poems - poetry

[nephele]

I just realized that there is no poetry around here. What do you say if each one of us posted a poem - not too long. His own, someone elses, lyrics, anything.
I admit that I don't read poetry every day, but sometimes some verses, some poet comes to mind and it's good to share.

 

[booker]

this is my favourite poem
Futility
by the great war poet Wilfred Owen

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

 

[lies]

I think this thread might be interesting.

 

[Stephen]

I love poetry, especially hearing other people reading poems, I love to hear Roger McGough reading his poems, also Craig Charles (Red Dwarf - Lister).

It must be said though Pam Ayres put me of poetry when I was younger, did not like her voice

Spike Milligan, I haven't read any of his poems, so I'm going to buy some of his audio CD's.

One of my favorites has to be ' If ' by Kipling ( I think it's Kipling who wrote it, I might be wrong )

 

[kasstorr]

I would have to say The Unknown Soldier by Billy Rose is still my favorite...but I love alot of E.A Poe's poem's especially Annabell Lee

 

[member 737]

Personally, I'm very fond of poetry. One of my hobbies is collecting poems, which I think are the most wise and beautiful. I've got a special note book, where I write them down. There are poems of numerous poets, but my favourite authors are: Z. Herbert, W. Szymborska, Cz. Milosz, J. Tuwim, Bulat Okudzawa. I wonder if you know their works. I also like - guess who - a clue in my signature

My favourite poems are: 'The Divine Image' by W. Blake and 'He wishes for the cloths of Heaven' by W. B. Yeats.

Here the latter goes:

Had I the heavens' embroided cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Last but not least, I like reading poems aloud, to my family or friends.

 

[oloroso36]

Variations on the Word "Sleep"

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

-- Margaret Atwood

 

[HeraSee]

Just one of the many amazing poetic masterpieces by Ani Difranco, whose poetry and music come highly recommended.

"The Slant"

the slant
a building settling around me
my figure female framed crookedly
in the threshold
of the room
door scraping floorboards
with every opening
carving a rough history
of bedroom scenes
the plot hard to follow
the text obscured
in the fields of sheets
slowly gathering the stains
of seasons spent lying there
red and brown
like leaves fallen
the colors of an eternal cycle
fading with the
wash cycle
and the rinse cycle
again an unfamiliar smell
like my name misspelled
or misspoken
a cycle broken
the sound of them strong
stalking talking about their prey
like the way hammer meets nail
pounding, they say
pounding out the rhythms of attraction
like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon
like there was something more they wanted
than the journey
like it was owed to them
steel toed they walk
and I'm wondering why this fear of men
maybe it's because I'm hungry
and like a baby I'm dependent on them
to feed me
I am a work in progress
dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding
offering me intricte patterns of questions
rhythms that never come clean
and strengths that you still haven't seen

 

[Cosimah2o]

Miriam Van Hee, a well-known contemporary Flemish poet.

Sleepless

At night when I wake up
and can't get back to sleep
I touch your body, large
and asleep beside me
sometimes you turn away from me,
tired, as if to say
I was mistaken

sometimes you draw closer
and I lie waiting for the light
with your warmth in my neck,
thinking that one day
I must lose you - you do not say that
nor do you dispute
that you will leave and live alone
high up on the shadeless limestone plateaus
where there is always wind
where summer rain vanishes in the ground
with nothing to show for its pains

 

[Cosimah2o]

The Just by Jorge Luis Borges.

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.
Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating a color and a form.
The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.
A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.
These people, unaware, are saving the world.

 

[Cosimah2o]

- From Out of Africa
By Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen
( 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962)

If I know a song of Africa,
of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back,
of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers,
does Africa know a song of me?
Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on,
or the children invent a game in which my name is,
or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me,
or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

 

[Armick]

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley