I’m not that big a fan of honoring every random thing with its own calendar slot,* but I like poetry so it seems fitting to send off National Poetry Month with at least one post on the topic. The whole idea of favorite poets does a disservice to the art, since we go through times when any of two dozen poets and specific works speaks to us more strongly than the others. I have had Donne periods, Frost, Pound and Wislawa Szymborka. Often I switch between being mesmerized at the mythic renderings of Gary Snyder’s beatnik life and frustration with the way that he poemizes ordinary journal entries by adding arbitrary line breaks. For a few demented nights in college I was a Neruda guy.
So instead of picking our favorite poets, let’s use this thread to recall the poems that we can write down without looking them up. By definition that will make this a thread for poetry wonks, as if that is a bad thing. I will lead off with one of the few poems that I both like and (hopefully) remember in full.
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I’ve known enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice is also great
and would suffice.
***
(*) Please remind me when Intergalactic Coblogger Week comes around this year. For some stupid reason I keep missing it.
Zifnab
Damn you Walt Witman! Leaves of grass my ass!
Generic Eschaton Commenter
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Worst. President. Ever.
Bob In Pacifica
The Warriors are winning.
This is just the beginning.
Wilfred
next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by jee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beauti-
ful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.
e.e. cummings “next to of course god america i”, (1926)
Zifnab
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
Copied from Poems of Alfred Tennyson,
J. E. Tilton and Company, Boston, 1870
Teak111
so much depends on
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the white chichens.
-Willian Carlos Williams
Teak111
Don’t know the reason
Stay here all season
nothing to show but this brand new tatoo
Its a real beauty
Mexican cutie
How it go here I haven’t a clue
Wasted away again in Mar……oh you know the rest.
Rome Again
Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day’s useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.
Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?
Wilfred
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”
demimondian
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelly
Wilfred
More Shelley: “England in 1819”
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn – mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled fied –
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless – a book sealed;
A Senate – Time’s worst statue unrepealed –
Are graves, from which our glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Ted
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who had a ….
.
.
.
.
Damn, I can never remember all of that one. But it’s my favorite poem.
pretty good dog
Provide, Provide – Robert Frost
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
Aaron M
Only a fragment, but still my favorite bit of poetry ever:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
(Whitman, Song of Myself)
dlw32
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
— ee cummings
Zifnab
Jingle Bells
Batman Smells
Robin Laid an Egg
Batmobile
lost one wheel
And Joker took ballay
GI Joe
Went to Mexico
And Barbie came out gay
tBone
This is th inevitable result when moonbats control Congress. I hope you’re happy, Leftards.
On topic: where is Birdzilla? This thread is made for his particular talents.
Jake
Damn it, Ted stole my favourite poem.
Gus
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
I’ll admit that I had to look it up for the line breaks, though I can recite it. I don’t know why I love this poem, maybe for the richness of the language, the wonderful alliterations particularly. I also like the “be being finale of seem” concept
scarshapedstar
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
– e.e. cummings
canuckistani
O freddled gruntbuggly,
thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
Groop, I implore thee
My foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With mankly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t!
-Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
Larv
More Frost:
I saw a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth.
Assorted characters of death and blight,
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witch’s broth-
A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
That wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What, but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.
Third Eye Open
“A woman’s a woman I say, and I put my binoculars between her kneecaps, and I have seen where empires have fallen”
-Bukowski
you can’t truly appreciate his work without having experienced being flat broke, drunk, with a hooker you don’t remember soliciting rummaging through your pants as the roaches crawl over the snub-nose .45 pointing at you from the dresser…but it’s fun to pretend, either way
Caya
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
Punchy
Down at best spot its me and JD
and we’re sellin’ more birds than a pet shop
The spots hot, and everybody nervous
that’s when the blue car serve us
Oh why did fools have to let loose
heard 6 pops from a deuce-deuce
Big Tom hadda push us
13 niggahs running straight to the bushes
For dey Gats so they can draw down
why muthafuckah like me gotta fall down?
—Ice Cube (real poetry, bitches)
jenniebee
zomg, poetry thread.
But the Consul’s brow was sad,
And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe.
“Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?”
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,
“And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?
“Haul down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?”
Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
A Ramnian proud was he:
“Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.”
And out spake strong Herminius;
Of Titian blood was he:
“I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.”
“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
“As thou sayest, so let it be.”
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
–Lays of Ancient Rome, Macaulay
Fuck Sparta. Fuck it right in the ear.
Focus On Your Own Damn Family!
Tell me, O octopus,I begs
Is them things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus
If I were thee, I’d call me us.
— Ogden Nash
jenniebee
dlw32:
wholly to be a fool while spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
damn, I never can remember the line breaks and punctuation of a cummings poem. Better to switch to Browning:
GR-R-R–there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims–
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together;
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What’s the Latin name for “parsley”?
What’s the Greek name for “swine’s snout”?
Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps–
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
Saint, forsooth! While Brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
–Can’t I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as ’twere a Barbary corsair’s?
(That is, if he’d let it show!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As I do, in Jesu’s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp–
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp!
Oh, those melons! if he’s able
We’re to have a feast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot’s table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!–And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
There’s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails;
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe;
If I double down the pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?
Or, there’s Satan!–one might venture
Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he’d miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . . .
‘St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r–you swine!
canuckistani
I didn’t memorize this one, but it’s such a fine companion piece for the Lays of Ancient Rome that I had to dig it out-
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
demimondian
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it
And found it
Good
And that is why your cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor
to-
day
— Ogden Nash
I sang a setting of this at my senior recital, and so this is the scansion I remember. I know it isn’t Nash’s.
(The song cycle also included a setting of Octopus — in 9/8, and equipped with the slitheriest accompaniment on Earth.)
Geoff
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite and claws that catch!
Beware the jub-jub bird and shun
The frumious bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand,
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the tum-tum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock – with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came!
One-two, One-two, and through and through
The vorpal sword went snickersnack
And with its head he left it dead
And went gallumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
-Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky”
Teak111
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
Ok. I looked that one up. Still a fav.
Love that last rhyme. “Women come and go talking of Michelangelo”
Google is truely amazing. Just enter a few words of a poem, and up turns the whole thing.
srv
Life’s a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it
John Gay
srv
When you wish upon a star,
makes no difference who you are,
anything your heart desires,
will come to you.
If your heart is in your dreams,
no request is too extreme,
when you wish upon a star,
as dreamers do.
Like a bolt out of the blue,
fate will step in and see you through,
when you wish upon a star,
all your dreams will come true.
BrianM
Still more Frost:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
That was once the entirety of my comment from the floor at a software conference.
Someday I hope to go hiking in the winter without snow falling from an evergreen making me think of this Frost poem:
The way a crow shook down on me
A dust of snow from a hemlock tree
Has given my heart a change of mood
And saved some part of a day I had rued.
Nikki
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan or A Vision in A Dream”
Nikki
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a model’s fashion size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It’s in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
–Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal Woman”
demimondian
This is the way the world will end
This is the way the world will end
This is the way the world will end.
Not with a bang,
but a whimper.
jenniebee
Wilfred Owen ftw! “Dulce et Decorum Est” is another of my faves.
keeping in the martial meme:
An Irish Airman Forsees his Death
W. B. Yeats
I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Librarian
Daddy
by: Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time–
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You–
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two–
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
From “Ariel”, 1966
Librarian
Ezra Pound
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
HyperIon
Toil and grow rich,
What’s that but to lie
with a foul witch,
And after, drained dry,
to be brought
to the chamber where
lies one sought
with despair.
Yeats
Tulkinghorn
Crow’s First Lesson – by Ted Hughes
God tried to teach Crow how to talk.
“Love,” said God. “Say, Love.”
Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea
And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.
“No, no,” said God. “Say Love. Now try it. Love.”
Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito
Zoomed out and down
To their sundry flesh-pots.
“A final try,” said God. “Now, Love.”
Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Man’s bodiless prodigious head
Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest —
And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And woman’s vulva dropped over man’s neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept —
Crow flew guiltily off.
Librarian
plato told
him:he couldn’t
believe it(jesus
told him; he
wouldn’t believe
it)lao
tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes
mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or
not(you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn’t believe it,no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell
him
e.e. cummings
annie's granny
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
— If I Could Tell You, W. H. Auden
jenniebee
It’s long, but worth it. Excerpted from Rosetti’s “Goblin Market”:
Tender Lizzie could not bear
To watch her sister’s cankerous care
Yet not to share.
She night and morning
Caught the goblins’ cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy;” –
Beside the brook, along the glen,
She heard the tramp of goblin men,
The yoke and stir
Poor Laura could not hear;
Long’d to buy fruit to comfort her,
But fear’d to pay too dear.
She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter time
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time.
Till Laura dwindling
Seem’d knocking at Death’s door:
Then Lizzie weigh’d no more
Better and worse;
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kiss’d Laura, cross’d the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight, halted by the brook:
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look.
Laugh’d every goblin
When they spied her peeping:
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel- and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter skelter, hurry skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, –
Hugg’d her and kiss’d her:
Squeez’d and caress’d her:
Stretch’d up their dishes,
Panniers, and plates:
“Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck them,
Pomegranates, figs.” –
“Good folk,” said Lizzie,
Mindful of Jeanie:
“Give me much and many: –
Held out her apron,
Toss’d them her penny.
“Nay, take a seat with us,
Honour and eat with us,”
They answer’d grinning:
“Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
Warm and dew-pearly,
Wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
No man can carry:
Half their bloom would fly,
Half their dew would dry,
Half their flavour would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us.” –
“Thank you,” said Lizzie: “But one waits
At home alone for me:
So without further parleying,
If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I toss’d you for a fee.” –
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One call’d her proud,
Cross-grain’d, uncivil;
Their tones wax’d loud,
Their look were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbow’d and jostled her,
Claw’d with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soil’d her stocking,
Twitch’d her hair out by the roots,
Stamp’d upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeez’d their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.
White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood, –
Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone
Lash’d by tides obstreperously, –
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire, –
Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee, –
Like a royal virgin town
Topp’d with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguer’d by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.
One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuff’d and caught her,
Coax’d and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratch’d her, pinch’d her black as ink,
Kick’d and knock’d her,
Maul’d and mock’d her,
Lizzie utter’d not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in:
But laugh’d in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syrupp’d all her face,
And lodg’d in dimples of her chin,
And streak’d her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny, kick’d their fruit
Along whichever road they took,
Not leaving root or stone or shoot;
Some writh’d into the ground,
Some div’d into the brook
With ring and ripple,
Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
Some vanish’d in the distance.
In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore thro’ the furze,
Threaded copse and dingle,
And heard her penny jingle
Bouncing in her purse, –
Its bounce was music to her ear.
She ran and ran
As if she fear’d some goblin man
Dogg’d her with gibe or curse
Or something worse:
But not one goblin scurried after,
Nor was she prick’d by fear;
The kind heart made her windy-paced
That urged her home quite out of breath with haste
And inward laughter.
She cried, “Laura,” up the garden,
“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.”
Krista
I’m not even going to pretend to have a long poem memorized. But here’s a short one that I’ve memorized, followed by my favourite poem.
“Jenny Kissed Me” – Leigh Hunt
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I’m growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!
“I Knew a Woman” – Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
inchin along inchon
Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp
Guns aren’t lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live
HyperIon
Krista,
i had forgotten about that Roethke poem! i wrote an essay on it in freshman english many years ago. and now that i live in seattle, i have learned much more about the author (who taught at UW for years). much of his work is excellent.
thanks for reminding me.
Krista
It’s the type of poem that secretly, all women wish would be written about them.
DougJ
I have too short an attention span to read a whole poem, but I’ve always loved this part of The Tower by Yeats. This is corny — and typically male — but it kept going through my mind when I was watching those highlights of Walter Payton when he died:
In the most adolescent part of my mind, I like to think that I have pride of people that were bound neither to cause nor state.
mere mortal
I keep two with me, always.
First, as so many above, Frost:
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars, stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
to scare my self with my own desert places
And Second, Yeats:
Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue, and the dim, and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
Also, though I cannot keep the entire thing in my head, every time I hear a racist spew his hate at other people, these lines of Countee Cullin’s Incident ambush me, and I become angry, and sad:
I saw the whole of Baltimore,
from May until December,
Of all the things that happened there,
that’s all that I remember.
Finally, for humility, this one often comes to mind,
A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”
– Stephen Crane, “A Man Said to the Universe”
Would that I could keep as much great poetry in mind as I can great music lyrics. Though I suppose that may be a false distinction.
grumpy realist
Death be not proud
Although some have called Thou
Mighty and Dreadful, for Thou are not so
And soon our best men with Thee doth go
Rest of their Bones and Souls delivery
Thou are slave to Fate, Kings, Chance and Desperate Men
And doth with Poison and Sickness dwell
Poppies and Charmes, can make us sleepe as well.
And better than thy stroke. Why swelt’st thou then?
One short sleep past, and we wake Eternally,
Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
–John Donne
(Now if I could just remember that wonderful piece of spleen Catullus wrote about his mistress Lesbia. I only remember one line, which translates as her “trolling the streets of Rome stripping [of money] the descendents of great-souled Remus.”
Krista
He was pretty messed-up about Lesbia, though. Some of his stuff about her was pretty vicious, and then you have this:
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us judge all the rumors of the old men
to be worth just one penny!
The suns are able to fall and rise:
When that brief light has fallen for us,
we must sleep a never ending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.
Then, when we have made many thousands,
we will mix them all up so that we don’t know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.
Krista
And this is the one you were talking about…Carmen 58
Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia,
that same Lesbia, whom Catullus loved
more than himself and more than all his own,
now loiters at the cross-roads and in the backstreets
ready to toss-off the grandsons of the brave Remus.
DougJ
I’ve always thought of Catullus as the original uncivil blogger. The David Broders of his day hated him, I’m told.
funkyb0ss
There’s a polar bear in our Frigidaire
He likes it ’cause it’s cold in there
With his seat in the meat, and his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws in the buttery dish
He’s nibbling the noodles, he’s munching the rice
He’s slurping the soda, he’s licking the ice
And he lets out a roar when I open the door
And it gives me a scare to know he’s in there
That polary bear in our Frigidtydaire
-Shel Silverstien
grumpy realist
Yah, here’s the original:
Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes
nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.
Martial’s noted for the original of the Dr. Fell rhyme:
Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare
hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.
(I do not love thee, Sabidi, nor can I tell you why.
This so much I can say, I do not love thee.)
(I’m one of those anal bastards that prefers literature and poetry in the original because I miss so much with the translations…plus I’m always wondering how much actually can be translated from language to language, especially with something like poetry, which in differing languages is pulling on an entirely different set of images and metaphors from that language’s culture and history. )
Fruitbat
There’s a star in the wind
And the wind winds high
Blowing alight, through fog, through night
Through cold, through cold and the bitter alone
There high in the sky rides a star, my own
And the star is a word…of white, of white,
And the star in the wind is a word.
I hope that’s how it goes. One of my favorite poems from a true master of his chosen field, which wasn’t poetry.
Beej
Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the song without the words
And never stops
At all
–Emily Dickinson
I’m nobody. Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us. Don’t tell.
They’ll banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody.
How public, like a frog
To shout your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog.
–Emily Dickinson
I read her poems and a little biographical info on her in high school and thought she must have been a stuffy, prissy goody-two-shoes. It wasn’t until twenty years later that someone gave me a volume of her poems and I discovered she could bloodlessly slice pretensions to pieces and leave them lying in neat rows, never to be reassembled. Boy was I wrong the first time!
Boston Tom
They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to but they do.
They give you all the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old style hats and coats
Who half the time were soppy stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin, that exquisite laureate of morose self-pity. I don’t vouch for the punctuation or even word accuracy, as this is truly from memory. I read t his one once — once! — and though I have a poor recall for lyric, it stuck. I was in high adolescence at the time and at war with me mum — so you figure it out.