Today's poet

[Hes]

I liked Freckle's and XRunner's choices too. Hmmm...what to post next??

[Hes]

I found this in the anthology 'The River's Voice':

A Flowing River

You are lovely as a river
under tranquil skies-
There are inperfections
but a music overlays them-

telling by how dark a bed
the current moves
to what sea that shines
and ripples in my thought

William Carlos Williams

[stevefoster]

I found this in the anthology 'The River's Voice':

A Flowing River

You are lovely as a river
under tranquil skies-
There are inperfections
but a music overlays them-

telling by how dark a bed
the current moves
to what sea that shines
and ripples in my thought

William Carlos Williams

Lovely choice Hes, love the sound of running water, could sit by a river or a stream all day, beats working but doesn't pay the bills.

[freckle]

Nice selection Mossy. "the teardrop weight of wedding rings is tearing
at the stitches of the seam"

(She is probably better off without him )

i agree alf...such a sad and beautiful poem....sigh

[freckle]

I found this in the anthology 'The River's Voice':

A Flowing River

You are lovely as a river
under tranquil skies-
There are inperfections
but a music overlays them-

telling by how dark a bed
the current moves
to what sea that shines
and ripples in my thought

William Carlos Williams

hey you introduced me to someone new! thanks hes!

i think there is so much more than meets the eye with this one.....


The Decent
William Carlos Williams

The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned.
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment,
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
since their movements
are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected,
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness .

With evening, love wakens
though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .

Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to awaken
as night
advances.

The descent
made up of despairs
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
which is a reversal
of despair.
For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation—
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible .


ps an interesting analysis can be found here...
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...thedescent.htm

[Alf]

Over the Edge

All my dead people
seeping through the riverbank where they are buried
colouring the stream pale brown
are why I swim in the river,
feeling now rather closer to them
than when the water was clearer,
when I could walk barefoot on the gravel
seeing only the flicker of minnows
possessing nothing but balance.

Fleur Adcock

[Alf]

Somersby Brook

This brook was the pulse of his being;
I know; I have seen it,
An insignificant affair, stroking the grasses
In the drab fields.
But when the land is flat and there is nowhere to go,
No hill steep enough to sharpen the mind,
No wood darkening to an old legend,
One ignores the whole and prizes the parts,
Making a forest of the green cress,
A town of the trees’ roots.

So it was then in his young life
Beginning at Somersby;
His thoughts were attuned to the brook’s rhythm;
Its lithe movements, scaly with sunlight,
Startled his mind with a new joy.
And in the dark, if he leaned from his window,
It was as though the night spoke
In shrewd whispers –
And all because of this mean runnel,
Toying idly with a few stones,
Stones that became words in his verse,
Poised and polished in the mind’s stream.

R. S. Thomas

[Hes]

That's a really powerful poem Alf.

Over the Edge

All my dead people
seeping through the riverbank where they are buried
colouring the stream pale brown
are why I swim in the river,
feeling now rather closer to them
than when the water was clearer,
when I could walk barefoot on the gravel
seeing only the flicker of minnows
possessing nothing but balance.

Fleur Adcock

[Hes]

This is an excerpt from Alice Oswald's excellent poem/book Dart:

woodman working on your own
knocking the long shadows down
and all day the river's eyes
peep and pry among the trees

when the lithe water turns
and its tongue flatters the ferns
do you speak this kind of sound:
whirlpool whisking around?

Listen, I can clap and slide
my hollow hands along my side
imagine the bare feel of the water,
woodman, to the wrinkled timber

[Hes]

here is another excerpt from Dart about swimming...

Menyahari - we scream in mid-air,
We jump from tree into a pool, we change ourselves
into the fish dimension. Everybody swims here
under Still Pool Copse, on a saturday,
slapping the water with bare hands, its fine once you're in.

Is it cold? Is it sharp?

I stood looking down through the beech trees.
When I threw a stone I could count to five before the
splash.

Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head,
through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm,
giving water the weight and size of myself in order to
imagine it,
water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding

when my body was in some way a wave to swim in,
one continuous fin from head to tail
I steered through rapids like a canoe,
digging my hands in, keeping just ahead of the
river....