The poetry thread

[fivelive]

Out of the same bulbs, the same
Baby-cries from the thaw,
Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers
In the draughty wings of the year.

Lovely - thank you Stephen.

[fivelive]

Lovely - thank you Stephen.

[dancer1912]

Ooh....I like the imagery of shivering ballet dancers in the wings, waiting for their cues to enter the warmth of the spotlights!

[micrologus]

SOFTLY as brown-eyed Angels rove
I will return to thy alcove,
And glide upon the night to thee,
Treading the shadows silently.

And I will give to thee, my own,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
And the caresses of a snake
Cold gliding in the thorny brake.

And when returns the livid morn
Thou shalt find all my place forlorn
And chilly, till the falling night.

Others would rule by tenderness
Over thy life and youthfulness,
But I would conquer thee by fright!


Charles Baudelaire

[fivelive]

The Road Not Taken


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
tow roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Lee Frost

[dancer1912]

I love Frost! See previous page.

[stephen w]

By my bedside I've got propped a card from Foyles Bookshop:

"All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being: without it ‘man’s life is poor as beast’s’. "

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets

- not that I go with the 'poor as beast's' too much; should think they're ok on the whole as long as they don't encounter 'homo sapiens' -


I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.


.....................

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launche'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

* * * * * * *
What do you think have become of the young and old men?
And what do you think have become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
......................

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than a journey-work of the stars

......................

Walt Whitman

[stephen w]

Cloud, light, air, water and its depth –
a treble clef, on which
I am my monotonous single,
black breve
on a shining manuscript.

I think of grammar, I think of you.
– Subject, verb object in one,
your meaning is an everlasting
narrative of illuminations.
Yet I can no more analyse
the syntax of your going or parse
your parts of all speech
than I can explain why music
is a narrative of all illuminations except
yours, even though I can’t tell
an organum from
a diminished clavichord.

I hum melodiously
in this abstraction of music,
thinking of grammar, thinking of you,
till a woodwind sighs from the west
and my black breve
goes sharp, goes flat, goes sharp.


Norman MacCaig
March 1972

[birabiro]

The Birds Companion

As love
that is
each day upon the twig
which may die
So springs your love
fresh up
lusty for the sun
the bird's companion

By: William Carlos Williams
Touched By An Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

- Maya Angelou

[maureen]

i really like his style
there is a thoughtfulness to it
a little different than the usual sort of poem
i like how he plays with the words and their meanings