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  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: AE Poetry Club
    Posted: 06-Jun-2009 at 21:35
Thats a fine poem Dolphin (Bit late I know). Struck a chord with me. Reminds me of how I feel sometimes lying awake at night. Can never manage such a combination of words though Smile

Here's a poem I ran across while sitting on a public bench. The first and last line was written in tipex on a metal railing. I was in a rather reflective mood and so I went back to the house and googled it. This was a good three months ago but its really stuck in my mind:

Its by W.H. Davies, and its called 'Leisure'

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Aug-2011 at 02:43
Vladimir Khlebnikov:
Invocation of Laughter

O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!
You who laugh with laughs, you who laugh it up laughishly
O, laugh out laugheringly
O, belaughable laughterhood - the laughter of laughering laughers!
O, unlaugh it outlaughingly, belaughering laughists!
Laughily, laughily,
Uplaugh, enlaugh, laughlings, laughlings
Laughlets, laughlets.
O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!

1908-09
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Aug-2011 at 02:27
Longfellow - "Aftermath":

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
  And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
  And gather in the aftermath. 

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
  Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
  In the silence and the gloom.


Edited by Don Quixote - 24-Aug-2011 at 02:28
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Aug-2011 at 20:39
I like this particular Burns' poem very much, thanks, Dragon.

Boris Pasternak:

The Weeping Garden

 

It’s terrible! – all drip and listening.

Whether, as ever, it’s loneliness,

splashing a branch, like lace, on the window,

or whether perhaps there’s a witness.

 

Choked there beneath its swollen

burden – earth’s nostrils, and audibly,

like August, far off in the distance,

midnight, ripening slow with the fields.

 

No sound. No one’s in hiding.

Confirming its pure desolation,

it returns to its game – slipping

from roof, to gutter, slides on.

 

I’ll moisten my lips, listening:

whether, as ever, I’m loneliness,

and ready maybe for weeping,

or whether perhaps there’s a witness.

 

But, silence. No leaves trembling.

Nothing to see: sobs, and cries

being swallowed, slippers splashing,

between them, tears and sighs. 

 


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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2011 at 13:39
Kiss the sun good bye for me,
Oh, my living day
Tear it to threads and flashes
And then go away
Let me run and let me go
In the darkness black
So I'll fight the fog for you
And win you back
Every strike is morning new
Every blow is two
Every song is one won battle
Every poem too
Every kiss is one new life
Every spasm - mine
Let me start the run for you
Raise the Battle Cry!
DQ
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2011 at 19:57
Edgar Alan Po "Eldorado":
  Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Sep-2011 at 14:09
I am the Sign of the Beaver,
I am a Hatchet, and Snake,
I am a kiss in the morning,
 I'm the pain that keeps you awake,

I am a Fear and Trembling,
Spasm, and Sigh, Woe and Cry,
I'm the promise of pink Dawns,
And the Grass that never dies.

In the laps of bellowing tornadoes
My childhood was reared and raised
The winds had torn my haven
Night after night every day.

My day is heavy with memories,
I hear cries every night
For every lost generation,
And for every unborn child.

I'm a kin to wizards and witches,
Feeding on the stardust powder
In the enchanted forests
Where the unicorns feed om flowers.

I'm the rays of sunshine,
 Peaking through the dusty glass,
And the breath of ancient ancestors
Sleeping under quilts of dust.

Just like everyone else, every other,
Like him, like her, I am
I speck of celestial powder
Resting on a cosmic bedspread.
DQ
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Sep-2011 at 20:27
Emily Dickinson, my favorite American female poet:

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spum,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.



Edited by Don Quixote - 10-Sep-2011 at 20:28
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Sep-2011 at 18:58
Looking at Michelangelo's "Day" and "Night"

"Day"

"Night"




Day and Night are Lovers
That can never touch
For when the one is present
The other is not such

For when the one is Living
The others is a Ghost
One the one is Running
The other has to Stop

Only at Twilight and Dawn
Their fingers for each other reach
For a very brief "Hello"
With no time to speak

Back to back with each other
Like in a mystic Trance
They go forever and after
In an eternal Dance.

Day and Night are Lovers
That can never together Be
With all their given Freedom
They can be never Free.
DQ



Edited by Don Quixote - 13-Sep-2011 at 19:12
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Oct-2011 at 18:18
Looking At You

I look at you as you look at me too
And fall in your eyes pinned on mine
And then I think you are so beautiful
When you look at me, look through me tonight.
And then your eyes go somewhere else
And then I see the shifting of the light
In them, and then I think you are so beautiful
When your eyes go there and you don't know
That I have locked my gaze again on you
When you don't know that I still walk my eyes
Down your face, then run in disarray,
You are so beautiful my heart is sinking down
When you look at me and when you are away...
Just keep on being you in everything you do
Just keep your eyes the way you know not
How much it is for me to look in them
When you look at me and when you don't.
DQ



Edited by Don Quixote - 15-Oct-2011 at 18:30
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Dec-2011 at 15:29
Rudyard Kipling - Contradictions

The drowsy carrier sways
  To the drowsy horses' tramp.
His axles winnow the sprays
Of the hedge where the rabbit plays
  In the light of his single lamp.

He hears a roar behind,
  A howl, a hoot, and a yell,
A headlight strikes him blind
And a stench o'erpowers the wind 
  Like a blast from the mouth of Hell.

He mends his swingle-bar,
  And loud his curses ring;
But a mother watching afar
Hears the hum of the doctor's car
  Like the beat of an angel's wing!

So, to the poet's mood,
  Motor or carrier's van,
Properly understood,
Are neither evil nor good --
  Ormuzd not Ahriman!

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jan-2012 at 03:11
Madman

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long
before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all
my masks were stolen,--the seven masks I have fashioned an worn in
seven lives,--I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,
'Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.'

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear
of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top
cried, 'He is a madman.' I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed
my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun
kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for
the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I
cried, 'Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.'

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from
being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in
us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail
is safe from another thief.


Khalil Gibran
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Jan-2012 at 21:16
Fadwa Tuqan


The Deluge and the Tree

When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge
of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated. The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
"The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!"

Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive
tunneling deep, deep, into the land!

When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Jan-2012 at 23:47
A Grief Ago

A grief ago

She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower,
Or, water-lammed, from the scythe-sided thorn,
Hell wind and sea,
A stem cementing, wrestled up the tower,
Rose maid and male,
Or, master venus, through the paddler's bowl
Sailed up the sun;

Who is my grief,
A chrysalis unwrinkling on the iron,
Wrenched by my fingerman, the leaden bud
Shot through the leaf,
Was who was folded on the rod the aaron
Road east to plague,
The horn and ball of water on the frog
Housed in the side.

And she who lies,
Like exodus a chapter from the garden,
Brand of the lily's anger on her ring,
Tugged through the days
Her ropes of heritage, the wars of pardon,
On field and sand
The twelve triangles of the cherub wind
Engraving going.

Who then is she,
She holding me? The people's sea drives on her,
Drives out the father from the caesared camp;
The dens of shape
Shape all her whelps with the long voice of water,
That she I have,
The country-handed grave boxed into love,
Rise before dark.

The night is near,
A nitric shape that leaps her, time and acid;
I tell her this: before the suncock cast
Her bone to fire,
Let her inhale her dead, through seed and solid
Draw in their seas,
So cross her hand with their grave gipsy eyes,
And close her fist.


Dylan Thomas

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Jan-2012 at 16:16
 A Villonard - Ballad of the Gibbet

SCENE: 'En ce bourdel ou tenons nostre estat.'

It being remembered that there were six of us with Master Villon, when
that expecting presently lo be hanged he writ a ballad whereof ye know:

‘Freres humains qui apres nous vivez.'

Drink ye a skoal for the gallows tree!
Francois and Margot and thee and me,
Drink we the comrades merrily
That said us, 'Till then' for the gallows tree!

Fat Pierre with the hook gauche-main,
Thomas Larron 'Ear-the-less',
Tybalde and that armouress
Who gave this poignard its premier stain
Pinning the Guise that had been fain
To make him a mate of the 'Haulte Noblesse'
And bade her be out with ill address
As a fool that mocketh his drue's disdeign.

Drink we a skoal for the gallows tree!
Francois and Margot and thee and me,
Drink we to Marienne Ydole,
That hell brenn not her o'er cruelly.

Drink we the lusty robbers twain,
Black is the pitch o' their wedding dress,
Lips shrunk back for the wind's caress
As lips shrink back when we feel the strain

Of love that loveth in hell's disdeign,
And sense the teeth through the lips that press
'Gainst our lips for the soul's distress
That striveth to ours across the pain.

Drink we skoal to the gallows tree!
Francois and Margot and thee and me,
For Jehan and Raoul de Vallerie
Whose frames have the night and its winds in fee.

Maturin, Guillaume, Jacques d'Allmain,
Culdou lacking a coat to bless
One lean moiety of his nakedness
That plundered St. Hubert back o' the fane:
Aie! the lean bare tree is widowed again
For Michault le Borgne that would confess
In 'faith and troth' to a traitoress,
'Which of his brothers had he slain?'

But drink we skoal to the gallows tree!
Francois and Margot and thee and me:

These that we loved shall God love less
And smite always at their faibleness?

Skoal!! to the gallows! and then pray we:
God damn his hell out speedily
And bring their souls to his 'Haulte Citee'.

Ezra Pound


Ezra Pond wrote this for Fransoa Villon, a 15 century rogue poet, who was hung for theft; Marriet, Tybald, Fat Pierre etc are characters of Villon's poems. His last poem, written in the eve of his hanging, was this one:

Je suis François, dont il me poise,
Né de Paris emprés Pontoise,
Et de la corde d'une toise
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.

I'm currently not able to find an authorized translation for it, the following is my attempt for one.

I'm Francois, like this you knew me,
I was born in Paris, near Pontois,
My neck, grabbed in the rope pretty soon
Will understand what my bum already knew.

The sentence "'En ce bourdel ou tenons nostre estat.'" /in a bordello like ours we occupy/ is from a poem of his I currently haven't located yet.
"...
‘Freres humains qui apres nous vivez.'.." /Britehrs humans, whoa re born after us/ is from another Villon's poem, called

The Ballad of the Hanged Men

Men my brothers who after us live,
have your hearts against us not hardened.
For—if of poor us you take pity,
God of you sooner will show mercy.
You see us here, attached.
As for the flesh we too well have fed,
long since it's been devoured or has rotted.
And we the bones are becoming ash and dust.

Of our pain let nobody laugh,
but pray God
would us all absolve.

If you my brothers I call, do not
scoff at us in disdain, though killed
we were by justice. Yet ss you know
all men are not of good sound sense.
Plead our behalf since we are dead naked
with the Son of Mary the Virgin
that His grace be not for us dried up
preserving us from hell's fulminations.

We're dead after all. Let no soul revile us,
but pray God
would us all absolve.

Rain has washed us, laundered us,
and the sun has dried us black.
Worse—ravens plucked our eyes hollow
and picked our beards and brows.
Never ever have we sat down, but
this way, and that way, at the wind's
good pleasure ceaselessly we swing 'n swivel,
more nibbled at than sewing thimbles.

Therefore, think not of joining our guild,
but pray God
would us all absolve.
Prince Jesus, who over all has lordship,
care that hell not gain of us dominion.
With it we have no business, fast or loose.
People, here be no mocking,
but pray God
would us all absolve.



Edited by Don Quixote - 29-Jan-2012 at 16:33
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Feb-2012 at 22:51

And you as well must die, beloved dust,

And all your beauty stand you in no stead;

This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,

This body of flame and steel, before the gust

Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,

Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead

Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled.

Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.

In spite of all my love, you will arise

Upon that day and wander down the air

Obscurely as the unattended flower,

It mattering not how beautiful you were,

Or how beloved above all else that dies.

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Feb-2012 at 00:59
Be Still, My Soul, Be Still

 

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,

Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.

Think rather,—call to thought, if now you grieve a little,

The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

 

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry

I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;

Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:

Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

 

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,

I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.

Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:

Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

 

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;

All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:

Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation—

Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?
 

A.E. Housman

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 22:54
The New Colossus

 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips.  "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

Emma Lazarus



Edited by Don Quixote - 05-Feb-2012 at 22:56
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 21:16

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

 

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

 

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

 

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

 

               Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Edited by Don Quixote - 06-Feb-2012 at 21:24
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Feb-2012 at 22:34
Vysotsky:

Song about the Earth
Russian title: Pesnya o Zemle
Who has said "All is burned into ash?
No more seed in the Earth can be sown"
Who has said that the Earth is now dead?
No! For a time she quieted down.

Motherhood can't be taken from her,
Try to scoop up an ocean with leaves 
Who believed that the Earth has been burnt
No! She has blackened from grief.

Like gashes, the trenches were laid
And like gaping wounds ravens were gawking
Naked nerves of Earth, our maid,
Pain unearthy experieced knowing.

She'll endure all, she'll go on living
Don't write of Earth as if she is crippled!
Who has said that the Earth doesn't sing?
That forever she's silenced and muffled? 

No! She is ringing and deafening groans,
Coming from all her wounds and her roots,
Because Earth - is really our soul,
And a soul can't be trampled by boots!

Who believed that the Earth has been burnt?
No! She just quited down for a time. 






Edited by Don Quixote - 07-Feb-2012 at 23:06
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