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I liked this Mossy, it made me want to read more of her stuff :cool: Apparently she has worked as a waitress, librarian, telephone psychic, astrologer, tarot reader, New Age book buyer, and natural language programmer. "telephone psychic" :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Home is so Sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
Philip Larkin
O Give Me the Woods
O give me the woods, the budding woods,
In the gentle time of spring,
When her dantiest robe o'er tree and shrub
With a noiseless hand she flings;
When the warbling notes of the birds do float,
As from their southern home
To their place of rest in the olden nest,
On gladsome wing they come.
O give me the wood, the shady wood,
In the balmy summer-time,
When voices sweet in the charmed retreat
Blend in a dreamy chime.
And the murmur low of the streamlet's flow
Has ever a charm to the eye,
Seeming to say as it floats away,
I go, goodbye--goodbye.
O give me the wood, the gorgeous wood,
In the fading autumn-time,
When the fitful breeze as it sighs through the trees
Breathes ever a solemn rhyme.
O! strange is the song that echoes along
Through the forest aisles so dim,
Like the anthem grand of some spirit band
Or the organ's wildest hymn.
O! give me the wood, the dreary wood,
When winter, old and hoar,
In his snowy shroud with many a cloud
Comes from some ice-girt shore.
O! there is a charm in the wind and storm,
Like the echoes wild and deep
That rise and roll through some convent old
Where the dead undreaming sleep.
O! give me the woods, the grand old woods,
Where a fairy-land it seems;
And I dwell while there in a charmed air
And lose myself in dreams.
Art thou weary of life and its ceaseless strife?
Then go to the tuneful wood;
In that retreat let the heart grow meek
As ye list to the voice of God.
Mary T. Lathrap
at times i find larkin so melancholy yet so utterly authentic....nice choiceQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
to get it on...or not to get it on...that is the question....
A Style Of Loving
Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground
As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive
We two
Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsumated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head
Hot buttered rum - coffee for you;
And so not to bed
And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon's
High joy or pain.
Vikram Seth
Great choice freckle.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
"You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon's
High joy or pain. "
Sublime :cool:
Echo
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
thats rather lovely alf ....just what the doctor ordered as i wait for my supernoodles to cook :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
i never lose interest in this well posted poem....the drunkeness of things being various...the world being crazier than we think...genius
SNOW (Louis MacNeice)
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
I was listening to Radio 3 "Words and Music" programme today and heard this poem: A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
William Blake
Two good posts there xrunner and freckle :cool: Did you have the Supernoodles on toast freckle? :D
If you don't like these short winter days then you have something in common with Emily Dickinson.
There's a certain slant of light
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
Emily Dickinson
I think this has been posted before but I like it so here it is again.
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Robert Frost
I have flu and having woken up with a massive coughing,fit, spilling a glass of water all over the bed, this lovely poem has a soothing quality which is just what the doctor ordered !Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
The Mask
by Maya Angelou
We wear the mask that grins and lies.
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts…
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise
In counting all our tears and sighs.
Nay let them only see us while
We wear the mask.
We smile but oh my God
Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise
And we sing Oh Baby doll, now we sing…
The clay is vile beneath our feet
And long the mile
But let the world think otherwise.
We wear the mask.
When I think about myself
I almost laugh myself to death.
My life has been one great big joke!
A dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke.
I laugh so hard HA! HA! I almos’ choke
When I think about myself.
Seventy years in these folks’ world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say “HA! HA! HA! Yes ma’am!”
For workin’s sake
I’m too proud to bend and
Too poor to break
So…I laugh! Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh…
Until I start to cry when I think about myself
And my folks and the children.
My fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank.
And they gnarled like broken candles,
All waxed and burned profound.
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.
There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block
The chains and slavery’s coffles
The whip and lash and stock.
My fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.
They laugh to conceal their crying,
They shuffle through their dreams
They stepped ’n fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.
I understand their meaning,
It could an did derive
From living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
I love the story behind this poem as told by Angelou in the accompanying you tube clip worth a listen...its an adaptation of another poem
http://www.poeticous.com/maya-angelou/the-mask-1
she sure is sassy angelou...
Come, and Be My Baby
by Maya Angelou
The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that'll burn
Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
where you're going to turn
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we've got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you're gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
still love this poem and her reading of it...i always finding it inspiring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0
Some excellent choices there freckle and apart from "Still I rise" I have not read the other two before so even better :thumbup: The Mask is a particularly powerful anti-racism poem "And wrote the blues in screams" :cool: I hadn't realised it was adapted from a poem by Paul Lawrence.
We Wear the Mask
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should that world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, oh my God, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world think otherwise,
We wear the mask.
Paul Lawrence
The Word
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,
that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue
but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,
- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.
Tony Hoagland
-
so beautiful i was close to tears...thank you for posting mossyQuote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
I enjoyed "The Word" Mossy
"Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue
but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile"
Now nothing to do with the weather:
Frozen
I have seen a life laid to waste,
in the name of pure stubbornness,
in the absolute definition of denial.
I see my own life.
Caught up on the same rails,
charging full steam ahead,
to a tunnel where no light shines.
The gates of experience fly by.
Still frames of adventures
I have excused myself from
for reasons, for selfishness.
Vanity . . . shame.
The double yellow line,
solid and illuminated,
laughs as I attempt to find the nerve.
To dare cross.
Throwing up walls of resistance
as the hourglass bleeds
grains of sand I can't afford.
I have seen a lifetime
laid to waste,
and in its shadow,
I have seen my own.
Natasha Head
feels sad.......Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
The Sick Rose
William Blake
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Try to praise the mutilated world.
—Adam Zagajewski
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
Flying at Night by Ted Kooser Above us, stars.
Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away,
a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water.
Below us,some farmer,
feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light,
drawing his sheds and barnback into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities,
like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
That's marvellous.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
And, just to get us into the spirit (not sure what spirit that is tho!) here's...
Christmas Prelude
O little fleas
of speckled light
all dancing
like a satellite
O belly green trees
shaded vale
O shiny bobcat
winter trail
Amoebic rampage
squamous cock
a Chinese hairpiece
burly sock
A grilled banana
smashes gates
and mingeless badgers
venerate
The asses of the
winter trees
rock on fat asses
as you please
Be jumpy
or unhinged
with joy
enlightened
fry cakes
Staten hoy.
LISA JARNOT
d-e-l-e-c-t-a-b-l-eQuote:
Originally Posted by mossdog
One Another’s Light
I do not know what brought me here
Away from where I’ve hardly ever been and now
Am never likely to go again.
Faces are lost, and places passed
At which I could have stopped,
And stopping, been glad enough.
Some faces left a mark,
And I on them might have wrought
Some kind of charm or spell
To make their futures work,
But it’s hard to guess
How one person on another
Works an influence.
We pass, and lit briefly by one another’s light
Hope the way we go is right.
Brian Patten
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
R. Shlong, 2012.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I really like this one freckle :cool: Its only the bad times that make the good times so special.
In drear nighted December
In drear nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity—
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy—
But were there ever any
Writh'd not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.
John Keats
A great winter poem especially for those of us getting a bit long in the tooth and watching that bus pass in the distance creeping inexorably towards us :rolleyes:
An Old Man's Winter Night
All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon—such as she was,
So late-arising—to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
Robert Frost
a nice Frost choice Alf...i also like this one..think it describes those times when we think we have grasped something significant only for it to leave us....Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz?
For once, then, something.
I read today that Oliver Sacks the famous professor of neurology and author of Awakenings and "The Man who mistook his wife for a hat" has recently suffered from a tumour located behind his eye which left him with significant visual perceptual problems. In the article he also discussed the possible mechanisms behind visual hallucinatons in people who are blind and happened to mention Virginia Hamilton Adair, poet who published her first book of poems aged 83 (one might think there is hope for us all however i think she may have had a head start as her father was robert browning hamilton, poet and she is said to have penned her first poem aged two!). In her latter years she was blind and experienced several visual hallucinations but this seemed to act as a creative spur to the writing process. Anyhow I decided to look her up and found this rather macabre but brilliant verse about marriage...
Cutting the Cake
Virginia Hamilton Adair
Gowned and veiled for tribal ritual
in a maze of tulle and satin
with her eyes rimmed round in cat fur
and the stylish men about her
kissing kin and carefree suitors
long she looked unseeing past him
to her picture in the papers
print and photoflash embalming
the demise of the familiar
and he trembled as her fingers
took the dagger laid before them
for the ceremonial cutting
of the mounting tiers of sweetness
crowned with manikin and maiden
and her chop was so triumphant
that the groomlike little figure
from his lover at the apex
toppled over in the frosting
where a flower girl retrieved him
sucked him dry and bit his head off.
Hinting at something spiritual in our lives? I like people who "look down wells" as long as they don't lose sight of what's outside the well itself :DQuote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Nice choice freckle!
Going Down Hill on a Bicycle
With lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.
Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:—
"O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.
"Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy,
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!"
Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
'Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.
Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.
Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
Shall find wings waiting there.
Henry Charles Beeching
If that doesn't put a bloke off marriage I don't know what will?Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Sort of the equivalent of a Black Widow spider eating its mate after the "ceremony" :D
Mein Gott! You two seem to have a a dose of festive melancholia.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Ok. So now for something slightly more yummy...well sort of...
To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS
I love this! i must do more cycling next year :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Saw this today and really liked it.
Winter Mantel
'Terar dum prosim' (a motto from Thomas Carlyle's home)
The copper vessel boasts its age
In the hand-hammered, tarnished sides.
The iron handle scrolls, then slides
Through hoops and crimps. Your fingers gauge
The vessel's volume, which you feed
With cones until you overflow
The brim. These wooden lilacs grow
Like blooms to shield ovules and seed
Beneath a shingled core. The winter
Winds and the snows won't break the spell
You stoke. Like conifers, we dwell
In timber towers. All might splinter
Like ornaments on loosened wire.
Beneath the clock you kindle love
For kids whose stockings hang above
Carlyle's creed and midnight's fire:
"Consumed in service" like the cones,
A hearth adorned to warm our bones.
by David Livewell
This made me smile too Mossy! feeling cheery despite my snotty cold. Had a totally beautiful run in the hoar frost. Am not really writing much poetry at the moment, just the occasional haiku but I've been reading a little and hope to have a bit more time to enjoy it now I'm out of work mayhem for a bit. I'm so glad that you are all keeping the thread going. Looking forward to reading some of the posts I've missed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog