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Post a Poem You Love
Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Frost at Midnight The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. `Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang >From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the interspersed vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shall learn far other lore, And in far other scenes! For I was reared In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. |
not like the brazen giant of greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land, here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name mother of exiles. from her beacon hand glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, i lift my lamp beside the golden door!" --emma lazarus, "the new colossus" (i transcribed that from memory) |
This one finds T.S. Eliot in religious mode.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
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T.S. Eliot once quipped that Edgar Allan Poe "had the mind of a gifted adolescent...before puberty."
So, to be fair, I'm posting a Poe poem. The fact is that Eliot knew that Poe was one of the most important American Poets & that he was both modern & scholarly & did it all before Modern Poetry & so Eliot took a cheap shot since some of Poe's writings are pulpy & sensationalistic to an extent because he felt threatened by Poe's genius. A Dream Within a Dream Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? |
BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire
to contrast the T.S. Eliot, here we go: The Litanies of Satan Oh you, the wisest and the most beautiful of Angels, God betrayed by fate and deprived of praises, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! Oh Prince of exile, you who were wronged And who, defeated, always return stronger, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who know all, great king of subterranean things, Familiar healer of human anguish, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who, even to the lepers, to the cursed pariahs, Teach through love the taste of Paradise, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! Oh you who from Death, your old, strong lover, Engendered Hope, -- a charming madwoman! Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who lend the condemned man that calm and haughty gaze That condemns an entire people around the gallows. Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who know in what corners of envious lands The jealous God hid precious gems, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You whose clear eye knows the deep arsenals In which sleep buried the multitude of metals, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You whose large hand hides precipices From the sleepwalker wandering on the edge of buildings, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who, magically, make supple the old bones Of the drunkard run late and trampled by horses, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who, to console the frail man in pain, Taught us to mix saltpeter and sulphur, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who place your mark, oh subtle accomplice, On the brow of pitiless and vile Croesus, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! You who set in the eyes and in the hearts of girls The cult of the wound and the love of rags, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! Staff of the exiles, lamp of inventors, Confessor of the hanged and of conspirators, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! Adoptive father of those who, in his black anger, God the Father chased from the earthly paradise, Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery! Prayer Glory and praise to you, Satan, in the heights Of Heaven, where you reigned, and in the depths Of Hell, where, defeated, you dream in silence! Make it so that my soul may one day, under the Tree of Knowledge, Rest near to you, at that hour when upon your brow Like a new Temple, its branches spread! |
The Sick Rose
O rose, thou art sick!  |
Prune juice acid and toxic chalk
my esophogus is burning, I cannot talk I'm gettting rammed in the abdomen by Satan's goat and there's some kind of porcupine crawling down my throat i got bored and wrote that in class yesterday. |
THE STARRY PHOTOGENIC
The man who rushed into most remote grief without one single rose with those eyes that kept their ochre so coarse, pushing into the half-uncovered deserted chapel the large crippled silence in the wheelchair of speech, always aware of the inexhaustible situation: that we are blood-stained amateurs of the Real with a mystery which desecrates the intellect dividing before the skin of the sea, raises Hades that much higher. The massive torrential storm smashes the eyeglasses and great fear seizes coming events, forming abscesses in memory. Flat on the ground of the unquenched silence, a mobile worm memento. The life that grows shorter: the great truth. Whomever the hoe digs in becomes part of hoeing, whomever drinks the water becomes part of drinking. Spring comes ever-virginal offering fragrances, holding by the thinnest of jet-black threads in the open air of night the spot where the small owl is, unknown beyond . . . (NIKOS KAROUZOS) |
i can't find any fucking Sir Kingsley Amis to copy & paste on the entire internet! That means I have to transcribe it.
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since feeling is first
by e.e. cummings 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 |
modified to amend grievous error of even posting it to begin with.
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After Work
The shack and a few trees float in the blowing fog I pull out your blouse, warm my cold hands on your breasts. you laugh and shudder peeling garlic by the hot iron stove. bring in the axe, the rake, the wood we'll lean on the wall against each other stew simmering on the fire as it grows dark drinking wine -Gary Snyder |
wow, Gary Snyder...some taste;
oh, it's krastian...makes sense i'm not familiar with that poem though. I only have Earth House hold & not rip rap i think it is...i googled (because i sensed that might be wrong) it's riprap not rip rap.... the fact that i can remember that the poem is from riprap, a book i do not even own but checked out from a library like 15 years ago, should demonstrate to all that I have some memory. Respect! i shouldn't go into it, but i substance abuse beyond belief. Take away the Respect! i have to because the memory is a curse really, but i still cannot shake it...fucking crazy...beddy bye |
Ha....thanks man. Check out this book if you interested...it is fucking amazing. I love it. It has poems, essays, journal writings etc. I love T.S. Eliot....what a voice from such a fucked up era.
 I love that picture of him. |
AMERICA
Allen Ginsburg America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I'm sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I'm trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. I won't say the Lord's Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I'm addressing you. Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me. I haven't got a chinaman's chance. I'd better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and twentyfivethousand mental institutions. I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys. America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. America you don're really want to go to war. America it's them bad Russians. Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct? I'd better get right down to the job. It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. |
Blake/Snyder
I love Blake and Snyder!
I had not read that Snyder poem either. Here is my favorite: Four Poems for Robin Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest
I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck in my pack Hands deep in my pockets Barely able to sleep. I remembered when we were in school Sleeping together in a big warm bed We were the youngest lovers When we broke up we were still nineteen Now our friends are married You teach school back east I dont mind living this way Green hills the long blue beach But sometimes sleeping in the open I think back when I had you. A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji
Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms At night in an orchard in Oregon. All that I wanted then Is forgotten now, but you. Here in the night In a garden of the old capital I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao I remember your cool body Naked under a summer cotton dress. An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji
Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight, Bitter memory like vomit Choked my throat. I unrolled a sleeping bag On mats on the porch Under thick autumn stars. In dream you appeared (Three times in nine years) Wild, cold, and accusing. I woke shamed and angry: The pointless wars of the heart. Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter. The first time I have Ever seen them close. December at Yase
You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard When you chose to be free, "Again someday, maybe ten years." After college I saw you
One time. You were strange. And I was obsessed with a plan. Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known where you were-- I might have gone to you Hoping to win your love back. You still are single. I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I Have done that. Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity Of our young love Return to my mind, to my flesh. We had what the others
All crave and seek for; We left it behind at nineteen. I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives. And may never now know If I am a fool Or have done what my karma demands. Gary Snyder
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PUNK ROCK REVIVAL
By John Cooper Clarke the rip-off riff's authentic ring a singer who can't really sing can only mean one fucking thing punk rock revival affect the look of a man obsessed predisposed to the predistressed now you know you're properly dressed punk rock revival wear your hair the wrong way round spike it up in a vaseline crown button up your button down punk rock revival PVC and nylon fur and D-rings are de rigeur the way we are is the way we were punk rock revival |
Last Night's Dream
Denise Levertov I sing tree, making green school after school of leaf-fish flicker between the shade and sunlight in nets of branch, urging the students to see, to see— and one says: I like the brown tree. So I look: she has conjured one of those scrawny northern cedars, arbor vitae, dead or alive, one can't tell, earth-brown, sprouting bits of dry fern-frond from random twigs, disregarded; and this tree, behold, glows from within; haloed in visible invisible gold. |
Wanna Be YoursJohn Cooper Clarke
let me be your vacuum cleaner breathing in your dust let me be your ford cortina i will never rust if you like your coffee hot let me be your coffee pot you call the shots i wanna be yours let me be your raincoat for those frequent rainy days let me be your dreamboat when you wanna sail away let me be your teddy bear take me with you anywhere i don’t care i wanna be yours let me be your electric meter i will not run out let me be the electric heater you get cold without let me be your setting lotion hold your hair with deep devotion deep as the deep atlantic ocean that’s how deep is my emotion deep deep deep deep de deep deep i don’t wanna be hers i wanna be yours |
High Windows
Philip Larkin When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-- Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. |
The Face Behind the Scream
this case appears to be urgent kindly pull the screen cosmetic surgeon the son of mr. sheen is jerry building versions of the face behind the scream the girl who would be beauty queen tells the doctor of her dream in which she reads a magazine wearing only cold cream they call her the face behind the scream the image he maintains and the silence he observes says it's worth a little pain for the figure we both deserve a cowboy by profession since the age of 17 who's singular obsession is the face behind the scream the girl who would be beauty queen tells the doctor of her dream a soiree in the mezzanine and castenets and tambourines a careless word and ugly scenes the doctor knows he's made for good impressions on demand the new nose in the neighborhood was fashioned by these hands he can do it blindfold, his instruments are clean a snapshot in his mind holds the face behind the scream the girl who would be beauty queen diamond rivets in her jeans wild and with-it even off screen he then removes the bandage and the odd remaining scab a flair for fancy language... the gift of the gab hands you a sandwich and applies the vaseline to show to best advantage the face behind the scream the girl who would be beauty queen tells the doctor of her dream in which she turns her money green finds herself in a funny scene cracks up like a shatterproof windscreen danke schoen ich liebe dich, I promise not to hurt a telephone receiver clicks RED ALERT whatever you do don't touch that switch, the doctor goes to work with his bag of tricks in his limousine mugshots from magazines face creams and photofits to fit the face that doesn't fit the face behind the scream the girl who would be beauty queen surrounded by the regular team of pluto brats and coma teens in bowler hats and brilliantine or bold cravats of bottle green such a precious little dream to be taken to extremes how many times can you be 16 they call her the face behind the scream. JOHN COOPER CLARKE |
The Wasteland
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo." I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; "They called me the hyacinth girl." - Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer. Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson! "You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! "That corpse you planted last year in your garden, "Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? "Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, "Or with his nails he'll dig it up again! "You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!" II. A GAME OF CHESS The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, "Jug Jug" to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. "My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. "Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. "What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? "I never know what you are thinking. Think." I think we are in rats' alley Where the dead men lost their bones. "What is that noise?" The wind under the door. "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?" Nothing again nothing. "Do "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember "Nothing?" I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes. "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag - It's so elegant So intelligent "What shall I do now? What shall I do?" I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street "With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow? "What shall we ever do?" The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said - I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face, It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don't want children? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot - HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. continues... |
...continued
III. THE FIRE SERMON The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd. Tereu Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest - I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. "This music crept by me upon the waters" And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia Wallala leialala "Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe." "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised 'a new start'. I made no comment. What should I resent?" "On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing." la la To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning IV. DEATH BY WATER Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. continues... |
...continued
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID After the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman - But who is that on the other side of you? What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust Bringing rain Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih ================================================== ======== |
Thomas VAughan (1622-1666), not so well known for poetry as his brother Henry, wrote my favourite short poem:
Now had the night spent her black stage, and all Her beautheous, twinkling flames grew sick and pale, Her scene of shades and silence fled; and day Dressed the young east in roses, where each ray Falling on sables, made the sun and night Kiss in a chequer of mixed clouds and light. Dawn, by Thomas Vaughan. |
Dylan Thomas: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How my clay is made the hangman's lime. The lips of time leech to the fountain head; Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round the stars. And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm. |
^Beautiful
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I don't really read poetry. Most of the poems that come to mind are ones that I read in school. Every once in awhile I come across a poem I like then forget about it.
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To My Soul
Umberto Saba (1883-1957)   You delight in your unending misery. Such, my soul, should be the worth of knowledge, that your suffering alone should do you good. Or is the self-deceived the lucky one? He who cannot ever know himself or the sentence of his condemnation? Still, my soul, you are magnaminous; yet how you thrill to phantom opportunities, and so are brought down by a faithless kiss. To me my misery is a bright summer day, where from high up I can make out every facet, every detail of the world below. Nothing is obscure to me; it's all right there, wherever my eye or my mind leads me. My road is sad but brightened by the sun; and everything on it, even shadow, is in light |
Quote:
That's my best friend's favorite poem. This poem of Frank O'Hara's is so unlike his others and it has always registered with me. I'm typing it out from memory because I couldn't find it online: When I am feeling depressed and anxious sullen all you have to do is take your clothes off and all is wiped away revealing life's tenderness that we are flesh and breathe and are near us as you are really as you are I become as I really am alive and knowing vaguely what is and what is important to me above the intrusions of incident and accidental relationships which have nothing to do with my life when I am in your presence I feel life is strong and will defeat all its enemies and all of mine and all of yours and yours in you and mine in me sick logic and feeble reasoning are cured by the perfect symmetry of your arms and legs spread out making an eternal circle together creating a golden pillar beside the Atlantic the faint line of hair dividing your torso gives my mind rest and emotions their release into the infinite air where since once we are together we always will be in this life come what may |
i really like Cummings. Actually, i just ordered his 100 selected poems book.
my favorite by Cummings is this one: who knows if the moon's who knows if the moon's a baloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky--filled with pretty people? (and if you and i should get into it,if they should take me and take you into their baloon, why then we'd go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody's ever visited,where always it's Spring)and everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves. that ending line always hits me. Cummings has great ending lines. The one w/ Spring not breaking a thing is also great. |
given the ruling verborrhea, i'll be a contrarian.
---------- IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. --------- ^^ Ole EZ |
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the poet cannot spell, but that was damn fine entertainment, porkmarras...
this next one is featured at the end of Mindwalk (1990), a movie scipted by Frijitof Capra, who wrote The Tao of Physics, & it's recited to great effect by actor John Heard who plays a poet named Thomas in the movie (but does credit P.B.) ... & now, w/o further adieu, I give you: Enigmas by Pablo Neruda You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you. You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms? Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know. You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal, and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies. You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers, which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides? Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now? You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines? The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks? The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water? I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl. I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes, dead in those darknesses, of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes on the timid globe of an orange. I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star, and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind. --- Mindwalk imdb link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100151/ --- my favorite T.S. Eliot is Choruses from the Rock, but The Waste Land (thanks alyasa) & of course The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock are classics as well. there's lots of great Blake, but The Sick Rose is probably my favorite. I like Ferlinghetti a good deal, but I really don't have a favorite exactly...someone will get to Howl by Ginsberg undoubtably. Thanks Daycare Nation, for the fantastic thread! |
on the Gary Snyder tip:
ORLANDO BLUE: 31st Chorus
by Jack Kerouac O Gary Snyder
we work in many ways
In Montreal I suffered tile
and rain In Additional Christmas
waylayed babes In old crow Hotels
full of blue babes in pink dressinggowns down But O Gary Snyder
where'd you go, What I meant was there you go In Montreal I worked a manied-way
And better than Old Post
I learned to appreciate in many ways Montreal, Soulsville, and Drain This one is from Heaven & Other Poems; I'd love to excerpt some of Mexico City Blues, but alas, it's too laborious. |
The Waste Land....great poem. I think we studied that for like 3 days in one of my classes in college.
Nice one's atari (Jack and Neruda). This is the best....love it. But O Gary Snyder where'd you go, What I meant was there you go |
Pale Fire by John Shade (Nabokov)
The first 12 lines: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure of the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! |
Soneto V
Escrito está en mi alma vuestro gesto y cuanto yo escribir de vos deseo vos sola lo escribisteis; yo lo leo tan solo, que aun de vos me guardo en esto. En esto estoy y estaré siempre puesto, que aunque no cabe en mí cuanto en vos veo, de tanto bien lo que no entiendo creo, tomando ya la fe por presupuesto. Yo no nací sino para quereros; mi alma os ha cortado a su medida; por hábito del alma misma os quiero. Cuanto tengo confieso yo deberos; por vos nací, por vos tengo la vida, por vos he de morir y por vos muero. Garcilaso de la Vega. |
Here's a good political one by Walt Whitman
To A President All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn'd of Nature--of the politics of Nature you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not seen that only such as they are for these States, And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these States. |
here 2 i like, for different occasions, perhaps a bit sentimental; both with formal verse, but really great stuff if you get over any preconceptions of what modern poetry should be like:
---------- Leap Before You Look The sense of danger must not disappear: The way is certainly both short and steep, However gradual it looks from here; Look if you like, but you will have to leap. Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep And break the by-laws any fool can keep; It is not the convention but the fear That has a tendency to disappear. The worried efforts of the busy heap, The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer Produce a few smart wisecracks every year; Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap. The clothes that are considered right to wear Will not be either sensible or cheap, So long as we consent to live like sheep And never mention those who disappear. Much can be said for social savior-faire, Bu to rejoice when no one else is there Is even harder than it is to weep; No one is watching, but you have to leap. A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear: Although I love you, you will have to leap; Our dream of safety has to disappear. -- W. H. Auden -------------------------------- One Art 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. -- Elizabeth Bishop |
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