OPP - Other People'e Poetry

I enjoy reading other people's poetry, especially when it is full of fire, or ancient knowledge, so I will post poems that spark me here. I'll start with Lilith she is my past.

http://lilithgate.atspace.org/pict/cjlilith.PNG

The Return of Lilith *

Translated by: Henry Matthews **

Wildcats shall meet with hyenas;
goat-demons shall call to each other.
There too Lilith shall repose,
and find a place to rest.
Isaiah 34:14

I am Lilith, returned from her exile.

I am Lilith, returned from the prison of white oblivion, lioness of the master and goddess of the twin moons. I gather in a cup what cannot be gathered, and I drink it, for I am the priestess and the temple. I leave no drop for no one, lest they think I have had enough. I copulate and multiply by myself to make a people from my own, and then kill my lovers to make way for those who did not know me.

I am Lilith, the forest woman. I did not know a hopeful wait but I have known lions and true beasts. I impregnate all parts in me to weave the tale; I gather voices in my womb to complete the number of slaves. I eat my body so I am not accused of hunger and I drink my water so I am not thirsty. My tresses are long for the winter and my bags have no ceiling. Nothing quenches me and nothing fills me, and I return to be the lioness of the lost on earth.

Long are my tresses
Far
And long
Like a smile fading away in the rain
Slumber after pleasure reached.
My shivers are scars of shadows sometimes
And gleams of the blade, at all times.

I am the guardian of the well, the sum of contrasts. Kisses on my body are the scars of those who tried. From the flute between the thighs my song rises and from my song flows the curse, water on the earth.

I am the two moons Lilith. The hand of every maiden, the window of every virgin. The angel of the fall and the conscience of light slumber. Daughter of Delilah, Magdalena and the seven fairies. From my lust mountains rise and rivers break. I return to injure the wisp of virtue with my water and rub the ointment of sin on the wounds of deprivation.

I am the curse of past curses
The enticer of boats so the storm will not abate
My names bejewel your tongues when thirsty you
Follow me as the touch follows the kiss
And take me like the night on his mother’s breast.

I am Lilith the secret of fingers that insist. I open the road and uncover dreams and lay bare the cities of manhood for my deluge. I do not gather two from each kind but I become them so the species will be pure from any virtue.

The dreams are all open to me
I am the conscience of light slumber
I wear and shed the dream
entice the boats away and don’t guide the storm
I scatter the sky with the cunning of a cloud
So no one gets my honey
I have no home and no pillow
I am the naked
Who gives nudity the flower of its meaning.

I am Lilith the cup and the server
I came to say:
More than one cup for me
I came to say:
The server is blind
I came to say:
Adam, Adam, you are busy with many matters but the need is one.

Gather me
The need is one
Come gather me in the rain of your eyes
Stab your mounts in my abyss
Carve your features in the memory of my palms
And breathe the tigress lurking at the drop of the shoulders.

I am Lilith, the verse of apple. Books wrote me even if you did not read me. I am the unbridled pleasure the renegade wife the fulfillment of lust which brings the great destruction. My shirt is a window on madness. Whoever hears me deserves to die and whoever does not hear me will be killed by his remorse.

I am the moon within
Astray is my compass and migration my home
No caller knocks at my door
No house leads to my window
And no window exists but the illusion of a window.

I am not the stubborn steed or the easy ride, rather the shiver of the first seduction.
I am neither the stubborn horse nor the easy steed, rather the debacle of the final regret.

I am Lilith the destiny woman
Salome’s last dance and the fading of the light
I climb your night stone by stone every time the sun of absence bleeds the horizon
I climb to set a dream to the table
I delve into your vagabond mind
I make room for my head in your sleep.

For my blazes I climb up the stairways of the night
And for your dreams
I seek not certainty but obsession
Not arriving but the pleasure of not arriving.
Your night is my ladder to me
And my hand to beneath the imaginary.

I am the two genders Lilith. I am the desired gender. I take and am not given. I bring back to Adam his truth, and to Eve her ferocious breast so the logic of creation is appeased.

I am the one who was conceived under the sign of ecstasy
She whose presence rises
She whose tongue is a beehive
She who is a cake, eaten and kept
She who is the crying hunger
And who Limbo preserves.

I am the arrogance of the two breasts
Budding to grow and laugh
To want and be eaten
My breasts are salty
So high that I do not reach them:
Kiss them for me.

Two lamps hint in two lights
Budding so that their mischief may be forgiven.

I am Lilith, the lascivious angel. Adam’s first steed, corrupter of Satan. The shadow of stifled sex and its purest scream. I am the shy maiden of the volcano, the jealous because I am the beautiful whisperer of the wilderness. The first paradise could not stand me. I was pushed out to sow conflict on earth and arrange in beds the matters of my subjects.

My hand is the key to flame and the fierceness of hope
Your bodies are firewood and my hand is the fireplace
My hand is unbridled desire:
With faith
It moves mountains.

I, the goddess of the twin nights, the destiny of the wise. The unity of sleep and wakefulness. I am the foetus poet. I slew myself and found her. I return from my exile to be the bride of the seven days and the destruction of future life.

I am the seducing lioness. I return to slay the prisoners and rule the earth.
I return to mend Adam’s ribs and rid the men from their Eves.

I am Lilith, returned from exile to inherit the death of the mother to whom
I gave birth
@Lilith

Lilith is one of my fav female figures in world mythology.


Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and beauty and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair. (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

[I used to have this one on my website before I took it down]

Liturgy for Lilith


I am Lilith, Grandmother of Mary Magdalene

I am Lilith, whose sexual fire was too hot for God.

I am Lilith, the First Woman, who chose the rage of exile over the cancer

Of servitude.

I am Lilith, Mother to the Mother-less.

I am Lilith, whose blood covers the moon.

I am Lilith, standing on owl’s claws at a woman’s crossroads.

I am Lilith, the Whore in the gateway of the Temple.

I am Lilith, whose serpentine tongue caused Eve to laugh, and pick the apple!

I am Lilith, Revolving Sword of Flame – scorching hypocrisy from truth’s white bones.

I am Lilith, free-moving in the Wilderness.

I am Lilith, spirit of night and air.

I am Lilith, in whose dark caves transgressors find sanctuary.

I am Salome.

I am Morgan le Faye.

I am the Queen of Shayba –

My hair is black, and I am ‘dark but comely’,

(Solomon sang my song!).

My hair is red and my skin, ivory.

I am Eve’s big sister.

I am Lilith, Mother to the motherless.

I am Lilith, whose sexual fire was too hot for God.

I am Lilith, living in the Shadow.

Waiting. For you.



"Fabian’s work, which ranges from poetry to playwriting, provides us with exciting new images of Lilith and of sacred sexuality. Fabian, who refers to her profession as that of sacred prostitute, gives us Lilith in a new, strongly feminist light. She portrays Lilith as bold, openly sexual, irreverent, enlightened, righteously rageful at times and unquestionably empowered."

http://rosariomariocapalbo.files.wor.../10/satana.jpg

Th' Arch-Enemy, and thence in Heav'n call'd Satan, with bold words breaking the horrid silence thus began.

Quote:

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If thou beest he; but O how fall'n! how chang'd from him, who in the happy Realms of Light cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine myriads though bright: If he whom mutual league, united thoughts and counsels, equal hope, and hazard in the Glorious Enterprize, joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd in equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest from what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd he with his Thunder: and till then who knew the force of those dire Arms? yet not for those nor what the Potent Victor in his rage can else inflict do I repent or change, though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind and high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit, that with the mightiest rais'd me to contend, and to the fierce contention brought along innumerable force of Spirits arm'd that durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, his utmost power with adverse power oppos'd in dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n, and shook his throne...

What though the field be lost? all is not lost; the unconquerable Will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield: and what is else not to be overcome? that Glory never shall his wrath or might extort from me. To bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee, and deifie his power who from the terrour of this Arm so late doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, that were an ignominy and shame beneath this downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods and this Empyreal substance cannot fail, since through experience of this great event in Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc't, we may with more successful hope resolve to wage by force or guile eternal Warr irreconcileable, to our grand Foe, who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n.

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So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain, vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQi8W1afSEQ

"sparks"

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death. (Pablo Neruda)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWL0B7Sia-8


WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

-- Lord Byron

While looking Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy

From Paradise Lost

Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.

— Book 2, lines 910–920

The Triple Fool


I am two fools, I know—
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wiseman that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then, as th' earths inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea waters fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhymes vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain,
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To Love and Grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read;
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published;
And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.


--John Donne

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aylen

The Triple Fool


I am two fools, I know—
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wiseman that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then, as th' earths inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea waters fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhymes vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain,
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To Love and Grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read;
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published;
And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.


--John Donne

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Quote:

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Love's Diet

TO*what a cumbersome unwieldiness*
And burdenous corpulence my love had grown,
* * But that I did, to make it less,*
* * And keep it in proportion,*
Give it a diet, made it feed upon
That which love worst endures, discretion.

Above one sigh a day I allow'd him not,*
Of which my fortune, and my faults had part ;*
* * And if sometimes by stealth he got*
* * A she sigh from my mistress' heart,
And thought to feast upon that, I let him see
'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.*

If he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so*
With scorn and shame, that him it nourish'd not ;
* * If he suck'd hers, I let him know*
* * 'Twas not a tear which he had got ;*
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat ;
For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat.

Whatever he would dictate I writ that,
But burnt her letters when she writ to me ;
* * And if that favour made him fat,
* * I said, "If any title be
Convey'd by this, ah ! what doth it avail,
To be the fortieth name in an entail?"

Thus I reclaim'd my buzzard love, to fly*
At what, and when, and how, and where I choose.*
* * Now negligent of sports I lie,*
* * And now, as other falconers use,*
I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep ;
And the game kill'd, or lost, go talk or sleep.

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I think Donne was EIE. What other type could be so "fabulous"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aylen

very, very, dark, bad things. :p

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http://cdn.chud.com/2/23/900x900px-L...f_serious.jpeg

http://endlessorigami.com/wp-content...lationship.png

‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’


He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,

And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.

Leda and the Swan

by W. B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Before life set me on a different path, I had a website...it was titled:

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

Ballad

I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

-- John Keats

I Sing the Body Electric


by Walt Whitman

1


I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.


Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2


The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.


The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.


The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's
breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3


I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.


This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
love,
He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4


I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5


This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.


This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born
of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
outlet again.


Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.


The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
daughters.


As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6


The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)


The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.


(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)


Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7


A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.


Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.


In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.


Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.


Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in
parlors and lecture-rooms?)


This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.


How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
back through the centuries?)

8


A woman's body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.


Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
times all over the earth?


If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9


O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
or of any one's body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aylen

I Sing the Body Electric


by Walt Whitman

1


I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.


Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2


The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.


The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.


The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's
breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3


I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.


This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
love,
He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4


I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5


This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.


This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born
of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
outlet again.


Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.


The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
daughters.


As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6


The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)


The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.


(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)


Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7


A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.


Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.


In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.


Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.


Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in
parlors and lecture-rooms?)


This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.


How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
back through the centuries?)

8


A woman's body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.


Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
times all over the earth?


If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9


O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
or of any one's body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

---

My favorite parts:

Quote:

---

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

---

Quote:

---

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.




In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

---

Here's Wallace Stevens talking about "processions":

Quote:

---

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKKcgcqd-w

1877
I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER

(Surrender Speech)

by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER -

I am tired of fighting.

Our chiefs are killed.

Looking Glass is dead.

Toohulhulsote is dead.

The old men are all dead.

It is the young men who say no and yes.

He who led the young men is dead.

It is cold and we have no blankets.

The little children are freezing to death.

My people, some of them,

Have run away to the hills

And have no blankets, no food.

No one knows where they are-

Perhaps they are freezing to death.

I want to have time to look for my children

And see how many of them I can find.

Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired.

My heart is sad and sick.

From where the sun now stands

I will fight no more forever. - -

THE END

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aylen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKKcgcqd-w

1877
I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER

(Surrender Speech)

by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER -

I am tired of fighting.

Our chiefs are killed.

Looking Glass is dead.

Toohulhulsote is dead.

The old men are all dead.

It is the young men who say no and yes.

He who led the young men is dead.

It is cold and we have no blankets.

The little children are freezing to death.

My people, some of them,

Have run away to the hills

And have no blankets, no food.

No one knows where they are-

Perhaps they are freezing to death.

I want to have time to look for my children

And see how many of them I can find.

Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired.

My heart is sad and sick.

From where the sun now stands

I will fight no more forever. - -

THE END

---

Quote:

---

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

---

I've always loved this poem, but now I finally understand how he feels.




Robert Browning. 1812–1889


Porphyria's Lover

THE rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listen'd with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And call'd me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me—she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I look'd up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipp'd me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untighten'd next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propp'd her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gain'd instead!
Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirr'd,
And yet God has not said a word!

Super bowl... :(
It's not quiet here...

 

My body urges me to find you
Your body does the same for you.
We need. What?
Do we remember how it was?
Before?
When we were US
Before we became ME and YOU.
That’s the thing we need again.

I knew you before.
I was part of you then,
You knew me then, as well
As you know your right hand,
As I know mine. It’s part of me;
Part of me I cannot function without.
That is the need that drives us.
The thing we need again.

I am drawn again to the symbol of the TAO.
Today, to me, it is signifying
Completion, a return to the normal state,
Finally, to quiet my Soul.

3 My Heart Flutters Hastily

My heart flutters hastily,
When I think of my love of you;
It lets me not act sensibly,
It leaps from its place.
It lets me not put on a dress,
Nor wrap my scarf around me;
I put no paint upon my eyes,
I'm even not anointed.

"Don't wait, go there," says it to me,

As often as I think of him;
My heart, don't act so stupidly,
Why do you play the fool?
Sit still, the brother comes to you,
And many eyes as well.
Let not the people say of me:
"A woman fallen through love!"
Be steady when you think of him,
My heart, do not flutter!

Fourth Stanza, from Papyrus Chester Beatty I

http://vimeo.com/56463764

Not a metered poem, but still so good.

“Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark.
You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintergration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money, for the absolute has no price.”

One of the best but too long to post. Here's an excerpt. Inanna has always been my goddess of choice.

From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.
From the Great Above the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below.
From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below.

My Lady abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.
Inanna abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.
She abandoned her office of holy priestess to descend to the underworld.
...more

WilliamBlake’s ‘The Tyger’
.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
.
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
.
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
.
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
.
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

When I Became Fruit

Author: Joumana Haddad
Translated by: Issa J. Boullata

A girl and a boy I was conceived under the shade of the moon
but Adam was sacrificed at my birth
immolated to the mercenaries of night.
And to fill the gap of my other essence
my mother bathed me in waters of mystery,
placed me on the edge of each mountain
and molded me in light and darkness,
so that I become the center and the spear,
transfixed and glorious,
the angel of pleasures that have no name.

Stranger I grew
and nobody harvested my fields.
I drew my life on a white sheet,
an apple which no tree gave birth to,
then I split it and got out
partly dressed in red and partly in white.
I was not only in time or outside of it
for I matured in the two forests
and I remembered before being born
that I was a multitude of bodies
and that I slept for a long time
that I lived for a long time
and when I became fruit
I knew what awaited me.

I asked the wizards to take care of me
so they took me.
Sweet was my laughter
blue my nudity
and timid my sin.
I flew on a bird’s feather
and became pillow at the delirious hour.
They covered my body with amulets
and coated my heart with the honey of madness.
They protected my treasures
and the thieves of my treasures,
brought me silences and stories
and prepared me to live without roots.

And from that time on I fly.
I reincarnate in the cloud of each night and I travel.
I am the only one to tell me good-bye
and the only one to welcome me.

Desire is my way and the storm my compass
and in love I do not drop anchor in any port.

At night I give up most of me
then I hug myself passionately when I return.

Twin of the high tide and the low
of the wave and its sands
of the abstinence of the moon and its vices
of love
and the death of love.

During the day my laughter belongs to the others
and my secret dinner belongs to me.

Those who understand my rhythm know me,

Follow me

But never rejoin me.

If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that our dance was all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world

Whatt he was thinking about the girl
Ya, whatt he's thinking about the girl, oh

A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"

Just because she makes you feel wrong
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole

Just by playing a different role
Ya, by playing a different role, oh

The boat ya you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well ya know there's no stoppin' it

The boat ya you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it

So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she can be so cold

So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
Ya need ta spit it out, in a telephone booth
While ya call everyone that you know, and ask 'em

Where do you think she goes
Oh ya, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh

The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well ya know she's still rockin' it

The boat ya you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth ya you know there's no stoppin' it

You recognize the effect and the fact
That it's comin' when she rocks the boat.
But it's the cause hittin' on the cardinal laws
About the proper place to hang her coat.

So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kiddin'
She's been singing it all along

But you were hearin' a different song
Ya you were hearin' a different song
But you were hearin' a different song

VI.
70 He advanced to the council-table:
71 And, ``Please your honours,'' said he, ``I'm able,
72 ``By means of a secret charm, to draw
73 ``All creatures living beneath the sun,
74 ``That creep or swim or fly or run,
75 ``After me so as you never saw!
76 ``And I chiefly use my charm
77 ``On creatures that do people harm,
78 ``The mole and toad and newt and viper;
79 ``And people call me the Pied Piper.''
--Robert Browning

Full Text

At 12 o’clock in the afternoon
in the middle of the street
-Alexis.
Summer had all but brought the fruit
to its perilous end:
and the summer sun
and that boy’s look
did their work on me.
Night hid the sun.
Your face consumes my dreams.
Others feel sleep as feathered rest;
mine but in flame refigures
your image lit in me.
--Meleager

Get ready to feel sad.

Quote:

---

He looked down at his withering body and saw a hairnear his navel, swaying.

And now he saw his other hairs rise up.

He felt a hectic current in his veins.
Looking within, he saw the bubbling of his blood.

He cursed his fever, saying:
“It is the chemistry of prayer.
It increases in frequency,
seeding panic to all my being.
My cells swell with the liquid of guilt they fabricate,
juices of hatred eat my belly
my corpuscles make war in me as they devour each other.
My head heats in the combustion of anxiety,
I am polluted by the secretions of my soul’s decay,
while my brain wears away
with the scratching night and day
on the encephalograph of prayer.
I grow monstrous with the leukemia of the world.”

And he heard the hair say: “Hear me.”
And he saw it grow gray as it waved.
All his hairs he saw whiten,
and, numberless, wilt from their erect electric listening.
He saw them topple from their roots.
“How dare you!” he cursed them.
There surged a brief resuscitation to his body.
His heart took heart and pounded twice
with the health of fear
But then the plague of prayer redoubled and overwhelmed him.

In his feebleness he raged, and said:
“I will tear out this evil and free it.”

With his withered hands he tore the remaining hairs
from his body and head.
With his nails he opened his breast,
and with his fist he exploded his heart,
which erupted, a black and red volcano.

As his brain tasted, for the first time,
the birth of his doom,
he came a rolling tide, a floating mountain of ecstasy.
“I see you! I love you!” his eyes cried,
overflowing with his bright blood.
“You were the light of the world
that are now my gushing tears—
the kind and fiery tears of chaos, that wash my eyes
with the cure of oblivion.”

“He hears us!” cried his sick blood
pouring from his ears.
“Even as of old he heard our hair before it perished.”

With his last strength, the chemistry of prayer,
a few drops of his blood coagulated.
That clot whirled out, free, in the vortex of the universe.

---

Quote:

---

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

---

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ays_Hector.jpg
Yet the ash spear heavy with bronze did not sever the windpipe,
so that Hektor could still make exchange of words spoken.
But he dropped in the dust, and brilliant Achilleus vaunted above him:

Quote:

---

'Hektor, surely you thought as you killed Patroklos you would be
safe, and since I was far away you thought nothing of me,
o fool, for an avenger was left, far greater than he was,
behind him and away by the hollow ships. And it was I;
and I have broken your strength; on you the dogs and the vultures
shall feed and foully rip you; the Achaians will bury Patroklos.'

---

In his weakness Hektor of the shining helm spoke to him:

Quote:

---

'I entreat you, by your life, by your knees, by your parents,
do not let the dogs feed on me by the ships of the Achaians,
but take yourself the bronze and gold that are there in abundance,
those gifts that my father and the lady my mother will give you,
and give my body to be taken home again, so that the Trojans
and the wives of the Trojans may give me in death my rite of burning.'

---

But looking darkly at him swift-footed Achilleus answered:

Quote:

---

'No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.
I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me
to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things that
you have done to me. So there is no one who can hold the dogs off
from your head, not if they bring here and set before me ten times
and twenty times the ransom, and promise more in addition,
not if Priam son of Dardanos should offer to weigh out
your bulk in gold; not even so shall the lady your mother
who herself bore you lay you on the death-bed and mourn you:
no, but the dogs and the birds will have you all for their feasting.'

---

Then, dying, Hektor of the shining helmet spoke to him:

Quote:

---

'I know you well as I look upon you, I know that I could not
persuade you, since indeed in your breast is a heart of iron.
Be careful now; for I might be made into the gods' curse
upon you, on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo
destroy you in the Skaian gates, for all your valour.'

---

He spoke, and as he spoke the end of death closed in upon him,
and the soul fluttering free of the limbs went down into Death's house
mourning her destiny, leaving youth and manhood behind her.
Now though he was a dead man brilliant Achilleus spoke to him:

Quote:

---

'Die: and I will take my own death at whatever time
Zeus and the rest of the immortals choose to accomplish it.'

---

THE ANNUNCIATION AND PASSION.
by John Donne


TAMELY, frail body, abstain to-day ; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur ; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away ;
She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who's all ;
She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall ;
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead ;
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha ;
Sad and rejoiced she's seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen ;
At once a son is promised her, and gone ;
Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John ;
Not fully a mother, she's in orbity ;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th' abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one—
As in plain maps, the furthest west is east—
Of th' angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God's Court of Faculties,
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these.
As by the self-fix'd Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th'other is, and which we say
—Because it strays not far—doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know,
And stand firm, if we by her motion go.
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud ; to one end both.
This Church by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one ;
Or 'twas in Him the same humility,
That He would be a man, and leave to be ;
Or as creation He hath made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood's extremes ; He shall come, He is gone ;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all,
So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords.
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.

Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite

Translation, notes and metrical explanation copyright 1997 Elizabeth Vandiver; all rights reserved.

Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless
Child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I now implore you,
Don't--I beg you, Lady--with pains and torments
Crush down my spirit,

But before if ever you've heard my pleadings
Then return, as once when you left your father's
Golden house; you yoked to your shining car your
Wing-whirring sparrows;

Skimming down the paths of the sky's bright ether
On they brought you over the earth's black bosom,
Swiftly--then you stood with a sudden brilliance,
Goddess, before me;

Deathless face alight with your smile, you asked me
What I suffered, who was my cause of anguish,
What would ease the pain of my frantic mind, and
Why had I called you

To my side: "And whom should Persuasion summon
Here, to soothe the sting of your passion this time?
Who is now abusing you, Sappho? Who is
Treating you cruelly?

Now she runs away, but she'll soon pursue you;
Gifts she now rejects--soon enough she'll give them;
Now she doesn't love you, but soon her heart will
Burn, though unwilling."

Come to me once more, and abate my torment;
Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me
All I long for; Lady, in all my battles
Fight as my comrade.

THRONED in splendor, immortal Aphrodite!
Child of Zeus, Enchantress, I implore thee
Slay me not in this distress and anguish,
Lady of beauty.

Hither come as once before thou camest,
When from afar thou heard'st my voice lamenting,
Heard'st and camest, leaving thy glorious father's Palace golden,

Yoking thy chariot. Fair the doves that bore thee;
Swift to the darksome earth their course directing,
Waving their thick wings from the highest heaven
Down through the ether.

Quickly they came. Then thou, O blessed goddess,
All in smiling wreathed thy face immortal,
Bade me tell thee the cause of all my suffering,
Why now I called thee;

What for my maddened heart I most was longing.
"Whom," thou criest, "dost wish that sweet Persuasion
Now win over and lead to thy love, my Sappho?
Who is it wrongs thee?

"For, though now he flies, he soon shall follow,
Soon shall be giving gifts who now rejects them.
Even though now he love not, soon shall he love thee
Even though thou wouldst not."

Come then now, dear goddess, and release me
From my anguish. All my heart's desiring
Grant thou now. Now too again as aforetime,
Be thou my ally.

This English translation, by William Hyde Appleton, of 'Hymn to Aphrodite' is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.

A Death Scene by Emily Brontë

1. ‘O Day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;

2. ‘He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!

3. ‘Edward, awake, awake-
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden’s lake-
Arouse thee from thy dreams!

4. ‘Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend! I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:

5. ‘I hear its billows roar-
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.

6. ‘Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.

7. ‘It is not death, but pain
That struggles in thy breast-
Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again;
I cannot let thee rest!’

8. One long look, that sore reproved me
For the woe I could not bear-
One mute look of suffering moved me
To repent my useless prayer:

9. And, with sudden check, the heaving
Of distraction passed away;
Not a sign of further grieving
Stirred my soul that awful day.

10. Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting;
Sunk to peace the twilight breeze:
Summer dews fell softly, wetting
Glen, and glade, and silent trees.

11. Then his eyes began to weary,
Weighed beneath a mortal sleep;
And their orbs grew strangely dreary,
Clouded, even as they would weep.

12. But they wept not, but they changed not,
Never moved, and never closed;
Troubled still, and still they ranged not-
Wandered not, nor yet reposed!

13. So I knew that he was dying-
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. (lines 154–173)

To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.

We have been so many places together --
Spiritually, emotionally, physically.
Separate or apart we are together.
For some time I was lost inside myself,
Enveloped, imagining only the ideal, afraid to see you.
I am ready to face you again;
To be there,
To embrace the emotions you inspire.
We cannot truly start over;
The past affords a depth we can’t dismiss.
But we can realize a new awareness,
A new openness, an enhanced understanding.
Where do we begin?
Our expanse is unbounded, the frontiers infinite.
In every direction our lives are intertwined.

[Something I didn't read until after he had died. Sitting there in my inbox waiting to be opened. I guess it was supposed to be that way. I need to go through the rest of my email to see what else I have missed.]

"How dare you consider me a clinging vine! I am a rose, I can stand independently. I am not a social climber, a trellis is not what I ask of you. Do not attempt to domesticate me, my dearest.

Why must you assume that I need you? I am a free thinker, my mind is mine alone. To impose your will is to lose me, a dictator I shall overthrow. Do not ignore my strength and worth, my treasure.

Is it only my beauty that you value? I am a puzzle, an infinite maze of logic and emotions. To expect predictability is to incite rebellious chaos. Do not take it upon yourself to conform me, my own.

What do you think you can create in me? I am unique in the universe, no copy will compare. To try is to create an unyielding anomaly. Do not endeavor to propagate me, my love.

How dare you consider me a challenge! I am wild, my love is unrestrainable. To prune away my spontaneity is to make me a lie, a gardener I deny. Do not lay your ambitions on me, my sweetest.

Where will you look for me when I leave you? I am dangerous, you must keep your distance from me. Do not love me. I will only cause you suffering with the thorns that make me who I am, my heart."

-- Kiera Martens

Quote:

---

Too Late

Each on his own strict line we move,
And some find death ere they find love;
So far apart their lives are thrown
From the twin soul which halves their own.

And sometimes, by harder fate,
The lovers meet, but meet too late.
-- Thy heart is mine! -- True, true! ah, true!
-- Then, love, thy hand! -- Ah no! adieu!

---

Quote:

---

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

---

Quote:

---

Meeting

Again I see my bliss at hand,
The town, the lake are here;
My Marguerite smiles upon the strand,
Unalter'd with the year.

I know that graceful figure fair,
That cheek of languid hue;
I know that soft, enkerchief'd hair,
And those sweet eyes of blue.

Again I spring to make my choice;
Again in tones of ire
I hear a God's tremendous voice:
"Be counsell'd, and retire."

Ye guiding Powers who join and part,
What would ye have with me?
Ah, warn some more ambitious heart
And let the peaceful be!

---

Quote:

---

A Last Thought


Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last!

Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still!

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged -and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When thy forts of folly fail,
Find thy body by the wall!

---

Matthew Arnold

“At one glance…”

At one glance
I loved you
With a thousand hearts

They can hold against me
No sin except my love for you
Come to me
Don’t go away

Let the zealots think
Loving is sinful
Never mind
Let me burn in the hellfire
Of that sin

-- Mihri Hatun

From last nights impromptu, voice chat, poetry reading:
I have terrible stage fright! :eek:

:cool:

E. E. Cummings

In The Rain-

in the rain-
darkness, the sunset
being sheathed i sit and
think of you

the holy
city which is your face
your little cheeks the streets
of smiles

your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss

and
there is the sweet shy pirouette
your hair
and then

your dancesong
soul. rarely-beloved
a single star is
uttered,and i

think
of you

~~~

I Like My Body When It Is With Your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

~~~

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

He looked down at his withering body and saw a hair
near his navel, swaying.

And now he saw his other hairs rise up.

He felt a hectic current in his veins.
Looking within, he saw the bubbling of his blood.

He cursed his fever, saying:
“It is the chemistry of prayer.
It increases in frequency,
seeding panic to all my being.
My cells swell with the liquid of guilt they fabricate,
juices of hatred eat my belly
my corpuscles make war in me as they devour each other.
My head heats in the combustion of anxiety,
I am polluted by the secretions of my soul’s decay,
while my brain wears away
with the scratching night and day
on the encephalograph of prayer.
I grow monstrous with the leukemia of the world.”

And he heard the hair say: “Hear me.”
And he saw it grow gray as it waved.
All his hairs he saw whiten,
and, numberless, wilt from their erect electric listening.
He saw them topple from their roots.
“How dare you!” he cursed them.
There surged a brief resuscitation to his body.
His heart took heart and pounded twice
with the health of fear
But then the plague of prayer redoubled and overwhelmed him.

In his feebleness he raged, and said:
“I will tear out this evil and free it.”

With his withered hands he tore the remaining hairs
from his body and head.
With his nails he opened his breast,
and with his fist he exploded his heart,
which erupted, a black and red volcano.

As his brain tasted, for the first time,
the birth of his doom,
he came a rolling tide, a floating mountain of ecstasy.
“I see you! I love you!” his eyes cried,
overflowing with his bright blood.
“You were the light of the world
that are now my gushing tears—
the kind and fiery tears of chaos, that wash my eyes
with the cure of oblivion.”

“He hears us!” cried his sick blood
pouring from his ears.
“Even as of old he heard our hair before it perished.”

With his last strength, the chemistry of prayer,
a few drops of his blood coagulated.
That clot whirled out, free, in the vortex of the universe.

lilith: wouldn't accept her husband in a dominant sexual position
eve: fed adam the poison apple

guy couldn't catch a break; bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks

I posted this song to the secret crush thread. The lyrics are beautiful.

Mediaeval Italian Noi leggiavamo un giorno diletto Di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse Soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto Per più fiate li occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso Ma soso un punto fu quel che ci vinse Quando leggemmo il disïato riso Esser basciato da cotanto amante Questi, che mai da me non fia divisio La bocco mi bascio tutto tremante Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante Mentre che l'undo spirto questo disse L'altro piangëa sì che di pietade To venni men così com' io morisse E caddi come corpo morto cade

English Translation we were reading one day for pleasure of lancelot how love beset him we were alone and without any suspicion many times the reading drove our eyes together and turned our faces pale but one point alone was the one that overpowered us when we read that the yearned-for smile was kissed by so great a lover he who will never be separated from me kissed my mouth all trembling galeotto was the book and he who wrote it that day we read there no further while one spirit said this the other was weeping so that for pity i fainted as if i were dying and i fell as a dead body falls

I wrote poetry once or twice and got an acolade.

Now as an LSE i'm too realz for it all you know?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Words

I wrote poetry once or twice and got an acolade.

Now as an LSE i'm too realz for it all you know?

---

:lol:

Sappho To Her Girlfriends

This is my song of maidens dear to me.
Eranna, a slight girl I counted thee,
When first I looked upon thy form and face,
Slim as a reed, and all devoid of grace.
But stately stature, grace and beauty came
Unto thee with the years — O, dost not shame
For this, Eranna, that thy pride hath grown
Therewith? Alas for thee ! I have not known
One beauty ever of more scornful mien,
As though thou wert of all earth's daughters queen!
Mnasidica is comelier, perchance,
Than my Gyrinna — ah, but sweetly rings
Gyrinna's matchless voice ! In rapture-trance
I listen, listen, while Gyrinna sings.
Hero of Gyara is fleet of foot
As fawns, and as light-footed in the dance,
The dance taught by the measures of my lute.
Ever-impassioned Gorgo! — is it strange
That I grow weary of the change on change
Of thine adored ones? — of thy rhapsodies
O'er each new girlfriend, while the old love dies?
Joy to thee, daughter of a princely race,
For thy last dear one! Lie in her embrace —
Till shines a new star on thy raptured eyes!
Fonder of maids thou art, I trow, than she.
The ghost who nightly steal young girls, to be
In Hades of her woeful company.
This is my fair girl-garden: sweet they grow —
Rose, violet, asphodel and lily's snow;
And which the sweetest is, I do not know;
For rosy arms and starry eyes are there.
Honey-sweet voices and cheeks passing fair.
And these shall men, I ween, remember long;
For these shall bloom for ever in my song.

The Night-wind

In summer's mellow midnight,
A cloudless moon shone through
Our open parlour window,
And rose-trees wet with dew.

I sat in silent musing;
The soft wind waved my hair;
It told me heaven was glorious,
And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing
To bring such thoughts to me;
But still it whispered lowly,
How dark the woods will be!

"The thick leaves in my murmur
Are rustling like a dream,
And all their myriad voices
Instinct with spirit seem."

I said, "Go, gentle singer,
Thy wooing voice is kind:
But do not think its music
Has power to reach my mind.

"Play with the scented flower,
The young tree's supple bough,
And leave my human feelings
In their own course to flow."

The wanderer would not heed me;
Its kiss grew warmer still.
"O come!" it sighed so sweetly;
"I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.

"Were we not friends from childhood?
Have I not loved thee long?
As long as thou, the solemn night,
Whose silence wakes my song.

"And when thy heart is resting
Beneath the church-aisle stone,
I shall have time for mourning,
And THOU for being alone."

In these stanzas a louder gale has roused the sleeper on her
pillow: the wakened soul struggles to blend with the storm by
which it is swayed:--

Ay--there it is! it wakes to-night
Deep feelings I thought dead;
Strong in the blast--quick gathering light--
The heart's flame kindles red.

"Now I can tell by thine altered cheek,
And by thine eyes' full gaze,
And by the words thou scarce dost speak,
How wildly fancy plays.

"Yes--I could swear that glorious wind
Has swept the world aside,
Has dashed its memory from thy mind
Like foam-bells from the tide:

"And thou art now a spirit pouring
Thy presence into all:
The thunder of the tempest's roaring,
The whisper of its fall:

"An universal influence,
From thine own influence free;
A principle of life--intense--
Lost to mortality.

"Thus truly, when that breast is cold,
Thy prisoned soul shall rise;
The dungeon mingle with the mould--
The captive with the skies.
Nature's deep being, thine shall hold,
Her spirit all thy spirit fold,
Her breath absorb thy sighs.
Mortal! though soon life's tale is told;
Who once lives, never dies!"

--Emily Brontë

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish, 1892 - 1982



A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate:
I’d like to find you in the shower
And chase the soap for half an hour.
I’d like to have you in my power and see your eyes dilate.
I’d like to have your back to scour
And other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
To chase you screaming up a tower or make you cower
By asking you to differentiate Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I’d like to successfully guess your weight and win you at a fête.
I’d like to offer you a flower.

I like the hair upon your shoulders,
Falling like water over boulders.
I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.
Your collar-bones have great potential
(I’d like all your particulars in folders marked Confidential).

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,
I like the way your lips disclose
The neat arrangement of your teeth
(Half above and half beneath) in rows.

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.
Your upper arms drive me berserk.
I like the way your elbows work, on hinges.

I like your wrists, I like your glands,
I like the fingers on your hands.
I’d like to teach them how to count,
And certain things we might exchange,
Something familiar for something strange.
I’d like to give you just the right amount and get some change.

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup. I like your legs when you unwind
them.
Even in trousers I don’t mind them.
I like each softly-moulded kneecap.
I like the little crease behind them.

I’d always know, without a recap, where to find them.
I like the sculpture of your ears.
I like the way your profile disappears
Whenever you decide to turn and face me.

I’d like to cross two hemispheres and have you chase me.
I’d like to smuggle you across frontiers
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.
I’d like you to embrace me.
I’d like to see you ironing your skirt and cancelling other dates.
I’d like to button up your shirt.
I like the way your chest inflates.
I’d like to soothe you when you’re hurt
Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.

I’d like you even if you were malign
And had a yen for sudden homicide.
I’d let you put insecticide into my wine.
I’d even like you if you were the Bride of Frankenstein
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian’s Jekyll and Hyde.
I’d even like you as my Julian of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan
How melodramatic
If you were something muttering in attics
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of boolean mathematics.

You are the end of self-abuse.
You are the eternal feminine.
I’d like to find a good excuse
To call on you and find you in.
I’d like to put my hand beneath your chin. And see you grin.
I’d like to taste your Charlotte Russe,
I’d like to feel my lips upon your skin,
I’d like to make you reproduce.

I’d like you in my confidence.
I’d like to be your second look.
I’d like to let you try the French Defence and mate you with my rook.
I’d like to be your preference and hence
I’d like to be around when you unhook.
I’d like to be your only audience,
The final name in your appointment book, your future tense.

John Fuller

A Dream Child

by Don Marquis


WHERE tides of tossed wistaria bloom
Foam up in purple turbulence,
Where twining boughs have built a room
And wing'd winds pause to garner scents
And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom,
She broods in pensive indolence.

What is the thought that holds her thrall,
That dims her sight with unshed tears?
What songs of sorrow droop and fall
In broken music for her ears?
What voices thrill her and recall
The poignant joy of happier years?

She dreams 'tis not the winds which pass
That whisper through the shaken vine;
Whose footstep stirs the rustling grass
None else that listened might divine;
She sees her child that never was
Look up with longing in his eyne.

Unkissed, his lifted forehead gains
A grace not earthly, but more rare--
For since her heart but only feigns,
Wherefore should love not feign him fair?
Put blood of roses in his veins,
Weave yellow sunshines for his hair?

All ghosts of little children dead
That wander wistful, uncaressed,
Their seeking lips by love unfed,
She fain would cradle on her breast
For his sweet sake whose lonely head
Has never known that tender rest.

And thus she sits, and thus she broods,
Where drifted blossoms freak the grass;
The winds that move across her moods
Pulse with low whispers as they pass,
And in their eerier interludes
She hears a voice that never was.

The numbing cold of a winter's night brings me no harm nor the rain showering its vast waters on me.
This labour won't hurt me, if only Delia unlocks the door and calls me silently with the sound of her tapping.
Hide your eyes, man or woman whom we meet with: Venus wants her thefts to be concealed.

Don't startle us with clattering feet or ask our names, nor bring the light of glowing torches near us.
If anyone has seen us unawares, let him hide it, and deny by all the gods that he remembers.
Since if any turns informer, he'll find Venus is the child of blood and angry seas.

Still, your husband won't believe them, the truthful witch promised me that, with her magic rites.

I've seen her drawing stars down from the sky:
her chant turns back the course of the flowing river.
her spells split the ground, conjure ghosts from the tomb and summon dead bones from the glowing funeral pyre:
now she holds the infernal crew with magic hissing, now sprinkling milk orders them to retreat.
As she wishes, she dispels the cloud from the sombre sky:
as she wishes, calls up snows to a summer world.

She composed a spell for me, that you can deceive with:
chant it three times, spit three times when you've done.
Then he'll not be able to believe anyone about us, not even himself if he saw us in your soft bed.
Still you must keep away from others: since he'll see all the rest: it's only me he'll see nothing of!

What? Do I believe? Surely she's the same who said she could dissolve my love with herbs or charms,
and purified me with torches, and in the calm of night a mournful sacrifice fell to the gods of sorcery. (2)

Portrait of a Lady
BY T. S. ELIOT

Thou hast committed —
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
(The Jew of Malta)

I
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do—
With "I have saved this afternoon for you";
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
"So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room."
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you —
Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!"
Among the winding of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite "false note."
— Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ...."

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark.
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III
The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.

"And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn."
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

"Perhaps you can write to me."
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
"I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends."
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

"For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends."

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—
Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for quite a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a "dying fall"
Now that we talk of dying—
And should I have the right to smile?

Technically might not be a poem but it is. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkkTZ7zQ3BA

"it isn't always i am well
for sometimes i am ailing
and yet in steaming night i smile
to downplay this my failing
and make a noise to bury all
of your weeping and your wailing

and then in bed by little light
and closed off from it all
i must try and bring a conscious end to night
and hope that dreams begin to fall

the color of my dreams, they would be you...ruby
oh if i could close my eyes and bring you to me
push your head into
make you not you not you not you but me

and then in dreams i wander free
and see some things i'm meant to be
and sometimes even i see thee

and would the night go on and on
and not tomorrow end at dawn
and whatever mat i lay upon
dissolve

the color of my dreams, if i had dreams, they would be you...ruby
everything i do is done to bring you closer to me
when you sleep your breath it blows right on through me

the color of my dreams, if i had dreams, they would be you...ruby
the color of my dreams, they would be you...ruby

and illness be or wellness thrive
my dream proves i am yet alive"

Last night I had really violent dreams, so violent that I don't want to tell anyone. I was basically a child in them but I saw myself at different ages, throughout the dreams, and I was extremely angry at my EII sister and other people. This kind of stuff tends to come up after she leaves (she was here a week this time). We are the two oldest, from my mom, and grew up together. She always wants to bring up stuff I feel has been analyzed to death over the years but I know it is because she is still processing and hasn't let it go. I love her very much and would do anything for her but she seems to carry a heavy darkness around her still. I won't blame that on her sp/sx. :content:

Anyway I woke up and needed to read "Octaves" for some reason. It was etched into my memory to do so.

 

I
TO get at the eternal strength of things,
And fearlessly to make strong songs of it,
Is, to my mind, the mission of that man
The world would call a poet. He may sing
But roughly, and withal ungraciously;
But if he touch to life the one right chord
Wherein God's music slumbers, and awake
To truth one drowsed ambition, he sings well.

II
We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand.

III
To mortal ears the plainest word may ring
Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false
And out of tune as ever to our own
Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;
But if that word be the plain word of Truth,
It leaves an echo that begets itself,
Persistent in itself and of itself,
Regenerate, reiterate, replete.

IV
Tumultuously void of a clean scheme
Whereon to build, whereof to formulate,
The legion life that riots in mankind
Goes ever plunging upward, up and down,
Most like some crazy regiment at arms,
Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,
And ever led resourcelessly along
To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.

V
To me the groaning of world-worshippers
Rings like a lonely music played in hell
By one with art enough to cleave the walls
Of heaven with his cadence, but without
The wisdom or the will to comprehend
The strangeness of his own perversity,
And all without the courage to deny
The profit and the pride of his defeat.

VI
While we are drilled in error, we are lost
Alike to truth and usefulness. We think
We are great warriors now, and we can brag
Like Titans; but the world is growing young,
And we, the fools of time, are growing with it: --
We do not fight to-day, we only die;
We are too proud of death, and too ashamed
Of God, to know enough to be alive.

VII
There is one battle-field whereon we fall
Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!
We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves
To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred
By sorrow, and the ministering wheels
Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds
Of human gloom are lost against the gleam
That shines on Thought's impenetrable mail.

VIII
When we shall hear no more the cradle-songs
Of ages -- when the timeless hymns of Love
Defeat them and outsound them -- we shall know
The rapture of that large release which all
Right science comprehends; and we shall read,
With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,
That record of All-Soul whereon God writes
In everlasting runes the truth of Him.

IX
The guerdon of new childhood is repose: --
Once he has read the primer of right thought,
A man may claim between two smithy strokes
Beatitude enough to realize
God's parallel completeness in the vague
And incommensurable excellence
That equitably uncreates itself
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.

X
There is no loneliness: -- no matter where
We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends
Forsake us in the seeming, we are all
At one with a complete companionship;
And though forlornly joyless be the ways
We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams
Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,
Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.

XI
When one that you and I had all but sworn
To be the purest thing God ever made
Bewilders us until at last it seems
An angel has come back restigmatized, --
Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is
On earth to make us faithful any more,
But never are quite wise enough to know
The wisdom that is in that wonderment.

XII
Where does a dead man go? -- The dead man dies;
But the free life that would no longer feed
On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh
Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance,
Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;
And when the dead man goes it seems to me
'T were better for us all to do away
With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.

XIII
Still through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,
And unremunerative years we search
To get where life begins, and still we groan
Because we do not find the living spark
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,
To dream of untriangulated stars.

XIV
With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough
To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates
Between me and the glorifying light
That screens itself with knowledge, I discern
The searching rays of wisdom that reach through
The mist of shame's infirm credulity,
And infinitely wonder if hard words
Like mine have any message for the dead.

XV
I grant you friendship is a royal thing,
But none shall ever know that royalty
For what it is till he has realized
His best friend in himself. 'T is then, perforce,
That man's unfettered faith indemnifies
Of its own conscious freedom the old shame,
And love's revealed infinitude supplants
Of its own wealth and wisdom the old scorn.

XVI
Though the sick beast infect us, we are fraught
Forever with indissoluble Truth,
Wherein redress reveals itself divine,
Transitional, transcendent. Grief and loss,
Disease and desolation, are the dreams
Of wasted excellence; and every dream
Has in it something of an ageless fact
That flouts deformity and laughs at years.

XVII
We lack the courage to be where we are: --
We love too much to travel on old roads,
To triumph on old fields; we love too much
To consecrate the magic of dead things,
And yieldingly to linger by long walls
Of ruin, where the ruinous moonlight
That sheds a lying glory on old stones
Befriends us with a wizard's enmity.

XVIII
Something as one with eyes that look below
The battle-smoke to glimpse the foeman's charge,
We through the dust of downward years may scan
The onslaught that awaits this idiot world
Where blood pays blood for nothing, and where life
Pays life to madness, till at last the ports
Of gilded helplessness be battered through
By the still crash of salvatory steel.

XIX
To you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,
And wonder if the night will ever come,
I would say this: The night will never come,
And sorrow is not always. But my words
Are not enough; your eyes are not enough;
The soul itself must insulate the Real,
Or ever you do cherish in this life --
In this life or in any life -- repose.

XX
Like a white wall whereon forever breaks
Unsatisfied the tumult of green seas,
Man's unconjectured godliness rebukes
With its imperial silence the lost waves
Of insufficient grief. This mortal surge
That beats against us now is nothing else
Than plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakes
Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.

XXI
Nor jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme
Reverberates aright, or ever shall,
One cadence of that infinite plain-song
Which is itself all music. Stronger notes
Than any that have ever touched the world
Must ring to tell it -- ring like hammer-blows,
Right-echoed of a chime primordial,
On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge.

XXII
The prophet of dead words defeats himself:
Whoever would acknowledge and include
The foregleam and the glory of the real,
Must work with something else than pen and ink
And painful preparation: he must work
With unseen implements that have no names,
And he must win withal, to do that work,
Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.

XXIII
To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn
Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud
The constant opportunity that lives
Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget
For this large prodigality of gold
That larger generosity of thought, --
These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,
The fundamental blunders of mankind.

XXIV
Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance;
The master of the moment, the clean seer
Of ages, too securely scans what is,
Ever to be appalled at what is not;
He sees beyond the groaning borough lines
Of Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knows
That Love's complete communion is the end
Of anguish to the liberated man.

XXV
Here by the windy docks I stand alone,
But yet companioned. There the vessel goes,
And there my friend goes with it; but the wake
That melts and ebbs between that friend and me
Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful
And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships
Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing
Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

-- Pablo Neruda

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aylen

My biggest regret on this forum is the original title of this thread.

---

@Aylen it can be changed if you'd like :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by glam

@Aylen it can be changed if you'd like :)

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Thanks Glam. I had BG change it already. I won't mention what it was before. lol

This is epic.


The Sphinx

By Oscar Wilde

In a dim corner of my room
For longer than my fancy thinks,
A beautiful and silent Sphinx
Has watched me through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile
She does not rise she does not stir
For silver moons are nought to her
And nought to her the suns that reel.
Red follows grey across the air,
The waves of moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go
And in the night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old
And all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat
With eyes of satin rimmed with gold.
Upon the mat she lies and leers
And on the tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and fur
Or ripples to her pointed ears.

Come forth my lovely seneschal!
So somnolent, so statuesque!
Come forth you exquisite grotesque!
Half woman and half animal!
Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx!
And put your head upon my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see
Your body spotted like the Lynx!

And let me touch those curving claws
Of yellow ivory and grasp
The tail that like a monstrous Asp
Coils round your heavy velvet paws!
A thousand weary centuries
Are thine while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green
For Autumn's gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs
On the great sand-stone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks,
And you have looked on Hippogriffs.
O tell me, were you standing by
When Isis to Osiris knelt?
And did you watch the Egyptian melt
Her union for Anthony

And drink the jewel-drunken wine
And bend her head in mimic awe
To see the huge pro-consul draw
The salted tunny from the brine?
And did you mark the Cyprian kiss
With Adon on his catafalque,
And did you follow Amanalk
The god of Heliopolis?
And did you talk with Thoth, and did
You hear the moon-horned Io weep
And know the painted kings who sleep
Beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?
Lift up your large black satin eyes
Which are like cushions where one sinks,
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx,
And sing me all your memories.

Sing to me of the Jewish maid
Who wandered with the Holy Child,
And how you led them through the wild,
And how they slept beneath your shade.

Sing to me of that odorous
Green eve when crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian's gilded barge
The laughter of Antinous,

And lapped the stream, and fed your drouth,
And watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare
Young slave with his pomegranate mouth.

Sing to me of the Labyrinth
In which the two-formed bull was stalled,
Sing to me of the night you crawled
Across the temple's granite plinth

When through the purple corridors
The screaming scarlet Ibis flew
In terror, and a horrid dew
Dripped from the moaning Mandragores,

And the great torpid crocodile
Within the great shed slimy tears,
And tore the jewels from his ears
And staggered back into the Nile,

And the Priests cursed you with shrill psalms
As in your claws you seized their snake
And crept away with it to slake
Your passion by the shuddering palms.

Who were your lovers, who were they
Who wrestled for you in the dust?
Which was the vessel of your Lust,
What Leman had you every day?

Did giant lizards come and crouch
Before you on the reedy banks?
Did Gryphons with great metal flanks
Leap on you in your trampled couch,

Did monstrous hippopotami
Come sidling to you in the mist
Did gilt-scaled dragons write and twist
With passion as you passed them by?

And from that brick-built Lycian tomb
What horrible Chimaera came
With fearful heads and fearful flame
To breed new wonders from your womb?

Or had you shameful secret guests
And did you harry to your home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam
With curious rock-crystal breasts;

Or did you, treading through the froth,
Call to the brown Sidonian
For tidings of Leviathan,
Leviathan or Behemoth?

Or did you when the sun was set,
Climb up the cactus-covered slope
To meet your swarthy Ethiop
Whose body was of polished jet?

Or did you while the earthen skiffs
Dropt down the gray Nilotic flats
At twilight, and the flickering bats
Flew round the temple's triple glyphs

Steal to the border of the bar
And swim across the silent lake
And slink into the vault and make
The Pyramid your lúpanar,

Till from each black sarcophagus
Rose up the painted, swathèd dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed
The ivory-horned Trageophos?

Or did you love the God of flies
Who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed
With wine unto the waist, or Pasht
Who had green beryls for her eyes?

Or that young God, the Tyrian,
Who was more amorous than the dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love
The God of the Assyrian,

Whose wings that like transparent talc
Rose high above his hawk-faced head
Painted with silver and with red
And ribbed with rods of Oreichalch?

Or did huge Apis from his car
Leap down and lay before your feet
Big blossoms of the honey-sweet,
And honey-coloured nenuphar?

How subtle secret is your smile;
Did you love none then? Nay I know
Great Ammon was your bedfellow!
He lay with you beside the Nile!

The river-horses in the slime
Trumpeted when they saw him come
Odorous with Syrian galbanum
And smeared with spikenard and with thyme.

He came along the river bank
Like some tall galley argent-sailed
He strode across the waters, mailed
In beauty and the waters sank.

He strode across the desert sand,
He reached the valley where you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day:
Then touched your black breasts with his hand.

You kissed his mouth with mouth of flame,
You made the hornèd-god your own,
You stood behind him on his throne:
You called him by his secret name,

You whispered monstrous oracles
Into the caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers
You taught him monstrous miracles,

While Ammon was your bedfellow
Your chamber was the steaming Nile
And with your curved Archaic smile
You watched his passion come and go.

With Syrian oils his brows were bright
And wide-spread as a tent at noon
His marble limbs made pale the moon
And lent the day a larger light,

His long hair was nine cubits span
And coloured like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garments' hem,
The merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies
Upon a vat of new-made wine,
The seas could not insapphirine
The perfect azure of his eyes.

His thick, soft throat was white as milk
And threaded with thin veins of blue
And curious pearls like frozen dew
Were broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled
He was too bright to look upon
For on his ivory breast there shone
The wondrous ocean-emerald,

That mystic, moonlight jewel which
Some diver of the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves
And carried to the Colchian witch.

Before his gilded galiot
Ran naked vine-wreathed corybants
And lines of swaying elephants
Knelt down to draw his chariot,

And lines of swarthy Nubians
Bore up his litter as he rode
Down the great granite-paven road,
Between the nodding peacock fans.

The merchants brought him steatite
From Sidon in their painted ships;
The meanest cup that touched his lips
Was fashioned from a chrysolite.

The merchants brought him cedar chests
Of rich apparel, bound with cords;
His train was borne by Memphian lords;
Young kings were glad to be his guests.

Ten hundred shaven priests did bow
To Ammon's altar day and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light
Through Ammon's carven house, and now

Foul snake and speckled adder with
Their young ones crawl from stone to stone
For ruined is the house, and prone
The great rose-marble monolith;

Wild ass or strolling jackal comes
And crouches in the mouldering gates,
Wild satyrs call unto their mates
Across the fallen fluted drums.

And on the summit of the pile,
The blue-faced ape of Horus sits
And gibbers while the fig-tree splits
The pillars of the peristyle.

The God is scattered here and there;
Deep hidden in the windy sand
I saw his giant granite hand
Still clenched in impotent despair.

And many a wandering caravan
Of stately negroes, silken-shawled,
Crossing the desert, halts appalled
Before the neck that none can span.

And many a bearded Bedouin
Draws back his yellow-striped burnous
To gaze upon the Titan thews
Of him who was thy paladin.

Go seek his fragments on the moor,
And wash them in the evening dew,
And from their pieces make anew
Thy mutilated paramour.

Go seek them where they lie alone
And from their broken pieces make
Thy bruisèd bedfellow! And wake
Mad passions in the senseless stone!

Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns;
He loved your body; oh be kind!
Pour spikenard on his hair and wind
Soft rolls of linen round his limbs;

Wind round his head the figured coins,
Stain with red fruits the pallid lips;
Weave purple for his shrunken hips
And purple for his barren loins!

Away to Egypt! Have no fear;
Only one God has ever died,
Only one God has let His side
Be wounded by a soldier's spear.

But these, thy lovers, are not dead;
Still by the hundred-cubit gate
Dog-faced Anubis sits in state
With lotus lilies for thy head.

Still from his chair of porphyry
Giant Memnon strains his lidless eyes
Across the empty land and cries
Each yellow morning unto thee.

And Nilus with his broken horn
Lies in his black and oozy bed
And till thy coming will not spread
His waters on the withering corn.

Your lovers are not dead, I know,
And will rise up and hear thy voice
And clash their cymbals and rejoice
And run to kiss your mouth, and so,

Set wings upon your argosies!
Set horses to your ebon car!
Back to your Nile! Or if you are
Grown sick of dead divinities;

Follow some roving lion's spoor
Across the copper-coloured plain,
Reach out and hale him by the mane
And bid him to be your paramour!

Crouch by his side upon the grass
And set your white teeth in his throat,
And when you hear his dying note,
Lash your long flanks of polished brass

And take a tiger for your mate,
Whose amber sides are flecked with black,
And ride upon his gilded back
In triumph through the Theban gate,

And toy with him in amorous jests,
And when he turns and snarls and gnaws,
Oh smite him with your jasper claws
And bruise him with your agate breasts!

Why are you tarrying? Get hence!
I weary of your sullen ways.
I weary of your steadfast gaze,
Your somnolent magnificence.

Your horrible and heavy breath
Makes the light flicker in the lamp,
And on my brow I feel the damp
And dreadful dews of night and death,

Your eyes are like fantastic moons
That shiver in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake
That dances to fantastic tunes.

Your pulse makes poisonous melodies,
And your black throat is like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal
On Saracenic tapestries.

Away! the sulphur-coloured stars
Are hurrying through the Western gate!
Away! Or it may be too late
To climb their silent silver cars!

See, the dawn shivers round the gray,
Gilt-dialled towers, and the rain
Streams down each diamonded pane
And blurs with tears the wannish day.

What snake-tressed fury, fresh from Hell,
With uncouth gestures and unclean,
Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen
And led you to a student's cell?

What songless, tongueless ghost of sin
Crept through the curtains of the night
And saw my taper burning bright,
And knocked and bade you enter in?

Are there not others more accursed,
Whiter with leprosies than I?
Are Abana and Pharphar dry,
That you come here to slake your thirst?

False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx,
Old Charon, leaning on his oar,
Waits for my coin. Go thou before
And leave me to my crucifix,

Whose pallid burden, sick with pain,
Watches the world with wearied eyes.
And weeps for every soul that dies,
And weeps for every soul in vain.

"Think gently of the erring:
Ye know not of the power
With which the dark temptation came
In some unguarded hour.
Ye may not know how earnestly
They struggled, or how well,
Until the hour of weakness came
And sadly thus they fell.

Think gently of the erring:
Oh! do not thou forget,
However darkly stained by sin
He is thy brother yet;
Heir of the selfsame heritage,
Child of the selfsame God,
He has but stumbled in the path
Thou hast in weakness trod.

Speak gently to the erring:
For is it not enough
That innocence and peace have gone,
Without thy censure rough?
It sure must be a weary lot,
That sin-stained heart to bear,
And those who share a happier fate
Their chidings well may spare.

Speak gently to the erring:
Thou yet may'st lead them back
With holy words and tones of love,
From misery's thorny track:
Forget not thou hast often sinned,
And sinful yet must be;
Deal gently with the erring, then,
As God has dealt with thee."

I Ran to the forest for shelter,
Breathless, half sobbing;
I put my arms round a tree,
Pillowed my head against the rough bark.
"Protect me," I said. "I am a lost child."
But the tree showered silver drops on my face and hair.
A wind sprang up from the ends of the earth;
It lashed the forest together.
A huge green wave thundered and burst over my head.
I prayed, implored, "Please take care of me!"
But the wind pulled at my cloak and the rain beat upon
me.
Little rivers tore up the ground and swamped the bushes.
A frenzy possessed the earth: I felt that the earth was
drowning
In a bubbling cavern of space. I alone--
Smaller than the smallest fly--was alive and terrified.
Then for what reason I know not, I became trium-
phant
"Well, kill me!" I cried and ran out into the open.
But the storm ceased: the sun spread his wings
And floated serene in the silver pool of the sky.
I put my hands over my face: I was blushing.
And the trees swung together and delicately laughed.


Katherine Mansfield

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

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 Book of Thel: Notes

The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks,
All but the youngest. She in paleness sought the secret air,
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day.
Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard,
And thus her gentle lamentation falls like the morning dew;

'O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile & fall?
Ah! Thel is like a wat'ry bow, and like a parting cloud,
Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows in the water,
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,
Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.
Ah! gentle may I lay me down and gentle rest my head,
And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gentle hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden of the evening time.'

The Lilly of the Valley, breathing in the humble grass,
Answer'd the lovely maid and said: 'I am a wat'ry weed,
And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales;
So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head;
Yet I am visited from heaven, and he that smiles on all
Walks in the valley, and each morn over me spreads his hand
Saying, "Rejoice, thou humble grass, thou new-born lilly flower,
Thou gentle maid of silent valleys and of modest brooks;
For thou shalt be clothed in light, and fed with morning manna,
Till summer's heat melts thee beside the fountains and the springs
To flourish in eternal vales". Then why should Thel complain?
Why should the mistress of the vales of Har utter a sigh?
She ceas'd & smil'd in tears, then sat down in her silver shrine.

Thel answer'd: 'O thou little virgin of the peaceful valley,
Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless, the o'erfired;
Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb, he smells thy milky garments,
He crops thy flowers while thou sittest smiling in his face,
Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints.
Thy wine doth purify the golden honey; thy perfume,
Which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass that springs,
revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed.
But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun:
I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place?'

'Queen of the vales,' the Lilly answer'd, 'ask the tender cloud,
And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky,
And why it scatters its bright beauty thro' the humid air.
Descend, O little cloud, & hover before the eyes of Thel.'

The Cloud descended, and the Lilly bow'd her modest head,
And went to mind her numerous charge among the verdant grass.

II

'O little cloud,' the virgin said, 'I charge thee to tell to me
Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away;
Then we shall seek thee, but not find. Ah! Thel is like to thee:
I pass away; yet I complain, and no one hears my voice.'

The Cloud then shew'd his golden head, & his bright form emerg'd,
Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel:

'O virgin, know'st thou not? Our steeds drink of the golden springs
Where Luvah doth renew his horses. Look'st thou on my youth,
And fearest thou, because I vanish and am seen no more,
Nothing remains? O maid, I tell thee, when I pass away,
It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace and raptures holy.
Unseen descending, weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers,
And court the fair eyed dew to take me to her shining tent.
The weeping virgin trembling kneels before the riding sun,
Till we arise link'd in a golden band, and never part,
But walk united, bearing food to our tender flowers.'

'Dost thou, O little Cloud? I fear that I am not like thee;
For I walk thro' the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers,
But I feed not the little flowers. I hear the warbling birds,
but I feed not the warbling birds; they fly and seek their food.
But Thel delights in these no more, because I fade away;
And all shall say, "Without a use this shining woman liv'd,
Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms?" '

The Cloud reclin'd upon his airy throne and answer'd thus:

'Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies,
How great thy use, how great thy blessing! Everything that lives
Lives not alone, nor for itself. Fear not, and I will call
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth, worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.'

The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lilly's leaf,
And the bright Cloud sail'd on, to find his partner in the vale.


III

Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed:
'Art thou a Worm? image of weakness, art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lilly's leaf.
Ah weep not, little voice, thou canst not speak, but thou can weep.
Is this a worm? I see thee lay helpless & naked, weeping,
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mother's smiles.'

The Clod of Clay heard the Worm's voice, & rais'd her pitying head;
She bow'd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal'd
In milky fondness; then on Thel she fix'd her humble eyes;

'O beauty of the vales of Har, we live not for ourselves.
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark,
But he that loves the lowly pours his oil upon my head,
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast,
And says: "Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away."
But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know;
I ponder, and I cannot ponder, yet I live and love.'

The daughter of beauty wip'd her pitying tears with her white veil,
And said: Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep.
That God would love a Worm I knew, and therefore did I weep;
And I complain'd in the mild air, because i fade away,
And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot.'

'Queen of the vales,' the matron Clay answer'd, 'I heard thy sighs,
And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down.
Wilt thou, O Queen, enter my house? 'Tis given thee to enter
And to return; fear nothing; enter with thy virgin feet.'

IV

The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the northern bar.
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown.
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wander'd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, list'ning
Dolours and lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence, list'ning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down,
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit:

'Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glist'ning Eye to the poison of a smile?
Why are Eyelids stor'd with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits and coined gold?
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling & affright?
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?'

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek
Fled back unhinder'd till she came into the vales of Har.


Thel's Motto

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit,
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod,
Or Love in a golden bowl?

"Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.

Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fulness of her face—

Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-altar gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown:

Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;

That her fair form may stand and shine,
Make bright our days and light our dreams,
Turning to scorn with lips divine
The falsehood of extremes!"

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe."

Lord Byron

Dreamland

"By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule."

Edgar Allan Poe

I HAVE FIVE THINGS TO SAY

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved, "
You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love, the resurrection-place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers, "
Here I am!"

--Rumi

Why was there a thread like this for several years, but no thread for people to post their poetry? There was also a "favorite poems" thread at the same time. So, it can't be your poem or one you like, but anything else is game. So much self-loathing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

Why was there a thread like this for several years, but no thread for people to post their poetry? There was also a "favorite poems" thread at the same time. So, it can't be your poem or one you like, but anything else is game. So much self-loathing.

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https://www.the16types.info/vbulleti...t-Your-Poetry/

Song for the New Year Eliza Cook

Old Time has turned another page Of eternity and truth; He reads with a warning voice to age, And whispers a lesson to youth. A year has fled o’er heart and head Since last the yule log burnt; And we have a task to closely ask, What the bosom and brain have learnt? Oh! let us hope that our sands have run With wisdom’s precious grains; Oh! may we find that our hands have done Some work of glorious pains. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us. We may have seen some loved ones pass To the land of hallow’d rest; We may miss the glow of an honest brow And the warmth of a friendly breast: But if we nursed them while on earth, With hearts all true and kind, Will their spirits blame the sinless mirth Of those true hearts left behind? No, no! it were not well or wise To mourn with endless pain; There’s a better world beyond the skies, Where the good shall meet again. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us. Have our days rolled on serenely free From sorrow’s dim alloy? Do we still possess the gifts that bless And fill our souls with joy? Are the creatures dear still clinging near? Do we hear loved voices come? Do we gaze on eyes whose glances shed A halo round our home? Oh, if we do, let thanks be pour’d To Him who hath spared and given, And forget not o’er the festive board The mercies held from heaven. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us.