Today's poet

[freckle]

I found this poem today for the first time...its one of those poems I wish I had found earlier and shared earlier...I find it so inspiring I hope you do too...

To an english friend in Africa
Ben Okri


Be grateful for freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships.
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all.
Do not think your ways superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
Do not condemn
But praise what you can
And when you can't be silent.

Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to re-create yourself anew
In order to transform time.

Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn a new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen
To you are raw materials
Endlessly fertile
Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change
Your life and go on doing for ever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful
For all the things good or bad on the rich road;
For everything is changeable
So long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love;
Fear not but be alert and receptive;
Fear not but act decisively when you should;
Fear not, but know when to stop;
Fear not for you are loved by me;
Fear not, for death is not the real terror,
But life -magically - is.

Be joyful in your silence
Be strong in your patience

Do not try to wrestle with the universe
But be sometimes like water or air
Sometimes like fire
And constant like the earth.

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery.
Never forget that love
Requires that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-generating and strong and gentle-
Your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us
To always and in time overcome the worst
And lowest in our souls.
Love the world wisely.
It is love alone that is the greatest weapon
And the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend.
The darkness is gentler than you think.
Be grateful for the manifold
Dreams of creation
And the many ways of unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it.
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you on the unfolding road.

[freckle]

It is Freckle, although I don't know if I even like it. I wrote it quite a few years ago when I was pondwering what I thought heaven would be like if I was a deeply religous person, so it's a sort of pseudo religous poem I think

i think its jolly good...i like the freedom associated with the idea of a pseudo religious poem (especially as I am a non believer)

[Hes]

Freckle, the Ben Okri poem is something that I took in my notebook when I travelled alone for a year and half. It is more relevant today than ever and so thank you very much for reminding me of it!

[freckle]

re goldfish....

Margaret Atwood - You Fit Into Me

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye


Pink Floyd

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.


O.W.

A silent witness
To a familiar scene
Domestic meltdown

It is so good to have you back OW with some thought provoking words...I am a fan of Atwood, I think those lines convey both the pain and the beauty of an intense love between two people...your reference to Pink Floyd made me think again of the Ben Okri poem I have just posted...this also touches on fear, change and the capacity to "stay alive" as a human being (something to remember in times of adversity)...there are so many layers to the poem i think its quite something....thanks again for your post

[freckle]

Freckle, the Ben Okri poem is something that I took in my notebook when I travelled alone for a year and half. It is more relevant today than ever and so thank you very much for reminding me of it!

I'm glad you like it Hes, ...it seems so relevant to your upcoming journey, I had you in my mind's eye whilst reading it...and another friend

p.s. part of me wishes i could climb into your suitcase and escape to india...it sounds like such a wonderful and exciting adventure!!!

[freckle]

Another good one from Ben Okri

They say

They say
Love grows
When the fear of death
Looms.

They say
Courage looms
When the fear
Of never loving again
Disappears
In the smell of the enemy
Who crushes us so much
We can only fight.

Love and courage grow together
When the flesh is rawest
And the spirit charged
And distorted within the nightmare
We see the possibility
Of a future.

[Nathaniel Lee]

Old.

Sepia memories are all i have left,
My love gone now for so many years,
A tired old man downtrodden bereft,
Existing alone as the end nears.

There was a better time when sunlight came in,
Her smile would bring such joy to me,
It's only alone at night that i see her again.
I hope it's not long now for me to join my love in eternity.

By Matt Harmston.

[Derby Tup]

Sonnet LXXXI

And now you're mine.
Rest with your dream in my dream
Love and pain and work should all sleep now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams.
You will go we will go together,
over the waters of time
No one else will travel through the shadows with me only you,
evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away your eyes closed like two gray wings,
and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind that carries me away.
The night, the world, the wind spin out of their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that,
And that is all

Pablo Neruda

[Nathaniel Lee]

Each day everyone just seems to get better i love the choices of poems and everyones creations.

[Hes]

The Heart of a Friend

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

by H. W. Longfellow