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I grew unwittingly apart from the world in which I was born and can no longer walk again among the things of the earth. We know that even love is a possession, but we can’t keep from praying that life will go on. And we accept the poverty of our prayers. I can possess nothing, though I love trees, clouds, people. I can only discard my overflowing heart— hesitant to call that an act of love. Reprinted without permission. One poem from "62 Sonnets" (1953) by Shuntaro Tanikawa copied from Thethepoetry.com 9/9/2011 |
A Song on the End of the World
~ Czeslaw Milosz (Warsaw, 1944) Translated by: Anthony Milosz On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be. On the day the world ends Women walk through fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of the lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night. And those who expected lightening and thunder Are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits a rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now. Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: There will be no other end of the world, There will be no other end of the world. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Milosz, C. (1988). The Collected Poems: 1931-1987. New York: The Ecco Press. |
My friend Rachel layin' it down... love this!! <3 :)
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In My Sky At Twilight In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your form and colour are the way I love them. You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips and in your life my infinite dreams live. The lamp of my soul dyes your feet, the sour wine is sweeter on your lips, oh reaper of my evening song, how solitary dreams believe you to be mine! You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice. Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water. You are taken in the net of my music, my love, and my nets of music are wide as the sky. My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning. In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin. Pablo Neruda |
If You Forget Me
I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Pablo Neruda |
The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. |
Dead Butterfly
BY ELLEN BASS For months my daughter carried a dead monarch in a quart mason jar. To and from school in her backpack, to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast. She took it to bed, propped by her pillow. Was it the year her brother was born? Was this her own too-fragile baby that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world? Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house? Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there? This plump child in her rolled-down socks I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me and carry safe again. What was her fierce commitment? I never understood. We just lived with the dead winged thing as part of her, as part of us, weightless in its heavy jar. |
On the road through the clouds is there a shortcut to the summer moon? ~Den Sute-Jo (pp. 69) Written On The Sky: Poems from the Japanese Translated by, Kenneth Rexroth (New York, NY). |
The Cinnamon Peeler
Michael Ondaatje If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow. Your breasts and shoulders would reek you could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon. Here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbor to your hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler’s wife. I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you — your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers… When we swam once I touched you in water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. You climbed the bank and said this is how you touch other women the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter. And you searched your arms for the missing perfume. and knew what good is it to be the lime burner’s daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in an act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of scar. You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon peeler’s wife. Smell me. |
Friday's Child
(In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945)
He told us we were free to choose But, children as we were, we thought--- "Paternal Love will only use Force in the last resort On those too bumptious to repent." Accustomed to religious dread, It never crossed our minds He meant Exactly what He said. Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves, But it seems idle to discuss If anger or compassion leaves The bigger bangs to us. What reverence is rightly paid To a Divinity so odd He lets the Adam whom He made Perform the Acts of God? It might be jolly if we felt Awe at this Universal Man (When kings were local, people knelt); Some try to, but who can? The self-observed observing Mind We meet when we observe at all Is not alarming or unkind But utterly banal. Though instruments at Its command Make wish and counterwish come true, It clearly cannot understand What It can clearly do. Since the analogies are rot Our senses based belief upon, We have no means of learning what Is really going on, And must put up with having learned All proofs or disproofs that we tender Of His existence are returned Unopened to the sender. Now, did He really break the seal And rise again? We dare not say; But conscious unbelievers feel Quite sure of Judgement Day. Meanwhile, a silence on the cross, As dead as we shall ever be, Speaks of some total gain or loss, And you and I are free To guess from the insulted face Just what Appearances He saves By suffering in a public place A death reserved for slaves. WH Auden |
O sweet spontaneous
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee , has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty, how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring) e.e. cummings (1894-1962) 1920 |
Inspired by Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky
What is a youth? Impetuous fire. What is a maid? Ice and desire. The world wags on. A rose will bloom It then will fade So does a youth. So do-o-o-oes the fairest maid. Comes a time when one sweet smile Has its season for a while...Then love's in love with me. Some they think only to marry, Others will tease and tarry, Mine is the very best parry. Cupid he rules us all. Caper the cape, but sing me the song, Death will come soon to hush us along. Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall. Love is a task and it never will pall. Sweeter than honey...and bitter as gall Cupid he rules all. Eugene Walter Inspired by Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky "A Time For Us" (Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet) A Time For Us - competing instrumental version by Henry Mancini charted at # 1 - from the 1968 film produced by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey - Words by Larry Kusik and Eddie Snyder and Music by Nino Rota A time for us, some day there'll be When chains are torn by courage born of a love that's free A time when dreams so long denied can flourish As we unveil the love we now must hide A time for us, at last to see A life worthwhile for you and me And with our love, through tears and thorns We will endure as we pass surely through every storm A time for us, some day there'll be a new world A world of shining hope for you and me For you and me And with our love, through tears and thorns We will endure as we pass surely through every storm A time for us, some day there'll be a new world A world of shining hope for you and me A world of shining hope for you and me |
Risk And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to Blossom. Anais Nin |
~The Heart Of A Woman~
:heartbeat: The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. ~Georgia Johnson |
Theme And Variations
Edna St. Vincent Millay Heart, do not bruise the breast That sheltered you so long, beat quietly, strange guest. Or have I done you wrong To feed you life so fast? Why no, digest this food And thrive. You could outlast Discomfort if you would. You do not know for whom These tears drip through my hands. you thud in the bright room Darkly. This pain demands No action on your part, Who never saw that face. These eyes, that let him in, (Not you, my guiltless heart) These eyes, let them erase His image, blot him out With weeping, and go blind. Heart, do not stain my skin With bruises, go about Your simple function. Mind, Sleep now, do not intrude, And do not spy, be kind. Sweet blindness, now begin. |
Monet Refuses the Operation
BY LISEL MUELLER Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don’t know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and change our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end. |
There is no Frigate like a Book (1286) By Emily Dickinson There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul – . |
poetry
My Favourite poem is Tennysons Lady of Shallot way to long to put on here, but it is beautiful.
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William Wordsworth
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. ___________________________________________ INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD I THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. II The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. III Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday;-- Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! IV Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all. Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:-- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! --But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? V Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. VI Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. VII Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. VIII Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-- Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! IX O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest-- Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-- Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. XI And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. |
The Hound From Heaven (God's pursuit of a sinner)
THE HOUND FROM HEAVEN by Francis Thompson (1859-1907) ____________________________ I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasemed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet-- "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." I pleaded, outlaw-wise, By many a hearted casement, curtained red, Trellised with intertwining charities (For, though I knew His love Who followed, Yet was I sore adread Lest having Him, I must have naught beside); But if one little casement parted wide, The gust of His approach would clash it to. Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue. Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars; Fretted to dulcet jars And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. I said to dawn, Be sudden; to eve, Be soon; With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I tempted all His servitors, but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, The long savannahs of the blue; Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet-- Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following Feet, And a Voice above their beat-- "Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me." I sought no more that after which I strayed In face of man or maid; But still within the little children's eyes Seems something, something that replies; They at least are for me, surely for me! I turned me to them very wistfully; But, just as their young eyes grew sudden fair With dawning answers there, Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. "Come then, ye other children, Nature's--share With me," said I, "your delicate fellowship; Let me greet you lip to lip, Let me twine with you caresses, Wantoning With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses' Banqueting With her in her wind-walled palace, Underneath her azured daïs, Quaffing, as your taintless way is, From a chalice Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring." So it was done; I in their delicate fellowship was one-- Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies. I knew all the swift importings On the willful face of skies; I knew how the clouds arise Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings; All that's born or dies Rose and drooped with--made them shapers Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine-- With them joyed and was bereaven. I was heavy with the even, When she lit her glimmering tapers Round the day's dead sanctities. I laughed in the morning's eyes. I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, Heaven and I wept together, And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine; Against the red throb of its sunset-heart I laid my own to beat, And share commingling heat; But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart. In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's gray cheek. For ah! we know not what each other says, These things and I; in sound I speak-- Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences. Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth; Let her, if she would owe me, Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me The breasts of her tenderness; Never did any milk of hers once bless My thirsting mouth. Nigh and nigh draws the chase, With unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy; And past those noisèd Feet A voice comes yet more fleet-- "Lo naught contents thee, who content'st not Me." Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, And smitten me to my knee; I am defenseless utterly. I slept, methinks, and woke, And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. In the rash lustihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years-- My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. Yea, faileth now even dream The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, Are yielding; cords of all too weak account For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed. Ah! is Thy love indeed A weed, albeit amaranthine weed, Suffering no flowers except its own to mount? Ah! must-- Designer infinite!-- Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it? My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; And now my heart is a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver Upon the sighful branches of my mind. Such is; what is to be? The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? I dimly guess what Time in mist confounds; Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity; Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again. But not ere him who summoneth I first have seen, enwound With blooming robes, purpureal, cypress-crowned; His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. Whether man's heart or life it be which yields Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields Be dunged with rotten death? Now of that long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit; That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: "And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile thing, Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said, "And human love needs human meriting, How hast thou merited-- Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee Save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms. But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms. All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for the at home; Rise, clasp My hand, and come!" Halts by me that footfall; Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly? "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me." ___________________ NOTES AND STUDY GUIDE http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides3/hound.html |
I Like For You To Be Still by Pablo Neruda
I like for you to be still
it is as though you are absent and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you It seems as though your eyes had flown away And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth As all things are filled with my soul You emerge from the things Filled with my soul You are like my soul A butterfly of dream And you are like the word... Melancholy I like for you to be still and you seem far away It sounds as though you are lamenting A butterfly cooing like a dove and you hear me from far away and my voice does not reach you Let me come to be still in your silence And let me talk to you with your silence That is bright as a lamp Simple, as a ring You are like the night With its stillness and constellations Your silence is that of a star As remote and candid I like for you to be still it is as though you are absent Distant and full of sorrow So you would've died One word then, One smile is enough And I'm happy; Happy that it's not true |
For Women Who Are Difficult To Love by Warsan Shire you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you want anything but you you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frightening in the way you want him unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn’t you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier less volatile, less awake but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams so what did you want to do love split his head open? you can’t make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love. |
Nine Below--Joy Harjo
Across the frozen Bering Sea is the invisible border of two warring countries. I am loyal to neither, only to the birds who fly over, laugh at the ridiculous ways of humans, know wars destroy dreams, divide the country, inside us. Last night there was a breaking wave, in the center of a dream war. You were there, but I couldn't see you. Woke up cold in a hot house. Didn't sleep but fought the distances I had imagined, and went back to find you. I called my heart's dogs, gave them the sound of your blue saxophone to know you by, and let them smell the shirt you wore when we last made love. I walked with them south along the white sea, and crossed to the fiery plane of my dreaming. We circled the place, you were not there. I found nothing that I could see. No trace of war, of you, but the dogs barked, rolled in your smell, ears pricked at what they could hear that I couldn't. They ran to me, licked the smell of the wet tracks of your mouth on my neck, my shoulder. They smelled you on my fingers, my face. They felt the quivering nerve of emotion that forced me to live. It made them nervous, excited. I loosened my mind's rein; let them find you. I watched them follow the invisible connection. They traveled a spiral arc through an Asiatic burst of time. There were no false boundaries between countries, between us. They climbed the polar ice, saw it melt. They flew through the shimmering houses of the gods, crossed over into your childhood, and then south. When they arrived in your heart's atmosphere it was an easy sixty degrees. The war was over, it had never begun. And you were alive and laughing, standing beneath a fat sun, calling me home. |
A Satirical Romance...Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
I can't hold you and I can't leave you, and in sorting the reasons to leave you or hold you, I find an intangible one to love you, and many tangible ones to forgo you. As you won't change, nor let me forgo you, I shall give my heart defense against you, so that half shall always be armed to abhor you, though the other half be ready to adore you. |
ECHO
Christina Rossetti Come to me in the silence of the night, Come in the speaking silence of a dream, Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream, Come back in tears, O memory, hope and love of finished years. O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet, Whose wakening should have been in paradise, Where souls brim full of love abide and meet, Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more. |
Where Does This Tenderness Come From?
by Marina Tsvetaeva Where does this tenderness come from? These are not the first curls I have stroked slowly and lips I have known are darker than yours as stars rise often and go out again where does this tenderness come from? so many eyes have risen and died out in front of these eyes of mine. And yet no such song have I heard in the darkness of night before, where does this tenderness come from? here, on the ribs of the singer. Where does this tenderness come from? And what shall I do with it, sly singer just passing by? Your lashes are...longer than anyone's. |
by Carol Ann Duffy
Words Wide Night
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear. La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross to reach you. For I am in love with you and this is what it is like or what it is like in words. |
Evening Solace
THE human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. And days may pass in gay confusion, And nights in rosy riot fly, While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, The memory of the Past may die. But, there are hours of lonely musing, Such as in evening silence come, When, soft as birds their pinions closing, The heart's best feelings gather home. Then in our souls there seems to languish A tender grief that is not woe; And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish, Now cause but some mild tears to flow. And feelings, once as strong as passions, Float softly backa faded dream; Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations, The tale of others' sufferings seem. Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding, How longs it for that time to be, When, through the mist of years receding, Its woes but live in reverie ! And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer, On evening shade and loneliness; And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, Feel no untold and strange distress Only a deeper impulse given By lonely hour and darkened room, To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven, Seeking a life and world to come. Charlotte Brontë |
I See, I See The Crescent Moon~Anna Akhmatova
I see, I see the crescent moon through the willow's thick foliage. I hear, I hear the regular heartbeat of unshod hooves. You don't want to sleep either? In a year you weren't able to forget me, you're not used to finding your bed empty? Don't I talk with you in the sharp cries of falcons? Don't I look into your eyes from the matt white pages? why do you circle round, my silent house like a thief? Or do you remember the agreement and wait for me alive? I am falling asleep. The moon's blade cuts through the stilling dark. Again hoofbeats. It is my own warm heart that beats so.:heartbeat: |
Rain~
Diana Der Hovanessian Rain undoes the stone unfastens grass. Nothing is permanently attached to bone. Neither epoxy nor promises last. But I keep those inflections you telephoned to wear with your frown on rainy days. There is another you I have invented from your name and cemented to my bones forever. let the rain say nothing stays. |
CORAZÓN CORAZA
by: Mario Benedetti Porque te tengo y no porque te pienso porque la noche está de ojos abiertos porque la noche pasa y digo amor porque has venido a recoger tu imagen y eres mejor que todas tus imágenes porque eres linda desde el pie hasta el alma porque eres buena desde el alma a mí porque te escondes dulce en el orgullo pequeña y dulce corazón coraza porque eres mía porque no eres mía porque te miro y muero y peor que muero si no te miro amor si no te miro porque tú siempre existes dondequiera pero existes mejor donde te quiero porque tu boca es sangre y tienes frío tengo que amarte amor tengo que amarte aunque esta herida duela como dos aunque te busque y no te encuentre y aunque la noche pase y yo te tenga y no. |
Dear Billie-by Christine Cassidy
Dear Billie, I'd offer apologies for flirting at the party but I know what you'd say-it's not all that necessary- and besides, I'm enticed, your cool minx eyes assessing me the way I've come to enjoy. Why didn't you, at the end, kiss me? I'd have given you skirt, not to flirt. Then I saw you, whispered in your nappy hair, smiled a lot, and had to touch. Why is it you're the one butch -my new lover won't say much- who feeds me information from the hand, and won't begrudge my hunger for knowing somewhat better whom I've been lusting after -granted I'm a little late, a shy date-these last few years? Fourteen now, since I've been comfortably out. Longer, if you count Girl Scouts, the woman whose flint-lit fires kindled mine. I stayed closemouthed about sex, watched the playground mavericks pick out sides while I grew breasts, lip-synched to Janis Joplin, and fantasized what came next. That same thrill, chasing after boyish girls -rough girls with flaccid pigtails- who swaggered off fields and courts, has gotten me in trouble more than once. When I wore a cocktail dress (another time, only lace) to seduce the dykes in suits at Seven Sisters dances, I wish you had been there with your etudes of history, tales accrued not from books. Sea Colony stories circa '62 my favourite: at twenty you learned the gait and gaze that femmes would covet. You stroked my knee, reminisced. I thought, does femme etiquette permit one bite into your neck, or none? You laugh at my abstention and my burn to know just what you butches want, how and when. You say I couldn't take what's on your mind. What's on mine might terrify you more. Or is this coax you expect, or will you try to please me when I visit? If you feed me raisin scones and stories, I'll reply in kind-naive but willing, my dear Billie. |
Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Men themselves have wondered What they see in me. They try so much But they can’t touch My inner mystery. When I try to show them, They say they still can’t see. I say, It’s in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Now you understand Just why my head’s not bowed. I don’t shout or jump about Or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing, It ought to make you proud. I say, It’s in the click of my heels, The bend of my hair, the palm of my hand, The need for my care. ’Cause I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. |
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. |
Under The Harvest Moon
by Carl Sandberg Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. |
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
by E.E. Cummings i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) |
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands |
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967 Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”) Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.” The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today. O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again! |
this was my era and could have been all of us protesting the war during that time
Flowers & Bullets, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(English translation by Anthony Kahn) Of course: Bullets don't like people who love flowers, They're jealous ladies, bullets, short on kindness. Allison Krause, nineteen years old, you're dead for loving flowers. When, thin and open as the pulse of conscience, you put a flower in a rifle's mouth and said, "Flowers are better than bullets," that was pure hope speaking. Give no flowers to a state that outlaws truth; such states reciprocate with cynical, cruel gifts, and your gift, Allison Krause, was the bullet that blasted the flower. Let every apple orchard blossom black, black in mourning. Ah, how the lilac smells! You're without feeling. Nothing, Nixon said it: "You're a bum." All the dead are bums. It's not their crime. You lie in the grass, a melting candy in your mouth, done with dressing in new clothes, done with books. You used to be a student. You studied fine arts. But other arts exist, of blood and terror, and headsmen with a genuius for the axe. Who was Hitler? A cubist of gas chambers. In the name of all flowers I curse your works, you architect of lies, maestros of murder! Mothers of the world whisper "O God, God!" and seers are afraid to look ahead. Death dances rock-and-roll upon the bones of Vietnam, Cambodia - On what stage is it booked to dance tomorrow? Rise up, Tokyo girls, Roman boys, take up your flowers against the common foe. Blow the world's dandelions up into a blizzard! Flowers, to war! Punish the punishers! Tulip after tulip, carnation after carnation rip out of your tidy beds in anger, choke every lying throat with earth and root! You, jasmine, clog the spinning blades of mine-layers. Boldy, block the cross-hair sights, drive your sting into the lenses, nettles! Rise up, lily of the Ganges, lotus of the Nile, stop the roaring props of planes pregnant with the death of chidren! Roses, don't be proud to find yourselves sold at higher prices. Nice as it is to touch a tender cheek, thrust a sharper thorn a little deeper into the fuel tanks of bombers. Of course: Bullets are stronger than flowers. Flowers aren't enough to overwhelm them. Stems are too fragile, petals are poor armor. But a Vietnam girl of Allison's age, taking a gun in her hands is the armed flower of the people's wrath! If even flowers rise, then we've had enough of playing games with history. Young America, tie up the killer's hands. Let there be an escalation of truth to overwhelm the escalating lie crushing people's lives! Flowers, make war! Defend what's beautiful! Drown the city streets and country roads like the flood of an army advancing and in the ranks of people and flowers arise, murdered Allison Krause, Immortal of the age, Thorn-Flower of protest! |
Choices by Nikki Giovanni
CHOICES
If i can't do what i want to do then my job is to not do what i don't want to do It's not the same thing but it's the best i can do If i can't have what i want . . . then my job is to want what i've got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want Since i can't go where i need to go . . . then i must . . . go where the signs point through always understanding parallel movement isn't lateral When i can't express what i really feel i practice feeling what i can express and none of it is equal I know but that's why mankind alone among the animals learns to cry Written by Nikki Giovanni |
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