I may have posted this a ong time ago but it is great so here it is again...
Touch
My hands
Open the curtains of your being
Clothe you in a further nudity
Uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
Invent another body for your body
Octavio Paz
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I may have posted this a ong time ago but it is great so here it is again...
Touch
My hands
Open the curtains of your being
Clothe you in a further nudity
Uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
Invent another body for your body
Octavio Paz
'enjoyed' never seems quite the right word after Allendale. 26 miles. Cracking running for the 1st 7 or so then a middle section of peat bog hell lasting about 10 miles, before some excellent terrain that would be a joy had you not spent the previous 10 miles wading, leaping, struggling etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I'm led to believe it improves the character.
Anyway - I'll be at Guisborough as a spectator. Will stand at one of the check-points reciting poetry if you wish!!
lovely! But you're not seriously suggesting I recite this one are you :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
my world rearranged
I, may appear the same, I
am forever changed
Ha ha! It might put me off my stride a tad! It will be great to see you there. It sounds like you had a really tough run. Fantastic that you can do that distance. I've just got to 18.5miles but its quite hard going.Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
That's great. I take it you enjoyed it then. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
That is beautiful Hes. You've produced some absolutely fabulous poetry recently. Keep sharing the great work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Good luck for Guisborough tomorrow.
I like this poem, it had a soothing feel (especially after reading the well constructed rant of a post allendaler !:eek:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
see you soon Hes :)
Well, top of the morning to you all...I is off on my jollies soon......have a nice day all
Once more the round
What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.
Now I adore my life
With the Bird, the abiding Leaf,
With the Fish, the questing Snail,
And the Eye altering All;
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake;
And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
Theodore Roethke
Some really good stuff from everyone.Hes you are on quite a roll.
I've been really remiss and preoccupied recently so greatly missing my visit to this thread. Anyway, I've just logged on and what do I find, wow, some tremendous orginal poetry and also this gem. Thank you all :)Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
Yes, another one by......(thanks Freckle, he's new to me)
Theodore Roethke
Days like leaves
leaves fallen from a tree
Winter wind catches
them one
or two,
taking them from you,
But some remain in
layers
of leaf
on withering
leaf,
Skeletal days no maore than
a mulch of emaciated memory.
its nice to have you back mossy, i thought of your poem that i posted whilst running today, i particular the metronome bit, helped me get thru some of the hard bits and there were a few! (gisborough moors)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
this is really good, it made me think of how memories are constructed within our minds, how they are multi layered, why do we forget some things and recall others, the innaccuracies and subjectivity of memory i thought you encapsulated in the "mulch" line....thanks for postingQuote:
Originally Posted by N-dubya
Regret.
I carry regret around with me,
Poisoning me slowly,
The world becoming shades of grey,
All life flowing past,
While i crawl into the cave,
I've constructed within my soul,
Watching the miasma of broken hearts,
And shattered dreams pass by me,
As i wonder if only,
But that's lost in time,
I wait here and cry,
And i want to die.
By Herakles.
Very well written Herakles and very moving....regret is one of those things that can cause a lot of pain for all of us and I know that sometimes I have dwelt a little too much on the past (or indeed the future) rather than trying to live in the moment. I think us westerners have a great deal to learn from more eastern philosophies in this regard which place greater emphasis on living our lives moment to moment. Anyhow, I do hope your OK, we have still to meet up at a fell race and I look forward to that. Take care you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herakles
Distances
Swifts turn in the heights of the air;
higher still turn the invisible stars
When day withdraws to the ends of the earth
their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand.
We live in a world of motion and distance.
The heart flies from tree to bird,
from bird to distant star,
from star to love; and love grows
in the quiet house, turning and working,
servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand.~
Philippe Jaccottet ~
My last two pieces go together as a pair. One explains the other. As two decades pass.
I see, very moving HeraklesQuote:
Originally Posted by Herakles
Photo No 1 For Freckles' Fellrunning Calendar.
Who is that girl in the photo there,
Running through shot with wind in her hair,
Red blooded males lift their heads up,
By gosh it's Freckle the Fellrunners Pin-Up.
By Herakles.
P.S. When will the 2011 calendar be ready.;)
Yes I am getting quite a bit of ribbing for this photo you lot!......2011 will be ready just as soon as I complete my ten fell races this year (two so far) with two months showing me lounging around drinking snecklifter in various stunning locations!Quote:
Originally Posted by Herakles
I vote for one of the locations to be lounging about on a peat bog on top of kinder with just for your pleasure a couple of topless mountain rescue men stopping you sinking. In fact guys lets have a where should Freckle be seen drinking Snecklifter for her calendar comp.:D
Now your talking!...I could have done with them today!.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Herakles
well I am a little tired now...all that running you know, makes a calender gal/tip top athlete sleepy....i'll sign of with one of my faves from Auden...night all...
Lullaby
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love
Gosh, this is delicious Frecks....where do you find these? Keep them coming please. :):)Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Hello again, it's been a while since I was last here, and there are some names I don't even recognise.
Anyway, since spring is upon us, and everything is good, a quick attempt at a couple of verses.
Spring in my step, daylight running!
Snowdrops, crocus, primrose, daffodils
Banishing the long long winter at last.
Soon bluebells. I have been reborn.
But wait, look in the shade there -
Nettles waiting to rise and strike.
Soon bracken will unfurl noxious ferns,
Cow parsley rising again to crowd the path.
Tangling bramble and dog mercury in the forest.
Crops rising in fields to scratch my legs.
Picnickers spoiling the peace and quiet.
Oh I can't wait for Autumn...
I don't really mean it! It's just that sooner or later, in mid summer, probably when it's raining and the nettles are drooping across the paths and stinging hard, I just long for the empty landscape of winter. Terrible really, to wish my life away like that. But spring is great, and it's also good to catch up with what's happening on the poetry forum.
Steve
Herakles, your words
reminded me of a couple of lines in Sylvia Plath's poem The Colossus. Your poem and Sylvia's are about different things, I know, but after I went and read The Colossus again I thought it was worth sharing:Quote:
Originally Posted by Herakles
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
By Sylvia Plath
You've made me smile Stevie thanks. Who was it who said a weed is just a plant whose virtue has yet to be discovered? Could have been talking about me, perhaps ;).Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
I seem to recall reading that the North American Indians (Native Amercians?), before the Spanish brought the horse to the continent, did rather alot of running. When they were tired (bonked), they use to thrash their legs with stinging nettles to squeeze those extra miles out of them :eek:. I can see that catching on. Gap in the market for some nettle 'rub' me thinks:).
The Effortless Point
Three long-distant-runners
out for buoyancy
pad by me, leaving the weed tassles a-waggle
and are past the sumach clump and
fleet, into brightness flowing,
they bear along
lungs
all rinsed with morning.
For Richard Rolle, swift in the strength of stillness,
flowed light, and the out there flooded
his pulses
leaping these six centuries -
love breathes him alive.
Moving into sky
or stilled under it
we are in the becoming
moved: let wisdom learn
unnoticing in this.
Margaret Avision
From her anthology 'sunblue'
Found this in a second hand bookshop this morning while muching around Barney Castle -ain't it just lovely, or what? Sadly the FRA formatting won't allow me to post it in its orginal spacing.
:)
Richard Rolle (1290–1349) was an English religious writer, Bible translator, and hermit.[1] He is known as Richard Rolle of Hampole or de Hampole, since after years of wandering he settled in Hampole, near the Cistercian nunnery.
According to Wiki.
Cheers Stevie. I certainly find that a compliment.Big Plath fan you know. Both of us Manic Depressive too which is why i can appreciate her darker works as i have been in the same place. Nice choice of poem and i do hope you will return regularly.
The canny Scots have already discovered this lotion:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Gin ye be for lang kail coo the nettle, stoo the nettle
Gin ye be for lang kail coo the nettle early
Coo it laich, coo it sune, coo it in the month o' June
Stoo it ere it's in the bloom, coo the nettle early
Coo it by the auld wa's, coo it where the sun ne'er fa's
Stoo it when the day daws, coo the nettle early."
Old Wives Lore for Gardeners
The Stinging Truth About Nettles.
Another use of nettles:
http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/reprint/93/6/305.pdf
I had to look out for a sumach clamp.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Must be true then!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
I wonder why he eventually stopped his wanderings near a nunnery?
I love the "lungs all rinsed with morning" line.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
It took me a while to get going today following a tough run yesterday so I appreciate the line. A few deep breaths of moorland air and the crys of Oystercatcher and I felt better again.
Nice to see you back Steve.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
I'm only just getting over the winter and appreciating the warmth of the sun again. May it long continue, although we might be in for a cold snap again next week. I hope it is a long hot summer.
A great poem too
Teasing Ringed Plover
It was you I spotted on
Friday. Welcome back.
Personally, I've always liked nettles. As kids we used to pluck the white flowers off and suck the sugar from the base. Well there was nowt else to do in the wilds of Devon:o In the pre-digital age, that is. Kid's nowadays eh! Don't know they're born...I ask you?:D:D Hey! Another use for nettles, you could skip on carrying all those jelly babies - that's brill!:rolleyes: Fell Running Ray Mears styleQuote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
Now HHH your just being mischievous and irreverent (again!) :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill