Share a poem which may bring a tear to your eye...

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Share a poem which may bring a tear to your eye...

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1SqueakyChu
Juin 30, 2007, 9:47 am

You must have a poem that rings clear for you. That makes you cry for real..if only a little bit.

Please share that poem with us.

2Morphidae
Juin 30, 2007, 10:16 am

Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

3SqueakyChu
Juin 30, 2007, 11:37 am

The Lanyard by Billy Collins

4doogiewray
Août 8, 2007, 12:41 pm

To a Siberian Woodsman by Wendell Berry.

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

5WholeHouseLibrary
Août 8, 2007, 7:32 pm

Maude Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier

Probably the only poem I can recite from memory, because I've been there...

Feeble attempt at creating a link: http://www.bartleby.net/102/76.html

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been!"

6lorsomething
Août 8, 2007, 9:27 pm

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

7EncompassedRunner
Modifié : Août 8, 2007, 9:47 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

8clm256poetry
Août 15, 2007, 7:59 pm

Try reading "When We Two Parted"
by Geo Gordon-Lord Bryon.

9clm256poetry
Août 15, 2007, 8:50 pm

Or how about "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" by Dylan Thomas?

10bookstopshere
Août 16, 2007, 1:26 pm

or Housman's

We'll to the weeds no more,
The laurels are all cut,
The bowers are bare of bay
That once the Muses wore;
The year draws in the day
And soon will evening shut:
The laurels all are cut,
We'll to the woods no more.
Oh we'll no more, no more
To the leafy woods away,
To the high wild woods of laurel
And the bowers of bay no more.

11tropics
Modifié : Août 18, 2007, 8:54 pm


When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "When You Are Old".

12AnneBoleyn
Août 19, 2007, 3:58 pm

She Moved Through The Fair

My young love said to me,
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kind"
And she stepped away from me
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
Till our wedding day"

As she stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there
And then she turned homeward
With one star awake
Like the swan in the evening
Moves over the lake

The people were saying,
No two e'er were wed
But one had a sorrow
That never was said
And I smiled as she passed
With her goods and her gear,
And that was the last
That I saw of my dear.

Last night she came to me,
My dead love came in
So softly she came
That her feet made no din
As she laid her hand on me
And this she did say
It will not be long, love,
'Til our wedding day.

by Padraic Colum

13lorsomething
Août 19, 2007, 7:18 pm

The Blind Orchardist Refuses to Discuss the Day They Burned the Last of His Trees

He thinks himself no more useful than a kite,
Memories of meals eaten under the lattice
dominate his conversation.

Hoof runes in the muck by the cow barn
don't tell the history of the land
he left unwilling.

He spurns tapes and Braille. He pushes back.
His eyes crawl up the wall
with no more logic than a fly. He smiles.

Perhaps some neural ignition, a vision
has shown him ash rising to ride the wind.
Empty winter limbs, callused with axe galls
flicker. The cherished memory of his orchard,
merging into clouds, becomes invisible at last.

Embers rage, like eyes on fire.

- Laurence J. Sasso, Jr.

14almigwin
Août 19, 2007, 11:06 pm

110 Stories
by John M. Ford

This is not real. We've seen it all before.
Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.
And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again.
I heard that they went after Air Force One.
Call FAA at once if you can't land.
They say the bastards got the Pentagon.
The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.
I was across the river, saw it all.
Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.
Aboard the ferry -- we felt awful small.
I didn't look until I felt the flame.
The steel turns red, the framework starts to go.
Jacks clasp Jills' hands and step onto the sky.
The noise was not like anything you know.
Stand still, he said, and watch a building die.
There's no one you can help above this floor.
We've got to hold our breath. We've got to climb.
Don't give me that; I did this once before.
The firemen look up, and know the time.
These labored, took their wages, and are dead.
The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light.
The air's deciduous of letterhead.
How dark, how brilliant, things will be tonight.
Once more, we'll all remember where we were.
Forget it, friend. You didn't have a choice.
That's got to be a rumor, but who's sure?
The Internet is stammering with noise.
You turn and turn but just can't turn away.
My child can't understand. I can't explain.
The towers drain out from Boston to LA.
The cellphone is our ganglion of pain.
What was I thinking of? What did I say?
You're safe? The TV's off. What do you mean?
I'm going now, but not going away.
I couldn't touch the answering machine.
I nearly was, but caught a later bus.
I would have been, but had this awful cold.
I spoke with her, she's headed home, don't fuss.
Pick up those tools. The subway job's on hold.
Somebody's got to pay, no matter what.
I love you. Just I love you. Just I love --
The cloud rolls on; I think of Eliot.
Not silence, but an emptiness above.
There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.
it's airless and it's absolutely black.
I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.
I'll stay until my little girl comes back.
You hold your breath whenever something shakes.
St. Vincent's takes one massive trauma case.
The voice, so placid, till the circuit breaks.
Ten minutes just to grab stuff from my place.
I only want to hear them say goodbye.
They could be down there, buried, couldn't they?
My friends all made it, and that's why I cry.
He stayed with me, and he died anyway.
We almost tipped the island toward uptown.
Next minute, I'm in Macy's. Who knows how.
I really need to get this bagel down.
He'd haul ass, that's what Jesus would do now.
A fighter plane? Dear God, let it be ours.
We're scared of bombs and so we're loading guns.
Who didn't have a rude word for the towers?
The world's hip-deep in junk that mattered once.
Hands rise to heaven as asbestos falls.
The air is yellow, hideously thick.
A photo, private once, on fifty walls.
A candle in a teacup on a brick.
They found -- can you believe -- a pair of hands.
Oh, that don't hurt. Well, maybe just a bit.
The Winter Garden's shattered but it stands.
A howl is Mene Tekeled in the grit.
Some made it in a basement, so there's hope.
The following are definitely known . . .
You live, is how you learn that you can cope.
Yes, I sincerely want to be alone.
Don't even ask. That's what your tears are for.
The cats are in a shelter; we are not.
Pedestrians rule the Roeblings' bridge once more.
A memory of home is what we've got.
Tribeca with no people, that's plain wrong.
It's just a shopping bag, but who can tell?
Okay, okay, I'm moving right along.
The postcards hit two dollars, and they sell.
Be honest, now. You're proud of living here.
If this is Armageddon, make it quick.
Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.
We're shooting down our neighbors. Now I'm sick.
I can't do that for fifty times the fare.
A coronary. Other things went on.
It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.
All those not now accounted for are gone.
Here is the man whose god blinked in the flash,
Whose god says sinful people should be hurt,
The man whose god is kneeling in the ash,
The man whose god is dancing on the dirt.
Okay, I ate at Windows now and then.
This fortune-teller went to Notre Dame?
They knocked 'em down. We'll stack 'em up again.
Oh, I'd say one or two things stayed the same.
Some nights I still can see them, like a ghost.
King Kong was right about the Empire State.
I'd rather not hear what you'll miss the most.
A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.
I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.
So this is what you call a second chance.
One turn aside, into eternity.
This is New York. We'll find a place to dance.


With resolution wanting, reason runs
To characters and symbols, noughts and ones.
Copyright (c) 2001 by John M. Ford. Permission hereby granted to make one or two copies for personal use, but please do not reprint except by permission. John M. Ford can be reached at speceng@visi.com. Thank you.

15chellerystick
Août 20, 2007, 3:57 pm

"The Book of Yolek" by Anthony Hecht is one. In The Transparent Man.

16virgingloves
Nov 13, 2007, 3:50 pm

Sorry Grandpa

And so I didn't go to my grandfather's funeral
They would all be there, snickering, gossiping
My hair would be an issue, my career would be an issue
They would ask about my relationship
She's twelve years younger than me
They would cry, they would snivel
I would be the only person there to mourn
They would harangue, they would bicker
I didn't want to be the focal point
They would make me more important than him
And so I didn't go,
Sorry Grandpa.

Alex Hutchinson

This poem is from the book 'Anarchy Bell'
Now available at www.SuburbanFiction.com

17jburlinson
Modifié : Nov 18, 2007, 6:37 pm

Climb Mount Fuji,
Snail, but slowly,
slowly!

-- Issa

This little haiku was made especially touching, for me, when I read it in the children's book Cool Melons - Turn To Frogs!: The Life And Poems Of Issa where it is illustrated with an image by Kazuko Stone that puts readers at a vantage point above a snail traversing a tree branch that appears to lead the way up the famous mountain's slope. You can see this image on my profile page. I hope you like it.

18Sparrowing
Nov 23, 2007, 8:09 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

19bobmcconnaughey
Nov 26, 2007, 10:16 pm

So Much Happiness by Naomi Nye - to her husband
Caring for Animals, Jon Silkin
...
"take up the man-trapped squirrel upon your shoulder.
Attend to the unnecessary beasts.

From growing mercy and moderate love
Great love for the human animal occurs.
And your love grows. Your great love grows and grows.
...
and of course John Dunne..
"John Dunne/Anne Dunne/Undone"
after her father tried to break up their union.

20PandoraLuvsBooks
Modifié : Déc 28, 2007, 11:31 am

"And death shall have no dominion" & "Do not go gentle into that good night" By Dylan Thomas are coming to mind, but this one is also very special to me;

"Footsteps of Angels"
by Longfellow

When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;

Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful fire-light
Dance upon the parlour wall;

Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the road-side fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.

With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes the messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.

And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.

O, thought oft deppress'd and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!

21poemsforkeeps
Déc 28, 2007, 10:04 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

22yareader2
Fév 25, 2008, 7:52 pm

I don't know the title or if this is just a portion of a greater poem, but I love it.

Dark lowers our fate,
And terrible the storm that gathers o'er us;
But nothing, till that latest agony
Which severs thee from nature, shall unloose
This fixed and sacred hold. In thy dark prison-house;
In the terrific face of armed law;
Yea! on the scaffold, if it needs must be,
I never will forsake thee.

-Joanna Baillie

23timjones
Fév 26, 2008, 7:35 am

Into the distance disappear the mounds of human heads.
I dwindle - go unnoticed now.
But in affectionate books, in children's games,
I will rise from the dead to say: the sun!

- Osip Mandelstam

24maloytsang
Fév 26, 2008, 12:00 pm

This poem/song always moves me. As poignant today as it was when put to music 800 years ago.

'Donal Og'
And if you should go across the water
Take me with you to be your partner
At fair and market you'll be well looked after
And you shall sleep with the Greek King's daughter

Oh Donal Og, you'll not find me lazy
Like many a high born expensive lady
I'll do your milking, I'll nurse your baby
And if you're set on, I'll defend you bravely

I saw you first on a Sunday evening
Before the Easter, as I was kneeling
'Twas of Christ's passion that I was reading
But my mind was on you, and my own heart bleeding

Black as the sloe is the heart that's in me
Black as the coal is the grief that blinds me
Black as the bootprint on shining hallway
'Twas you that blackened it, ever and alway

For you took what's before me and what's behind me
Took East and West when you would not mind me
Sun, moon and stars from my sky have been taken
And God as well, or I'm much mistaken

25yareader2
Fév 26, 2008, 10:23 pm

those are beautiful pieces

26MarianV
Fév 27, 2008, 10:16 am

Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
by John Crowe Ransom

There was such a speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window,
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

27oversomecognac
Fév 28, 2008, 6:20 pm

Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray--
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch--crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;--
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay

28yareader2
Mar 8, 2008, 11:38 pm

My Letters! all dead paper... (Sonnet 28)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee tonight.
This said—he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand. . . a simple thing,
Yes I wept for it—this . . . the paper's light. . .
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this . . . 0 Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

29leahmarjorie
Modifié : Mar 10, 2008, 1:50 pm

This one puts me in mind of the many beautiful trees in my yard that were destroyed during hurricane Katrina.

Binsey Poplars
felled 1879

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

30doogiewray
Mar 10, 2008, 8:55 pm

Oh, Leah Marjorie ... I hear you!

I lost a beloved willow tree a couple of years ago. I had pasted Frost's Tree at my Window on my own bedroom window until I had memorized the poem.

I posted the poem and pictures of it's final (expensive) demise here right after a particularly big blow.

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

31walden_girl
Avr 10, 2008, 12:32 am

-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
-Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
-The Reprimand by Elizabeth Bishop (haha, get it? tear? really, it's more of a bitter poem than a sad one, though.)

32aviddiva
Avr 10, 2008, 1:04 am

REST

O earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth
Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.

--Christina Rossetti

33yareader2
Avr 11, 2008, 9:21 pm

REST has a musical sound to it. Beautiful

34aviddiva
Avr 11, 2008, 9:31 pm

There is a lovely choral setting of it by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

35chrisharpe
Avr 14, 2008, 2:52 pm

John Clare's "I Am"

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

36keren7
Modifié : Avr 23, 2008, 6:54 pm

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Sorry, I just read the posting on not posting poems so I am deleing my poem - but you can still look it up :)

37cabanagirl
Avr 17, 2008, 11:23 pm

The Light Wraps You

The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twilight
that revolves around you.

Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
your newly born, takes nourishment.

Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.

Pablo Neruda

38yareader2
Avr 26, 2008, 5:31 pm

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

39bookstopshere
Avr 30, 2008, 4:19 pm

A Story about the Body

The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity-like music-withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl-she must have swept the corners of her studio-was full of dead bees.

Robert Hass

I like Hass - call this a prose poem and go read his verses

40yareader2
Mai 2, 2008, 10:52 pm

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins


I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

41cabanagirl
Mai 3, 2008, 1:03 pm

# 40 - Great one, yareader2. Thanks.

42yareader2
Mai 17, 2008, 11:06 pm

No, Love Is Not Dead
by Robert Desnos


No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth
that announced the start of its own funeral.
Listen, I've had enough of the picturesque, the colorful
and the charming.
I love love, its tenderness and cruelty.
My love has only one name, one form.
Everything disappears. All mouths cling to that one.
My love has just one name, one form.
And if someday you remember
O you, form and name of my love,
One day on the ocean between America and Europe,
At the hour when the last ray of light sparkles
on the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,
A spring morning on the boulevard Malesherbes,
A rainy day,
Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-that
I alone loved you more and it's a shame
you didn't know it.
Tell yourself there's no need to regret: Ronsard
and Baudelaire before me sang the sorrows
of women old or dead who scorned the purest love.
When you are dead
You will still be lovely and desirable.
I'll be dead already, completely enclosed in your immortal body,
in your astounding image forever there among the endless marvels
of life and eternity, but if I'm alive,
The sound of your voice, your radiant looks,
Your smell the smell of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me.
In me and I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire

I'm Robert Desnos who, because I knew
and loved you,
Is as good as they are.
I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be remembered
On this vile earth for nothing but his love of you.

A la mysterieuse

43Sodapop
Mai 17, 2008, 11:45 pm

This one's kinda obvious but it gets me everytime anyway.

Stop All the Clocks...
by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

44AsYouKnow_Bob
Mai 19, 2008, 7:00 pm

Against Entropy
by John M. Ford

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

—John M. Ford

45bobmcconnaughey
Modifié : Juin 10, 2008, 3:20 pm

I Shall Not Care - Sara Teasdale

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Tom Rapp/Pearls before Swine set this to a lovely melody decades ago.
bob

46Harinezumi
Juin 10, 2008, 8:26 pm

Spring and Fall, to a young child - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Léaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie,
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s springs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, nor nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

47yareader2
Juin 10, 2008, 9:44 pm

Twinkle, Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle , Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are

( I still believe, do you?)

48MissTeacher
Fév 27, 2009, 8:24 pm

#43 - That's the one I wanted. Thanks!

49murunbuchstansangur
Modifié : Avr 18, 2009, 1:12 pm

Yes, #43, that one always gets me, too!

Love After Love by Derek Walcott always makes me feel like crying.


Love After Love


The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.



50mejix
Modifié : Avr 18, 2009, 1:51 pm

Autumn
Rainier Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

51retropelocin
Avr 18, 2009, 2:04 pm

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

52Magnocrat
Sep 29, 2009, 4:45 am

Lovely read for the first time by me and it touched some chords. I instantly thought of 'We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with a sleep'.

53omaca
Sep 29, 2009, 9:11 pm


The auto-biographical and utterly heartbreaking. Mid Term Break by the Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heany

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

54Magnocrat
Sep 30, 2009, 5:56 am

Sad but what does it mean? Why dead bees?

55Magnocrat
Sep 30, 2009, 6:00 am

I loved this never read it before, it has heart beat.

56omaca
Modifié : Sep 30, 2009, 9:01 am

> 54 Magnocrat said: Sad but what does it mean? Why dead bees?

Huh? Not sure where you got anything about dead bees.

The poem is about Seamus Heany's young four year old brother lying in wake at his home, having been killed by a car.

Apart from Digging (see below), it is perhaps Heany's most famous poem.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Being an Irishman, I have a soft spot for the Irish poets like Heany, Kavanagh, Yeats.

Another that always touches me, if not prompting a tear, is the self-penned epitaph of WB Yeats.


Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!


I stood there recently, before his grave, this giant of the new Irish nation, letters and tragic lover (from afar) of Maud Gonne. It was cold and damp heavy mists rolled down from the brooding presence of Ben Bulben, muffling the sounds of cars passing near by. In the distance you could just make out the ancient high tower and the thousand year old Celtic cross in the nearby graveyard. A strange and wholly ineffably sad experience.

57Magnocrat
Oct 1, 2009, 3:54 am

How wonderfully up to date Hopkins is 'where we mean to mend her we end her'. How this speaks of the green revolution sweeping the civilised world.
I always find a wonderful poem in this section and I come everyday searching for more jems.

58IlieRuby
Mai 11, 2010, 11:57 am

This poem is always just right for any circumstance...one of my favorites.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

59SqueakyChu
Oct 31, 2010, 1:10 pm

I just found this thread again ...and want to rejuvenate it!

60carusmm
Modifié : Mai 19, 2016, 11:11 am

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