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!