Today's poet

[Alf]

I think I have posted a poem of Gwendolyn Brooks before. This one is strong stuff.


The Mother


Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Gwendolyn Brooks

[freckle]

I really liked the poems by David Morphet Multi...i also liked this of his from the website...thank you


MOOR SONG
Here is my element.
The lift and swell
and lip and lie.
The stretch of sky
over the hills.
The way moor folds;
the way it breaks
into a run of ghylls;
the way it falls;
the way the wide fells
hold the eye and all
is clear and still.

[freckle]

I think I have posted a poem of Gwendolyn Brooks before. This one is strong stuff.


The Mother


Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gosh this is so sad I could weep but brillaintly written...i felt totally transported whilst reading it...

thanks Alf

[Nathaniel Lee]

Thermopylae.

I smell their fear,
Arrows blotting the sun,
I was born for this,
Let these persian hordes come,
They shall taste their own blood,
Xerxes dare say he would take Sparta,
Molon Labe, mighty Xerxes,
Molon Labe.

By Herakles.

[freckle]

is this about forbidden fruit?

To Be In Love

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

Gwendolyn Brooks

[freckle]

Thermopylae.

I smell their fear,
Arrows blotting the sun,
I was born for this,
Let these persian hordes come,
They shall taste their own blood,
Xerxes dare say he would take Sparta,
Molon Labe, mighty Xerxes,
Molon Labe.

By Herakles.

hi herakles good to see you back...nice avatar!.....v nice!

anyhoo, you still up for armitage?

not sure i understand poem, think i am a bit too thick!

[Nathaniel Lee]

It is about the battle of thermopylae where 300 spartans died to protect greece by holding off an army of somewhere between 300000 and 1.5 million at the thermopylae pass for 3 days until reinforcements could get there. And yes i am up for it.

[freckle]

It is about the battle of thermopylae where 300 spartans died to protect greece by holding off an army of somewhere between 300000 and 1.5 million at the thermopylae pass for 3 days until reinforcements could get there. And yes i am up for it.

Ah right...i did like that film...but for all the wrong reasons (tee hee!!!)

look forward to seeing you soon (ish)

[XRunner]

It is about the battle of thermopylae where 300 spartans died to protect greece .

Or as Robert Browning wrote about another battle:

Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Akropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine thro' clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!

[Nathaniel Lee]

Indeed. I would love to be able to see just how good a soldiering unit the Spartans were if i had a time machine. All those years of training and the intensity of it. Only the best getting through it a good number dying in the 13 years.