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The Poem of the Week



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Tue Feb 09, 2016 5:13 am
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Morrigan says...



Because I could not stop for Death (479)
Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
"So many poems growing outta them they're practically a poet-tree"
Gringoamericano
  





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Sun Mar 13, 2016 10:54 pm
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Meshugenah says...



Blackberry Picking - Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.



(thanks, @Aley, for the suggestion!)
***Under the Responsibility of S.P.E.W.***
(Sadistic Perplexion of Everyone's Wits)

Medieval Lit! Come here to find out who Chaucer plagiarized and translated - and why and how it worked in the late 1300s.

I <3 Rydia
  





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Tue Mar 29, 2016 4:30 am
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Aley says...



Shoveling Snow With Buddha - Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
  





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Fri Jul 22, 2016 6:50 am
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Aley says...



The Calf-Path
by: Sam Walter Foss

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then two hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made;
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed -- do not laugh --
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach --
But I am not ordained to preach.
  





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Sat Aug 06, 2016 3:26 am
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Aley says...



[An old pond!]
By: Matsuo Basho

An old pond!
A frog jumps in—
the sound of water.
  





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Sat Nov 12, 2016 2:45 am
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Audy says...



The Man Who Gave Birth to a Panda
BY IDRA NOVEY

He had to have it, his mother told him. How could he not, with so few left in the world? He felt heaviest at night with the miracle of it. He was a vessel now. A receptacle for a threatened being. What if he rose too fast and killed it? Or maybe his stillness would do it, too much sitting around, stunned and hungry. And what if the bear emerged alive and another formed in its place, would he have to have that one, too, and another one after that?


He dreamed of the panda’s tiny eyes opening inside him, the doctor’s wide incision, a whirring pain, and then the furry thing emerging, the bear turning to him as to a stranger and whether that would be it—his bit part in the history of the future.
  





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Wed Nov 16, 2016 11:39 am
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Virgil says...



Alone With Everybody - Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

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Fri Feb 10, 2017 11:42 am
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Virgil says...



Scheherazade - Richard Siken

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

Note: It messes up the cool format--lame, but it's still a great poem.

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Sun Mar 05, 2017 1:49 am
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Lumi says...



Image
I am a forest fire and an ocean, and I will burn you just as much
as I will drown everything you have inside.
-Shinji Moon


I am the property of Rydia, please return me to her ship.
  





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Thu Apr 27, 2017 9:45 am
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Virgil says...



Preludes - T.S. Eliot

I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

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Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:02 am
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bboss says...



Today was a little dark
I just
Didn’t know what to do
I thought we were safe on the ark
But I
Was drowning with you
I said I’ll never let you go
I may die
But it can’t be you
I may cry
But you shouldn’t too
My tears will dry
But yours, on my mind, will never do
I hold your face and say it’s gonna be alright
I’ll take us baby
Together to the light
I know it hurts a lot
I know you’re hurt a lot
And from this drowning I’ll take you out
It never felt good seeing you in pain
But I promise you’ll never feel the same again
I try to swim through the mighty waves
And my only thought is that they’re our graves
Because there will be nothing of our remains
I see an island and I turn to you
“That’s our rescue”
I turn left and right but you’re not there
But where
Where did you go?
I cannot bear
You’re lost…
I look under water until I’m out of breath
I don’t care if by this
Will be my death
For you’re the one
That I’m with
My love was honest so now I should give
This bloody sea took you
And taken my happiness too
This bloody sea took you
And on this sea I shall die too
Today was dark
And it’s darker without you…
  





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Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:39 pm
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alliyah says...



"Hope" is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Fri Jul 21, 2017 9:17 pm
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alliyah says...



"Butterfly Laughter"
by Katherine Mansfield


In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the
butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: "Do not eat the poor
butterfly."
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of our plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother's lap.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:02 am
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alliyah says...



"Pastoral (Radio)"
From the book Groundspeed by Emilia Phillips

Out of range the stations’ signals confuse—

____like grasses, crossing. Over the fields,

_________a field of waves. I have thrown my voice into

____the future. I’ve called after

it to return. Like the radio,

____I’m waiting for something to come, flickering

meanwhile with half-songs
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Fri Aug 11, 2017 2:41 am
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alliyah says...



"Beauty and Duty"
by Ellen Sturgis Hooper from The Dial 1840

I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  








"You, who have all the passion for life that I have not? You, who can love and hate with a violence impossible to me? Why you are as elemental as fire and wind and wild things..."
— Gone With the Wind