Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
This is an excellent sonnet Hes. Silence where people have once been is more powerful than silence where no one has ever been :cool:
Printable View
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
This is an excellent sonnet Hes. Silence where people have once been is more powerful than silence where no one has ever been :cool:
Yes, that's so true Alf and I too liked the last lines of Freckles poem choice. They got me thinking....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
I was talking to a single friend recently and we both agreed that what we miss most when not in a relationship is not sex (although...who wouldn't miss that?:wink:) its intimacy and affection. A hug from a friend ends up feeling like a precious gift when you've been on your own for a long time. I just listened to a radio 4 play about a mother who has a surrogate baby for her daughter and she talks about the lack of physical contact in her life and there is a really moving scene where her daughter kisses her cheek after ten years of not touching her.
Absence
Separate in my solitude
how loud is this quiet!
The absence of your voice
deafens me and leaves
my untouched body restless.
arms folded, pacing familiar floors
I hug myself as if cold
hoping to recall the warmth
and ghost of your embrace.
Wow! what a moving poem Hes...utterly beautiful and one I think we can all relate to at some level (single or not), it made me think about loss and the stark sense of absence and emptiness one can sometimes feel after the loss of a relationship....thank you so much for sharing xQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Thanks Freckle.xx
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Lovely little poem that Hes :cool: Touch is very important in all our lives and can often do more than a lot of well meant words :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Well it definitely felt a bit "seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness" this morning with the foggy weather highlighting all the spider's webs in the garden but Autumn is a month away yet officially so we will have to stay poetically in late summer :D
Tis the Last Rose of Summer
Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone:
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither'd,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
Thomas Moore
cheery little number that alf ! :w00t:...but very charming nevertheless!
i love all the metaphors in the "end of summer"type poems......
here is my fave drama queen! in another life I think i might quite like to be christina rossetti.....
"Summer Is Ended"
Christina Georgina Rossetti
To think that this meaningless thing was ever a rose
Scentless, colorless, _this!_
Will it ever be thus (who knows?)
Thus with our bliss,
If we wait till the close?
Though we care not to wait for the end, there comes the end
Sooner, later, at last,
Which nothing can mar, nothing mend:
An end locked fast,
Bent we cannot re-bend.
Absence
Separate in my solitude
how loud is this quiet!
The absence of your voice
deafens me and leaves
my untouched body restless.
arms folded, pacing familiar floors
I hug myself as if cold
hoping to recall the warmth
and ghost of your embrace.
Hes, That is very touching.
If it's any consolation, contentment can seriously damage your poetry skills. And though the jury is out (as they say) race times may suffer too from a lack of misery and angst.
Look at this, as proof. (not of the times. That evidence is elsewhere).
A hound with a penchant for booze-o(sorry)
Did go to the land of the ouzo
With a spot of Metaxa,
Became quite a relaxer (sorry again)
With very little in common with Robinson Crusoe (I know – unforgivable)
I did find a poem about the area where I am temporarily basking, but I reckon it's even worse than mine....on many levels!
Ionian
Just because we've torn their statues down,
and cast them from their temples,
doesn't for a moment mean the gods are dead.
Land of Ionia, they love you yet,
their spirits still remember you.
When an August morning breaks upon you
a vigour from their lives stabs through your air;
and sometimes an ethereal and youthful form
in swiftest passage, indistinct,
passes up above your hills.
Constantine P Cavafy
Now that really is crap
loving the incoherent ramblings of a fell runner on a greek holiday...made me laugh out loud...come home soon please! x
lovely lttle interview iwth jo shapcott her on the importance of poetry here...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...terviewId=6754
like simon armitage, i could listen to her calming voice for hours!
friday nights used to be filled with pablo neruda! ....i'll do my bit !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFG66...layer_embedded
I like for you to be still
Pablo Neruda
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.
As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.
And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.
ha ha ha...love the McGonagall style offering OW...much better than that Cavafy chap. :D I know what you mean about poetry and contentment...to be honest, I have been quite happy of late and have found that my poetry skills (if you can call them that:o) have really dropped off. Still, there's plenty of great poetry already written to tide us over until our next bouts of misery & angst:wink:
I'm very envious of you in the Ionian isles...I'm longing for a holiday and have been dreaming of Greek islands but might have to wait till next year now. Not to worry, there's plenty of good things here at home to be happy about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
Thanks for the posts Freckle, Neruda was just the right tone before bed. :)
I'll listen to Jo Shapcott tomorrow though as its getting late and I want to be up early for a big bike ride.x
I got heavily bitten by midges last week and I quoted a line from a poem which has always seemed right but I've been unable to find the full version..any one reconises it..
I long for the ridges,
away from the midges.
up where the eagles fly.....
Diary of a Playwright.
Here amongst this noise,
It could drive a man who hast his wits out of them,
Cat 'o' nine tails are Gaolers joys,
This rank cesspool that is Bethlem.
Shackled cold, wet and witless,
For a penny they ogle my tortured soul,
I spring forward scare them shitless,
Then i shrink back inside my hole.
Nathaniel Lee.
Ahhh....what a lovely poem...
Romantics
BY LISEL MUELLER
Johannes Brahms and
Clara Schumann
The modern biographers worry
“how far it went,” their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth-century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving us nothing to overhear.
I have tried my best googling and to no avail....hope someone else can help!
Quote:
Originally Posted by IanDarkpeak
Geology
BY BOB KING
I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.
And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.
Day 1 Only 364 Days to go.
I lay cold in this unholy place,
Resting in my own filth,
Blood and scars mark my face,
Losing weight and my health.
Cruel gaolers spit in my gruel,
I must try to keep my wits,
Screams from the tortured fools,
Chained up against my wall in fits.
Nathaniel Lee.
Here is a Scottish poem to the pest.....(by W.R.Darling)Quote:
Originally Posted by IanDarkpeak
Oh ye, wha in your oors o ease,
Are fashed wi golochs, mauks, an flees,
Fell stingin wasps an bumble bees,
Tak tent o this:
There's ae sma pest that's waur nor these
To mar your bliss.
They hing ower hedges, burns, an wuds,
An dance at een in dusky cluds;
Wi aw your random skelps an scuds,
They're naeweys worrit:
Gin there's a hole in aw your duds,
They'll mak straucht for it.
I've traivled wast, I've traivled east;
I'm weel aquant wi mony a beast;
Wi lions, teegers, bears - at least
I've kent their claw:
I've been the fell mosquito's feast-
But this cowes aw.
Auld Scotland, on thy bonnie face,
Whan Mither Nature gied ye grace,
Lown, birken glens an floery braes,
Wild windy ridges,
To save ye frae deleerit praise,
She gied ye midges.
How Snow Falls
Like the unshaven prickle
of a sharpened razor,
this new coldness in the air,
the pang
of something intangible.
Filling our eyes,
the sinusitis of perfume
without the perfume.
And then love's vertigo,
love's exactitude,
this snow, this transfiguration
we never quite get over.
Craig Raine
Just returned from me hols and back reading some of the great posts on this thread, and what do I find......this absolutely magnificent gem. Really beautiful Hes - thank you for sharing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Poetry. Cleans the mind.
Oh poetry,oh poetry,
More useful than a lavatory,
One is used to free the mind,
The other leaves a clean behind.
Oh poetry,oh poetry,
Represents mans dignity,
Many don't realise what poems have,
They would rather riot and be a chav.
Nathaniel Lee.
:wink::wink::wink::wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nathaniel Lee
Talking of 'bogs', I was running up Crossfell today and spotted a wild flower I'd not seen before (great excuse for a breather). Turns out it's called Grass-of-Parnassus. Not a grass at all, and is in the Cumbria coat-of-arms (guess whose been googling about it). Anyway (stay with me I'm getting there!!!), the google also revealed thi short-film of the same name which I just know is going to appeal to some of you on this thread.....
enjoy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7xcb...layer_embedded
Ok not exactly a poem but...
very elegant alf...nice choice...some great offerings on here of late :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Welcome back Mossy, hope you had a good holiday? Thanks for your lovely comments about my poem.
I just watched the video, brilliant stuff (wasn't quite expecting what happened!). I'm not sure if I've ever come across a Grass-of-Parnassus but I'm going to look out for it now...don't you just love google?:)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
I like this Alf!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
When the English tongue we speak.
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Will you tell me why it's true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of the verse,
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard
Cord is different from word.
Cow is cow but low is low
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose, dose,and lose
And think of goose and yet with choose
Think of comb, tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll or home and some.
Since pay is rhymed with say
Why not paid with said I pray?
Think of blood, food and good.
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Wherefore done, but gone and lone -
Is there any reason known?
To sum up all, it seems to me
Sound and letters don't agree.
Lord Cromer
The Licorice Fields of Pontefract
In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.
The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.
She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.
John Betjeman
I love the Betjemen Alf! Especially the lines I highlighted.
Have you heard the cd Banana Blush where his poems are set to music and he is reading them? Its great.
(great new avatar by the way :) )
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Really enjoyed this too. :D
Quote:
Originally Posted by robpark
Privacy of Rain
by Helen Dunmore
Rain. A plump splash
On tense, bare skin.
Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking.
Rain. A first touch
At the nape of the neck.
Sharp drops kick the dust, white
Downpours, shudder
Like curtains, rinsing
Tight hairdos to innocence
I love the privacy of rain.
The way it makes things happen
On verandahs, under canopies
Or in the shelter of trees
As a door slams and a girl runs out
Into the black-wet leaves.
By the brick wall an iris
Sucks up the rain
Like intricate food, its tongue
Sherbetty, furred.
Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking
On the street bud-silt
Covers the windscreens.
I enjoyed that poem Hes and very topical looking out of my window today :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Thanks for the info I will have to check out the CD.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
The Brown Hare in full flight picture really gives a sense of speed with the blurring which is what attracted it to me.
The picture was taken by Marlene Thyssen (Wikimedia)
http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...gebit/Hare.jpg
Eh Alf, thes cheered me up no end lad - :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Really like the photo Alf! I have been trying to take pictures of hares but they haven't been that great because my zoom isn't powerful enoughAttachment 5045
Now having read that I'm feeling quite a whimp. Bottled out (postponed until tomorrow) an anticlockwise trot around the Kirby Stephen Yomp route due to the wet forecast today, it certainly didn't 'make things happen' for me :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Ending
The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.
Gavin Ewart
I Sit and Think
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien