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My favorite of all poems
Musée des Beaux Arts
By WH Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. |
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught on 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, Being 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? W. B. Yeats One of the most erotic pieces of literature I've ever read... femme2tao |
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts today Feel the gladness of the May! _______________________________________ What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; ________________________________________ In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. —William Wordsworth Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood |
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XVII (I do not love you) Pablo Neruda
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. By Pablo Neruda as translated from the Spanish by Stephen Tapscot For those who are interested, here it is below in the original Spanish: No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma. Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra. Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. |
just my favorite for today -- that's all i'll ever claim.
The Kiss by Stephen Dunn She pressed her lips to mind. —a typo How many years I must have yearned for someone’s lips against mind. Pheromones, newly born, were floating between us. There was hardly any air. She kissed me again, reaching that place that sends messages to toes and fingertips, then all the way to something like home. Some music was playing on its own. Nothing like a woman who knows to kiss the right thing at the right time, then kisses the things she’s missed. How had I ever settled for less? I was thinking this is intelligence, this is the wisest tongue since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear, speaking sense. It’s the Good, defining itself. I was out of my mind. She was in. We married as soon as we could. |
short but sweet...
The Shirt
by Jane Kenyon The shirt touches his neck and smooths over his back. It slides down his sides. It even goes down below his belt— down into his pants. Lucky shirt. |
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from Dear Michael (2) - Mark McMorris
The wound cannot close; language is a formal exit
is what exits from the wound it documents. The wound is deaf to what it makes; is deaf to exit and to all, and that is its durable self, to be a mayhem that torments a city. The sound comes first and then the word like a wave lightning and then thunder, a glance then a kiss follows and destroys the footprint, mark of the source. It is the source that makes the wound, the wound that makes a poem. It is defeat that makes a poem sing of the light and that means to sing for a while. |
A Man's Requirements: Elizabeth Barret Browning
I Love me Sweet, with all thou art, Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the lightest part, Love me in full being. II Love me with thine open youth In its frank surrender; With the vowing of thy mouth, With its silence tender. III Love me with thine azure eyes, Made for earnest grantings; Taking colour from the skies, Can Heaven's truth be wanting? IV Love me with their lids, that fall Snow-like at first meeting; Love me with thine heart, that all Neighbours then see beating. V Love me with thine hand stretched out Freely -- open-minded: Love me with thy loitering foot, -- Hearing one behind it. VI Love me with thy voice, that turns Sudden faint above me; Love me with thy blush that burns When I murmur 'Love me!' VII Love me with thy thinking soul, Break it to love-sighing; Love me with thy thoughts that roll On through living -- dying. VIII Love me in thy gorgeous airs, When the world has crowned thee; Love me, kneeling at thy prayers, With the angels round thee. IX Love me pure, as muses do, Up the woodlands shady: Love me gaily, fast and true, As a winsome lady. X Through all hopes that keep us brave, Farther off or nigher, Love me for the house and grave, And for something higher. XI Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear, Woman's love no fable, I will love thee -- half a year -- As a man is able. |
Poems in Braille
1 all your hands are verbs, now you touch worlds and feel their names - thru the thing to the name not the other way thru (in winter I am Midas, I name gold) the chair and table and book extend from your fingers; all your movements command these things back to their places; a fight against familiarity makes me resume my distance 2 they knew what it meant, those egyptian scribes who drew eyes right into their hieroglyphs, you read them dispassionate until the eye stumbles upon itself blinking back from the papyrus outside, the articulate wind annotates this; I read carefully lest I go blind in both eyes, reading with that other eye the final hieroglyph 3 the shortest distance between 2 points on a revolving circumference is a curved line; O let me follow you, Wencelas 4 with legs and arms I make alphabets like in those children's books where people bend into letters and signs, yet I do not read the long cabbala of my bones truthfully; I need only to move to alter the design 5 I name all things in my room and they rehearse their names, gather in groups, form tesseracts, discussing their names among themselves I will not say the cast is less than the print I will not say the curve is longer than the line, I should read all things like braille in this season with my fingers I should read them lest I go blind in both eyes reading with that other eye the final hieroglyph Gwendolyn MacEwen |
Icarus - Clayton Michaels
A man with sunstroke is flying
a twin-engine Cessna over Lake Michigan. The staler the air in the cockpit grows, the more positive he is that he sees St. Peter, walking across the face of the water, trolling for perch. The last coherent thought he has before being claimed by the water is of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, singing “Moon River” on a fire escape. The last thing he hears the black box say is cerulean. |
Remains - Dora Malech
Mama,
he’s not like the other coroners. Took me upstairs and showed me his coelacanth. Sutured the last of the suitors at sunup. Straddled the strata, solved for salve. Same river begging to be taken back. Prayed effigy, efficacy, something to sign for. Bodies? Flutter fodder. Fit start to endgame. Last rites, riots, stage left in a whisper, best left beheaded, behest left unsung. Secured the parameters, opened the aperture, cut me a switch and learned luck a new trick. Wind turned tail, broke stride and won over, air on the side of the nacreous acreage, my far cry. |
Cruelty and Love by: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) What large, dark hands are those at the window Lifted, grasping the golden light Which weaves its way through the creeper leaves To my heart's delight? Ah, only the leaves! But in the west, In the west I see a redness come Over the evening's burning breast-- --'Tis the wound of love goes home! The woodbine creeps abroad Calling low to her lover: The sun-lit flirt who all the day Has poised above her lips in play And stolen kisses, shallow and gay Of pollen, now has gone away --She woos the moth with her sweet, low word, And when above her his broad wings hover Then her bright breast she will uncover And yield her honey-drop to her lover. Into the yellow, evening glow Saunters a man from the farm below, Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed Where hangs the swallow's marriage bed. The bird lies warm against the wall. She glances quick her startled eyes Towards him, then she turns away Her small head, making warm display Of red upon the throat. His terrors sway Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball, Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies In one blue stoop from out the sties Into the evening's empty hall. Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes Hide your quaint, unfading blushes, Still your quick tail, and lie as dead, Till the distance folds over his ominous tread. The rabbit presses back her ears, Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes And crouches low: then with wild spring Spurts from the terror of his oncoming To be choked back, the wire ring Her frantic effort throttling: Piteous brown ball of quivering fears! Ah soon in his large, hard hands she dies, And swings all loose to the swing of his walk, Yet calm and kindly are his eyes And ready to open in brown surprise Should I not answer to his talk Or should he my tears surmise. I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair Watching the door open: he flashes bare His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise He flings the rabbit soft on the table board And comes toward me: ah, the uplifted sword Of his hand against my bosom, and oh, the broad Blade of his hand that raises my face to applaud His coming: he raises up my face to him And caresses my mouth with his fingers, which still smell grim Of the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare! I know not what fine wire is round my throat, I only know I let him finger there My pulse of life, letting him nose like a stoat Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood: And down his mouth comes to my mouth, and down His dark bright eyes descend like a fiery hood Upon my mind: his mouth meets mine, and a flood Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown Within him, die, and find death good. |
The travels of true love - Bob Hicock
If you’re inside me at the hockey game,
you’re inside the arena when the winning goal’s scored and octopi thrown onto the ice. A Detroit thing, as in Cambodia, they don’t play hockey or call it Cambodian food, it’s just food, but if you’re inside me and I go to Angkor Wat, you see how tourism destroys the past. This love of ours has done little for you thus far in this poem. If you’re inside me when I write a letter urging my senator to vote against the death penalty, you’re ineffectual in your outrage too. But it feels good, doesn’t it, when I can’t decide if I need a four or five inch bolt, to be the voice inside me saying, does it matter, as I am the voice inside you saying, I am the voice inside you, the voice beside your voice inside you, the voice holding the hand of that voice, which is anatomically impossible though romantically essential. If you are inside me I am lucky: I am lucky: therefore you are inside me: that’s called a proof. I’m serious: I don’t know what good the death penalty does. “Cruel and inhuman” sounds like a law firm. You sound like everything to me. |
Elegy: I Pass by the Erotic Bakery - Anna Journey
The way the tits of lemon meringue whorled
in the window that day looked at first like breasts, then more like paws of my grandfather's clubfoot Siamese. I want to believe that, after he died, the cat didn't gnaw off his face. I've heard it happens. I'd like to ask the pastry chef if his vision of whipped egg whites and sugar meant he saw, in a dream, that mangled paw pressed to my grandfather's chest. I know my grandfather died alone, with the TV on. I need to know he kept his face that day, in the green armchair, that the channel he chose as his heart slowed was not televangelism, but a bird documentary: dark-eyed juncos jilting the magnolias, fiercer than angels flying south. I need to know the show's voice-over was pitched in the gauzy timbre of lullaby--low and Latinate, Byzantine. Because hearing, during death, is the last faculty to go. And so, his last moments were filled with the wing beat of juncos, and a calm, omniscient voice: Fringilla nigra, ventre albo--black finch, with a white belly. Languid in heat, the meringue breasts cave a little, almost inscrutably burnt brown at the side-seams, and at the tips. I lick my lips, though I won't enter. I'm afraid like Christ they'd turn to flesh in my mouth. |
Mary Oliver
Mindful
Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for--- to look, to listen to lose myself inside this soft world--- to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant--- but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these--- the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass? by Mary Oliver Greco |
Annabel Lee Edgar Allen Poe It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love - I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her high-born kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me - Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud one night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we - Of many far wiser than we - And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea - In her tomb by the sounding sea. |
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"To Risk" ~ William Arthur Ward
"To laugh is to risk appearing a fool, To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk involvement, To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return, To live is to risk dying, To hope is to risk despair, To try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist complains about the wind; The optimist expects it to change; And the realist adjusts the sails." |
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