how utterly beautiful, calm and soothing...i somehow needed to read this tonight.....thank you AlfQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
ps SA lovely choice
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how utterly beautiful, calm and soothing...i somehow needed to read this tonight.....thank you AlfQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
ps SA lovely choice
just gorgeous...can't believe the choices on here today, brilliant!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Moving Forward by Rainer Maria RilkeThe deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
There is a theory that to become an expert in anything you need to practice it for a minimum of 10,000 hours.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
After 10,000 posts the thread is looking pretty damned expert at picking choices.
I like to think that I will eventuallyQuote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
turn into some wizened, most probably hairy
bearded and more than slightly bonkers
mountain man that chooses to stay
in the hills all the time,
rarely bothering with civilisation.
People walking in the hills
will spot me flitting between the crags
from time to time,
although I'll become an increasingly rare sighting.....
until one day I will, like Wainright,
end up 'staying forever' in some remote tarn or other
Stolly
That is beautiful, especially the last line.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Sorry to hear that Matt. I hope you both get back to full health soon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Leonidas
I'm a bit slow this week. I've only just realised that this one was penned by you. Very well written and extremely poignant. Keep being strong girl.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Good to have the Howgill back...
yesterday my daughter remarked...
"you know mam
two lonely people
aren't lonely at all
they are just two people
who could be together"
Loneliness
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise eachother
have to sleep together in one bed-
that is when loneliness receives the rivers...
Ward 31
You would think it would be quiet here
But even though I can’t move a muscle
I hear well enough
About this nurse and that’s- forthcoming holiday,
How this patient and that- isn’t complying.
Blood and MRI results.
Amidst the beeps and the various dramas
of my somewhat surreal compadres,
I hanker for some peace.
To lie, at home in my bed
looking at the sun streaming in
Or to float on a lilo
in a greek swimming pool
without one single ioata of a care.
So when my friend, (also a nurse) visits
Is it any surprise that my eyes well,
That tears prick within the sockets
and roll down my cheek
I ask you...
Is it so unnatural to want to be held and loved
When you cannot hold yourself?
That's a very profound comment by your daughter freckle :cool: I bet you are really proud :DQuote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Rilke is popular tonight :)
Mirror Image
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as
the image of my father, whose life
was spent like this,
thinking of death, to the exclusion
of other sensual matters,
so in the end that life
was easy to give up, since
it contained nothing: even
my mother's voice couldn't make him
change or turn back
as he believed
that once you can't love another human being
you have no place in the world.
Louise Gluck
Smashing poem that freckle. The last couplet is very powerful :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I liked this very much, thought provoking and powerful. The penultimate line is true on its own no matter what lines precede and follow it, so all the better for being amongst so many other fine words.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Thanks HHH, I appreciate it. Am throwing myself into work, running and also discovered kundalini yoga which is brilliant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
This is really thought provoking and moving Freckle. I agree with Alf about the last couplet and with you about the postings lately, they've been really wonderful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Some terrific stuff posted this evening :cool:
Fantastic freckle. Real Donny and Marie Osmond morningside of the mountain stuff :D
I'll stop there as quoting more than six lines of a Donny Osmond song contravenes all sensible health and safety standards :)Quote:
There was a girl, there was a boy
If they had met they might have found a world of joy
But he lived on the morning side of the mountain
And she lived on the twilight side of the hill
They never met, they never kissed
They will never know what happiness they've missed
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
Ha ha ! Morning all...loved this Stolly!
Thanks to all for your lovely comments re my poem. Alf your last choice was gorgeous, very moving....Hes good to see you are keeping yourself busy and I can totally see you doing Yoga looking forward to seeing how bendy you are next time we catch up!....Well, the girls and I are off rollerskating again later whilst simultaneusly trying to avoid casualty!
ps Alf- I am very proud of her!
Seeker Of Truthseeker of truth
by E. E. Cummings
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here
I need to dedicate more time to this thread :cool:
snowy white egrets
patrolling boggy margins
Mekong Delta
pair of wheeling swifts
sickle shaped, highly mobile
greying Saigon skies
Pair of traffic conesQuote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
submerged and covered in sludge
sunny Leeds Liverpool canal
:D
Now this is what I like to see, three haikus in a row with the last from the stollster! nice oneQuote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
I like it Stolly (and yours too DT). Can't help but procrastinate a little....
ink in strange places
getting high on solvent fumes
but prints nearly done
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
Hiya Freckle, my yoga classes have been brilliant but embarrassing, I'm the fittest but least flexible in the group and can't help making squeaking and groaning noises whenever my hamstrings are involved. Last week I got hiccups doing 'body drops'...could have been worse I suppose! ;)
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
WHAT IS IT, THEN?
What is it, then, to love the world
sipping its colour-patched enchantment
from nub and frond, sepal or wavelet,
to pierce unutterable blurring
and perceive things clear?
To do so will not stop the bombs
nor silence fatal scripture-freaks.
Oh, no. Seeing this fretwork patterning
of jacaranda on macadam
is no more than good in itself.
To lounge and think about beauty,
"the unplumbed salt estranging sea",
or a spider's wiry legs, twitching,
only means owning art's eye,
so there some of us are:
neither a diplomat nor a killer be -
a good thing, on the whole -
but we claim our planetary vote
in flashes or yearnings of
ostensible peace. And so there.
by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
In the interest of furthering my artistic knowledge (honest gov) I was trawling the net and came across a blog with an article about a poet who has written poems based on the life of the artist Frida Kahlo, a favourite of mine. The stuff on the blog is mainly very powerful excerpts on her accident, sex and death but here one based on one of her paintings.
Self-Portrait with Monkey
The bristles on my brushes work
like furtive birds. Hours pass.
When the painting starts to rustle,
Fulang-Chang grips my neck,
too frightened even to yelp. As if
the leaves are hiding a forest floor
where I have buried a troop of monkeys
alive. As if the only sound in this
whole house is the breathing of animals
through thin straws, even tonight,
when it’s too late, and I am long dead.
And you, brave viewer, meet my gaze.
Katrina Naomi
This was on R3 late last night and reviewed by Andrew Motion. The poet is Elizabeth Bishop and I think she spent quite some timein Brazil - quite interesting anyway.
Questions of Travel
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.
Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"
That's lovely. You should be proud of her.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Sounds like you are keeping yourself busy which is great. The yoga sounds good too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I remember Swifts. Summer seems a long time ago already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
Been a long day.....
The Day Is Done
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet.
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Henry Longfellow
Really like this Hes :thumbup:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
WOW. I Like that. Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Panties
She wanted embroidered on her panies and bra
a message that told him that he'd gone too far.
A motif that told him "If you can read this,
you're much too close, so give it a miss."
"Certainly Modom," the saleslady said.
"In what kind of script would you like it read?
Copperplate? San Serif? Bold wouldn't fail."
She thought for a moment and then she said… "Braille."
Copyright; Roger Wooller
First time I've cited someone else's poetry, but here goes. Got my own reasons for citing this but when I heard Sam Baker singing this it brought a tear or two.
Waves
So many years, so many hardships
So many laughs, so many tears
So many things to remember
'cos they had fifty years
And now our kids got their own kids
And their own kids have grown
She told him not to worry
Said he'd be fine when she was gone
He walks down to the ocean
Bends to touch the water, kneels to pray
Writes her name in the sand
The waves wash it away
This is lovely and so very moving...some brilliant choices on here tonight :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
Oooo I just read this and it sent a few shivers down the ol spine....macbeth's reaction to the death of his wife....
Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28