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Post by MacademiaNut on Jan 12, 2013 13:35:16 GMT -5
Because we need one. Here's one read today to start off: Life, Life1 I don’t believe in omens or fear Forebodings. I flee from neither slander Nor from poison. Death does not exist. Everyone’s immortal. Everything is too. No point in fearing death at seventeen, Or seventy. There’s only here and now, and light; Neither death, nor darkness, exists. We’re all already on the seashore; I’m one of those who’ll be hauling in the nets When a shoal of immortality swims by. 2 If you live in a house – the house will not fall. I’ll summon any of the centuries, Then enter one and build a house in it. That’s why your children and your wives Sit with me at one table, - The same for ancestor and grandson: The future is being accomplished now, If I raise my hand a little, All five beams of light will stay with you. Each day I used my collar bones For shoring up the past, as though with timber, I measured time with geodetic chains And marched across it, as though it were the Urals. 3 I tailored the age to fit me. We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe; The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced, Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes – and it prophesied, Threatening me with destruction, like a monk. I strapped my fate to the saddle; And even now, in these coming times, I stand up in the stirrups like a child. I’m satisfied with deathlessness, For my blood to flow from age to age. Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on I’d willingly have given all my life, Whenever her flying needle Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe. -- Arseny Tarkovsky
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 13, 2013 6:19:45 GMT -5
Thanks for that macnut.
“There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.”
Fleur Adcock
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 13, 2013 7:16:01 GMT -5
Those two are both shattering... I'm sitting here stunned with my cereal and coffee. Sadly I am not a collector of poetry, though if I remember or encounter one I like, I'll put it here.
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Post by Queen on Jan 14, 2013 16:59:49 GMT -5
for two who slipped away almost entirely: my "part" Cherokee great-grandmother Tallulah (Grandmama Lula) on my mother's side about whom only one agreed-upon thing is known: her hair was so long she could sit on it;
and my white (Anglo-Irish?) great-great-grandfather on my father's side; nameless (Walker, perhaps?) whose only remembered act is that he raped a child: my great-great-grandmother, who bore his son, my great-grandfather, when she was eleven.
Rest in peace. The meaning of your lives is still unfolding.
Rest in peace. In me the meaning of your lives is still unfolding.
Rest in peace, in me. The meaning of your lives is still unfolding.
Rest. In me the meaning of your lives is still unfolding.
Rest. In peace in me the meaning of our lives is still unfolding.
Rest.
(The dedication to "Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful ~ Alice Walker)
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Post by tinier_dragon on Jan 15, 2013 19:49:24 GMT -5
yay! i'm very happy about a poetry thread, and i love all the selections so far, and the fact that i didn't know them already. here's one i like --
Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
Robert Hershon
Don't fill up on bread I say absent-mindedly The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says Did you really just say that to me?
What he doesn't know is that when we're walking together, when we get to the curb I sometimes start to reach for his hand
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Post by MacademiaNut on Jan 17, 2013 4:36:19 GMT -5
Aw, dragon, that's a wonderful poem. Here's yesterday's: You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start I don't even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me--the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and un- suspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods-- all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me. You, Beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing. An open window in a country house--, and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-- you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening... -- Rainer Maria Rilke
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Post by tinier_dragon on Jan 17, 2013 19:15:59 GMT -5
wow, that's beautiful, mnut. i think i need to read more rilke.
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Post by tinier_dragon on Jan 17, 2013 19:21:13 GMT -5
The Colonel by Carolyn Forché
What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
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pyrrha
No fig, no jam
Posts: 192
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Post by pyrrha on Jan 19, 2013 12:53:24 GMT -5
Great thread!
caminante, no hay camino se hace camino al andar.
traveler, there is no road, the road is made by walking.
-- Antonio Machado
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Post by SoulCurry on Jan 25, 2013 10:24:25 GMT -5
Dear Heart ... I’d like a word with you, my inner poem; Have you time? I know what it is you’re doing Now I have seen for myself the breakdown Of your new independent prosody, The red ink dwelling on the random stresses Of your undisciplined running rhythm.
We have outgrown the iamb, you and I; I, having lately come into my strength Am stimulated by experiment Nevertheless, it’s hard to see my own Meticulously orchestrated epic Dissolving into syncopated prose.
What do you have in mind for the coda? Is it the quick kick and the sudden silence Of a brisk Audenesque buggering-off Or will it have a touch of comedy, Me bowing out to fibrillating giggles As you die laughing?
~ Ann Drysdale ~
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Post by Phoenix on Feb 9, 2013 9:39:18 GMT -5
Choose
The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other. Carl Sandburg
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Post by jimm on Apr 29, 2013 17:19:02 GMT -5
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Post by tzarine on Apr 30, 2013 21:17:38 GMT -5
garcia lorca, new york
Debajo de las multiplicaciones hay una gota de sangre de pato. Debajo de las divisiones hay una gota de sangre de marinero. Debajo de las sumas, un rÃo de sangre tierna; un rÃo que viene cantando por los dormitorios de los arrabales, y es plata, cemento o brisa en el alba mentida de New York. Existen las montañas, lo sé. Y los anteojos para la sabidurÃa, lo sé. Pero yo no he venido a ver el cielo. He venido para ver la turbia sangre, la sangre que lleva las máquinas a las cataratas y el espÃritu a la lengua de la cobra. Todos los dÃas se matan en New York cuatro millones de patos, cinco millones de cerdos, dos mil palomas para el gusto de los agonizantes, un millón de vacas, un millón de corderos y dos millones de gallos que dejan los cielos hechos añicos. Más vale sollozar afilando la navaja o asesinar a los perros en las alucinantes cacerÃas que resistir en la madrugada los interminables trenes de leche, los interminables trenes de sangre, y los trenes de rosas maniatadas por los comerciantes de perfumes. Los patos y las palomas y los cerdos y los corderos ponen sus gotas de sangre debajo de las multiplicaciones; y los terribles alaridos de las vacas estrujadas llenan de dolor el valle donde el Hudson se emborracha con aceite. Yo denuncio a toda la gente que ignora la otra mitad, la mitad irredimible que levanta sus montes de cemento donde laten los corazones de los animalitos que se olvidan y donde caeremos todos en la última fiesta de los taladros. Os escupo en la cara. La otra mitad me escucha devorando, cantando, volando en su pureza como los niños en las porterÃas que llevan frágiles palitos a los huecos donde se oxidan las antenas de los insectos. No es el infierno, es la calle. No es la muerte, es la tienda de frutas. Hay un mundo de rÃos quebrados y distancias inasibles en la patita de ese gato quebrada por el automóvil, y yo oigo el canto de la lombriz en el corazón de muchas niñas. óxido, fermento, tierra estremecida. Tierra tú mismo que nadas por los números de la oficina. ¿Qué voy a hacer, ordenar los paisajes? ¿Ordenar los amores que luego son fotografÃas, que luego son pedazos de madera y bocanadas de sangre? No, no; yo denuncio, yo denuncio la conjura de estas desiertas oficinas que no radian las agonÃas, que borran los programas de la selva, y me ofrezco a ser comido por las vacas estrujadas cuando sus gritos llenan el valle donde el Hudson se emborracha con aceite.
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