Favorite Poem?

[BamaLefty]

What is yours fave poem?

Tell it all!

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

1. Besides the usual Robert Frost poems

I love "Ulysses" by Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
<1842>

[BamaLefty]

2. Pretty Good

I like it.

I really don't have a "favorite." I ilke many and would be hard pressed to choose one.


Anybody else wish to share?

[Wetzelbill]

22. Tennyson is unbelievably skilled

He put words on paper the way Michelangelo put paint on church ceilings. Tennyson's technique always grasps me. You can overlook the stringent level of technique in his work because his words are so beautiful and he makes it all look flawless. But, Tennyson really was a master of the craft.

[enigmatic]

3. Anything by this guy:

[Gildor Inglorion]

4. "Ozymandias" by Percy B. Shelley

Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

:-)

[johnnie]

5. When I was a younger man I liked this one

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then–in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life–was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe

[Wetzelbill]

8. that's haunting and beautiful

The last line gave me chills

[Wetzelbill]

6. One each by Chidiock Tichborne and Dylan Thomas and me

I like some of my work too, because it touches me, so I'll paste my latest.

Chidiock Tichborne's Elegy
http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/elegy.html


DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT by Dylan Thomas
http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm

Emily's Wedding by Bill Wetzel

Alabaster skin caped in ivory
Golden beam drenches the air
She illuminates the world at an altar
A future snapshot preserved forever

That day held my heart etched memory
She radiated an aurora dawn engulfing me
A smile cantillates nonexistent songs in ears
Dreams hold as our arms grasp tightly

I remember her as an early spring morning
Salmon flecks seamlessly across the sky
Sunlight coruscates filaments as shadows melt
Unraveling my loss of control and words

Fitted black standing in the Sonora desert
He etches resplendence, hears nonexistent songs
My illusion dreams burning springtime snapshots
Album keepsakes, before her summer begins

[BamaLefty]

9. Good Stuff Man

Thanks for showing interest!

[Wetzelbill]

16. you're welcome

Well, all writing interests me, so I couldn't pass up a post like this. It's pretty much my life. :)

[Donkeyboy75]

7. Well, it starts off with

"There one was a man from Nantucket"

but I don't remember the rest. :shrug:

[Gildor Inglorion]

10. There was an old man from Nantucket...

who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

There's also an unprintable (but hilarious) version...

;-)

[Dora]

Dover Beach is the first that comes to mind....

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold (1822–88)


THE SEA is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-winds, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confus’d alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Wetzelbill]

19. damn, that is gorgeous

Makes me think of how bad a poet I am, haha.

There is something about art from the first 160 years of U.S. existence that is so amazing. Before TV's came along, before we landed on the moon, etc. Just a different feel to it all. And I don't just mean work from the U.S., it was different around the world in general.

[Dora]

25. Hey, you're writing.

That says a lot. I haven't in five years. And I read your post above - you're not a bad poet. Not by a long shot. Thanks for sharing your work. Do you visit the Poetry writers group?

But, yes, Dover Beach.... sigh. It's a heartbreaker.

"let us be true to one another"

[Wetzelbill]

34. I write poetry

but I am not really a poet. I'm ambivalent about that. Fiction is my true skill. That and maybe creative nonfiction, come relatively easy to me. I find I end up writing about politics more than anything, though. I'd like to be more dedicated about my short stories and creative nonfiction, but, although it comes easy to me, it is much more work than anything else. Poetry is the most beautiful type of writing. I'm more angry and humorous than beautiful, so like I said, I can write poetry, but I'm not really a poet. I'm ok, it's just not totally my thing. Glad you liked it, thanks for saying that.

I visit some of the different writing groups from time to time. Just depends. :)

[liontamer]

30. The Dover Bitch: A Criticism Of Life

by
Anthony Hecht
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
the notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As sort of a mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
and finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.

[Dora]

36. OMG!

Thank you! That's awesome!
:rofl:

[Shakespeare]

39. aw, damn--you beat me to it!

A WONDERFUL parody of a lovely poem.

[Left_Winger]

11. An oldie, but a goodie

The Raven

[rocktivity]

12. The Seven Pool Players At The Golden Shovel

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

-- Gewndolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000)

From An Interview With Gewndolyn Brooks (1970):

Q. How about the seven pool players in the poem "We Real Cool"?

BROOKS: They have no pretensions to any glamor. They are supposedly dropouts, or at least they're in the poolroom when they should possibly be in school, since they're probably young enough, or at least those I saw were when I looked in a poolroom...they're a little uncertain of the strength of their identity...

Short, sweet, and timeless, effortlessly touching upon the troubled youth themes of peer pressure, alientation, poverty, hopelessness. Written in the 40's, but could have been yesterday: "The Seven Gangbangers At A Back Table Of A McDonald's."

:headbang:
rocknation

[Dora]

13. Nice.

[Semi_subversive]

14. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

I learned it in 6th grade and have never forgotten it.

[Dora]

29. That's kind of spooky

because I learned it in 5th grade

and I still find myself reciting it in my head...

[Semi_subversive]

41. Year's ago I was playing softball

and the other team's left fielder was coming in while I was going out. He happened to be reciting Jabberwocky and I chimed in. It blew our minds.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. There once was a hermit named Dave

Actually it's this one, in French:

"Brise marine," by Stéphane Mallarmé

La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D'être parmi l'écume inconnue et les cieux!
Rien, ni les vieux jardins reflétés par les yeux
Ne retiendra ce cœur qui dans la mer se trempe
O nuits! ni la clarté déserte de ma lampe
Sur le vide papier que la blancheur défend
Et ni la jeune femme allaitant son enfant.
Je partirai! Steamer balançant ta mâture,
Lève l'ancre pour une exotique nature!

Un Ennui, désolé par les cruels espoirs,
Croit encore à l'adieu suprême des mouchoirs!
Et, peut-être, les mâts, invitant les orages
Sont-ils de ceux qu'un vent penche sur les naufrages
Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts, ni fertiles îlots...
Mais, Ô mon coeur, entends le chant des matelots!

[BamaLefty]

18. We don't speak French

you idiot. Post it in English so we can read it. Gah! ;)

[rocktivity]

23. Courtesy of the Google translator

Marine Breeze

The flesh is sad, alas!
and I read all the books.
To flee! Over there to flee!
I feel that birds are drunk
to be among unknown scum and the skies!
Nothing, nor the old gardens reflected by the eyes
will retain this heart which in the sea soaks O nights!
neither the deserted clearness of my lamp
On the vacuum paper which whiteness defends
And nor the young woman nursing her child.
I will leave! Steamer balancing your mast,
Weighs the anchor for a natural exotic!
A Trouble, afflicted by the cruel hopes, still
And, perhaps, the masts, inviting the storms
Are those which a wind leans on the
Perdus shipwrecks, without masts,
without masts, nor fertile small islands...
But, Ô my heart, hear the song of the sailors!

Hmm, must have been one of those Beat poets.

:shrug:
rocknation

[trackfan]

17. Poe: The Bells; Nash: A Drink with Something in it

are 2 that come to mind

[laststeamtrain]

20. This is one of my favorites by Brecht

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year's War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

Bertolt Brecht

[swag]

21. One of my favorites from a genuine fascist (writing of World War I, etc.)

a fragment of it -

from "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly"
by Ezra Pound

IV

These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case . . .

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria,
non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

[no name no slogan]

24. "Chicago Poem" by Lew Welch

The last part of it is in my sig line. He wrote it after he had a nervous breakdown.

Welch was also born on the same day as me (August 16). He worked as a poet, cabdriver and an ad copywriter-- in fact, Raid's slogan "Kills Bugs Dead" was coined by him.

Lew Welch was last seen alive in May 1971, when he walked off into the woods with a gun and was never seen again. He left a suicide note for his friend, neighbor and fellow poet, Gary Snyder, but he was never heard from again.

The poem itself is a couple of pages long, and it's copyrighted so I can only link to it.

For some reason it says a lot about this fscked up world we live in, even many years later.

[Wetzelbill]

26. Poems by James Welch and Sherwin Bitsui

These are from James Welch, a great writer and friend of mine who died a few years ago. I'm adapting one of his novels into a screenplay.

In My First Hard Springtime by James Welch

Those red men you offended were my brothers.
Town drinkers, Buckles Pipe, Star Boy,
Billy Fox, were blood to bison. Albert Heavy Runner
was never civic. You are white and common.

Record trout in Willow Creek chose me
to deify. My horse, Centaur, part cayuse,
was fast and mad and black. Dandy in flat hat
and buckskin, I rode the town and called it mine.

A slow hot wind tumbled dust against my door.
Fed and fair, you mocked my philosophic nose,
my badger hair. I rolled your deference
in the hay and named it love and lasting.

Starved to visions, famous cronies top Mount Chief
for names to give respect to Blackfeet streets.
I could deny them in my first hard springtime,
but choose amazed to ride you down with hunger.



Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat by James Welch

Christmas comes like this: Wise men
unhurried, candles bought on credit (poor price
for calves), warriors face down in wine sleep.
Winds cheat to pull heat from smoke.

Friends sit in chinked cabins, stare out
plastic windows and wait for commodities.
Charlie Blackbird, twenty miles from church
and bar, stabs his fire with flint.

When drunks drain radiators for love
or need, chiefs eat snow and talk of change,
an urge to laugh pounding their ribs.
Elk play games in high country.

Medicine Woman, clay pipe and twist tobacco,
calls each blizzard by name and predicts
five o'clock by spitting at her television.
Children lean into her breath to beg a story:

Something about honor and passion,
warriors back with meat and song,
a peculiar evening star, quick vision of birth.
Blackbird feeds his fire. Outside, a quick 30 below.
------

This is from another friend of mine, Sherwin Bitsui, a Navajo poet, who is an absolute genius.

The Scent of Burning Hair by Sherwin Bitsui

I circle my shadow
at 5 A.M. when crickets gather in the doorway
showing their teeth and striped tongues,
silver eyes,
singing about a wind-blown desert
sinking into the waist of a setting sun.

I have become a man crawling over his broken fingers,
searching for a ring to plant my lips on,
eating cinders while breaking eggs on brother's white skin.

I have either become a black dot growing legs,
running from the blank page,
or the mud that is caked over the keyhole of a church hiding its bandaged eyes.

The bed quivers;
it wants to become a spider again
and sting silent the antelope that leap over children
whose mothers abandon their pots
and follow hoofprints into the city,
smudging themselves with the smoke of burning hair.

Look! There between the eyes of the horizon:
two crows waiting for our bodies.

Imagine this at 5 A.M.,
when the river slides into a silent city
stuffed with decaying corn husks,
when everyone discovers razors in the womb of this land,
and the sun decides which bridges should be covered with skin and leaves
and which should remain as goat ribs submerged in sand smelling of diesel engines.

[giant_robot]

27. I'm not much of a poetry fan, however....

Xanadu by Coleridge has always stuck with me since high school.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


Good ol' Coleridge was inspired by an opium-fueled hallucination for this work. Can you tell?

[liontamer]

31. delete

posted in the wrong place

[JimmyJazz]

28. Howl - Allen Ginsberg

[liontamer]

32. Sex without love

This is the first poem I read that made me appreciate poetry as more than just something that sounded pretty.

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
Gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth, whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

-- Sharon Olds

[Wetzelbill]

35. a lot going on there

what an interesting poem.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

33. Billy Collins is my favorite poet

Picking my favorite one would be hard, but this is among the top 5.

The Best Cigarette
by Billy Collins


There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded ones, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.

That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

[nuxvomica]

42. I love the one about forgetfulness

But I don't remember what the title is. :-)

[XemaSab]

37. Sandhill People by Carl Sandberg

I TOOK away three pictures.
One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan.
One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come.
One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing points, half over the sand, half over the water, a half-love for the sea, a half-love for the land.

I took away three thoughts.
One was a thing my people call “love,” a shut-in river hunting the sea, breaking white falls between tall clefs of hill country.
One was a thing my people call “silence,” the wind running over the butter faced sand-flowers, running over the sea, and never heard of again.
One was a thing my people call “death,” neither a whistle in the little sandhills, nor a bird Sanscrit of wing points, yet a coat all the stars and seas have worn, yet a face the beach wears between sunset and dusk.

[AVulgarianHue]

38. Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

John Berryman

[Shakespeare]

40. Sunday Morning, by Wallace Stevens

Sunday Morning
1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

4
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

5
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feel shall manifest.

8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

[laststeamtrain]

43. Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright

Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio
by James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.