*Poem of the day thread

[ShiftyBagLady]

Song: Rarely, rarely, comest thou
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou are fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismay'd;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dress'd,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love—though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee—
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

I can't find a copy and pastable text of this, so here: hear the man himself read it

 

[butchersapron]

Die Stalin die

We Live, Not Feeling

We live, not feeling the country beneath us,
Our speech inaudible ten steps away,
But where they're up to half a conversation -
They'll speak of the Kremlin mountain man.

His thick fingers are fat like worms,
And his words certain as pound weights.
His cockroach whiskers laugh,
And the top of his boots glisten.

And all around his rabble of thick-skinned leaders,
He plays through services of half-people.
Some whistle, some meow, some snivel,
He alone merely caterwauls and prods.

Like horseshoes he forges decree after decree-
Some get it in the forehead, some in the brow,
some in the groin, and some in the eye.
Whatever the execution - it's a raspberry to him
And his Georgian chest is broad.

Osip Mandelstam

(other translations available)

 

[butchersapron]

I can't find a copy and pastable text of this, so here: hear the man himself read it

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,-a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea

77 dream songs here.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

 

[Greebo]

 

[Greebo]

EVE TO THE SERPENT

I’m stretched on tiptoes, and I know
your eyes are flicking over me -
at my sex especially - and look,
I twist the stalk and snap -
I pluck the apple carefully,
because it is precious,
green, unblemished,
and wrong. I want it
more than I’ve ever wanted
anything. I wonder about the skin,
how my teeth will puncture it
and about the flesh, how hard
and white it will be, how sweet,
You told me, didn’t you? -
it would be the sweetest thing
I’d ever had in my mouth,
its juice would slide down my throat
like nectar, like ambrosia,
and do me so much good.
I could just stand here with it
in my hand and you could writhe
in your complicated skin, your tongue
darting and quivering. This could be
the longest afternoon of our lives.

Catherine Smith

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Introduced ShiftyJunior to Betjemen this evening

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

 

[Santino]

Betjeman was a bit of a dick, wasn't he?

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Betjeman was a bit of a dick, wasn't he?

In what way?
Wouldn't surprise me though, a lot of poets of that era were thoroughly dislikeable.

 

[Santino]

In what way?

Despising people who eat tinned food, for a start.

 

[Greebo]

Casanever

To most men, the notion
Of 'romance and mystery'
Means clearing the porn from
Their internet history.

Nic Aubury

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Despising people who eat tinned food, for a start.

Ah. Well so long as he wasn't a raging fascist I don't mind that so much...
We have to draw a line somewhere, tinned food seems a reasonable place to start

 

[Santino]

Although Betjeman is thought of as a nice old cove, and Larkin as a grumpy sod, Larkin was a much more generous observer of other people than Betjeman, who was a terrible snob.

 

[Greebo]

Intimacy

Nineteen days without you when I woke,
one morning, full with what I lacked;
laid in the bath finding evidence
of your absence and my neglect.
I shaved my underams and legs
plucked my eyebrows, shaped my pubes
and used my tiny scissors to snip
an errant hair. I paid attention again
to detail, tried to look at my body
the way you would - knowing
that I would drive out, that day,
to find you - that after our frantic urgency,
or that slowed motion when (somehow)
you trip it and we keep going on
and on - knowing that, after this,
you would examine every inch of me,
your blue-gray eyes drunk with it,
you rolling that one word around
your mouth like a jelly bean gorgeous.
gorgeous. You're so gorgeous...
Later, you take my right breast
between your teeth, skim your tongue
across my nipple, ask: Where's it gone?
I miss it. there was just a single one.

Elizabeth Barrett

 

[Dillinger4]

by WS Merwin

Your absence has gone through me
like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its colour.

 

[Dillinger4]

The Prediction by Mark Strand

That night the moon drifted over the pond,
turning the water to milk, and under
the boughs of the trees, the blue trees,
a young woman walked, and for an instant

the future came to her:
rain falling on her husband's grave, rain falling
on the lawns of her children, her own mouth
filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,

a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it,
a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death
thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising
and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.

 

[RedDragon]

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

 

[Dillinger4]

A Blessing by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

 

[Dillinger4]

Peaches by Donald Hall

A mouthful of language to swallow:
stretches of beach, sweet clinches,
breaches in walls, pleached branche;
britches hauled over haunches;
hunched leeches, wrenched teachers.
What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
richness, plashy juices.
I beseech to you peach,
clench me into the sweetness
of your reaches

 

[Dillinger4]

Mid August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout by Gary Snyder

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
looking down for miles
through high still air.

 

[Dillinger4]

The English Are So Nice! by DH Lawrence

The English are so nice
So awfully nice
They are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being nice
About your being nice as well!
If your not nice they will soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
They're all very well
But they're not really nice, you know
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Shakespeare, SONNET 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

 

[Greebo]

Guacamole*

Avocadoes were somewhere on the lust-list
we made sate on the floor of room 404
write down, you said, write down every wicked
little dirty thing you'd like us to try. I pitted
the felt-tip against my teeth, then whispered:
I want you to carefully split a ripe avocado,
loosen its pip, scoop out the warm yellowy
flesh and squeeze it to a gentle pulp, then -

I stopped - back suddenly at my mother's side,
eye-level with hip and kitchen top, glued to
her hands as she cuts and twists the wizened pears,
mashes in garlic, the devil-tailed chillies, a
spalsh of lime. Ravenous, open-mouthed, I crave
to lick the buttery mush between her fingers,
the jaded smear from her wrist, to suck her
wedding ring, to suck her wedding ring clean.

Kaddy Benyon

*I remembered this one after reading the avocado thread in suburban.

 

[Greebo]

And Pigs Might Fly

It was crisis day in the parliament
The house was hushed and still.
A member rose with a question
“Are we doomed to go downhill?”
“I am confident of an upturn”,
The PM made reply.
“If workers pay is held at bay,
We'll all be home and dry.”
“How true, how true”, cried the workers.
“Let's end this wicked strike.
We don't want a rise in wages,
They can stick it where they like.”
“Thank God, Thank God”, sobbed the bosses.
“There's faith on the factory floor.
And now we've got this extra lot
We'll give it to the poor.”
They filled their pockets with money
And ran with eager feet
Pressing their surplus profits
On the people in the street.
They moved among the dole queues
And boarded every bus
With streaming eyes and heartfelt cries
“You need it more than us”.
Soon all the people prospered
And the devil became a saint
Now the sober unions
Had exercised restraint.
The cities were filled with singing
And the sound of laughter spread
As hand took hand in the golden land
and pigs flew overhead.

author not known

 

[Mikey77]

Writer's block
holds me back like a soft cock
let me think for one moment
I feel it presently I am impotent

At my best I've not a care
but it's rare that I'm there
If I was poet laureate I'd get the sack
But my high standards are those of a megalomaniac

Thanks...

 

[fractionMan]

Toby Thompson, on studying Shakespeare in Secondary school

 

[Greebo]

Tout fait l'amour. Et moi j'ajoute,
Lorsque tu dis : "Tout fait l'amour":
Même le pas avec la route
La baguette avec le tambour.

Même le doigt avec la bague,
Même la rime et la raison,
Même le vent avec la vague,
Le regard avec l'horizon...

G. Nouveau

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

T

G. Nouveau

tf:cr

(too foreign:can't read)

 

[Greebo]

tf:cr

(too foreign:can't read)

Sorry. I deliberately put the original first because the rhythm's so punchy even if you don't understand most of it. A quick and dirty translation follows...

Everyone makes love. And I'll add to that,
When you say it: "Everything makes love":
Even the step with the path,
The beater with the tambour.

Even the finger with the ring,
Even rhyme with reason,
Even the wind with the wave,
The gaze with the horizon...

G. Nouveau