Some call Larkin a misanthrope, but here I’d just call him a fellow introvert.
Tag: poetry Page 1 of 2
Since it’s National poetry month, I think I’ll mark today with a poem.
A Sonnet of the Moon
by Charles Best
Look how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With her full tide is ready her to honour.
But when the silver wagon of the moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.
So you that are the sovereign of my heart
Have all my joys attending on your will;
My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,
When you return their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.
A very happy birthday wish to my darling kitanzi, the best wife, lover, partner, and friend anyone could ever hope to have.
Seen various places by now. Put your music player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title.
This almost makes sense. Not quite, I don’t think. But almost. (Good thing i didn’t decide to do the “Guess the 20 songs” meme instead…)
Nothing’s Gone The Way I Planned
by Robs Itunes Library
Every young boy wants to die.
I’m sitting here, in the abandoned brain;
Outside there’s a box car waiting.
I’ve this creeping suspicion that things here are not as they seem.
Don’t call on me when you’re feeling footloose.
As you look around this room tonight,
New cities by the sea
Between a father and a son.
We had an apartment in the city.
I like to walk in the summer breeze.
Soft the gentle weeping,
Nine dollars, two cents, no money, no rent.
When I first met her, it was a sunny spring time morn.
You know something girl? I’m thinking about you right now.
Living on a lighted stage approaches the unreal:
Mr. Willoughby, whose only luxury is the sugar in his tea .
And it’s by the hush, me boys;
Rainy road into Atlanta – time is truly crawling by.
Say what you will, I will miss you my friends.
Come away, leave the day, fall into a dream.
Just because it makes me happy.
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
–James Leigh Hunt
It’s obvious now at the start of the day
When nothing quite seems to be right
That morning collects all the dues we must pay
For the fun we were having last night
And yet there’s a joy that morning light brings
If only you take time to feel it
A lightness of being, your inner heart sings
And you hide it lest someone might steal it
So shake off the shadows and cast off the fear
And let not a cloud hang above you
And know that the world was made special for you
And is full of the people who love you
thatcrazycajun reminds us that today is World Poetry Day, and invites us to post a favourite poem in honour of the event.
This made me think about Dave Alway, whose memorial gathering I was unfortunately unable to attend a couple of weekends ago, which in turn brought to mind this wonderful poem by John M. Ford, which was recently referenced on a newsgroup I read.
So here’s a poem on World Poetry Day, in honour and memory of Dave.
Against Entropy
by John M. Ford
The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
UNENDING LOVE
by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours-
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
So I saw this bit in agrumer‘s journal, suggesting that a person take a random line from each of the last 50 non-private/screened entries on your friends list and arrange them into a poem.
I quickly abandoned the original rules — there’s a lot of fluff on my friends list that doesn’t lend itself well to the idea. But I did find 20 lines scrolling through that made a nifty sort of sense, so I thought I would post it here rather than abandon it all.
Meandering
I’ve become pretty good at guarding my heart,
But all of that is beside the point, I guess.
As you can see, I am not making much sense;
That said, I think I need to spend some time writing.
I had meant to write lots of things yesterday —
I might make more sense the following day.
This weekend I did nothing.
Today, I’m probably just hanging out at home.
You have nothing better to do with your time?
I need to get work done before I can sleep for the night
But I am left with one question:
Do you see wave-patterns every time you close your eyes?
It was quite cold last night,
and skim ice formed in the wheelbarrow outside.
Now i want to paint my walls silver.
So that’ll be fun.
Tomorrow, a quiet day ideally intended for reflection
but if I am honest with myself probably mostly spent asleep,
I pray that You find yourself within yourself;
Today I’m going to try writing instead.
This Is The Day
by Rob Wynne
This is the day we had looked forward to —
When the daily maelstrom of change and movement
had settled back into simple routine
and time no longer whipped past
like a hurricane wind.
This is the day we had looked forward to —
When mundane and ordinary cares could at last be set aside
If only for a couple of days
And we could retreat into the warmth of each other
for a while.
This is the day we had looked forward to —
When the distance between us was no longer
A gaping, unbridgeable chasm
And you were finally able to lie safe and quiet
In my arms.