Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

*Poem of the day thread

Shakespeare
Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
 
This Room by Imtiaz Dharker

This room is breaking out
of itself, cracking through
its own walls
in search of space, light,
empty air.

The bed is lifting out of
its nightmares.
From dark corners, chairs
are rising up to crash through clouds.
This is the time and place
to be alive:
when the daily furniture of our lives
stirs, when the improbable arrives.
Pots and pans bang together
in celebration, clang
past the crowd of garlic, onions, spices,
fly by the ceiling fan.
No one is looking for the door.

In all this excitement
I'm wondering where
I've left my feet, and why
my hands are outside, clapping.
 
The Thought-Fox


I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes
 
Still Morning - WS Merwin


It appears now that there is only one
age and it knows
nothing of age as the flying birds know
nothing of the air they are flying through
or of the day that bears them up
through themselves
and I am a child before there are words
arms are holding me up in a shadow
voices murmur in a shadow
as I watch one patch of sunlight moving
across the green carpet
in a building
gone long ago and all the voices
silent and each word they said in that time
silent now
while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight
 
The Heart Of A Friend
For René Gonzalez

It’s the heart of a friend; let us open the wall,
and tear down the defences we have erected.
They were a necessary barrier to all
of the hatred we have for so long suspected
and the recipe of lies so well confected;
but here now we are resurrected from our fall
by the heart of a friend: let us open the wall.

Our enemies are big and we are only small;
and they have hurt us with cruelty inflicted,
seeking to cut us down before we grow too tall.
Our truth confronts their falsehood, that’s all conflicted
against us, and their harsh command has evicted
us from the garden of our innocence. Hopes stall.
But the heart of a friend lets us open the wall.

It is the chink in our armour; it is our heel
of Achilles; it is our saving grace: to feel
the balm of friendship that displaces disgraces
in our heart, and occupies the holy spaces
where we truly dwell; making us as strong as steel
even though we are kept apart in dark places.
It is the heart of a friend that’s truly real.

Tony Walton
 
Here's a middle english poem I love;

Hier lieth beneth this marbill stone
Rich Allane the ballid man
Whether he be safe or noght
I reke never, for he ne roght.

Which means....

Here lies under this marble stone
Rich Alan, the bald man.
Whether he has been saved or not
I don't care, because he never did.

Interesting comment on medieval spiritual commitment, no?
 
Incredible
Simon Armitage

After the first phase, after the great fall
between floorboards into the room below,
the soft landing, then standing one-inch
tall
within the high temple of table legs,
or one-inch long inside a matchbox bed . . .
And after the well-documented wars:
the tom-cat in its desert camouflage,
the spider in its chariot of limbs,
the sparrow in its single-seater plane . . .
After that, a new dominion of scale.
The earthrise of a final, human smile.
The pure inconsequence of nakedness,
the obsolescence then of flesh and bone.
Every atom ballooned. Those molecules
that rose as billiard balls went by as
moons.
Neutrinos dawned and bloomed, each
needle's eye
became the next cathedral door, flung
wide.
So yardsticks, like pit-props, buckled and
failed.
Lifetimes went past. With the critical mass
of hardly more than the thought of a
thought
I kept on, headlong, to vanishing point.
I looked for an end, for some dimension
to hold hard and resist. But I still exist.

I really like this poem, but I can't work out what it's about.
 
Daddy's Poem

----------------------

Her hair was up in a pony tail,
Her favourite dress tied with a bow.
Today was Daddy's Day at school,
And she couldn't wait to go.

But her mommy tried to tell her,
That she probably should stay home.
Why the kids might not understand,
If she went to school alone.

But she was not afraid;
She knew just what to say.
What to tell her classmates
Of why he wasn't there today.

But still her mother worried,
For her to face this day alone.
And that was why once again,
She tried to keep her daughter home.

But the little girl went to school
Eager to tell them all.
About a dad she never sees
A dad who never calls. There were daddies along the wall & back,
For everyone to meet.
Children squirming impatiently,
Anxious in their seats

One by one the teacher called
A student from the class.
To introduce their daddy,
As seconds slowly passed.

At last the teacher called her name,
Every child turned to stare.
Each of them was searching,
A man who wasn't there.

'Where's her daddy at?'
She heard a boy call out.
'She probably doesn't have one,'
Another student dared to shout.

And from somewhere near the back,
She heard a daddy say,
'Looks like another deadbeat dad,
Too busy to waste his day.'

The words did not offend her,
As she smiled up at her Mom.
And looked back at her teacher,
Who told her to go on.
And with hands behind her back,
Slowly she began to speak.
And out from the mouth of a child,
Came words incredibly unique.

'My Daddy couldn't be here,
Because he lives so far away.
But I know he wishes he could be,
Since this is such a special day.

And though you cannot meet him,
I wanted you to know.
All about my daddy,
And how much he loves me so.

He loved to tell me stories
He taught me to ride my bike.
He surprised me with pink roses,
And taught me to fly a kite.

We used to share fudge sundaes,
And ice cream in a cone.
And though you cannot see him.
I'm not standing here alone.

'Cause my daddy's always with me,
Even though we are apart
I know because he told me,
He'll forever be in my heart'
With that, her little hand reached up,
And lay across her chest,
Feeling her own heartbeat,
Beneath her favorite dress.

And from somewhere here in the crowd of dads,

Her mother stood in tears,
Proudly watching her daughter,
Who was wise beyond her years.

For she stood up for the love
Of a man not in her life.
Doing what was best for her,
Doing what was right.

And when she dropped her hand back down,
Staring straight into the crowd.
She finished with a voice so soft,
But its message clear and loud.

'I love my daddy very much,
he's my shining star.
And if he could, he'd be here,
But heaven's just too far.

You see he is a British soldier
And died just this past year
When a roadside bomb hit his convoy
And taught Britains' to fear.
But sometimes when I close my eyes,
it's like he never went away.'
And then she closed her eyes,
And saw him there that day.

And to her mothers amazement,
She witnessed with surprise.
A room full of daddies and children,
All starting to close their eyes.

Who knows what they saw before them,
Who knows what they felt inside.
Perhaps for merely a second,
They saw him at her side.

'I know you're with me Daddy,'
To the silence she called out.
And what happened next made believers,
Of those once filled with doubt.

Not one in that room could explain it,
For each of their eyes had been closed.
But there on the desk beside her,
Was a fragrant long-stemmed rose.



And a child was blessed, if only for a moment,
By the love of her shining star.
And given the gift of believing,
That heaven is never too far.



Take the time...to live and love.
Until eternity. God bless!
 
THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron
 
Epiphany

For Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008)​

Epiphany is not a blazing light. A blazing light
blazes when warplanes spread their demon’s wings
and drop their demon’s eggs over the city,
and the city burns like the eye of a screaming horse.

Epiphany is a comic book during the war.
A sailor on the convoy from New York to London
brought home bundles of American comics
that you studied like the scrolls of a world beyond the sun.
These were heroes who would never become a hand
waving goodbye from a pyramid of bricks.
The pages rolled: Batman. Superman. Whit-Man.

Whit-Man. Whit-Man could not fly, yet he soared over mountains, seeing
the fur trapper and his native bride, the panther pacing in the branches.
He did not brawl with grinning villains, yet he was one of the roughs,
yanking doors off hinges, shouting about the rights of them the others are down upon,
as the auctioneer of shackled men and women cowered in his shadow.
He was far across the sea, yet he was there at the war hospital
unraveling the bandages, sponging clean the stump of an arm.
He was a shape-shifter with a wizard’s beard:
now the sailor in the crow’s nest, now the mutineer in jail,
now the runaway slave leaning on a fencepost, out of breath.
He spoke in a tongue called barbaric yawp, mesmerized
by a spear of grass, amazed at the machinery of a mouse.

Epiphany is not a blazing light. Epiphany is a boy asking: Is Whit-Man real?
Epiphany is the poem you wrote in a boy’s hand, the letters rising on shaky legs.
Epiphany is the poem you wrote to praise the great bell in the great singer’s chest.
Epiphany is the poem you splattered against the epiphanies of cathedrals.
Epiphany is the poem you sang a thousand times against the blazing light
of bombardment, still sung as armies wander through the desert, spitting sand.
Epiphany is the night you sat in jail for trespass at the gates of the naval base
and the cop who called you sir, listening to every word about the missiles.
Epiphany is the joy of your creature the ape-man howling his poems in the forest,
even after the other creatures told him that howling would never change the forest.
Epiphany is the chorus of rebels, beggars, lunatics bellowing with your voice,
the flickering revelation that the words of the song in my head are your words.

Martin Espada
 
Annabel Lee. Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
 
Dylans, that's cheating. It's one per day.
I will happily overlook that pernickety as Annabell Lee is one of my favourite poems ever.
 
The Bee Meeting by Sylvia Plath

Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the
villagers-----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
Thev will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,
Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.
Their smiles and their voices are changing. I am led through a beanfield.

Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.

Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
And a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.
They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.
Is it the hawthorn that smells so sick?
The barren body of hawthorn, etherizing its children.

Is it some operation that is taking place?
It is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,
This apparition in a green helmet,
Shining gloves and white suit.
Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?

I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
With its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
I could not run without having to run forever.
The white hive is snug as a virgin,
Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.

Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
If I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,
A gullible head untouched by their animosity,

Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.
The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.
Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.
She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
While in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins

Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
A curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,
The upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.
The villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.
The old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?

I am exhausted, I am exhausted -
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished,
why am I cold.
 
Wilfred Owen's The Parable of the Old Man and the Young. Great War poetry might have been done to death on the GCSE syllabus, but Owen's use of Biblical imagery, and that devastating final line, grab me every time.

* * *

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps

and builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him, thy son.

Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,

A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
 
Excerpt from Nova, by Peter Stampfel

How did primitive man survive?
Bound by lust, he couldn't count past five.
And in the hustle to stay alive,
He side-tracked.
He put on clothing and an ordered mind.
He left his instincts all far behind.
He dropped his rhythm and picked up time.
And now he's out there looking for a ride back.
 
Ah, I think I just posted on the sticky thread (enjoying reading the poems here though). Can anyone explain this thread to me?
 
OK, well I'll post a poem then. By my favourite poet, Edwin Morgan. I don't know if he is on the school curriculum in England, so I don't know if you're sick of him or not. But I mostly like his eclecticism - from sonnets to concrete poetry to sound poetry etc., always willing to experiment. This is one of his more 'sci-fi' poems. Or something.

On The Needle's Point

Of course it is not a point at all.
We live here, and we should know.
I doubt indeed if there can be a point
in created things: the finest honing
uncovers more rough. Our ground stretches
for several miles, it is like living
on an asteroid, a bounded island
but with a bottomless core lost in mist
so far below and out of sight we feel
like pillar saints in earthly Syria.
The surface is slashed and pitted, greyish
with streaks of black and enigmatic
blue silver; spores of red lichen
gather and smoulder in crevices and caves.
At the edge it is very prodigious.
We have had some climbing over and down
with home-made crampons, disappearing,
perhaps making it to what we cannot imagine;
others fly off with fixed smiles,
vanish in their elation into violet haze.
But I like it on the point, good
is the dark cavern, good the craggy walls,
good the vertiginous bare brightness,
good the music, good the dance
when sometimes we join wings and drift
in interlinking circles, how many thousands
I could never tell, silent ourselves,
almost melting into light.
 
Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, China, From the gun-boats in the river,
Ten-inch shells for Christmas gifts,
And peace on earth forever.

Merry Christmas, India,
To Gandhi in his cell,
From righteous Christian England,
Ring out, bright Christmas bell!

Ring Merry Christmas, Africa,
From Cairo to the Cape!
Ring Hallehuiah! Praise the Lord!
(For murder and for rape.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Haiti!
(And drown the voodoo drums—
We'll rob you to the Christian hymns
Until the next Christ comes.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Cuba!
(While Yankee domination
Keeps a nice fat president
In a little half-starved nation.)

And to you down-and-outers,
("Due to economic laws")
Oh, eat, drink, and be merry
With a bread-line Santa Claus—

While all the world hails Christmas,
While all the church bells sway!
While, better still, the Christian guns
Proclaim this joyous day!

While holy steel that makes us strong
Spits forth a mighty Yuletide song:
SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere!
Let Merry Christmas GAS the air!


Langston Hughes
 
GODZILLA IN MEXICO

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.

Roberto Bolano (translated from Spanish)
 
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore.
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
Of Love
by Robert Herrick

How Love came in, I do not know,
Whether by th’ eye, or eare, or no:
Or whether with the soule it came
(At first) infused with the same:
Whether in part ‘tis here or there,
Or, like the soule, whole every where:
This troubles me: but as I well
As any other, this can tell;
That when from hence she does depart,
The out-let then is from the heart.
 
Oh come on, am I the only one feeling poetic?
Just heard this on the radio, the plant mentioned is Artemisia absinthium (wormwood)


Old Man
By Edward Thomas

Old Man, or Lad's-love, -- in the name there's nothing
To one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man,
The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.
Even to one that knows it well, the names
Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the names
In spite of time. And yet I like the names.


The herb itself I like not, but for certain
I love it, as some day the child will love it
Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps
Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she, though it is as old;
So well she clips it. Not a word she says;
And I can only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter scent,
Of garden rows, and ancient damson trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.


As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.


I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:
No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.
 
The Busy Heart
By Rupert Brooke

Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted,
I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.
(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)
I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;
Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;
And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;
And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;
And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;
And evening hush, broken by homing wings;
And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,
That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,
Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,
One after one, like tasting a sweet food.
I have need to busy my heart with quietude.
 
Shall we rename this Shifty's self indulgent poetry thread?
I'm going to keep bumping this until somebody plays along :mad:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

PTK
The Self-Penned Lyrics Thread
Replies
2
Views
87
PTK
PTK
S
World Book Day (for the grown ups)
Replies
29
Views
811
StoneRoad
StoneRoad
Yossarian
'Groundhog Day' films
Replies
29
Views
899
stdP
stdP
P
Those were the days my friend...
Replies
4
Views
233
davesgcr
davesgcr
S
A film for every day of the year
10 11 12 13 14
Replies
412
Views
11K
Ziggycat
Ziggycat
Back
Top Bottom