[firmbeliever]

Excerpts from some favourites-

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
The road not taken by Robert Frost


" In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
Daffodils by William Wordsworth

[HistorianChick]

I was reading a book of poetry just last night! Great new thread! This has to be my all time favorite poem... it is the true, honest, complete definition of love... what it can be, what it should be, what it is made to be. I'll add more poems later - but this one is my favorite.

"Love"

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I Love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.


© Roy Croft (1907 - 1973).

[firmbeliever]

That was beautiful HC.

Thank you for sharing.

[templelane]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an al time favourite of mine.

The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

Pure genius.

[firmbeliever]

"Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink."

I always remember this bit of the poem,Temp.


Here is another poem I like-
WHAT A LITTLE GIRL HAD ON HER MIND

What a little girl had on her mind was:
Why do the shoulders of other men's wives
Give off so strong a smell like magnolia;
Or like gardenias?
What is it,
That faint veil of mist,
Over the shoulders of other men's wives?
She wanted to have one,
That wonderful thing
Even the prettiest virgin cannot have.

The little girl grew up.
She became a wife and then a mother.
One day she suddenly realized;
The tenderness
That gathers over the shoulders of wives,
Is only fatigue
From loving others day after day.

IBARAGI NORIKO (b. 1926)(Japanese poet)

[vingogly]

VIXEN

Comet of stillness princess of what is over
High note held without trembling without voice without sound
Aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
Of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
Never caught in words warden of where the river went
Touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished
Window onto the hidden place and the other time
At the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting
In the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born
You no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me
You are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you
Even now you are unharmed even now perfect
As you have always been now when your light paws are running on
The breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you
When I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
From the creeds of difference and contradictions
That were my life and all the crumbling fabrications
As long as it lasted until something that we were
Had ended when you are no longer anything
Let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
And before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
Guttering on a screen let my words find their own
Places in the silence after the animals

-- W.S. Merwin

[mafiaangel180]

This is one of my favorites...

"Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning"


There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
Restaurants fall into dreams
With candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
In a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
Idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
Lovers are listening
For the master to tell them they are one
With the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
On the freeway tonight
As a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
Sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
And sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
Sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
Keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
Ans bass players float away on their instruments
Clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
Buried masts of Amsterdam arise
As the great wave sweeps on Eastward
To wash away over-age Camembert Europe
Manhatta steaming in sea-vines
The washed land awakes again to wilderness
The only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
A cry of seabirds high over
In empty eternity
As the Hudson retakes its thickets
And Indians reclaim their canoes

~Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[jillianleab]

Sad as hell, but fabulous:

Protocols

We went there on the train. They had big barges that they towed.
We stood up, there were so many I was squashed.
There was a smoke-stack, then they made me wash.
It was a factory, I think. My mother held me up
And I could see the ship that made the smoke.

When I was tired my mother carried me.
She said, "Don't be afraid." But I was only tired.
Where we went there is no more .Odessa.
They had water in a pipe--like rain, but hot;
The water there is deeper than the world

And I was tired and fell in in my sleep
And the water drank me. That is what I think.
And I said to my mother, "Now I'm washed and dried.”
My mother hugged me and it smelled like hay
And that is how you die. And that is how you die.

--Randall Jarrell

There's another one I have in a book that I'm too lazy to go get right now. It's the dedication of the book to the poet's wife - it's lovely. Maybe I'll be less lazy tomorrow! :)

[jillianleab]

Less lazy today! :)

A Grace

I give thanks for the way our kitchen dance
Takes on the familiarity of ritual,
From the moment of decision, reached
In a mixture of eagerness and relief -
You'll roast a chicken, maybe, or
Walk us both toward boeuf carbonnade -
Through the several sub-tasks
We can or cannot help each other do,
And we quiet down, hearing small
Sounds of lettuce being torn,
Prunes snipped in quarters,
The nearly silent bristles
Of the mushroom brush -
And then the table set and served,
The centering on a moment of hope
And gratitude, as once again
We face each other, having done
A small and daily kind of work
In a large, eternal kind of joy.

- Henry Taylor

I got to meet him, he signed my book! :)

[Wondergirl]

One of mine is --

To His Coy Mistress
By Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[firmbeliever]

Thank you for sharing your favourites.

What a collection we are going to have right here on the Desk!

So many different poems and all of them have something special in them.

[Wondergirl]

Can we explicate them later?? Huh?? Huh?? Please??

[firmbeliever]

Wondergirl,
That is a wonderful idea...

[vingogly]

Written in the early 1970s which is why Kinnell refers to 2009 as being in the far future. :) From The Book Of Nightmares... highly recommended if you care about poetry.
-----

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair In The Moonlight
Galway Kinnell

1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
Into your room, and pick you up,
And hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
Hard,
As if clinging could save us. I think
You think
I will never die, I think I exude
To you the permanence of smoke or stars,
Even as
My broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
The sun, don't go down, I have stood by
As you told the flower, don't grow old,
Don't die. Little Maud,

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,

Until washerwomen
Feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
And hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
And rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
And iron twists weapons toward the true north,
And grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
And men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
And lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the
Dark, O corpse-to-be...

And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
This the nightmare you wake screaming from:
Being forever
In the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

3

In a restaurant once, everyone
Quietly eating, you clambered up
On my lap: to all
The mouthfuls rising toward
All the mouths, at the top of your voice
You cried
Your one word, caca! Caca! Caca!
And each spoonful
Stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering
Steam.

Yes,
You cling because
I, like you, only sooner
Than you, will go down
The path of vanished alphabets,
The roadlessness
To the other side of the darkness,

Your arms
Like the shoes left behind,
Like the adjectives in the halting speech
Of old men,
Which once could call up the lost nouns.

4

And you yourself,
Some impossible Tuesday
In the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out
Among the black stones
Of the field, in the rain,

And the stones saying
Over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît,

And the raindrops
Hitting you on the fontanel
Over and over, and you standing there
Unable to let them in.

5

If one day it happens
You find yourself with someone you love
In a café at one end
Of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
Where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

And if you commit then, as we did, the error
Of thinking,
One day all this will only be memory,

Learn,
As you stand
At this end of the bridge which arcs,
From love, you think, into enduring love,
Learn to reach deeper
Into the sorrows
To come – to touch
The almost imaginary bones
Under the face, to hear under the laughter
The wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
The mouth
Which tells you, here,
Here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

6

In the light the moon
Sends back, I can see in your eyes

The hand that waved once
In my father's eyes, a tiny kite
Wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look:

And the angel
Of all mortal things lets go the string.

7

Back you go, into your crib.

The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell.
Your eyes close inside your head,
In sleep. Already
In your dreams the hours begin to sing.

Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight,
When I come back
We will go out together,
We will walk out together among
The ten thousand things,
Each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages
Of dying is love.

[firmbeliever]

Thank you all for your contributions...
Hope to see more:).

[thinkinabouthim]

i love this poem, it's by silvya plath, it might seem twisted, but if you get the tone and read it carefully, you might get a good laugh from it. i suggest you read her novel THE BELL JAR, i read it this past summer and loved it. it's somewhat autobiographical.

Cut

What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

[bushg]

A copy of this hangs in my dining room. This poem speaks to me like nothing else I have ever read. To me every word is simply perfection.


Max Ehrmann


Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
And remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
Be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
And listen to others,
Even the dull and the ignorant;
They too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
They are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
You may become vain and bitter;
For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.


Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
For the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
Many persons strive for high ideals;
And everywhere life is full of heroism.


Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
It is as perennial as the grass.


Take kindly the counsel of the years,
Gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
Be gentle with yourself.


You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here.
And whether it is clear to you,
No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.


Therefore be at peace with God,
Whatever you conceive Him to be,
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
In the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.


With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
It is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.


Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952

[firmbeliever]

G,
Those were truly inspiring and true words.
Thank you for sharing.

[kentgurl]

The sky is deep, the sky is dark,
The light of stars is so damn stark.
When I look up, I fill with fear.
If all we have is what lies here,
This lonely world, this troubled place,
Then cold dead stars and empty space...
Well, I see no reason to persevere,
No reason to laugh or shed a tear,
No reason to sleep or ever to wake,
No promises to keep, and none to make.
And so at night I still raise my eyes
To study the clear but mysterious skies--
That arch above us, as cold as stone.
Are you there, God? Are we alone?

Dean Koontz

[shw3nn]

Clenched Soul
Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
While the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
The fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
Burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
In that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
When I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
And my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
Toward the twilight erasing statues.


Yes, Yes
Charles Bukowski


When God created love he didn't help most
When God created dogs He didn't help dogs
When God created plants that was average
When God created hate we had a standard utility
When God created me He created me
When God created the monkey He was asleep
When He created the giraffe He was drunk
When He created narcotics He was high
And when He created suicide He was low

When He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
And He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
But when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.