Today's poet

[freckle]

Eeeeee well, this little freckle is tired and turning in...as the bard would say "sleep perchance to dream"..........na night one and all

Variation on the word sleep
Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Margaret Atwood

[Derby Tup]

Goodnight freckle

[stevefoster]

Sleep tight freckle

[Derby Tup]

Body

What was so quiet a companion,
My dumb friend,
Now cries out, groans,
Swells with noxious fluid
Clamouring for attention.
Did I neglect you,
Taking for granted
The ease with which you walked, breathed,
Ran for a bus?
We that were one, are two
I bow before you.

Sasha Moorsom

[Stolly]

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls

The Eagle

You may have sorted my epitaph out for me there DT

[Alf]

Hows about this?

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

Thanks for the introduction to Mary Oliver freckle This could be a first for me liking a poet who is not dead

I enjoyed the Tennyson extract as well DT



A bit of Robert Southey today:



How darkly o'er yon far-off mountain frowns
The gather'd tempest! from that lurid cloud
The deep-voiced thunders roll, aweful and loud
Tho' distant; while upon the misty downs
Fast falls in shadowy streaks the pelting rain.
I never saw so terrible a storm!
Perhaps some way-worn traveller in vain
Wraps his torn raiment round his shivering form
Cold even as Hope within him! I the while
Pause me in sadness tho' the sunbeams smile
Cheerily round me. Ah that thus my lot
Might be with Peace and Solitude assign'd,
Where I might from some little quiet cot,
Sigh for the crimes and miseries of mankind!

[Derby Tup]

John Cooper Clarke, Burnley

I'll tell you now and I'll tell you firmly
I don't never want to go to Burnley
What they do there don't concern me
Why would anybody make the journey?


I'll tell you know and I'll tell you flatly
I don't never want to go to Gatley
I don't even want to go to Batley
Where is that place exactly?


Do I wanna to go to Redditch?
I wouldn't visit in a souped-up sheddish
what am I some kind of Nebbish?
No I don't want to go to Reddish


I'll tell you now and I'll tell you briefley
I don't never want to go to Keighley
I'll tell you now, just like I told Elsa Lanchester.....
I don't ever want to go to.....Cumbernauld!

[Derby Tup]

five Wharfedale dippers
handsome and be-waistcoated
sing their songs of spring

[freckle]

You may have sorted my epitaph out for me there DT

I liked that poem very much too now don't talk of your death stolly i will get all upset!

[freckle]

Well....they will all be out tonight, tables for two...overpriced hastily prepared meals and god awful red inflatable balloons and single stem roses...(I'm not bitter...honest!)......i'll post some romnatic poems in honour of tomorrow later but here's a bit of cynicism, Yeat's style to kick off with!.....

Never give all the heart
W.B. Yeats

NEVER give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.