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Post by spiderwort on Aug 7, 2023 14:50:17 GMT
Camas Liliesby Lynn Ungar Consider the lilies of the field, the blue banks of camas opening into acres of sky along the road. Would the longing to lie down and be washed by that beauty abate if you knew their usefulness, how the natives ground their bulbs for flour, how the settlers’ hogs uprooted them, grunting in gleeful oblivion as the flowers fell? And you—-what of your rushed and useful life? Imagine setting it all down— papers, plans, appointments, everything— leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields to be lovely. Be back when I’m through with blooming.” Even now, unneeded and uneaten, the camas lilies gaze out above the grass from their tender blue eyes. Even in sleep your life will shine. Make no mistake. Of course your work will always matter. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
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Post by spiderwort on Aug 14, 2023 0:15:11 GMT
Psalm by Dorianne Laux
Lord, there are creatures in the understory, snails with whorled backs and silver boots, trails beetles weave in grass, black rivers of ants, unbound ladybugs opening their wings,
spotted veils and flame, untamed choirs
of banjo-colored crickets and stained-glass cicadas. Lord, how shall we count the snakes and frogs and moths? How shall we love the hidden and small? Mushrooms beneath leaves
constructing their death domes in silence,
their silken gills and mycelial threads, cap scales and patches, their warts and pores. And the buried bulbs that will bloom in spring, pregnant with flower and leaf, sing Prepare for My Radiance, Prepare
for the Pageantry of My Inevitable Surprise.
These are the queendoms, the spines and horns, the clustered hearts beating beneath our feet. Lord though the earth is locked in irons of ice and snow there are angels in the undergrowth, praise them.
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Post by theravenking on Aug 22, 2023 20:20:30 GMT
I Go Out On The Road Alone by Mikhail Lermontov
Alone I set out on the road; The flinty path is sparkling in the mist; The night is still. The desert harks to God, And star with star converses.
The vault is overwhelmed with solemn wonder The earth in cobalt aura sleeps. . . Why do I feel so pained and troubled? What do I harbor: hope, regrets?
I see no hope in years to come, Have no regrets for things gone by. All that I seek is peace and freedom! To lose myself and sleep!
But not the frozen slumber of the grave… I'd like eternal sleep to leave My life force dozing in my breast Gently with my breath to rise and fall;
By night and day, my hearing would be soothed By voices sweet, singing to me of love. And over me, forever green, A dark oak tree would bend and rustle.
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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 22, 2023 22:30:47 GMT
Today’s Dorothy Parker’s birthday, and… I’ve got to post some Dotty Parker. Just got to. Morally bound and all that.
Time Doth Flit
Time doth flit; Oh shit.
Rainy Night
Ghosts of all my lovely sins, Who attend too well my pillow, Gay the wanton rain begins; Hide the limp and tearful willow.
Turn aside your eyes and ears, Trail away your robes of sorrow, You shall have my further years,— You shall walk with me tomorrow.
I am sister to the rain, Fey and sudden and unholy, Petulant at the windowpane, Quickly lost, remembered slowly.
I have lived with shades, a shade; I am hung with graveyard flowers. Let me be tonight arrayed In the silver of the showers.
Every fragile thing shall rust; When another April passes I may be a furry dust, Sifting through the brittle grasses.
All sweet sins shall be forgot; Who will live to tell their siring? Hear me now, nor let me rot Wistful still, and still aspiring.
Ghosts of dear temptations, heed; I am frail, be you forgiving. See you not that I have need To be living with the living?
Sail, tonight, the Styx’s breast; Glide among the dim processions Of the exquisite unblest, Spirits of my shared transgressions.
Roam with young Persephone, Plucking poppies for your slumber. With the morrow, there shall be One more wraith among your number…
The Red Dress
I always saw, I always said If I were grown and free, I’d have a gown of reddest red As fine as you could see,
To wear out walking, sleek and slow, Upon a Summer day, And there’d be one to see me so And flip the world away.
And he would be a gallant one, With stars behind his eyes, And hair like metal in the sun, And lips too warm for lies.
I always saw us, gay and good, High honored in the town. Now I am grown to womanhood… I have the silly gown.
Résumé
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.
And one more, an longtime favorite:
Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.
Happy Birthday, Dotty.
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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 29, 2023 20:09:50 GMT
Note: Brian Patten published two versions of this poem, under the same title. I far prefer the first version, though it is less polished and has what I think are typos (notably “Aunt Heriot” and the last stanza’s odd capitalizations), as Patten changed them in the second version. Nevertheless, here’s the original, which I find immensely moving.
Where Are You Now, Batman? by Brian Patten
Where are you now, Batman? Now that Aunt Heriot has reported Robin missing And Superman’s fallen asleep in the sixpenny childhood seats? Where are you now that Captain Marvel’s SHAZAM! echoes round the auditorium, The magicians don’t hear it, Must all be deaf… or dead… The Purple Monster who came down from the Purple Planet disguised as a man Is wandering aimlessly about the streets With no way of getting back. Sir Galahad’s been strangled by the Incredible Living Trees, Zorro killed by his own sword. Blackhawk has buried the last of his companions And has now gone off to commit suicide in the disused Hangars of Innocence. The Monster and the Ape still fight it out in a room Where the walls are continually closing; Rocketman’s fuel tanks gave out over London. Even Flash Gordon’s lost, podgy and helpless He wanders among the stars Weeping over the robots he loved Half a universe ago. My celluloid companions, it’s only a few years Since I first knew you. Yet something in us has already faded. Has the Terrible Fiend, That Ghastly Adversary, Mr Old Age, Caught you in his deadly trap, And come finally to polish you off, His machinegun dripping with years…?
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 1, 2023 12:25:49 GMT
Death of a Dog by Ted Kooser
The next morning I felt that our house had been lifted away from its foundation during the night, and was now adrift, though so heavy it drew a foot or more of whatever was buoying it up, not water but something cold and thin and clear, silence riffling its surface as the house began to turn on a strengthening current, leaving, taking my wife and me with it, and though it had never occurred to me until that moment, for fifteen years our dog had held down what we had by pressing his belly to the floors, his front paws, too, and with him gone the house had begun to float out onto emptiness, no solid ground in sight.
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 7, 2023 18:15:18 GMT
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 8, 2023 21:57:10 GMT
Why We Don’t Die by Robert Bly
In late September many voices Tell you you will die. That leaf says it, that coolness. All of them are right.
Our many souls—what Can they do about it? Nothing. They’re already Part of the invisible.
Our souls have been Longing to go home Anyway. “It’s late,” they say, “Lock the door, let’s go.”
The body doesn’t agree. It says “We buried a little iron Ball under that tree. Let’s go get it.”
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 9, 2023 18:54:35 GMT
Oh Life Like the Grass by Arthur Lundkvist (Translated from the French of Jean-Clarence Lambert by Gwynn O’Gara)
Grass walks through the world, the fullest and greenest river of the wind. Grass is always walking, to assail the haunches of the mountains, the sleeping cities, over the plateaus, the savannas, the steppes where the centaur remains unvanquished, where distances resound under the hoofs of horses, where milk ferments in tents of felt under a moon with bridled eyes. Grass carries the rain on its millions of shoulders, it holds back the soil with its millions of toes. Grass without agony knots its frail fingers around a skull. The tireless grass works, it doesn’t hesitate, it traces a path and follows it and responds to each menace by growing. Grass loves the world as much as it loves itself, grass is happy, whether times are hard or not. Grass fades away rooted, the grass road standing together, countless, profuse. Grass accompanies people and bows before the memory that passes to the forgotten. Grass makes a bed for the unicorn’s horn, for the ax of the indigenous, grass makes itself eyelashes to protect the spring. Grass stands out with its high black bouquets the animals killed by lightning. The field mouse scratches the grass shivering, grass without limit, servant of the soil, servant of animals, that dies by cold or fire, that always comes back to life and never dreams itself tooth or blade: oh life like the grass.
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 21, 2023 21:19:34 GMT
Equations of the Light by Dana Gioia
Turning the corner, we discovered it just as the old wrought-iron lamps went on— a quiet, tree-lined street, only one block long resting between the noisy avenues.
The streetlamps splashed the shadows of the leaves across the whitewashed brick, and each tall window glowing through the ivy-decked façade promised lives as perfect as the light.
Walking beneath the trees, we counted all the high black doors of houses bolted shut. And yet we could have entered any door, entered any room the evening offered.
Or were we deluded by the strange equations of the light, the vagrant wind searching the trees, that we believed this brief conjunction of our separate lives was real?
It seems that moment lingered like a ghost, a flicker in the air, smaller than a moth, a curl of smoke flaring from a match, haunting a world it could not touch or hear.
There should have been a greeting or a sign, the smile of a stranger, something beyond the soft refusals of the summer air and children trading secrets on the steps.
Traffic bellowed from the avenue. Our shadows moved across the street’s long wall, and at the end what else could I have done but turn the corner back into my life?
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 23, 2023 13:55:18 GMT
Fall Rainby Robert Bly In the rain the sodden leaffloor shudders faintly as if ruffling its feathers; it is the time when bark hangs from old birch and poplar trees, like rags, and the moss gains new foothold on the sodden cedar trunk leaning out over the water. The husband, in the damp bed covered with blankets, dreams of aunts he has never heard of, dead grandfathers still alive, and strange earth- quakes as they walk the street. Now on the roof the delicate rain whispers of wet sails falling over abandoned junks in ancient har- bors of China, and of young women wandering in the rain to die, and it whispers of drowned bodies floating on the stairs of the lake floor, ascending to the eternal balconies of death, and of the souls of those of the first World War beneath the tangled metal, the buckles and the ghosts of leather, ghosts of wooden wagon wheels, of shell casings and bandages. Now the sound of geese is heard.
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 24, 2023 12:56:25 GMT
The Dark Hours of My Being by Ranier Maria Rilke
I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open to another life that's wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace:
a dream once lost among sorrows and songs.
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Post by PaulsLaugh on Sept 25, 2023 3:32:49 GMT
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 25, 2023 16:12:40 GMT
The Snakes of September by Stanley Kunitz
All summer I heard them rustling in the shrubbery, outracing me from tier to tier in my garden, a whisper among the viburnums, a signal flashed from the hedgerow, a shadow pulsing in the barberry thicket. Now that the nights are chill and the annuals spent, I should have thought them gone, in a torpor of blood slipped to the nether world before the sickle frost. Not so. In the deceptive balm of noon, as if defiant of the curse that spoiled another garden, these two appear on show through a narrow slit in the dense green brocade of a north-country spruce, dangling head-down, entwined in a brazen love-knot. I put out my hand and stroke the fine, dry grit of their skins. After all, we are partners in this land, co-signers of a covenant. At my touch the wild braid of creation trembles.
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Post by theravenking on Sept 26, 2023 16:39:39 GMT
The Twilight Turns by James Joyce
The twilight turns from amethyst To deep and deeper blue, The lamp fills with a pale green glow The trees of the avenue.
The old piano plays an air, Sedate and slow and gay; She bends upon the yellow keys, Her head inclines this way.
Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands That wander as they list -- - The twilight turns to darker blue With lights of amethyst.
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