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Post by Nalkarj on Jun 6, 2023 17:36:21 GMT
Trees by Joyce Kilmer I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet, flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. Then of course there’s Ogden Nash’s rejoinder:;)
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Post by spiderwort on Jun 18, 2023 17:02:15 GMT
A Praise by Wendell Berry
His memories lived in the place like fingers locked in the rock ledges like roots. When he died and his influence entered the air I said, Let my mind be the earth of his thought, let his kindness go ahead of me. Though I do not escape the history barbed in my flesh, certain wise movements of his hands, the turns of his speech keep with me. His hope of peace keeps with me in harsh days, the shell of his breath dimming away three summers in the earth.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jun 19, 2023 20:58:55 GMT
I had to go to the dentist this morning (o hapless day!), so I’m honor-bound to post the following in this thread. (Apologies to those who already read it when I posted it at the old board.)
Intimations of Mortality on being told by the dentist that this will be over soon by Phyllis McGinley
Indeed, it will soon be over, I shall be done With the querulous drill, the forceps, the clove-smelling cotton. I can go forth into fresher air, into sun, This narrow anguish forgotten.
In twenty minutes or forty or half an hour, I shall be easy, and proud of my hard-got gold. But your apple of comfort is eaten by worms, and sour. Your consolation is cold.
This will not last, and the day will be pleasant after. I’ll dine tonight with a witty and favorite friend. No doubt tomorrow I shall rinse my mouth with laughter. And also that will end.
The handful of time that I am charily granted Will likewise pass, to oblivion duly apprenticed. Summer will blossom and autumn be faintly enchanted. Then time for the grave, or the dentist.
Because you are shrewd, my man, and your hand is clever, You must not believe your words have a charm to spell me. There was never a half of an hour that lasted forever. Be quiet. You need not tell me.
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Post by spiderwort on Jun 21, 2023 13:39:12 GMT
Song for the Summer Solstice by Marge Piercy
Oak burns steady and hot and long and fires of oak are traditional tonight but we light a fire of pitch pine which burns well enough in the salt wind whistling while ragged flames lick the dark casting our shadows high as the dunes.
Come into the fire and catch, come in, come in. Fire that burns and leaves entire, the silver flame of the moon, trembling mercury laying on the waves a highway to the abyss, the full roaring furnace of the sun at zenith of the year and potency, midsummer's eve.
Come dance in the fire, come in. This is the briefest night and just under the ocean the fires of the sun roll toward us.
Come step into the fire, come in, come in, dance in the flames of the festival of the strongest sun at the mountain top of the year when the wheel starts down. Dance through me as I through you. Here in the heart of fire in the caves of the ancient body we are aligned with the stars wheeling, the midges swarming in the humid air like a nebula, with the clams who drink the tide and the heartwood clock of the oak and the astronomical clock in the blood thundering through the great heart of the albatross. Our cells are burning each a little furnace powered by the sun and the moon pulls the sea of our blood. This night the sun and moon dance and you and I dance in the fire of which we are the logs, the matches, and the flames.
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Post by spiderwort on Jun 29, 2023 12:50:21 GMT
Life While-You-Wait by Wisława Szymborska (Translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)
Life While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation.
I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot just what this play’s all about.
Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can’t conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for happy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.
Words and impulses you can’t take back, stars you’ll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run — the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.
If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).
You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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Post by theravenking on Jul 2, 2023 14:31:15 GMT
Tundra's Edge by John Burnside
Here is the wolf. The wind, the sound of rain, the kitchen light, that falls across the lawn - these things are his. This house is his domain.
Here is the wolf. He slips in with the dawn to raid your mirrors. Shadows will persist for days, to mark the distance he has gone
in search of you. Yet still you will insist the wolf died out in these parts long ago: everyone knows the wolf does not exist.
You catch no scent. And where the mirrors glow those are not eyes, but random sparks of light. You never dream of running with the snow.
Yet here is Wolf. He rustles in the night. Only the wind, but you switch on the light.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 2, 2023 15:34:45 GMT
Tundra's Edgeby John Burnside Here is the wolf. The wind, the sound of rain, the kitchen light, that falls across the lawn - these things are his. This house is his domain. Here is the wolf. He slips in with the dawn to raid your mirrors. Shadows will persist for days, to mark the distance he has gone in search of you. Yet still you will insist the wolf died out in these parts long ago: everyone knows the wolf does not exist. You catch no scent. And where the mirrors glow those are not eyes, but random sparks of light. You never dream of running with the snow. Yet here is Wolf. He rustles in the night. Only the wind, but you switch on the light. Wonderful.
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 2, 2023 16:47:23 GMT
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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Post by mikef6 on Jul 3, 2023 4:34:41 GMT
Hobbit song, probably by Bilbo Baggins, preserved in the Red Book of Westmarsh and translated by J.R.R. Tolkien:
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 8, 2023 18:38:41 GMT
Map by Linda Hogan
This is the world so vast and lonely without end, with mountains named for men who brought hunger from other lands, and fear of the thick, dark forest of trees that held each other up, knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them and spoke an older tongue, and the tongue of the nation of wolves was the wind around them. Even ice was not silent. It cried its broken self back to warmth. But they called it ice, wolf, forest of sticks, as if words would make it something they could hold in gloved hands, open, plot a way and follow.
This is the map of the forsaken world. This is the world without end where forests have been cut away from their trees. These are the lines wolf could not pass over. This is what I know from science: that a grain of dust dwells at the center of every flake of snow, that ice can have its way with land, that wolves live inside a circle of their own beginning. This is what I know from blood: the first language is not our own.
There are names each thing has for itself, and beneath us the other order already moves. It is burning. It is dreaming. It is waking up.
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Post by mikef6 on Jul 22, 2023 15:11:08 GMT
A somewhat different poem for a Somewhat Different Poetry Thread. This was written by Commander Data, the android science officer on Captain Picard’s Enterprise, to his cat, Spot.
Ode To Spot
Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature. Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations A singular development of cat communications That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents. You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance. And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion It often serves to illustrate the stage of your emotion.
Oh, Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array. And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
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Post by theravenking on Jul 26, 2023 12:49:51 GMT
Counting Sheep by Hamish Brown
Sleep is postponed when words sheep over the gates of the mind. It is too late, past dawn, to gather wool from thorns and barbed-wire fences. The beasts have to be grabbed, dipped and disinfected, sheared in an hour while fighting awake hung-over from day. Who would be a shepherd with flocks of words loose on the fells of the mind in March moonlight? I would wash my mind of the stinking fold, but I cannot sleep till I count my sheep.
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 28, 2023 1:16:11 GMT
Speaking Tree by Joy Harjo
I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree. —Sandra CisnerosSome things on this earth are unspeakable: Genealogy of the broken— A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre, Or the smell of coffee and no one there—
Some humans say trees are not sentient beings, But they do not understand poetry—
Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by Wind, or water music— Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—
Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth Between sunrise and sunset—
I cannot walk through all realms— I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—
What shall I do with all this heartache?
The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway— To the edge of the river of life, and drink—
I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:
Imagine what would it be like to dance close together In this land of water and knowledge. . .
To drink deep what is undrinkable.
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 30, 2023 21:44:53 GMT
How Calmly Does the Olive Branch (Nonno's Poem) by Tennessee Williams in his play, "The Night of the Iguana"
How calmly does the olive branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer With no betrayal of despair
Some time while light obscures the tree The zenith of its life will be Gone past forever And from thence A second history will commence
A chronicle no longer gold A bargaining with mist and mold And finally the broken stem The plummeting to earth, and then
An intercourse not well designed For beings of a golden kind Whose native green must arch above The earth's obscene corrupting love
And still the ripe fruit and the branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer With no betrayal of despair
Oh courage! Could you not as well Select a second place to dwell Not only in that golden tree But in the frightened heart of me?
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Post by spiderwort on Aug 6, 2023 13:46:32 GMT
Summer Dusk by Charles Simic
You’ve been the love of my life, Light lingering in the sky At the close of a long day Over the roofs of some city Like New York or Rome, As streets empty in the heat, And shadows lengthen And darken every room, Occupied or still vacant, Where some turn on the lamp And others step to a window To savor this fleeting moment When everything stops As if stunned by its own beauty.
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