Poetry

[Harp]

thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepards
one can attempt to catch the colour of the morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose

Zbigniew Herbert, Five Men

 

[Pompidou]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
That's what they tell me
Because I'm blind

-Gary Larson, Far Side

 

[Harp]

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Heaven-Haven

 

[Harp]

Drawn to the gentle flame,
The moth flies and catches on fire.
So your love draws my soul.

St Therese, Canticle of Celine

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I wish I could write a poem
If I only had the talent, I'd show em'
But try and try as I might
Lyrical prose I simply can't write
It seems that no amount of tuition
Will bring to fruition my poetic ambition
Of my attempts at emulation of Byron and Keats
The ignominous result is resounding defeat
But I've pinpointed the reason for my lack of success
And why it is that my efforts, quite frankly, are a total mess
It's the thing that frustrates me time after time
I just can't seem to make the damn thing rhyme!

V.C. Brunswick

 

[Photoss]

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator


~ can't recall the author...

 

[dragonaxe]

A background Grover sets the scene
of private massage on skin so clean.
The trusted touch of a lover known,
release the dreams of life overgrown.

There is no right, there is no wrong,
in this duet, our romantic song.
When harmonics match, they double their sound
and Milton's wrong - it's paradise found!

The flickering rouge of candlelight
captures the tease and playful bite,
upon slick skin with lips apart.
Of stifled moan and beating heart.

As the moon continues its lonely path
and embers sink within the hearth.
No cold creeps in. Our hideaway
creates the heat of summers day.

So together, as one. with eternal bond
from this world, to the ones beyond.
We travel the road, our hearts entwine.
My soul is yours, and yours is mine.

~ me

 

[John Boyer]

Sabbaths 1999: II

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

-Wendell Berry

 

[John Boyer]

A Dialogue of Self and Soul (Excerpt)

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

- W.B. Yeats

 

[Harp]

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart Of A Woman

 

[Aviator]

Ed

Ed was in love with a cocktail waitress
But Ed's family and friends didn't approve
So he broke it off

He married a respectable woman
Who played the piano
She played well enough to have been a professional

Ed's wife left him

Years later, at a family gathering
Ed got drunk and made a fool of himself
He said "You know, I should have married Doreen."
"Well", they said, "Why didn't you?"

By Louis Simpson from his Collected Works

 

["Skeet" McD]

CARMEN VESPERTINUM
A Valediction: Caniscæli Robert Emmet (Bob)


November eve, when still soft twilight manifests

insensibly — but oh! so swift. Swift as that swallow

which skims alone on high: so high, so small,

it seems neighbor to the moon which hangs,

pure and silent, impassive witness to the scene.

In the marsh cat-tails (now bloom’d) and grasses’ whisks

stand: glowing spectres, creatures of the falling dark. 

Time to turn back; now the time to call my dog

whose vesper bell, alone, fills the silence of this hour:

Come ’round! — we’re done.

—K.M. 11/12/10

 

[Harp]

Now that the shapes of mist...
Slink quietly along the middle of the road
And the lamps draw trails of milk in ponds of lustrous lead
I am decidedly pleased not to be dead.

Or when wet roads at night reflect the clutching
Importunate fingers of trees and windy shadows
Lunge and flounce on the windscreen as I drive
I am glad of the accident of being alive.

Louis MacNiece, Now that the shapes of mist

 

[Harp]

caithfidh me mo cheird
a ghearradh as coill ur:
mar ta mo gharran Bearla
crann-nochta seasc.

Michael Hartnett, Dan do Rosemary

I have to hone my craft
in a wood that's new:
for my English grove
is naked, barren

Poem for Rosemary

Michael Hartnett saw poetry as both gift and curse.
His use of Gaelic over English was prompted for aesthetic and cultural reasons.
A complex individual, Hartnett eventually resumed writing poetry in English; more's the pity.

 

[Harp]

I want to die while you still love me,
Oh, who would care to live
Til love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give!

I want to die while you love me
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim or cease to be.

Georgia Douglas Johnson, I Want To Die While You Still Love Me

 

[Harp]

A mound of summer grass,
Are warriors' heroic deeds,
Only dreams that pass?

Basho, Narrow Road to a Far Province;1689

 

["Skeet" McD]

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
For Martin Byrne, Reg Hall & Bill Leader, with thanks.

“Edward! EDWARD!” 

The words cut through the years —

did Edward hear? I do. 

Who was he? The barman? A friend just in the door?

And why? to buy — or cadge — another short one?

or was it just the joy of a familiar face,

a bit of home, deep in a city far away?

I am far away, myself; far from my home

and far away from that pub filled

with Irish lads who’d left the West to help rebuild

what Jerry left of London.

‘Twas hard work, any road, and a lonely bed:

Ah! but Saturday night!

I close my eyes to see and know it all:

the warmth inside, clear of the street’s cutting damp;

the air thick with smoke and a happy tumble of words

from the lads, just slightly heightened by the drink,

their pockets heavy with silver

and Monday a long way off.

The fiddle buzzes, rasps, and whines a reel

written (of all things!) in Philadelphia;

the dumpy upright thumps and thuds,

and — somewhere nearby — a reel-to-reel

wheels and steals Maudabawn Chapel’s gait straight

out of the smoky air through — magnetism; that’s it.

Add a jump of fifty years, and more (my own life’s span):

That happy evening, distill’d to tiny sparks of energy, 

lies tucked within the ’phone nestled in my pocket;
pumped
through wires to my ears, it’s reconverted

into tiny sparks of energy flashing now inside my brain —

Nothing lost, and much perhaps that’s found:

Am I walking into eternity along Seven Star Road?

—K.M. 11/30/10

 

[Harp]

...whose fusillading heart
Is triggered on a thorn
The dark night through...
the nightengale would set
To leave a pyre of roses for the Sun.

R. Campbell, San Juan de la Cruz

 

[Harp]

I wander her hills and valleys
And still through my sorrow I see
A land that has never known freedom
And only her rivers run free.

Mickey MacConnell, Only Our Rivers Run Free

 

[Harp]

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,
And hear the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.

Countee Cullen, Tableau

Cullen's poetic lyrical elegance, eroticism, and adamantine nature
haunt the Harlem Renaissance.