In honor of Stanley Kunitz, the 100-year-old poet laureate who passed away over the weekend, post your favorite poems here. And if you don't have a favorite, go look some up and find a good one to post.
(This is my feeble attempt to expose us all to something new....)
I will start with a famous poem by Mr. Kunitz himself.
The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
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!
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;
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,
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.
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 (architecture) has made all the difference.
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 know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
A spirit moved. John Harvard walked the yard,
The atom lay unsplit, the west unwon,
The books stood open and the gates unbarred.
The maps dreamt on like moondust. Nothing stirred.
The future was a verb in hibernation.
A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.
Before the classic style, before the clapboard,
All through the small hours of an origin,
The books stood open and the gate unbarred.
Night passage of a migratory bird.
Wingflap. Gownflap. Like a homing pigeon
A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.
Was that his soul (look) sped to its reward
By grace or works? A shooting star? An omen?
The books stood open and the gate unbarred.
Begin again where frosts and tests were hard.
Find yourself or founder. Here, imagine
A spirit moves, John Harvard walks the yard,
The books stand open and the gates unbarred.
I saw Stanley read at the 92nd second street Y on the occasion of his 90th birthday. I can't believe that was 10 yrs ago. He kicked ass. He was at that time, and up until this weekend obviously, the oldest active poet in history. I'm not one to get all wishy-washy about soul and spirit, but he was just so vibrantly alive that he glowed. A lot of his poems that night were about childhood, and his voice sounded vaguely childlike. Anyhow, good to read his words here.
On two occasions in the past twelve months
I have failed, when someone at a party
spoke of him with a dismissive scorn,
to stand up for D. H. Lawrence,
a man who burned like an acetylene torch
from one end to the other of his life.
These individuals, whose relationship to literature
is approximately that of a tree shredder
to stands of old-growth forest,
these people leaned back in their chairs,
bellies full of dry white wine and the ovum of some foreign fish,
and casually dropped his name
the way pygmies with their little poison spears
strut around the carcass of a fallen elephant.
“O Elephant,†they say,
“you are not so big and brave today!â€
It’s a bad day when people speak of their superiors
with a contempt they haven’t earned,
and it’s a sorry thing when certain other people
don’t defend the great dead ones
who have opened up the world before them.
And though, in the catalogue of my betrayals,
this is a fairly minor entry,
I resolve, if the occasion should recur,
to uncheck my tongue and say, “I love the spectacle
of maggots condescending to a corpse,â€
or, “You should be so lucky in your brainy, bloodless life
as to deserve to lift
just one of D. H. Lawrence’s urine samples
to your arid psychobiographic
theory-tainted lips.â€
Or maybe I’ll just take the shortcut
between the spirit and the flesh,
and punch someone in the face,
because human beings haven’t come that far
in their effort to subdue the body,
and we still walk around like zombies
in our dying, burning world,
able to do little more
than fight, and fuck, and crow,
something Lawrence wrote about
in such a manner
as to make us seem magnificent.
I have just booked a flight to visit some friends in England and Scotland in August. I will now post some Robert Burns to celebrate the occasion, and because I find it nearly incomprehensible, and therefore amusing:
Address to a Haggis
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect sconner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit:
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!
Not my favorite, but loaded w/ fond memories of architecture school, introductions to phenomenology, and good times in general...posted here earlier today, coincidentally...
by Trakl, via Norberg-Schulz:
Winter Evening
When snow falls against the window,
Long sounds the evening bell...
For so many has the table
Been prepared, the house set in order.
From their wandering, many
Come on dark paths to this gateway.
The tree of grace is flowering in gold
Out of the cool sap of the earth.
In stillness, wanderer, step in:
Grief has worn the threshold into stone.
But see: in pure light, glowing
There on the table: bread and wine.
Forbid thyself to feebleness! it mars
Thy warrior-name! cast off the coward-fit!
Wake! Be thyself! Arise, Scourge of the Foes!
...Life cannot slay. Life is not slain!
I say to thee weapons reach not the Life;
Flame burns it not, waters cannot overwhelm,
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure.
Invisible, ineffable, by word
And thought uncompassed, ever all itself,
Thus is the Soul declared!
...This Life within all living things, my Prince!
Hides beyond harm."
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'
he was a great poet ... my favourite though ...............
Touch Me –
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am
"I keep trying to improve my control over language, so that I won't have to tell lies." - Stanley K
This always keeps me thinking. It's pretty close to my favorite.
The Invitation by Oriah
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.â€
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
I am too young to grow a beard
But yes man it was me you heard
In dirty denim and dark glasses.
I look through everyone who passes
But ask him clear, I do not plead,
Keys lids acid and speed.
My grass is not oregano.
Some of it grew in Mexico.
You cannot guess the weed I hold,
Clara Green, Acapulco Gold,
Panama Red, you name it man,
Best on the street since I began.
My methedrine, my double sun,
Will give you two lives in your one,
Five days of power before you crash.
At which time use these lumps of hash
- They burn so sweet, they smoke so smooth,
The make you sharper while they soothe.
Now here, the best I've got to show,
Made by a righteous cat I know.
Pure acid - it will scrape your brain,
and make it something else again.
Call it heaven, call it hell,
Join me and see the worl I sell.
Join me, and I will take you there,
Your head will cut out from your hair
Into whichever self you choose.
With Midday Mick man you can't loose,
I'll get you anything you need.
Keys lids acid and speed.
Not by any means an amazing poet, but one of my fav's.
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs —
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star
I have been waiting for the right day to post one from my favorite poet. Today seems good. I love e.e. cummings because he treats the paper like a canvas on which he painted lovely strings of words.
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
But He Was Cool, or: he even stopped for green lights haki r. madhubiti (don l. lee)
super-cool
ultrablack
a tan/purple
had a beautiful shade.
he had a double-natural
that wd put the sisters to shame.
&his beads were imported sea shells
(from some blk/country i never heard of)
he was triple-hip.
his tikis were hand carved
out of ivory
&came express from the motherland.
he would greet u in swahili
&say good-by in yoruba.
woooooooooooo-jim he bes so cool &ill tel li gent
cool-cool is so cool he was un-cooled by other niggers' cool
cool-cool ultracool was bop-cool/ice box cool so cool cold cool
his wine didn't have to be cooled, him was air conditioned cool
cool-cool/real cool made me cool--now ain't that cool
cool-cool so cool him nick-named refrigerator.
cool-cool so cool
he didn't know,
after detroit, newark, chicago &c.,
we had to hip
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?â€
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?†and, “Do I dare?â€
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!â€]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!â€]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you allâ€â€” 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.â€
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.â€
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel,
Or on the beaches,
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;
And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration,
In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.
My heart is broke, but I have some glue
help me inhale, and mend it with you
We'll float around, and hang out on clouds
Then we'll come down, and I have a hangover
I'm not like them, but I can pretend
The sun is gone, but I have a light
The day is done, but I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb, or maybe just happy
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!
It's what makes the pancake hold still
while you slip the spatula under it
so fast it doesn't move, my father said
standing by the stove.
All motion stopped when he died.
With his last breath the earth
lurched to a halt and hung still on its axis,
the atoms in the air
coming to rest within their molecules,
and in that moment
something slid beneath me
so fast I couldn't move.
*this was my father's favorite poem and it fits his personality real well.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
...
Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests hurl'd,
And cleanse this beastly stable of the world;
Or bend thy brazen bow against the Sun,
As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun
Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes
Than thou wouldst suffer, with his envious beams.
Now make him leave the world to Night and dreams.
Never were virtue's labours so envied
As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop his pride.
Suffer no more his lustful rays to get
The Earth with issue: let him still be set
In Somnus' thickets: bound about the brows,
With pitchy vapours, and with ebon boughs.
Rich taper'd sanctuary of the blest,
Palace of Ruth, made all of tears, and rest,
To thy black shades and desolat{.i}on
I consecrate my life; and living moan,
Where furies shall for ever fighting be,
And adders hiss the world for hating me;
Foxes shall bark, and night ravens belch in groans,
And owls shall hollo my confus{.i}ons
There will I furnish up my funeral bed,
Strew'd with the bones and relics of the dead.
Atlas shall let th' Olympic burthen fall,
To cover my untombed face withal.
And when as well, the matter of our kind,
As the material substance of the mind,
Shall cease their revolutions, in abode
Of such impure and ugly period,
As the old essence, and insensive prime:
Then shall the ruins of the fourfold time,
Turn'd to that lump (as rapting torrents rise),
For ever murmur forth my miseries ! !
Then suddenly, I knew I'd been on that train for years,
and always singing that same great song of hope.
I'm forever leaving the cities and women I love,
And carrying my losses like wounds opening inside me.
I'm getting closer, closer to somewhere.
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.
i'm a latecomer -- no discussion here for two months, but i tripped over this by way of looking for the rilke poem posted by nevermore. so here are three for stanley k, who spent a lifetime seeking the right words to tell the truth.
in passing
lisel mueller
--
how swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
--
defying gravity
roger mcgough
--
gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
let go of the book and it abseils to the ground
as if, at the centre of the earth, spins a giant yo-yo
to which everything is attached by an invisible string.
tear out a page of the book and make an aeroplane.
launch it. for an instant it seems that you have fashioned
a shape that can outwit air, that has slipped the knot.
but no. the earth turns, the winch tightens, it is wound in.
one of my closest friends is, at the time of writing,
attempting to defy gravity, and will surely succeed.
eighteen months ago he was playing rugby,
now, seven stones lighter, his wife carries him
awkwardly from room to room. arranges him gently
upon the sofa for the visitors. ‘how are things?’
asks one, not wanting to know. pause. ‘not too bad.’
(open brackets. condition inoperable. close brackets.)
soon now, the man that i love (not the armful of bones)
will defy gravity. freeing himself from the tackle
he will sidestep the opposition and streak down the wing
towards a dimension as yet unimagined.
back where the strings are attached there will be a service
and homage paid to the giant yo-yo. a box of left-overs
will be lowered into a space on loan from the clay.
then, weighted down, the living will walk wearily away.
--
as one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, i held you to me: i saw you
turn red from me. how could anyone express
what took place between us? we made up for everything
there was never time for. i matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.
memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.
for i don't think back; all that i am
stirs me because of you. i don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation. longing leads out too often
into vagueness. why should i cast myself, when,
for all i know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.
--
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you - lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorius,
One average mind - with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale or two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of different light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
    Yet this is you.
"I swear the earth shall surely be complete to them who shall be complete.
The earth remains jagged and broken only to them who remain jagged and broken
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth.
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth
Say on sayers! sing on, singers!
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come In use,
When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear."
I, too, love ee cummings, WonderK. Especially since the day I discovered a chronological anthology of his (a library book, unfortunately) and learned that he spent his life methodically exploring the limits of each type of verse until finally breaking free of form himself. Helps put the un-formed poems he's so famous for in perspective (and makes an inspiring lesson for an architect).
Here's one of my favorite cummings':
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,
And one I love that doesn't at all match my mood today, luckily:
I am--yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes--
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host
Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes--
And yet I am and love--like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
Into the living sea of waking dreams
Where there is neither sense of life or joys
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange--nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
captures
the essence
entering
the room
where dozens
wait too
for the needle
assessing
the past
determining
the future
a biological
geneology
life, love
pleasure
pain
through
anonymous
analysis of
equally
anonymous
liquid
that waits
patiently
in the vial
while i wait
impatiently
for the answer.
Poetry: the telling of stories of the soul
In honor of Stanley Kunitz, the 100-year-old poet laureate who passed away over the weekend, post your favorite poems here. And if you don't have a favorite, go look some up and find a good one to post.
(This is my feeble attempt to expose us all to something new....)
I will start with a famous poem by Mr. Kunitz himself.
The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
-Stanley Kunitz
my favorite ...
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!
and then .. my second ..
Road Not Taken, The
by Robert Lee Frost
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;
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,
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.
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 (architecture) has made all the difference.
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 know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost
, by Seamus Heaney
A spirit moved. John Harvard walked the yard,
The atom lay unsplit, the west unwon,
The books stood open and the gates unbarred.
The maps dreamt on like moondust. Nothing stirred.
The future was a verb in hibernation.
A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.
Before the classic style, before the clapboard,
All through the small hours of an origin,
The books stood open and the gate unbarred.
Night passage of a migratory bird.
Wingflap. Gownflap. Like a homing pigeon
A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.
Was that his soul (look) sped to its reward
By grace or works? A shooting star? An omen?
The books stood open and the gate unbarred.
Begin again where frosts and tests were hard.
Find yourself or founder. Here, imagine
A spirit moves, John Harvard walks the yard,
The books stand open and the gates unbarred.
Thanks WonderK.
I saw Stanley read at the 92nd second street Y on the occasion of his 90th birthday. I can't believe that was 10 yrs ago. He kicked ass. He was at that time, and up until this weekend obviously, the oldest active poet in history. I'm not one to get all wishy-washy about soul and spirit, but he was just so vibrantly alive that he glowed. A lot of his poems that night were about childhood, and his voice sounded vaguely childlike. Anyhow, good to read his words here.
Here's one for the critics:
Lawrence
by Tony Hoagland
On two occasions in the past twelve months
I have failed, when someone at a party
spoke of him with a dismissive scorn,
to stand up for D. H. Lawrence,
a man who burned like an acetylene torch
from one end to the other of his life.
These individuals, whose relationship to literature
is approximately that of a tree shredder
to stands of old-growth forest,
these people leaned back in their chairs,
bellies full of dry white wine and the ovum of some foreign fish,
and casually dropped his name
the way pygmies with their little poison spears
strut around the carcass of a fallen elephant.
“O Elephant,†they say,
“you are not so big and brave today!â€
It’s a bad day when people speak of their superiors
with a contempt they haven’t earned,
and it’s a sorry thing when certain other people
don’t defend the great dead ones
who have opened up the world before them.
And though, in the catalogue of my betrayals,
this is a fairly minor entry,
I resolve, if the occasion should recur,
to uncheck my tongue and say, “I love the spectacle
of maggots condescending to a corpse,â€
or, “You should be so lucky in your brainy, bloodless life
as to deserve to lift
just one of D. H. Lawrence’s urine samples
to your arid psychobiographic
theory-tainted lips.â€
Or maybe I’ll just take the shortcut
between the spirit and the flesh,
and punch someone in the face,
because human beings haven’t come that far
in their effort to subdue the body,
and we still walk around like zombies
in our dying, burning world,
able to do little more
than fight, and fuck, and crow,
something Lawrence wrote about
in such a manner
as to make us seem magnificent.
I have just booked a flight to visit some friends in England and Scotland in August. I will now post some Robert Burns to celebrate the occasion, and because I find it nearly incomprehensible, and therefore amusing:
Address to a Haggis
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect sconner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit:
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!
-Robert Burns
Not my favorite, but loaded w/ fond memories of architecture school, introductions to phenomenology, and good times in general...posted here earlier today, coincidentally...
by Trakl, via Norberg-Schulz:
Winter Evening
When snow falls against the window,
Long sounds the evening bell...
For so many has the table
Been prepared, the house set in order.
From their wandering, many
Come on dark paths to this gateway.
The tree of grace is flowering in gold
Out of the cool sap of the earth.
In stillness, wanderer, step in:
Grief has worn the threshold into stone.
But see: in pure light, glowing
There on the table: bread and wine.
>> Poetry: the telling of stories of the soul
"Nay, Arjun!
Forbid thyself to feebleness! it mars
Thy warrior-name! cast off the coward-fit!
Wake! Be thyself! Arise, Scourge of the Foes!
...Life cannot slay. Life is not slain!
I say to thee weapons reach not the Life;
Flame burns it not, waters cannot overwhelm,
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure.
Invisible, ineffable, by word
And thought uncompassed, ever all itself,
Thus is the Soul declared!
...This Life within all living things, my Prince!
Hides beyond harm."
Bhagavad Gita (Song of God), 2
And of course, Aeschylus' Prometheus.
applause ^^ @ sotthi
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALONE--Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
From "The Raven" , also E.A.Poe
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'
"...moon
And wit, slide through the sky together;
And which is star - what's come a million
Miles, or gone those inches farther?"
- N.McCaig, Instrument and Agent
he was a great poet ... my favourite though ...............
Touch Me –
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am
"I keep trying to improve my control over language, so that I won't have to tell lies." - Stanley K
"Life is nothing but the absence of a few moments of death"--Unknown
"I poured a part of this world into me,
Tell me my Love ..
Would more waves dance out if a few drops of wine are poured in the sea ? "---(Original.)
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.---Rumi
This always keeps me thinking. It's pretty close to my favorite.
The Invitation by Oriah
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.â€
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Who would've thought nevermore would be Poe fan?
All right...anybody like Doughty or Gunn?
Street Song by Thom Gunn
I am too young to grow a beard
But yes man it was me you heard
In dirty denim and dark glasses.
I look through everyone who passes
But ask him clear, I do not plead,
Keys lids acid and speed.
My grass is not oregano.
Some of it grew in Mexico.
You cannot guess the weed I hold,
Clara Green, Acapulco Gold,
Panama Red, you name it man,
Best on the street since I began.
My methedrine, my double sun,
Will give you two lives in your one,
Five days of power before you crash.
At which time use these lumps of hash
- They burn so sweet, they smoke so smooth,
The make you sharper while they soothe.
Now here, the best I've got to show,
Made by a righteous cat I know.
Pure acid - it will scrape your brain,
and make it something else again.
Call it heaven, call it hell,
Join me and see the worl I sell.
Join me, and I will take you there,
Your head will cut out from your hair
Into whichever self you choose.
With Midday Mick man you can't loose,
I'll get you anything you need.
Keys lids acid and speed.
Not by any means an amazing poet, but one of my fav's.
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs —
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star
---Rainer Maria Rilke
I have been waiting for the right day to post one from my favorite poet. Today seems good. I love e.e. cummings because he treats the paper like a canvas on which he painted lovely strings of words.
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
-E.E. Cummings
This poem is formally approved by the Department of Standardization. By our will are we free to power!!!!
ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE
by Richard Brautigan (1968)
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.
Does this one qualify for it's title.."The best poem ever written ?"
I don't know .I've read better ones.
The Wasteland -T.S Eliot
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/3714/TheWasteLand.htm
haki r. madhubiti (don l. lee)
super-cool
ultrablack
a tan/purple
had a beautiful shade.
he had a double-natural
that wd put the sisters to shame.
&his beads were imported sea shells
(from some blk/country i never heard of)
he was triple-hip.
his tikis were hand carved
out of ivory
&came express from the motherland.
he would greet u in swahili
&say good-by in yoruba.
woooooooooooo-jim he bes so cool &ill tel li gent
cool-cool is so cool he was un-cooled by other niggers' cool
cool-cool ultracool was bop-cool/ice box cool so cool cold cool
his wine didn't have to be cooled, him was air conditioned cool
cool-cool/real cool made me cool--now ain't that cool
cool-cool so cool him nick-named refrigerator.
cool-cool so cool
he didn't know,
after detroit, newark, chicago &c.,
we had to hip
cool-cool/ super-cool/ real cool
that
to be black
is
to be
very-hot.
The love song of j. alfred prufrock
T.S. Elliot
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?â€
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?†and, “Do I dare?â€
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!â€]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!â€]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you allâ€â€” 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.â€
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.â€
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The Place of the Solitaires
Wallace Stevens
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel,
Or on the beaches,
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;
And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration,
In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.
of the surface of things,
by wallace stevens
i
in my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.
ii
from my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
reading where I have written,
'the spring is like a belle undressing.'
iii
the gold tree is blue,
the singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
the moon is in the folds of the cloak.
My heart is broke, but I have some glue
help me inhale, and mend it with you
We'll float around, and hang out on clouds
Then we'll come down, and I have a hangover
I'm not like them, but I can pretend
The sun is gone, but I have a light
The day is done, but I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb, or maybe just happy
Think I'm just happy
-----"Dumb" by Kurt Cobain
Oh, holy hell!
I just had a date!
It went really well!
And I feel great!
This never happens to me.
-dubK
Zippity-doo-dah
Zippity-yay
My oh my
What a WonderK day!!!
Yay!
in the fashion mall
the women come and go
speaking of vado retr-i-o
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!
wow! we are all po-ets
and we dont even know-it
when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes
Donald Hall was named the 44th Poet Laureate of the US today, returning the post to a New Hampshirite for the third time
It's what makes the pancake hold still
while you slip the spatula under it
so fast it doesn't move, my father said
standing by the stove.
All motion stopped when he died.
With his last breath the earth
lurched to a halt and hung still on its axis,
the atoms in the air
coming to rest within their molecules,
and in that moment
something slid beneath me
so fast I couldn't move.
by Debra Spencer
*this was my father's favorite poem and it fits his personality real well.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
dylan thomas
............Neither am I within the fleeting pleasure of an orgasm,
nor am i the permanence of death,
Neither did I identify the first or the last
nor did I acknowledge the concept of duality
I am not awake nor am I inert,
nor is there anyone wiser than I
You know ,Dear God, God alone knows who am I !
--- Bulleh Shah ,sufi mystic & poet
circa 1680-1758 A.D, Punjab, North India
George Chapman
(1559 - 1634)
...
Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests hurl'd,
And cleanse this beastly stable of the world;
Or bend thy brazen bow against the Sun,
As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun
Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes
Than thou wouldst suffer, with his envious beams.
Now make him leave the world to Night and dreams.
Never were virtue's labours so envied
As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop his pride.
Suffer no more his lustful rays to get
The Earth with issue: let him still be set
In Somnus' thickets: bound about the brows,
With pitchy vapours, and with ebon boughs.
Rich taper'd sanctuary of the blest,
Palace of Ruth, made all of tears, and rest,
To thy black shades and desolat{.i}on
I consecrate my life; and living moan,
Where furies shall for ever fighting be,
And adders hiss the world for hating me;
Foxes shall bark, and night ravens belch in groans,
And owls shall hollo my confus{.i}ons
There will I furnish up my funeral bed,
Strew'd with the bones and relics of the dead.
Atlas shall let th' Olympic burthen fall,
To cover my untombed face withal.
And when as well, the matter of our kind,
As the material substance of the mind,
Shall cease their revolutions, in abode
Of such impure and ugly period,
As the old essence, and insensive prime:
Then shall the ruins of the fourfold time,
Turn'd to that lump (as rapting torrents rise),
For ever murmur forth my miseries ! !
Then suddenly, I knew I'd been on that train for years,
and always singing that same great song of hope.
I'm forever leaving the cities and women I love,
And carrying my losses like wounds opening inside me.
I'm getting closer, closer to somewhere.
-Nazim Hickmet
De deux choses lune
l'autre c'est le soleil
-Jacques Prévert
Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines
- Guillaume Apollinaire
Gift
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.
- Leonard Cohen
i'm a latecomer -- no discussion here for two months, but i tripped over this by way of looking for the rilke poem posted by nevermore. so here are three for stanley k, who spent a lifetime seeking the right words to tell the truth.
in passing
lisel mueller
--
how swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
--
defying gravity
roger mcgough
--
gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
let go of the book and it abseils to the ground
as if, at the centre of the earth, spins a giant yo-yo
to which everything is attached by an invisible string.
tear out a page of the book and make an aeroplane.
launch it. for an instant it seems that you have fashioned
a shape that can outwit air, that has slipped the knot.
but no. the earth turns, the winch tightens, it is wound in.
one of my closest friends is, at the time of writing,
attempting to defy gravity, and will surely succeed.
eighteen months ago he was playing rugby,
now, seven stones lighter, his wife carries him
awkwardly from room to room. arranges him gently
upon the sofa for the visitors. ‘how are things?’
asks one, not wanting to know. pause. ‘not too bad.’
(open brackets. condition inoperable. close brackets.)
soon now, the man that i love (not the armful of bones)
will defy gravity. freeing himself from the tackle
he will sidestep the opposition and streak down the wing
towards a dimension as yet unimagined.
back where the strings are attached there will be a service
and homage paid to the giant yo-yo. a box of left-overs
will be lowered into a space on loan from the clay.
then, weighted down, the living will walk wearily away.
--
finally, my favorite poem ...
to lou andreas-salomé
rainer maria rilke
--
i held myself too open, i forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that i
with all i did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.
who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere. ah, only plunged toward you
does my face cease being on display, grows
into you and twines on darkly, endlessly,
into your sheltered heart.
as one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, i held you to me: i saw you
turn red from me. how could anyone express
what took place between us? we made up for everything
there was never time for. i matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.
memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.
for i don't think back; all that i am
stirs me because of you. i don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation. longing leads out too often
into vagueness. why should i cast myself, when,
for all i know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.
--
this is savage:
Portrait d'une femme
Ezra Pound
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you - lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorius,
One average mind - with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale or two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of different light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
    Yet this is you.
"I swear the earth shall surely be complete to them who shall be complete.
The earth remains jagged and broken only to them who remain jagged and broken
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth.
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth
Say on sayers! sing on, singers!
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come In use,
When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear."
Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth
How did I miss this post?!
I, too, love ee cummings, WonderK. Especially since the day I discovered a chronological anthology of his (a library book, unfortunately) and learned that he spent his life methodically exploring the limits of each type of verse until finally breaking free of form himself. Helps put the un-formed poems he's so famous for in perspective (and makes an inspiring lesson for an architect).
Here's one of my favorite cummings':
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
And one I love that doesn't at all match my mood today, luckily:
I am--yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes--
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host
Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes--
And yet I am and love--like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
Into the living sea of waking dreams
Where there is neither sense of life or joys
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange--nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I am : (by) John Clare
BAD MAGAZINES
nothing
captures
the essence
entering
the room
where dozens
wait too
for the needle
assessing
the past
determining
the future
a biological
geneology
life, love
pleasure
pain
through
anonymous
analysis of
equally
anonymous
liquid
that waits
patiently
in the vial
while i wait
impatiently
for the answer.
THE REFINED LIES HELPLESS
timothy mcveigh
landscape
dillon, montana
copious
music playing
singing, drinking
gin
gin
more gin
needed break
creates
absence of owners
during which
a slow
controlled
slant
becomes
a sliding
tilt
homemade
washtub bass
silver bucket
whittled branch
string
connecting
slowly
falls
like a
weeble wobble
defying gravity
boom
boom
boom
boom
becomes
eeeeek
screeeeech
pow
fine
richly colored
perfectly polished
impeccably stringed
tenor clef friend
hits ground
in key of A
in a moment
hush
embarrassment
apologies
group rush
to cello's side
instrumental
paramedics
with
no supplies
nor training
consoling begins
no worries
it's a rental
repeat hush
slight chatter
slow movement
back
to original
positions
music resumes
as though
nothing
happened.
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