of I am:
I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the
One;
I know that all things are each other, that their sum and
their substance is None;
But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken
its bond;
All's Truth, and all's falsehood as well, and-what of the
region beyond?
So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my
spine;
I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul
in the shrine
Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the
Now;
I cease from the effort to cease; I absolve the dead I from
its Vow,
I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote
or a star,
To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem
for what are,
Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go,
how I thrive,
If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive.
What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious
game.
Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them
the same.
Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly?
Phantom of fright
Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night?
I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that
beget
Ideas intagible wrought to things less conceivable yet.
It may be. Little I reck -but, assume the existence of
earth.
Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the
hour of my birth?
Am I born to abolish man's guilt? His horrible heritage,
awe?
Or a seed in his wantoness spilt by a jester? I care not
a straw,
For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole
of the Law.
Glad people still read poetry!
Surprised no one's mentioned Byron yet:
Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing a far,—and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done.
For on this morn three potent nations meet,
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
Though you probably have to read/hear/understand the Quran in Arabic to fully appreciate its beauty. Nothing worldly has even come close to the poetic and literatural quality of God's word.
I'm sorry, but reading the translation of Quran, I can't believe it:
Those who wander from the way of Allah have an awful doom.--38:36
Take them [unbelivers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.--4:91
O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you--9:123
Those who strive against Our revelations, challenging (Us), theirs will be a painful doom of wrath.--34:5
Those who disbelieve will be gathered unto hell.--8:36
A painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.--9:90
As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.--2:6-7
We have placed upon their hearts veils, lest they should understand, and in their ears a deafness.---6:25
Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers--3:28
You are cherry picking verses completely pulled out of their context for the sake of bashing the theological believes of Islam, I was talking about the poetic quality.
Here is a video to illustrate the poetic quality of the Quran:
acqq may be cherry-picking and bashing islam, but you were proselytising - you weren't just talking about the poetic quality.
Your video boils down to "it is because it is". It relies on the faulty assumption that a human or collection of humans can't possibly write something that's very beautiful. It's not even an internally consistent argument - somehow humans are able to analyse and critique the poetry in the koran, but yet not able to create it? It simply doesn't follow that because something is beautiful, only a god could have created it.
To paraphrase the famous cartoon: if you locked people in a box for a thousand years with 500 still frames of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, by the end they'd be adamant that the pictureas are the prettiest thing ever produced on Earth.
I couldn't resist - if you look in the comments to that video, you'll see me listing eight rhetorical devices against Eminem's quoted word "Yo", using the same qualifying standards that the bloke in the video uses (re-using several of the vlogger's own selections).
The video makes a big song and dance about there being so many rhetorical devices, but there's so much padding in that list. The vlogger than quotes a verse from Eminem's Lose Yourself, and states that it only has one rhetorical device - assonance. But you simply can't get assonance without "word choice" and "word arrangement", which the vlogger previously gave as props to his koran verse. It's a pretty cut-and-dried case of stacking the deck.
Anyway, if you're interested, check out the comments to the video to see how I found (at least) eight rhetorical devices in the two-letter word "Yo" that starts the verse. Density of rhetorical devices is the key point of the video; according to the vlogger, such high density either indicates the divinity of the author, or disproves the koran as the word of god.
Despite the lack of logic in the vlogger's arguments, he does have fantastic oration and sounds beautifully melodic as he speaks. I enjoyed the video just for the sound of his talking.
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Then there's this poem by Phillip Larkin that I like.
Shakespeare's sonnets are good. Classical poetry is just really hardcore when you consider how hard it is to write within the constraints of rhyme , meter and the chosen form. It's definitely in the hacker spirit of doing things like the JS1K contest , or maybe crazy assembly optimised demos.Also checkout Charles Bukowski and Coleridge.
Genius.com is a wonderful way to read poetry.