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Post by patricklondon on Oct 4, 2009 10:19:32 GMT
Here's one from last weekend's "climate change special" edition of the Guardian's Saturday review section. It's by Carol Rumens:
2084
Paired wheels and PV panels, ponds and hives and garden-fields (citron and silvery-green samplers, stitched by hand) declare our ground. We're scripture-safe in our examined lives; for each estate, one bin, one fridge, one screen only, daily rationing of down-loads. That ice-bar, frilling in the distant sound, that flood, in motion inches from the cross-roads where we abolished run-ways and re-wound the windmills, will be measured and contained - the government says so. And the world will sail over the carbon peak: we'll be in free-fall the whole sweet way to paradise regained.
It's slow, of course. The children want to burn anything that burns. They say we stole the magic brand, and scraped the sun's wheel to spark it, so shut up: it's their turn to hit the gas, light out, ignore the brakes, as children should. Just let us be children they wail from blazing consoles. And we tell them, or try to, what it was to drive that borrowed chariot, rocketing, spiralling with its florid machinery in a thunder of gold tyres down, down the yellowing sky-waste. Oh infelix Phaethon, earth grew nothing, then, but fires. We drove death into childhood, just being children.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 4, 2009 15:39:53 GMT
Wow. Applause.
Thank you for that, Patrick!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2009 11:32:41 GMT
Erasures by Sharon Bryan
My best lover ever is dead. And
the second best. Nothing to do
with me,it was years since I'd seen them.
Still,they took something with them
no one else knows about me,and if I
know,I know only half, like every
other line of a poem.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 12, 2009 14:06:09 GMT
I love poems like that. You always want to read them three times in a row to get all the subtlety. Good one!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2009 11:22:44 GMT
Autumn Waiting by Tom Hennan
Cold wind The day is waiting for winter Without a sound. Everything is waiting- Broken down cars in the dead weeds The weeds themselves. Trees, Even sunlight Is in no hurry and stays For a long time On each cornstalk. Blackbirds are silent And sit in piles. From a distance They look like Something Spilled on the road.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2009 10:30:29 GMT
Dancing by Margaret Atwood
It was my father taught my mother how to dance. I never knew that. I thought it was the other way. Ballroom was their style, a graceful twirling, curved arms and fancy footwork, a green-eyed radio.
There is always more than you know. There are always boxes put away in the cellar,worn shoes and cherished pictures, notes you find later, sheets of music you can't play.
A woman came on Wednesdays with tapes of waltzes. She tried to make him shuffle around the floor with her. She said it would be good for him. He didn't want to.
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Post by patricklondon on Nov 1, 2009 10:20:11 GMT
Autumn
by T. E. Hulme
A touch of cold in the Autumn night— I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2009 12:07:39 GMT
Nice poems.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2009 13:09:51 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 Deleted on Nov 26, 2009 14:02:28 GMT
Sweet Olive by Julie Kane
Sweet olive,blooming when the weather shifts from shorts to winter coats,or coats to shorts; for centuries before conditioned air, planted just outside the kitchen door to swish that otherworldly odor through the screen holes,maddening the young and old with something hard to put their finger on, as dangerous as powder up the nose... Small tree of knowledge,pulling victims off the sidewalk tracking your elusive smell, past sun-struck lizards or the birdbath's ice, to linger here for decades in its spell: Why can't we leave your native South behind? What grows here grows from the unconscious mind.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2009 11:36:49 GMT
In honor of the Winter Solstice:
When Winter Comes by David Jaffin
When winter comes We close the windows behind us, seal off that last bit of cold from within us And consider the warmth inside.
We are rooms then, With emptied spaces and shutters without, Perfectly planned we stand to Within the centre of ourselves And turn that switch between light and darkness.
When winter comes We take a book to ourselves From those long covered shelves of silence And feel out the pages of sound To our stretched out thoughts recede,
Touch to each a quickened vein At a fire of our own asking: Wine,and the wintered winds without.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2009 16:06:47 GMT
Letting Go
by Judy Burnette
How do you walk away from someone you love And take the road of friend; Can you reroute the course you have taken And start over once again?
I don't really want to let you go But inside me I know I must; The times we've loved . . . the times you've left My heart says stay . . . but it's my mind I must trust.
We have shared so much together Laughter . . . fun times . . . tears; Yet sometimes we can't turn back time We must walk away, and allow ourselves to heal.
I know one day you will be happy And your soulmate you will find; I know we each have one out there Even if for now . . . only in our minds.
May life be gentle with you May God's best come your way; And on some quiet tomorrow You will realize things were better this way.
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Post by patricklondon on Dec 21, 2009 16:36:18 GMT
For the shortest day, my mind went back to something studied in schooldays, John Donne's Nocturnal on St Lucy's Day:
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ; The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ; The world's whole sap is sunk ; The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk, Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh, Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be At the next world, that is, at the next spring ; For I am every dead thing, In whom Love wrought new alchemy. For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness ; He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that's good, Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ; I, by Love's limbec, am the grave Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood Have we two wept, and so Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow, To be two chaoses, when we did show Care to aught else ; and often absences Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her— Of the first nothing the elixir grown ; Were I a man, that I were one I needs must know ; I should prefer, If I were any beast, Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest, And love ; all, all some properties invest. If I an ordinary nothing were, As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none ; nor will my sun renew. You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun At this time to the Goat is run To fetch new lust, and give it you, Enjoy your summer all, Since she enjoys her long night's festival. Let me prepare towards her, and let me call This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.
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Post by lola on Dec 23, 2009 22:30:05 GMT
Is the I here every dead thing, or a sad man? Who is She?
They forgot to include this poem in my schooldays.
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Post by patricklondon on Dec 27, 2009 22:35:58 GMT
"I" is a man who is sad because he has lost "She" - which is what makes him "every dead thing", among various other examples of misery.
I like to cheer people up.
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Post by lola on Dec 28, 2009 6:27:23 GMT
Thanks, Patrick. Symbolism always throws me.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 11:37:45 GMT
Looking by W.D. Snodgrass
What was I looking for today? All that poking under the rugs, Peering under the lamps and chairs, Or going from room to room that way, Forever up and down the stairs Like someone stupid with sleep or drugs.
Everywhere I was,was wrong I started turning the drawers out,then I was staring in at the icebox door Wondering if I'd been there long Wondering what I was looking for. Later on,I think I went back again.
Where did the rest of the time go? Was I down cellar? I don't recall Finding the light switch,or the last Place I've had it,or how I'd know I didn't look at it and go past. Or whether it's what I want at all.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2010 11:13:45 GMT
One of the Butterflies
The trouble with pleasure is the timing it can overtake me without warning and be gone before I know it is here it can stand facing me unrecognized while I am remembering somewhere else in another age or somewhere not seen for years and never be seen again in this world and it seems that I cherish only now a joy I was not aware of when it was here although it remains out of reach and will not be caught or named or called back and if I could make it stay as I want to it would turn to pain.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 12, 2010 21:54:24 GMT
When Winter Comes (Jaffin) - "we are rooms then" ~ musingly beautiful poem. Donne's Nocturnal needs close study (by me, anyway) because of the language. This is lovely: The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays
On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney By Henry Constable
GIVE pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries, If they, importune, interrupt thy song, Which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among The angel-quiristers of th' heavenly skies. Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes, That since I saw thee now it is so long, And yet the tears that unto thee belong To thee as yet they did not sacrifice. I did not know that thou wert dead before; I did not feel the grief I did sustain; The greater stroke astonisheth the more; Astonishment takes from us sense of pain; I stood amazed when others' tears begun, And now begin to weep when they have done.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 18, 2010 4:55:32 GMT
TrainsHenry Bataille (1872-1922) translated by Jethro Bithell THE trains dream in the dew for hours outside The stations, then unmoor, and grate, and glide ... I love the wet trains passing through the fields, Long caravans of all the country yields; Those that sleep in the shunting; and the train Clad with tarpaulin cloak against the rain ... And trains of bullocks bellowing as they pass The farm where they were born, and sniff its grass ... And all grey carriages close shut and warm, Whose silence glitters through the pelting storm, With their inscriptions faded, and their cold, Pale windows ... the surrendered rest they hold ... Their flickering lanterns when the morning comes ... And how the sleepy engine puffs and hums!... A hand runs up the blind, and pulls it back ... The hamlet where the grass grows by the track ... The suburbs ... carriages where nothing stirs, Where you can hear the breath of passengers ... The blue-veiled lamps that palpitate ... the train That crosses us and tells us of its pain, While we in corners brood, and wonder why We hear it still when it has echoed by ... And the green halt where you can hear the quails, With their sad, solitary note ... and rails Blocked, while a whistle sounds and buffers clash, And regular signals through the darkness flash ... Mysterious calls we cannot comprehend ... And, after being cradled without end In jolts the listless soul is broken in, The snorting entrance, with a brazen din, Of the train bounding onwards as to joys In the great cities full of buzzing noise!... And here refracted is the chaste, white beam, Which led me through the world from dream to dream, O infinite rails under the moonlight cold, To whom my heart its bitterness has told In all the partings unto which it yields ... I love the wet trains passing through the fields.
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 27, 2010 15:52:47 GMT
This is far too early really, but at last this weekend, the weather is hinting at spring in London; there is sunshine, there are brisk breezes and daffodils on sale, so here's Philip Larkin's Trees:
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2010 14:25:14 GMT
Avoir et Être.
Loin des vieux livres de grammaire, Écoutez comment un beau soir, Ma mère m'enseigna les mystères Du verbe être et du verbe avoir. Parmi mes meilleurs auxiliaires, Il est deux verbes originaux. Avoir et Être étaient deux frères Que j'ai connus dès le berceau. Bien qu'opposés de caractère, On pouvait les croire jumeaux, Tant leur histoire est singulière. Mais ces deux frères étaient rivaux. Ce qu'Avoir aurait voulu être Être voulait toujours l'avoir. À ne vouloir ni dieu ni maître, Le verbe Être s'est fait avoir. Son frère Avoir était en banque Et faisait un grand numéro, Alors qu'Être, toujours en manque Souffrait beaucoup dans son ego. Pendant qu'Être apprenait à lire Et faisait ses humanités, De son côté sans rien lui dire Avoir apprenait à compter. Et il amassait des fortunes En avoirs, en liquidités, Pendant qu'Être, un peu dans la lune S'était laissé déposséder. Avoir était ostentatoire Lorsqu'il se montrait généreux, Être en revanche, et c'est notoire, Est bien souvent présomptueux. Avoir voyage en classe Affaires. Il met tous ses titres à l'abri. Alors qu'Être est plus débonnaire, Il ne gardera rien pour lui. Sa richesse est tout intérieure, Ce sont les choses de l'esprit.. Le verbe Être est tout en pudeur Et sa noblesse est à ce prix. Un jour à force de chimères Pour parvenir à un accord, Entre verbes ça peut se faire, Ils conjuguèrent leurs efforts. Et pour ne pas perdre la face Au milieu des mots rassemblés, Ils se sont répartis les tâches Pour enfin se réconcilier. Le verbe Avoir a besoin d'Être Parce qu'être, c'est exister. Le verbe Être a besoin d'avoirs Pour enrichir ses bons côtés. Et de palabres interminables En arguties alambiquées, Nos deux frères inséparables Ont pu être et avoir été.
(yes I know about the TOS)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2010 13:44:26 GMT
Blood Feud
The days have gone darker soldiers doing their duty nations & religions cultures clashing bombers flying delivering death buildings exploding bodies torn apart just another rerun on the tv we’ve been here before sometimes in jungles sometimes in deserts sometimes in the streets of cities like some foreign colony getting uppity for some life is so cheap send in the troops they will fight they will retaliate beginning a new cycle like in a pointless blood feud a pissing contest who’s faith is strongest all for the sake of a name which does the eternal one prefer Yahweh Jehovah Jesus Allah Buddha Vishnu Shiva Brahma Krishna Ahura Mazda god of a hundred thousand names yet all souls are glimmering shimmering lights a world of glittering jewels we have turned it inside out we are the barbarians writing a requiem for an empire the emperor has no clothes an emperor over-confident an emperor gone mad turning the nation into a prison hearing sad Hungarian folk music some sad Jewish song some sad Arabic poetry all these poets muscians & artists slaving away in the fields of the imagination lost in visions of fantasy coming up against the stone-walls of real-politic someone says its like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic-
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2010 14:13:02 GMT
No author citation on either of your two poems, Kerouac -- we can assume you wrote them?
There are some beautiful lines in the second: god of a hundred thousand names yet all souls are glimmering shimmering lights a world of glittering jewels we have turned it inside out we are the barbarians writing a requiem for an empire among others -- wonderful poem.
I can't claim to have gotten through the first one, although I'm trying. The subtle trickery of the title words may defeat me.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2010 14:19:44 GMT
Certainly not. I am allergic to poetry.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2010 14:21:53 GMT
Ah. So your sensitive alter-ego is sneaking on here and posting poems when you're not looking. That's okay. The rest of us benefit.
(so who wrote the damned poems, then?)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2010 14:26:29 GMT
I would have put the names of the authors if I had found them. You know I'm always sticking my nose where it doesn't belong.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2010 14:40:25 GMT
Être et Avoir was written by Yves Duteil.
I found Blood Feud, but not the author. I am on the case, however.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2010 21:33:17 GMT
Well, Yves Duteil is a French singer.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 3, 2010 17:05:17 GMT
Interesting. Of course I did not know that, having obtained his name by googling the first lines of the poem you posted. He is an interesting person. The wikipedia article is kind of a puff piece, but useful nonethless. Here is his blog. It's in French, not surprisingly, and contains some items of interest to AnyPorters, such as the school in Pondicherry.
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