Sunlight

2010-12-20T21:16:00.002-05:00

concrete
plain gray highway
woven across the land
iridescent with potential
all roads

2010-12-20T21:15:00.001-05:00

nothing
sweet empty sky
not a care in the world
a deeper blue than i have seen
morning

2010-12-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

waves crash
on other shores
we each hear our heart beat
under the droning of the wind
same storm

2010-12-20T21:10:00.000-05:00

heart break
split me open
my thoughts seem to cut me
fear and hope fracture my well being
let go

2010-12-20T21:05:00.000-05:00

Crashing
against concrete,
a tanker's oily wake
smells of dead fish and gasoline.
HeartBreak.

She is
Turning away.
The arc of a stone tossed;
A splash in the peaceful waters.
Ripples

ripples
Whisper nothing
Along the morning beach
Two dolphins glide by silently
SmallWaves

Bright star
Touch the moons horns
Fall with me this Evening
RedClouds deepen into velvet
twilight

Warm sun
Through the bamboo,
Azalea choked by weeds;
My blunt tool grubs out the choke trees.
HardWork.

Rejoice!
blue jays have come
to eat the ripe berries:
the purple burden of this bush.
PraiseThem!

flowers
someone planted
don't belong in this place
Pull them out and let the weeds grow
NoSweat

2007-05-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

Terzanelle of Kosovo Fields
Richard Jackson
June 2000

The soldier thinks he can beat the moon with a stick.
His is a country where roads do not meet, nor words touch.
The walls around him crumble: his heart is a pile of bricks.

We sit with the sky draped across our knees and trust
that the shadows of planes, whisper like children in the fields,
follow roads that do not meet us, speak words we will not touch.

The soldier lights a fuse that makes a tragic story real:
our words scavenge the countryside like packs of dogs, derelict,
abandoned, hunted by the shadows of planes that cross the fields.

It's true that the blackbirds fill the air with their terrible music.
How could we think a soldier wouldn't turn our stars to sawdust?
Now our words scavenge the countryside, and our loves are derelict.

I wanted to love you beyond the soldier's aim, beyond the war's clutch.
Now bombs hatch in our hearts. Even the smoke abandons us for the sky.
How could we think a soldier wouldn't turn our stars to sawdust?

We live in a world where the earth refuses to meet the sky.
Our homes are on the march, their smoke abandons us for the sky.
Our soldiers thought they could beat the moon with their sticks.
Now every heart is crumbling, every love is a pile of bricks.

hundred

2006-10-30T02:18:00.000-05:00

Shred the layered Veils

and Burn for heat these garments

which clothed us Summer long

now Shed their Golden splendor;

go Naked towards the Snow!

Till under these Pale stalks

in Clawed and furrowed Earth;

Bury life's remains with snow:

our gifts to winter's frozen heart.

Awaiting springtime's golden glow.

under this cold sky's arc

Effort rarely serves great Virtue;

One person's Work feeds many:

Starlings descend on the field.

Young ones shirk the Plow.

A paltry Rag-and-stick

man Wards off the Birds.

This season's children must till

Grandmother's garden. Save the wine;

Break bread in new Jerusalem.

Hafiz

2006-08-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

I thought that he was some one elses cat.
He liked our weedy, rank, neglected yard.
He basked in sunny patches watching birds.
When it rained curled against the house
I loved the way he ran and then looked back
When ever I came near to make a friend:
Eyes Blazing, he marched away with tail erect.
When I left food he disapeared. Rain filled
The empty bowl and grass filled his sunny nest.

I asked my Neighbor about the old grey cat.
He said, "No, my Fathers freind is gone,"
He used to sit in my dad's lap each day
He came here after dogs had ravaged him."
Now when I catch the old man's eye, we both know

Sonnet for the Son I Never Had

2006-07-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

A trickle of sweat ran behind my ear
While i hit rocks with an old baseball bat.
I did that in the corn fields every year,
When I was young, but now i'm done with that.

Now baseball is a game, my children play.
Before my eyes, my son hit a home run;
We took the team to celebrate the day;
Root beer and Pizza for all: it was fun.

He doesn't share the Anger that I had
He does his best in front of all his friends.
When the team fails, he knows he wasn't bad.
To win, is a begining, not an end

In his young social life, I see no fear.
No trace of that which haunted me these years

The Writer’s Response

2006-07-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

Unwritten rules abound in Poetry.
This thing is only what we make of it.
While every writer struggles to break free
From Rules, we also try to make thoughts fit
Conventions of language for others sake
So they can understand what we have said
Since we all know that rules were made to break
And some rules, broken leave us dead,
We gently step around the past poets
Forms and fancies to forge our own language.
In our efforts to do this we forget
Our duty: to the readers thoughts engage.
While off rhyme or weak meter, we can ignore…
Our job is certainly never to bore.

How to write a Tanka poem

2006-07-15T01:22:00.000-05:00

There are five lines in a Tanka poem.
.

Line one - 5 syllables Beautiful mountains

Line two - 7 syllables Rivers with cold, cold water.

Line three - 5 syllable White cold snow on rocks

Line four - 7 syllables Trees over the place with frost

Line five - 7 syllables White sparkly snow everywhere.

Tanks poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years ago.

No Fear

2006-06-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

Some one asked "What was the most foolish thing you did as a child?"

One cold winter back in the seventies, I went out on the Ice in Port Jefferson Harbor. the wather was rarely cold enough to freeze the salt water, but this year there was an ice storm followed by a cold snap the trees were all covered with a glaze of glittering crystal and the ground was hard and smooth as glass. School was out for a week, so we all had fun sliding down the hills with no sleds and exploring the sparkling forests.
When we came to the shore, the ice continued from the woods, down the beach and out across the wide harbor. nearly everything was frozen except for a passage cleared for oil tankers to dock at the power plant.
My two friends, Lewis and Clarke and i went out to the center of the harbor, equipped with long poles, so that we could push the ice flows off from each other and jump from one frozen raft to another. As the day wore on, the ice floes seemed smaller and futher apart.. We must have been at least half a mile out when Lewis stepped off one peice of ice onto the larger one that I was poling. Clarke was left ar one end of the smaller raft, which tipped, sliding him into the water. For a bunch of stupid kids, we seemed to know exactly what to do. Since Clarke could not climb out himself, we had to pull him up, the problem was that two people at the edge of the ice would cause it to tip, spilling both of us into the water with our friend.
So we lay down, one of us at each end, holding one pole between us. Lewis reached out with the other stick so that Clarke could grab it and we managed to get him out in a matter of minutes. We did not realize that only ten minutes of exposure like that would have caused hypothermia and we would have lost him.
I suppose that i should thank my parents who raised me around boats and taught me how to handle myself on the water.
When we got back on dry land Lewis gave Clark his dry coat, the poor kid was turning blue!
I never told any one about that until recently. We obviously made a big mistake and managed to escape with our lives.
Still, the lesson was not entirely clear, In the midst of our stupidity, we also rescued our friend. We had reason to be proud and ashamed.

In another foolish adventure, while the science teacher was out of the room, I poured turpentine into a test tube full of iodine crystals. I thought i knew exactly what would happen: a small explosion and a puff of purple smoke. I even wore safety glasses. What I didn't think of was the fact the the plastic test tube would melt, spilling purplish black tar onto the floor. Luckily other kids helped me clean it up; and the smoke smelled more like pine sap than something burning.

Now these are foolish things, dangerous and done with knowlege of the risks.
Talking to a friend about this, she told me that there are also unconscious mistakes, like the day she went to school with two different color shoes. Those mistakes are easilly forgiven, but the others are more serious, and none of this foolishness compares to the things i've done as an adult!

LITTLE GIDDING (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets') T.S. Eliot

2006-06-09T16:21:00.000-05:00

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

2006-04-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

The Wasteland -- T.S. Eliot


	I. The Burial of the Dead

	April is the cruelest month, breeding
	Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
	Memory and desire, stirring
	Dull roots with spring rain.
	Winter kept us warm, covering
	Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
	A little life with dried tubers.
	Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
	With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade
10	And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
	And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
	Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
	And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
	My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
	And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
	Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
	In the mountains, there you feel free.
	I read, much of the night, and go south in winter.

	What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
20	Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
	You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
	A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
	And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
	And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
	There is shadow under this red rock
	(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
	And I will show you something different from either
	Your shadow at morning striding behind you
	Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
30	I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
	Frisch weht der Wind
	Der heimat zu
	Mein Irisch kind,
	Wo weilest du?
	"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;"
	"They called me the hyacinth girl."
	--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
	Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
	Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
40	Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
	Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
	Öd' und leer das Meer.

	Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
	Has a bad cold, nevertheless
	Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
	With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
	Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
	(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
	Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
50	The lady of situations.
	Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
	And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
	Which is blank, is something that he carries on his back,
	Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
	The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
	I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
	Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
	Tell her I bring the horoscope myself;
	One must be so careful these days.

60	Unreal City
	Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
	A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
	I had not thought death had undone so many.
	Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
	And each man fixed his eyes before his feet,
	Flowed up the hill and down King William Street
	To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
	With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
	There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, "Stetson!
70	You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
	That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
	Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
	Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
	Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
	Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
	You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable!--mon frère!"

	[ The Burial of the Dead \| A Game of Chess \| The Fire Sermon ]
	[ Death by Water \| What the Thunder Said ]


08/13/97	xanax@enteract.com

2006-03-09T07:36:00.000-05:00

"Cold Poem"

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.
- Mary Oliver

2006-02-26T07:20:00.000-05:00

About.com Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky’s The Sounds of Poetry: "The big move in Robert Pinsky’s primer, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide is the teeny-tiniest. By positing the iamb as the atom of poetry, Pinsky ultimately dispenses with dactyls altogether, calling them “thunketta.” Anapests survive: Pinsky sees them as the “first, unstressed part of an iamb divided into two,” “bouncing two quick syllables, often elided, into the place of one,” galloping rhythm. In a way, you could say Pinsky’s gone digital poetry, espousing a terminology that covers the maximum number of cases with the minimum number of terms.

2006-02-25T02:04:00.000-05:00

: "A PRAYER FOR OLD AGE

A PRAYER FOR OLD AGE

GOD guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray -- for word is out
And prayer comes round again --
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.

Drowned City Poets

2005-09-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

Tell me your Sorrows

The Raven, By E. A. Poe

2005-08-23T16:35:00.000-05:00

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet violet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe
[First published in 1845]

2005-08-21T10:59:00.000-05:00

PERHAPS THE WORLD ENDS HERE

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat
to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it
has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the cor-
ners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be
human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our
children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as
we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the
shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for
burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering
and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laugh-
ing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Joy Harjo
from THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY,
(W.W. Norton, 1994)

2005-08-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER VILLAGE

hate the people of this village
and would nail our hats
to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
or staple our hands to our foreheads
for refusing to salute them
if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
mix their flour at night with broken glass.
We do this, they do that.
They peel the larynx from one of our brothers' throats.
We de-vein one of their sisters.
The quicksand pits they built were good.
Our amputation teams were better.
We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
They do this, we do that.
We canceled our sheep imports.
They no longer bought our blankets.
We mocked their greatest poet
and when that had no effect
we parodied the way they dance
which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
was leprous, hairless.
We do this, they do that.
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

--Thomas Lux
from SPLIT HORIZON, (Houghton Mifflin, 1994)

2005-08-18T08:35:00.000-05:00

Writing in the Dark

It's not difficult.
Anyway, it's necessary.

Wait till morning, and you'll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light, and you'll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen, ballpoints don't always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There's nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are our tools.

Never mind about crossing your t's, dotting your i's--
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.

- Denise Levertov
from such stuff

found at whiskey river

2005-08-02T23:18:00.000-05:00

Bob Dylan: Precious Memories:
"As I travel down life's pathway,
Know not what the years may hold.
As I ponder, hopes grow fonder,
Precious memories flood my soul

Precious father, loving mother,
Glide across the lonely years.
And old homes scenes of my childhood
In fond memory appears.

Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul.
In the stillness of the midnight,
Precious sacred scenes unfold.

Copyright ? 1986 Special Rider Music
"

2005-07-07T01:49:00.000-05:00

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always --
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T.S. Eliot

2005-07-06T18:48:00.000-05:00

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Wallace Stevens

A SONG ON THE END OF THE WORLD

2005-06-04T01:23:00.000-05:00

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his
tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Czeslaw Milosz wrote his poem in Warsaw, in 1944

What if God was one of us

2005-05-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets

And yeah yeah god is great yeah yeah god is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
He's trying to make his way home
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the pope maybe in rome

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if god was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the pope maybe in rome

2005-05-21T05:38:00.000-05:00

The great encounter stops your breath, your heart breaks,
you fall. Good men have this too, and women know
Of change; from birth, the metered months time the eggs
Arrival. You wait as if time were slow.
And bound in amber, your polished moments
Set with precious findings for display.

Taliesin

2005-05-04T06:51:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time,
a long time years years ago,
there was a witch called Caridwen.
She lived in a huge palace with marble halls
built on a rock in the middle of a lake.
In that palace with her lived a huge crow,
an old nam,
and her son
who was a monster.
But she didn't think so
and loved him dearly.
He was horrible,
and was always tormenting animals.
There was a little boy, too,
who was chained to a huge bubbling cauldron
in the middle of the largest marble hall.
The witch had come one night
and stolen him out of his bed in his parents house
and carried him to the palace
on the back of the back crow.
His name was Gwion and he was very very scared...
She gave him a ladle
and made him stir the cauldron day and night,
and if he stopped she whipped him
or wouldn't give him any more dry bread.
In the cauldron was a spell of wisdom
to make her monster son more wise,
and it had to cook for a year and a day.
But on the very last day of the year,
Gwion splashed three drops of the burning liquid on his finger
and "aieeee"...he cried,
and put it in his mouth.
Then he had tasted the spell and the cauldron exploded,
exploded into thousands of pieces,
and it was Gwion who was suddenly wise.
He was so wise he could see everything,
he could even see the witch Caridwen
gathering herbs at the North Pole.
Suddenly she turned sharply towards him
with a terrible scream of rage.
"You have tasted the spell meant for my son", she cried.
Then she came flying, flying,
over the seas and the mountains,
the towns and the villages,
down down to chase him and catch him
and punish him for ever and ever...

But he could now change into a bird
so he flew away up towards the sun,
but she changed into an eagle and flew after him
faster faster catch him up.
So he fell down through the sky into the river
and became a fish,
hiding among the weeds.
She became a fish, too,
and seam swam always after him,
but then he got tired,
and changed into a grain of corn
and hid in a sack,
but she changed into a chicken
and snap, snap, got in the sack and ate him up.
So now he was in her stomach,
and grew and grew into a baby
so that she would give birth to him.
And she did,
but so that she could kill that baby. "
Now I can kill you" she cried...
but what a beautiful baby,
she can't she can't
what will she do now?

So she put him in a old leather sack
and threw him into the river shrieking
"go away, go away, never look at me again".

The sack floated quietly down the river
many many miles,
by trees, and houses, and big pools,
and then got caught up against a boat.

It was a poor man's boat,
he and his good wife were in despair,
because they had no food or money.
He went to the river to fish for supper,
he found the sack,
what a treasure,
what a beautiful baby,
his name was Taliesin...
As soon as he took this golden baby home,
their fortunes changed,
and they had work and food.
The baby grew into a boy,
with beautiful clear face and strange green eyes,
but joyful and singing always,
such songs,
all the people would listen and wouldn't move.

He won a contest at the court of the king against all the bards,
his song was light like birdsong
and the people were entranced.
Then he kissed the good man and wide
and went off through the world singing marvels,
at the court of the king,
through the countryside,
through the towns,
n castles and in cottages,
to everyone who would listen,
and his stories were like spell,
and all the people listening were spellbound.

--Gilli Smyth "Mother"

2005-05-02T06:12:00.000-05:00

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

-- Emily Dickinson

Idiot Wind

2005-04-24T06:10:00.000-05:00

Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts.
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at,
I couldn't believe after all these years, you didn't know me better than that
Sweet lady.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's like.
There's a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door,
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars
After losin' every battle.

I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars.
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies.
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes,
Blood on your saddle.

Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb,
Blowing through the curtains in your room.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart.
Now everything's a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped,
What's good is bad, what's bad is good, you'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom.

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes
don't look into mine.
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building
burned.
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime
turned Slowly into autumn.

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I can't feel you anymore, I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin' I was somebody else instead.
Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy,
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory
And all your ragin' glory.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free,
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me.
You'll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We're idiots, babe.
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

Copyright © 1974 Ram's Horn Music

2005-04-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

A CLEAR DAY AND NO MEMORIES
by Wallace Stevens

No soldiers in the scenery,
No thoughts of people now dead,
As they were fifty years ago,
Young and living in a live air,
Young and walking in the sunshine,
Bending in blue dresses to touch something,
Today the mind is not part of the weather.

Today the air is clear of everything.
It has no knowledge except of nothingness
And it flows over us without meanings,
As if none of us had ever been here before
And are not now: in this shallow spectacle,
This invisible activity, this sense.

2005-03-24T03:40:00.000-05:00

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

-- :"Litany against Fear from the Bene Gesserit rite"

2005-03-16T04:06:00.000-05:00

Mary Oliver

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

2005-03-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

my little problem
--The Replacements

The feeling you're getting
is downright depressing
do you foresee
a way out for me

Well it's not my problem
to help you solve them
do you wanna go through it
do you really wanna do it
Don't you wanna be my little problem
don't you wanna be my little problem

Probably tell your friends
you were on a bet
but I'm a man of pieces
that you're never gonna mend
Let's put it together
some way, somehow
something's wrong
but I can't stop now, no...

Don't you wanna be my little problem
slide up next to me any time
don't you wanna be my little problem

I never had a problem
till I knew you'd try to solve it
well I never had a problem
don't you...
till I told you yeah

The feeling you're getting
is downright depressing
do you foresee
a way out for me

I never had a problem
till I met you try to solve 'em
oh I never had a problem
don't you wanna
don't you wanna be my little problem

shup up next to me any time
don't worry I can see my little problem
don't you wanna be my little problem
My little problem
my little problem

2005-03-02T14:33:00.000-05:00

Sojourns in the Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension - though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it Nature; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be Nature too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal - then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
- but we have changed, a little.

- Denise Levertov
Viawhiskey river

2005-02-15T15:20:00.000-05:00

"Coming from the sun of the precious Buddha
The smiling rays of luminous Dharma,
precious and genuine,
Bring to blossom the lotus garden of the
sangha, the supreme assembly,
May the three realms reveal all their
beauty in auspicious glory.

Tashi Delek and all good wishes for the New Year of the Water Sheep.

--Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje"

2005-02-10T14:36:00.000-05:00

Derek Walcott

A City's Death By Fire

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;
Under a candle's eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

2005-02-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

Concrete Jungle
Bob Marley

No sun will shine in my day today; (no sun will shine)
The high yellow moon won't come out to play:
(that high yellow moon won't come out to play)
I said (darkness) darkness has covered my light,
(and the stage) And the stage my day into night, yeah.
Where is the love to be found?
Won't someone tell me?
'Cause my (sweet life) life must be somewhere to be found -
(must be somewhere for me)
Instead of concrete jungle,
Where the living is harder.

Concrete jungle:
Man you got to do your best. Wo-ooh, yeah.
No chains around my feet,
But I'm not free, oh-ooh!
I know I am bound here in captivity;
G'yeah, now - (never, never) I've never known happiness;
(never, never) I've never known what sweet caress is -
Still, I'll be always laughing like a clown;
Won't someone help me? 'Cause I (sweet life) -
I've got to pick myself from off the ground
(must be somewhere for me), he-yeah! -
In this a concrete jungle
I said, what do you cry for me now, o-oh!
Concrete jungle, ah, won't you let me be, now.
Hey! Oh, now!

I said that life (sweet life) - it must be somewhere to be found
(must be somewhere for me)
Oh, instead: concrete jungle
- collusion - confusion (confusion). Eh!

Concrete jungle: baby, you've got it in.
Concrete jungle, now. Eh!
Concrete jungle.
What do you Got for me, now?

2005-01-19T16:31:00.000-05:00

August
Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

Mary Oliver | "August" | poetry archive | plagiarist.com: ". "

2005-01-05T15:53:00.000-05:00

Jesus said, "Everyone who seeks should continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will be troubled at the contemplation of Truth, but when he has passed through the time of trouble, he will be astonished at the brightness of the Light, for the Way of Truth is the Pathway to the Eternal Godhead, and the price of the beatific vision is the wringing of the soul. The person who desires to rise above all things must descend below all things, for the way to the heights passes through the depths of anguish, which generate the fires of Life. The person who has suffered and found Life is blessed."

2004-12-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

Support UNICEF's Tsunami Relief Efforts :: Donate :: U.S. Fund for UNICEF - U.S. Fund for UNICEF: "Support South Asia Tsunami Relief Efforts"

2004-12-29T06:40:00.000-05:00

Robert Creeley - The Academy of American Poets

As I was walking
I came upon
chance walking
the same road upon.

As I sat down
by chance to move
later
if and as I might,

light the wood was,
light and green,
and what I saw
before I had not seen.

It was a lady
accompanied
by goat men
leading her.

Her hair held earth.
Her eyes were dark.
A double flute
made her move.

"O love,
where are you
leading
me now?"

From Selected Poems by Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Originally published in For Love: Poems 1950-1960 (Scribner, 1962).

2004-12-27T06:15:00.000-05:00

from "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R.Tolkien:
"The Road goes ever on and on"

Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down form the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out form the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet. "

2004-12-12T10:21:00.000-05:00

There are many things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go on your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

Annie Dillard
from "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek."

2004-12-07T04:09:00.000-05:00

Preludium to America

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other arms she need!
Invulnerable though naked, save where clouds roll round her loins
Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise,
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce embrace.
'Dark Virgin,' said the hairy youth, 'thy father stern, abhorr'd,
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an Eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a Lion
Stalking upon the mountains, and sometimes a Whale, I lash
The raging fathomless abyss; anon a Serpent folding
Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs
On the Canadian wilds I fold; feeble my spirit folds,
For chain'd beneath I rend these caverns: when thou bringest food
I howl my joy, and my red eyes seek to behold thy face--
In vain! these clouds roll to and fro, and hide thee from my sight.'

Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links; free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he seiz'd the panting, struggling womb;
It joy'd: she put aside her clouds and smiled her first-born smile,
As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the silent deep.

Soon as she saw the terrible boy, then burst the virgin cry:

'I know thee, I have found thee, and I will not let thee go:
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa,
And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark death.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions
Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep.
I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love,
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the south-sea, drinking my soul away.
O what limb-rending pains I feel! thy fire and my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent.
This is eternal death, and this the torment long foretold.'

W illiam Blake

2004-11-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult. —W.B. Yeats

2004-09-15T06:36:00.000-05:00

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
W. H. Auden

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

     You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

   The parish of rich women, physical decay,

   Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

   Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

   For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

   In the valley of its making where executives

   Would never want to tamper, flows on south

   From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

   Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

   A way of happening, a mouth.

III

          Earth, receive an honoured guest:

        William Yeats is laid to rest.

        Let the Irish vessel lie

        Emptied of its poetry.



        In the nightmare of the dark

        All the dogs of Europe bark,

        And the living nations wait,

        Each sequestered in its hate;



        Intellectual disgrace

        Stares from every human face,

        And the seas of pity lie

        Locked and frozen in each eye.



        Follow, poet, follow right

        To the bottom of the night,

        With your unconstraining voice

        Still persuade us to rejoice;



        With the farming of a verse

        Make a vineyard of the curse,

        Sing of human unsuccess

        In a rapture of distress;



        In the deserts of the heart

        Let the healing fountain start,

        In the prison of his days

        Teach the free man how to praise.

2004-08-24T05:11:00.000-05:00

I see my beauty in you. I become
a mirror that cannot close its eyes

to your longing. My eyes wet with
yours in the early light. My mind

every moment giving birth, always
conceiving, always in the ninth

month, always the come-point. How
do I stand this? We become these

words we say, a wailing sound moving
out into the air. These thousands of

worlds that rise from nowhere, how
does your face contain them? I'm

a fly in your honey, then closer, a
moth caught in flame's allure, then

empty sky stretched out in homage.

- Jelaluddin Rumi
The Glance Songs of Soul-Meeting

-Whiskeyriver

2004-07-23T15:48:00.000-05:00

I
shakespeares-sonnets.com

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

2004-07-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

Becoming in Black (after Ghalib)
by William Dennis

Hard men live easy, it's true, and, yes, easy men live hard.
Only man . . . even woman . . . tries and fails to be humane.

What mad-moon gravity sets me full in that direction
Daily, by choice and aware, startled when she's still not there?

Her face would coax vision out of the most reluctant eye;
Even her green-backed mirror wants to see what it reflects.

My wound waits in the grave, while I mourn the death of all joy;
Glancing up, my tears embellish an orchard from your face.

She swears this binding oath: not to torment my remains more;
One so becoming in black is quick to don mourning.

2004-06-30T14:53:00.000-05:00

Imagine now and sing,
creating myths
forming jewels from the falling snow.

Ray Kurzweils Cybernetic Poetry

2004-06-28T07:15:00.000-05:00

2004-06-28T06:25:00.000-05:00

I said I shall tell the tale of my heart as best as I can;
Caught in the storm of my tears, with a bleeding heart,

I failed to do that!
I tried to relate to event in broken, muted words;
The cup of my thoughts was so fragile, that I fell into pieces like shattered glass.
Many ships were wrecked in this storm;
What is my little helpless boat in comparison?

The waves destroyed my ship, neither good remained nor bad;
Free from myself, I tied my body to a raft.
Now, I am neither up nor down-no this is not a fair description;
I am up on a wave one instant, and down under another the next.
I am not aware of my existence, I know only this:
When I am, I am not, and when I am not, I am!

(Divan 1419:1-6)

Translated by Fatemeh Keshavarz,
'Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi',
University of South Carolina Press, 1998

It is your turn now
It is your turn now,
you waited, you were patient.
The time has come,
for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now,
to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities.

From: 'Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi'
Translated by Sharam Shiva

O SUN, fill our house once more with light!
Make happy all your friends and blind your foes!
Rise from behind the hill, transform the stones
To rubies and the sour grapes to wine!
O Sun, make our vineyard fresh again,
And fill the steppes with houris and green cloaks!
Physician of the lovers, heaven's lamp!
Rescues the lovers! Help the suffering!
Show but your face - the world is filled with light!
But if you cover it, it's the darkest night!

O you who've gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you'd see the Beloved's
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul's pearly essence
when you're the Sea of God?
That's true - and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!

~Rumi 'I Am Wind, You are Fire'
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel

2004-06-25T07:54:00.000-05:00

Fabled by the daughters of memory... Finnegans Web An online text of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake By James Joyce.

2004-05-25T04:24:00.000-05:00

This book is the last flicker of the flame which I once hoped would burn so clear and strong that humanity itself might be delighted and comforted in its glow. How silly I was. Not wrong: just silly. This is light from a long dead star, and a tale that is told.

Colin Mackay's Jacob's Ladder

2004-05-19T15:59:00.000-05:00

William Blake

To Thomas Butts

To my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light,
On the yellow sands sitting.
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams
From Heaven's high streams.
Over sea, over land,
My eyes did expand
Into regions of air,
Away from all care;
Into regions of fire,
Remote from desire;
The light of the morning
Heaven's mountains adorning:
In particles bright,
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
Amaz'd and in fear
I each particle gazèd,
Astonish'd, amazèd;
For each was a Man
Human-form'd. Swift I ran,
For they beckon'd to me,
Remote by the sea,
Saying: `Each grain of sand,
Every stone on the land,
Each rock and each hill,
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.'
I stood in the streams
Of Heaven's bright beams,
And saw Felpham sweet
Beneath my bright feet,
In soft Female charms;
And in her fair arms
My Shadow I knew,
And my wife's Shadow too,
And my sister, and friend.
We like infants descend
In our Shadows on earth,
Like a weak mortal birth.
My eyes, more and more,
Like a sea without shore,
Continue expanding,
The Heavens commanding;
Till the jewels of ligh 1000 t,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appear'd as One Man,
Who complacent began
My limbs to enfold
In His beams of bright gold;
Like dross purg'd away
All my mire and my clay.
Soft consum'd in delight,
In His bosom sun-bright
I remain'd. Soft He smil'd,
And I heard His voice mild,
Saying: `This is My fold,
O thou ram horn'd with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea, and deep gulf.
These are guards of My fold,
O thou ram horn'd with gold!
And the voice faded mild:
I remain'd as a child;
All I ever had known
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appear'd on the sea.

To Mrs. Butts
Wife of the friend of those I most revere,
Receive this tribute from a harp sincere;
Go on in virtuous seed-sowing on mould
Of human vegetation, and behold
Your harvest springing to eternal life,
Parent of youthful minds, and happy wife!

To Thomas Butts
With Happiness stretch'd across the hills
In a cloud that dewy sweetness distils;
With a blue sky spread over with wings,
And a mild sun that mounts and sings;
With trees and fields full of fairy elves,
And little devils who fight for themselves --
Rememb'ring the verses that Hayley sung
When my heart knock'd against the root of my tongue --
With angels planted in hawthorn bowers,
And God Himself in the passing hours;
With silver angels across my way,
And golden demons that none can stay;
With my father hovering upon the wind,
And my brother Robert just behind,
And my brother John, the evil one,
In a black cloud making his moan, --
Tho' dead, they appear upon my path,
Notwithstanding my terrible wrath;
They beg, they entreat, they drop their tears,
Fill'd full of hopes, fill'd full of fears --
With a thousand angels upon the wind
Pouring disconsolate from behind
To drive them off, and before my way
A frowning thistle implores my stay.
What to others a trifle appears
Fills me full of smiles or tears;
For double the vision my eyes do see,
And a double vision is always with me.
With my inward eye, 'tis an Old Man grey,
With my outward, a Thistle across my way.
`If thou goest back,' the Thistle said,
`Thou art to endless woe betray'd;
For here does Theotormon lour,
And here is Enitharmon's bower;
And Los the Terrible thus hath sworn,
Because thou backward dost return,
Poverty, envy, old age, and fear,
Shall bring thy wife upon a bier;
And Butts shall give what Fuseli gave,
A dark black rock and a gloomy cave.'
I struck the Thistle with my foot,
And broke him up from his delving root.
`Must the duties of life each other cross?
Must every joy be dung and dross?
Must my dear Butts feel cold neglect
Because I give Hayley his due respect?
Must Flaxman look upon me as wild,
And all my friends be with doubts beguil'd?
Must my wife live in my sister's bane,
Or my sister survive on my love's pain?
The curses of Los, the terrible Shade,
And his dismal terrors make me afraid.'
So I spoke, and struck in my wrath
The Old Man weltering upon my path.
Then Los appear'd in all his power:
In the sun he appear'd, descending before
My face in fierce flames; in my double sight
'Twas outward a sun, inward Los in his might.
`My hands are labour'd day and night,
And ease comes never in my sight.
My wife has no indulgence given
Except what comes to her from Heaven.
We eat littl 84d e, we drink less,
This Earth breeds not our happiness.
Another sun feeds our life's streams,
We are not warmèd with thy beams;
Thou measurest not the time to me,
Nor yet the space that I do see;
My mind is not with thy light array'd,
Thy terrors shall not make me afraid.'

When I had my defiance given,
The sun stood trembling in heaven;
The moon, that glow'd remote below,
Became leprous and white as snow;
And every soul of men on the earth
Felt affliction, and sorrow, and sickness, and dearth.
Los flam'd in my path, and the sun was hot
With the bows of my mind and the arrows of thought.
My bowstring fierce with ardour breathes;
My arrows glow in their golden sheaves;
My brothers and father march before;
The heavens drop with human gore.

Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight,
And threefold in soft Beulah's night,
And twofold always. -- May God us keep
From single vision, and Newton's sleep!

To Thomas Butts
O! why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like the rest of my race?
When I look, each one starts; when I speak, I offend;
Then I'm silent and passive, and lose every friend.
Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise,
My person degrade, and my temper chastise;
And the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame;
All my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.

I am either too low, or too highly priz'd;
When elate I'm envied; when meek I'm despis'd.

Blake often wrote in verse to his friends and enemies

2004-04-28T10:37:00.000-05:00

Childhood's Appointment — Franz Wright

I am blind, but it seems to me the street meanders, it seems to
wish itself to sea.

But we're climbing now, I have come to stand on a great height
overlooking
the white city

silver mirror-glare of bay, of

the goodbye
against which nobody with pride would dare plead—

Here's hope you are well into your blessed summer

Cockroach befriended by the insane prisoner

At the wedding there weren't many guests

Visible ones, anyway

Then the beautiful hidden and infinite winter comes. . .

The closer I get to death, the more I love the earth, the thought
introduced itself as I sat shivering on my old park bench before
the dusk fog; as it has, I suppose, to every human being
who has ever lived
past forty.

A wingless, male, scared-looking angel of about sixteen—nobody
wants to see that

Prow of my father's bald unbuilt house parting the stars

2004-04-28T10:31:00.000-05:00

Letter — Franz Wright

January 1998

I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
But so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn't.
I don't participate, I'm not allowed;
I just listen, and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns. About the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other's eyes
and hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical
corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don't know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
When I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.

2004-04-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

SAY that the men of the old black tower,
Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds,
Their money spent, their wine gone sour,
Lack nothing that a soldier needs,
That all are oath-bound men:
Those banners come not in.

There in the tomb stand the dead upright,
But winds come up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

Those banners come to bribe or threaten,
Or whisper that a man's a fool
Who, when his own right king's forgotten,
Cares what king sets up his rule.
If he died long ago
Why do you dread us so?

There in the tomb drops the faint moonlight,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

The tower's old cook that must climb and clamber
Catching small birds in the dew of the morn
When we hale men lie stretched in slumber
Swears that he hears the king's great horn.
But he's a lying hound:
Stand we on guard oath-bound!

There in the tomb the dark grows blacker,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

W.B.Yeats

2004-04-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

DON'T THINK TWICE, IT'S ALL RIGHT
(Words and Music by Bob Dylan)
1963 Warner Bros. Inc
Renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

2004-04-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

'Easter, 1916'

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

-- William Butler Yeats

2004-04-08T22:54:00.000-05:00

And death shall have no dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, published by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971
Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1977 The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.

2004-03-31T06:50:00.000-05:00

Poetry of Lewis Carroll

YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM

You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it would injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple."

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth; one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

2004-03-31T06:33:00.000-05:00

William Butler Yeats

by Louise Bogan, May 1938

2004-03-05T06:23:00.000-05:00

Vespers
Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

From The Wild Iris, published by The Ecco Press, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Louise Glück

2004-03-05T06:03:00.000-05:00

June Light
Richard Wilbur

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me outside the window. You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire
As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face
As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,
Which promise always wine, by mottled fire
More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift—Oh when I saw it fall
Into my hands, through all that naïve light,
It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight
As must have been the first great gift of all.

2004-03-05T05:55:00.000-05:00

The Truth the Dead Know
Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone

2004-02-19T14:43:00.000-05:00

Robert Frost - A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

2004-01-20T03:03:00.000-05:00

E. E. Cummings
34

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

2003-12-23T05:21:00.000-05:00

The wise cats never appeared.
Dylan Thomas

2003-12-23T05:16:00.000-05:00

The Second Coming
(1921)
- by W.B. Yeats
(1865 - 1939)
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

2003-12-23T05:13:00.000-05:00

R Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

2003-12-06T13:06:00.000-05:00

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

2003-12-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman?s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather?s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover?s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

--Dylan Thomas

2003-12-02T16:29:00.000-05:00

Advice to a Prophet

Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God?s name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us??
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone?s face?
Speak of the world?s own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,
If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip
>On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin?s arc, the dove?s return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
As us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Ask us, ask us whether the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

2003-11-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Andrew Marvell

2003-11-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

"I am compelled to acknowledge, that science and the physical
world were products of human imagining - that we were not the cool
observers of that world, but its passionate creators. We were all
poets and the world was our metaphor."
--Jones

Where are the authors, the artists, the poets and explorers?

2003-10-30T15:52:00.000-05:00

The Manor Garden

The fountains are dry and the roses over.
Incense of death. Your day approaches.
The pears fatten like little buddhas.
A blue mist is dragging the lake.

You move through the era of fishes,
The smug centuries of the pig-
Head, toe and finger
Come clear of the shadow. History

Nourishes these broken flutings,
These crowns of acanthus,
And the crow settles her garments.
You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,

Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness. Some hard stars
Already yellow the heavens.
The spider on its own string

Crosses the lake. The worms
Quit their usual habitations.
The small birds converge, converge
With their gifts to a difficult borning.

Sylvia Plath
Links

Heyo Bill,
Thanks for all the info re this neat medium. Step by step.....day by day, I learn a little more!
Jim

2003-09-17T23:52:00.000-05:00

Seamus Heaney, from "Electric Light"

"Light came from the east," he sang,
"Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see headlands and buffeted cliffs.
Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already."

And when their objection was reported to him --
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there ?
"Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and the last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?"

2003-09-17T23:41:00.000-05:00

A refreshing take on Zionism

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time
(from the preface to 'Milton')
by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

byGosh.com - Best Loved Poems

2003-09-17T23:08:00.000-05:00

When You are Old
by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

byGosh.com - Best Loved Poems

2003-08-02T06:30:00.000-05:00

Postcardhaiku

2003-08-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

You have at your fingertips the ability to talk

2003-05-27T08:24:00.000-05:00

William Gibson

2003-05-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

Sonnets from the Portuguese, XIII

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light upon each?

I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirit so far off
From myself.. me.. that I should bring thee proof,
In words of love hid in me... out of reach.

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief,
Seeing that I stand unwon (however wooed)
And rend the garment of my life in brief
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

2003-05-07T07:29:00.000-05:00

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

- Lord Byron

2003-04-04T14:27:00.000-05:00

44 Howard

2003-03-18T17:38:00.000-05:00

Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni

2003-03-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

WHy War? What War? How? War?
WHERE? . . . WHen?. . .

2003-03-18T17:26:00.001-05:00

Dialup Numbers

235-0040

475-4676

827-6050

827-6058

562-1860

637-0004

623-0004

573-9869

431-0829

803-0582

450-2024

2003-01-31T01:13:00.000-05:00

Lepidoptera
shame
Potawatomi
COMFORT
plant
Suffolk
Wormwood

M A L A R I A

2002-11-22T00:31:00.000-05:00

Maple is Acer
Oak is Quercus
Elm is Ulmus
Birch is Betula
Lilac is Syringa
Pine is Pinus
Beech is Fagus
Ash is Fraxinus
Chestnut is Castanea
Walnut is Juglans
Ginkgo is Ginkgo
Sycamore is Platinus
Locust is Robinia
Willow is Salix
Holly is Ilex

2002-10-31T00:29:00.000-05:00

I walked down to the Bay walk mall complex in St. Pete today before class. People in the FSG studio were encouraging me to put something in the Anita London memorial case. I felt over honored.
as i was walking back from bay walk (where i had to deal with a man who wanted to sell me a rose for two dollars) I ran into Ken W. walking around janus landing with a brown bag full of beer. he was having diner with Ginni R. at Joey Brookyn',s so i joined them for a slice of pizza with ham( they had calzones and a meatball sandwich respectivly and it looked good) We all thought that it was good that there were so many places to eat outdoors downtown now-a-days.

2002-10-02T02:56:00.000-05:00

Avoid Miscellaneous Thought Remaining on Origins

2002-07-24T05:37:00.000-05:00

It wasn't quite the way he had remembered it.
First of all she wasn't really naked the whole time. Second, she was more beautiful than he had remembered.g

2002-07-24T05:06:00.000-05:00

I remembered the Blue Jays in the spring.
I shifted the weight of the pack to the right.
each afternoon I would find some new thing
from the noise, today the birds found a snake.
They followed it through the bushes of the neighbors yard
mocking birds and starlings had joined by then.
The racer was caught in the fence.
Each bird diving until he struck out randomly
grabbing the fence wire with his broken back teeth.
twisting from the broken bones and vertebrae,
I remember I watched him die like that.
with my pack set right I went up the hill.

2002-05-25T05:41:00.000-05:00

There are other writings here,

2002-05-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

tashi deleg tashi deleg

Evenings shadows stretched across the field. She was not naked but she felt that way. All the breezes moving through the trees breathed across her shoulders legs and arms.
She wished that she could not remember her name.

While Steven sketched, she could feel him watching even as though his pencils carressed the outlines of her hair, and gentle pastels crumbled against her chin.
A piece of wood can become one of many things.
It cannot become all those things but it may be many things over time.
Paper, made from wood and other fibers, can last a while.

I wonder about the charcoal too. Breath, don't wander.

2002-05-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

There wasn't really a way to end the story so I'll have to write a new one, she thought.

Line one - 5 syllables	Beautiful mountains
Line two - 7 syllables	Rivers with cold, cold water.
Line three - 5 syllable	White cold snow on rocks
Line four - 7 syllables	Trees over the place with frost
Line five - 7 syllables	White sparkly snow everywhere.