To Those Born Later [ Continued ] II I came to the cities in a time of disorder When hunger reigned there. I came among men in a time of revolt And I rebelled with them. So passed my time Which had been given to me on earth. My food I ate between battles To sleep I lay down among murderers Love I practised carelessly And nature I looked at without patience. So passed my time Which had been given to me on earth. All roads led into the mire in my time. My tongue betrayed me to the butchers. There was little I could do. But those in power Sat safer without me: that was my hope. So passed my time Which had been given to me on earth. Our forces were slight. Our goal Lay far in the distance It was clearly visible, though I myself Was unlikely to reach it. So passed my time Which had been given tome on earth. III You who will emerge from the flood In which we have gone under Remember When you speak of our failings The dark time too Which you have escaped. Brecht, Bertolt.
IMPRESSION DU MATIN The Thames nocturne of blue and gold Changed to a Harmony in grey: A barge with ochre-coloured hay Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold The yellow fog came creeping down The bridges, till the houses' walls Seemed changed to shadows, and S. Paul's Loomed like a bubble o'er the town. Then suddenly arose the clang Of waking life; the streets were stirred With country waggons: and a bird Flew to the glistening roofs and sang. But one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone. Wilde, Oscar. 1881. Poems.
Always for the first time Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there that from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occuring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entierly with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvelously I am no longer sure you know You idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures It's a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the center of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absense in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time Breton, Andre.
II Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. Housman, A.E. 1886. From A Shropshire Lad.
De Profundis Oh why is heaven built so far, Oh why is earth set so remote? I cannot reach the nearest star That hangs afloat. I would not care to reach the moon, One round monotonous of change; Yet even she repeats her tune Beyond my range. I never watch the scatter'd fire Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train, But all my heart is one desire, And all in vain: For I am bound with fleshly bands, Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope; I strain my heart, I stretch my hands, And catch at hope. Rossetti, Christina. 1881. Poems.
Good times my daddy has paid the rent and the insurance man is gone and the lights is back on and my uncle brud has hit for one dollar straight and they is good times good times good times my mama has made bread and grampaw has come and everybody is drunk and dancing in the kitchen and dancing in the kitchen of these is good times good times good times oh children think about the good times Clifton, Lucille. 1987.
Blue Squills How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills, how blue! And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree. Oh burn me with your beauty, then, Oh hurt me, tree and flower, Lest in the end death try to take Even this glistening hour. O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees, O sunlit white and blue, Wound me, that I, through endless sleep, May bear the scar of you. Teasdale, Sara. Flame and Shadow.
On Being Brought from Africa to America 'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. Wheatley, Phillis
The Princess: O Swallow O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North. O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. O were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green? O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown: Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, But in the North long since my nest is made. O tell her, brief is life but love is long, And brief the sun of summer in the North, And brief the moon of beauty in the South. O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. 1847. The Princess: A Medley. The Raven (Part 1 of 2 due to length - for Halloween) 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 heart 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 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 an instant 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." The Raven (Continued) 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 angels whose faint 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 the 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. Poe, Edgar Allan. 1850. The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe.
L Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun, Are the quietest places Under the sun. IN valleys of springs of rivers, By Ony and Teme and Clun, The country for easy livers, The quietest under the sun, We still had sorrows to lighten, One could not be always glad, And lads knew trouble at Knighton When I was a Knighton lad. By bridges that Thames runs under, In London, the town built ill, 'Tis sure small matter for wonder If sorrow is with one still. And if as a lad grows older The troubles he bears are more, He carries his griefs on a shoulder That handselled them long before. Where shall one halt to deliver This luggage I 'd lief set down? Not Thames, not Teme is the river, Nor London nor Knighton the town: 'Tis a long way further than Knighton, A quieter place than Clun, Where doomsday may thunder and lighten And little 'twill matter to one. Housman, A.E. 1886. From A Shropshire Lad.
The Fruit Garden Path The path runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. 'T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over the trees a single bright star glows. Dear garden of my childhood, here my years Have run away like little grains of sand; The moments of my life, its hopes and fears Have all found utterance here, where now I stand; My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears, You are my home, do you not understand? Lowell, Amy. 1912. A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass.
Medusa I had come to the house, in a cave of trees, Facing a sheer sky. Everything moved, - a bell hung ready to strike. Sun and reflection wheeled by. When the bare eyes were before me And the hissing hair, Held up at a window, seen through a door. The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead Formed in the air. This is a dead scene forever now. Nothing will ever stir. The end will never brighten it more than this, Nor the rain blur. The water will always fall, and will not fall, And the tipped bell make no sound. The grass will always be growing for hay Deep on the ground. And I shall stand here like a shadow Under the great balanced day, My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind, And does not drift away. Bogan, Louise. 1922. Bookman.
In a Museum I Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There's a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges with me still in its sweet singing. II Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard, In the full-fuged song of the universe unending. Hardy, Thomas. 1912. Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy.
Dedication Such grief might make the mountains stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe. . . . For some the wind can freshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead. The sun declined, the Neva blurred, and hope sang always from afar. Whose sentence is decreed? . . . That moan, that sudden spurt of woman's tears, shows one distinguished from the rest, as if they'd knocked her to the ground and wrenched the heart out of her breast, then let her go, reeling, alone. Where are they now, my nameless friends from those two years I spent in hell? What specters mock them now, amid the fury of Siberian snows, or in the blighted circle of the moon? To them I cry, Hail and Farewell! Akhmatova, Anna 1940.
ON MY WAY I PASSED OUT OVER ON THE PLAYER PIANO & SO DID NOT HEAR THE MESSAGE MACHINE GO OFF IN TIME TO GET IT UNDER THE PAINTING OF A SHIP ITS RUDDER BURIED IN THE SAND. Buck Downs 1999. Grande Meal Seizure.
XLIV Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers Plucked in the garden, all the summer through And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers. So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine, Here's ivy!--take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. 1850. Sonnets From the Portuguese.
Untitled Haiku As for the hibiscus on the roadside- my horse ate it. Matsuo Basho.
Carmen de Boheme Sinuously winding through the room On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, -- Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets. Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall, Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall. Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue. The andante quivers with crescendo's start, And dies on fire's birth in each man's heart. The tapestry betrays a finger through The slit, soft-pulling; --- and music follows cue. There is a sweep, -- a shattering, -- a choir Disquieting of barbarous fantasy. The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher, And stretches up through mortal eyes to see. Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes; -- Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes; -- Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips. "Carmen!," comes awed from wine-hot lips. Finale leaves in silence to replume Bent wings, and Carmen with her flaunts through the gloom Of whispering tapestry, brown with old fringe: -- The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge. Morning: and through the foggy city gate A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight. And some dream still of Carmen's mystic face, -- Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace. Crane, Hart. 1919.
Never More Will The Wind Never more will the wind cherish you again, never more will the rain. Never more shall we find you bright in the snow and wind. The snow is melted, the snow is gone, and you are flown: Like a bird out of our hand, like a light out of our heart, you are gone. Doolittle, Hilda (H.D.).
Furnishings Keen to the multi lens, pictures the threatened calm, luck of solid furnishing forms a room that might home. Going more generous to the tendrils of forgotten. If hydrotropism urges we drink the air, then the grime questions our throat and lungs, what we let sit with us on couches. Why not talk of hidden things the touching tongues, onyx and sea lions whispers and ancient rings. I faded inside the shut door, fossilized talk ways of leaving out, the cannons with which they fortified and closed the harbors. Who put that cobra among my toys, or were they already poison for hissing of waste. Tightened hoses extinguished the exuberance, exuding an odor that reeked of extinction. You might as well come over, the interior leaks but warms to grouping. Assuming the cretins just makes us so and slow, desisting. We wander out with all our breaks, shake against the gale, the wind we're all within. Language doesn't have to stuff us in the seats. Mark Wallace 1993. Complications from Standing in a Circle.
America Once in English they said America. Was it English to them. Once they said Belgian. We like a fog. Do you for weather. Are we brave. Are we true. Have we the national colour. Can we stand ditches. Can we mean well. Do we talk together. Have we red cross. A great many people speak of feet. And socks. Stein, Gertrude.
Have Me Have me in the blue and the sun. Have me on the open sea and the mountains. When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone. This is where I came from--the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones. It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in. And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone. Love goes far. Here love ends. Have me in the blue and the sun. Sandburg, Carl. 1918. Cornhuskers.
An Old Man's Winter Night All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him--at a loss. And having scared the cellar under him In clomping there, he scared it once again In clomping off;--and scared the outer night, Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar Of trees and crack of branches, common things, But nothing so like beating on a box. A light he was to no one but himself Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, A quiet light, and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, So late-arising, to the broken moon As better than the sun in any case For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, His icicles along the wall to keep; And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man--one man--can't fill a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It's thus he does it of a winter night. Frost, Robert. 1916. Mountain Interval.
Daybreak in a Garden I heard the farm cocks crowing, loud, and faint, and thin, When hooded night was going and one clear planet winked: I heard shrill notes begin down the spired wood distinct, When cloudy shoals were chinked and gilt with fires of day. White-misted was the weald; the lawns were silver-grey; The lark his lonely field for heaven had forsaken; And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of may, And touched the nodding peony-flowers to bid them waken. Sassoon, Siegfried. 1918. The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems.
Post Card (Sent to André Rouveyre, 20 August 1915) I write to you beneath this tent While summer day becomes a shade And startling magnificent Flowers of the cannonade Stud the pale blue firmament And before existing fade Apollinaire, Guillaume.
The Responsibility of Intellectuals The sun is not gutted or out on tour. The back-slap of facticity is lost on the F Train or else available only in outer space. The people of Hanover, where they make Utz, are genuine with regard to their enthusiasms. The essential writings see them & say their adventure. & yet, somehow unassailed, is absolutely nothing. The barber's concerns meld or mesh with the cosmetologist's. They are free. The word pusillanimous enters a conversation there, in Hanover, and does not return. It has gone home. Judgment regarding this is not worth a Knicks ticket. If you place everything you own in Hanover it will disappear. Rod Smith 1999. Protective Immediacy.
To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing 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. Yeats, Wm. Butler. 1916. Responsibilities & Other Poems.
