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*Poem of the day thread

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Ariel's poem from The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Act5 Sc. 1
 
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One Day…
An army of furious older women will take over the world.
And I want to be there at the front.
Because one day, every woman wakes up and realises, that quite frankly, they put themselves through hell.
Trying to fit in, trying to be enough, to be attractive, to be acceptable, to be responsible, to be reliable, to be a mother, to be a wife, to be a friend, to be a carer, to hold a career, to keep it all spinning effortlessly….
And in a flash, years and years of back-breaking conformity, whizzes before your eyes and you have a lightbulb moment…
It was never going to happen.
We could never have done it all.
For it is not possible.
No man could do it either. Not a chance.
Women of this world, beautiful, wonderful women – let that lightbulb go on sooner rather than later because when it does, you will be free.
Free to live.
Free to mess up.
Free to take breaks and make mistakes.
Free to pass over on the list of things you ‘should’ be doing.
And you will understand that whatever you did today, it was enough.
You are enough.
One day, an army of furious older women will take over the world and I want to be there, right at the front.

Donna Ashworth
From ‘to the women’:
 
On Visiting a Borrowed Country House in Arcadia

To leave the city
Always takes a quarrel. Without warning,
Rancors that have gathered half the morning
Like things to pack, or a migraine, or a cloud,
Are suddenly allowed
To strike. They strike the same place twice.
We start by straining to be nice,
The say something shitty.

Isn't it funny
How it's what has to happen
To make the unseen ivory gates swing open,
The rite we must perform so we can leave?
Always we must grieve
Our botched happiness: we goad
Each other till we pull to the hard shoulder of the road,
Yielding to tears inadequate as money.

But if instead
Of turning back, we drive into the day,
We forget the things we didn't say.
The silence fills with row on row
Of vines or olive trees. The radio
Hums to itself. We make our way between
Saronic blue and hills of glaucous green
And thread

Beyond the legend of the map
Through footnote towns along the coast
That boast
Ruins of no account–a column
More woebegone than solemn–
Men watching soccer at the two cafes
And half-built lots where dingy sheep still graze.
Climbing into the lap

Of the mountains now, we wind
Around blind, centrifugal turns.
The sun's great warship sinks and burns.
And where the roads without a sign are crossed,
We (inevitably) get lost.
Yet to be lost here
Still feels like being somewhere,
And we find

When we arrive and park,
No one minds that we are late–
There is no one to wait–
Only a bed to make, a suitcase to unpack.
The earth has turned her back
On one yellow middling star
To consider lights more various and far.
The shaggy mountains hulk into the dark

Or loom
Like slow, titanic waves. The cries
Of owls dilate the shadows. Weird harmonies rise
From the valley's distant glow, where coal
Extracted from the lignite mines must roll
On acres of conveyor belts that sing
The Pythagorean music of a string.
A huge grey plume

Of smoke or steam
Towers like the ghost of a monstrous flame
Or giant tree among the trees. And it is all the same–
The power plant, the forest, and the night,
The manmade light.
We are engulfed in an immense
Ancient indifference
That does not sleep or dream.

Call it Nature if you will,
Though everything that is is natural–
The lignite-bearing earth, the factory,
A darkness taller than the sky–
This out-of-doors that wins us our release
And temporary peace–
Not because it is pristine or pretty,
But because it has no pity or self-pity.

AE Stallings
 

..".But A Short Time To Live" by Leslie Coulson


Our little hour,—how swift it flies
When poppies flare and lilies smile;
How soon the fleeting minute dies,
Leaving us but a little while
To dream our dream, to sing our song,
To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower,
The Gods—They do not give us long,—
One little hour.

Our little hour,—how short it is
When Love with dew-eyed loveliness
Raises her lips for ours to kiss
And dies within our first caress.
Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame,
Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour,
For Time and Death, relentless, claim
Our little hour.

Our little hour,—how short a time
To wage our wars, to fan our hates,
To take our fill of armoured crime,
To troop our banners, storm the gates.
Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red,
Blind in our puny reign of power,
Do we forget how soon is sped
Our little hour?

Our little hour,—how soon it dies:
How short a time to tell our beads,
To chant our feeble Litanies,
To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds.
The altar lights grow pale and dim,
The bells hang silent in the tower—
So passes with the dying hymn
Our little hour.
 
Resistance
David Lehman

The sunset earlier, the sky spooky
as the nineteenth century, skeletal trees,
a brief orange glow before the blues
and grays darken in a landscape that lasts
for an hour before the shapes dissolve
into the dark of All Hallows’, a night
as sacred as would scare us, the guiltless ones,
who maintain our belief in metaphysics,
which French philosophes declared dead
in 1970 or so. As the last branches
disappear into the heavenly darkness,
what remains is what resists and what
clings to the oblivion of a fallen world
that exists in memory only, and poetry.
 
Figs
Henri Cole

Overnight the figs got moldy and look like little brains—
or Ids without structure—that say something dark
about our species not really laying down a garden
but living out the violent myths.
An insect chorus, almost diaphanous
in a neighbor’s yard, says something, too:
America began in tall ships that glowed from within,
but, for the wretched, it still wretchedeth every day.

As the bright day goes around the sun,
why do our days grow
more aggressive and difficult?
Why do the world’s shadows
come so close
as its wonders beckon?
 

Because I could not stop for Death – (479)​

Launch Audio in a New Window
BY EMILY DICKINSON
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 –
 
W.B. Yeats

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I heavens' embroidered 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.
 
anna akhmatova
[Balchoï Fontan, Ucrânia, 1889-1966]

COURAGE

Now we know what really counts
and what's been made of reality
The time for courage has come right up to us
and courage doesn't flee from us
It's not a horror now to stand up to the grave against lethal bullets,
We don't even feel bitter about losing the rooves above,
we keep alive, Russian,
the great Russian lingo
We take you pure and free
and we keep it safe to give to our grandchildren
and from enslavement you freed us all
forever!

[Supastupor translation 2022, maintaining the formatting as faithfully as possible]

#Translated from Portuguese, a 3rd-hand translation by an amateur#

I can't find the same translation online, the one in the book reads very sarcastic. However, after some light research it would seem Babushka Akhmatova was praised for her work in 'the great patriotic war' ..... but she was lucky not to get gulaged having written an epic poem dedicated to Stalin's victims......her son was imprisoned for 7 years... could have been longer but good ol' Khrushchev was the party secretary by then.....it's confusin then ......it's confusing now
 
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All The Talents


Liz Truss. Theresa Coffey.
Qwerty Wordle. Kelly Badenough.
Jonas Filth-Muck. Shaun Knotts O’Clever.
Pip Shithouse. Floella Blaggerman.
Dominic Raat. Noelene Caries.
Brandon Arse. Snorky Dump.
Polly Moribund. Helena Handcart.
Sir John Pluff-Trousers. Jeremy Filch.
Sarah De Luzional. Tom Mephisto.
Buster Sanction. Bernard Devious.
Brett Spatchcock. Brian Envelopes.
Patrick Flagg-Stompkin. Sally Headbutt.
Baron Hardline of Cutpurse. Grant Cipher.
Sebastian Fling-Fleshkin. Sid Crypto.
Lord Luvaduck of Halicarnassus.
Thanatos Armtwistle. John St.John Hades.

Andy Jackson


From here, well worth keeping an eye on, with a new poem each day in their Die Depfeffelschrift: new boots and pantisocracies
 
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Medium
Jennifer Grotz

In the nineteenth century,
I’d have found a medium,
a knocking table, a crystal ball,

but to conjure him in 2016
I go online and Google,
scroll page after page until

his name disappears
in a list of random links,
but still there’s his handle on Skype,

still the picture of him crossing the finish line
of the Portland marathon,
still the smiling-in-the-wind-on-the-beach photo, still

that e-mail that arrived at 3 a.m.
back in February, those words of such
love and affirmation out of the blue

that I knew were strange but didn’t query,
thought maybe he’d been up drinking,
was feeling sentimental, and

that must have been
the night of the first attempt
we found written in his journal,

how he’d thrown himself off a bridge
into the cold dirty Willamette
but survived,

and how disappointed
he must have felt then,
the body involuntarily countering

with a surge of adrenaline,
his body feeling at its
utmost alive.
 
Red n' Black

Fight all oppression with the red and black
For liberty
No to the parties and the bureaucrats
Disarm the bourgeosie
While we live with property
We shall never be free
So seize all the factories with the red the black
And anarchy

No cross nor bible with the red and the black
No hypocrisy
Clerics, priests and mullahs spread the same old lies
Serving this socitey
There are no sinners
Just their morality
So burn down their churches with the red and the black
Hail blasphemy

End class divisions with the red and the black
For unity
We're stronger together than we are alone
Wherever we might be
No 'first' or 'third' world but one world
Unequal and unfree
So tear down their frontiers with the red and the black
For humanity

The whole world is our world with the red and the black
In harmony
The last fight in history brings it home to us
Our common treasury
While thousands become millions
Struggling to be free
We raise the cry of ages proudly as our own
Land and liberty!


By Ashley Fletcher
 
The Leaden-Eyed
Vachel Lindsay

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.
 
Your laughter
Crashes through the sunlit air
Like shards of gleaming shattered crystal
Every shard
Stabbing through a fragment
Of my shattered heart
Your joy angers me in my sorrow
My boy, my beautiful boy, is gone
The sorrow remains
 
As I was walking down the street one day,
I saw a house on fire.
There was a man,
Standing at an upper storey window,
Shouting and screaming at the crowd that was gathered there below,
For he was sore afraid.

Jump,
You f*cker, jump!
Jump into this 'ere blanket what we are holding
And you will be alright.
He jumped, hit the deck,
Broke his f*cking neck,
There wa-a-as no blanket.

Laugh,
We nearly shat!
I have not laughed so much since grandma died,
Or Auntie Mabel caugh her left tit in the mangle.
We are miserable sinners,
Fi-i-i-ilthy f*ckers.
Ar-rse holes.

Oh, dear little Flo,
I love you so,
Especially in your nightie,
When the moonlight flits
Across your tits,
Oh Jesus Christ Almighty...

Derek & Clive
 
Not So Long Ago by Hugo Dewar

Woke one bright morning not so long ago;
Heard the sound of shooting out on the street below;
Went to the window and saw the barricade
Of paving stones the working people made not so long ago.
Met a man that morning not so long ago;
Handed me a leaflet on the street below;
Lean and hard-faced workingman with a close-cropped head;
Held me for a moment, eye to eye, then said,
“Read it. Read it. Read it and learn
What it is we fight for and why the churches burn.”

Out on the Ramblas, she passed me on her way,
Weapon cradled in her arm; it was but yesterday.
“Not just for wages now and not alone for bread.
We’re fighting for a whole new world, a whole new world,” she
said.

On the barricades all over town not so long ago,
The time had come to answer with a simple “Yes” or “No.”
They, too, were storming heaven. Do you think they fought in vain?
That because they lost a battle they would never rise again?
That the man with the leaflets, the woman with the gun,
Did not have a daughter? Did not have a son?
 
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You're Angry by Kevan Hughes

You're angry that 'your' queen is dead
And you know that I don't care
You're angry that I don't recognise
Her 'rightful Son and Heir'

You're angry that I don't show 'respect'
To something I don't believe
You're angry that I have the freedom
To choose when I should grieve

You're angry, that unlike you,
I wasn't put upon this earth
To bow and scrape and know my place,
Like some medieval serf

You're angry that somehow,
I'm allowed a point of view
You're angry when you realise
I don't agree with you

You're angry that I don't embrace
Your feudalistic rules
You're angry because you know that I despise
Such grovelling, fawning fools

But you see, I am angry too
About so many different things
Born in a world of sycophants,
And all the grief it brings

I'm angry at the BBC, the Daily Mail,
The morons that they quote
The puerile propaganda
They're ramming down my throat

I'm angry that I'm mourning,
For a vision that has gone
Angry that we can't make a world
That works for everyone

I'm angry that we're still held back
By forelock tuggers such as you
Angry that you're wedded to your masters
And your own outdated view

I'm angry that you worship
The people at the top
Your whole world's an anachronism
It really has to stop
 
Fighting For the Revolution

We've sung their songs for far too long
and to their gods we've prayed
We've sewn their fields and reaped their crops yet hunger has remained.
We've slaved in all their factories for their profits to be made
We've fought and died in their bloody wars for things to stay the same.

Now we want the revolution!
Now we want the revolution!
Now we want the revolution!
So organise for anarchy and build the barricades!

The bosses and the ruling class are shaking in their shoes
There is no room for compromise, this fight we must not lose.
To end their bloody tyranny there's things that we must do
So organise for anarchy to build the world anew.

Fighting for the revolution!
Fighting for the revolution!
Fighting for the revolution!
No gods, no states, no masters in the new world that we choose!


By Ashley Fletcher
 
Another gem from New Boots and Pantisocracies and their DePfeffelschrift

Prìomhaire

Online variations on the Scottish Gaelic for ‘Prime Minister’

A synonym for ceannardas: high-head, chief-end
(never ‘chieftain’). Scrot bag, racist git;
wee sleekit bastard, scunnerin basturt
(cuid nae hae put it better masell).
Wank-stain, utter knob. Shut yer geggie!
Ur a numpty bawbag if ever there was ane.
Get it right up yie! Mum
always said ne’er
trust any whose eyes are too close tegeither.
Gardyloo. U’ll do wonders for IndyRef2,
fud, with more faces than the town clock –
haunted furby, spineless cock
womble. An in-your-face out-and-out cunt.
Imagine school children studying history
in 50 years’ time. This’ll be known as the WTF-era.

-- Taylor Strickland
from here: new boots and pantisocracies
 
Arthur Waley's translation of one of the song-poems in the Book of Songs (compiled circa 600 BCE):

Tossed is that cypress boat,
Wave-tossed it floats.
My heart is in turmoil, I cannot sleep.
But secret is my grief.
Wine I have, all things needful
For play, for sport.

My heart is not a mirror,
To reflect what others will.
Brothers too I have;
I cannot be snatched away.
But lo, when I told them of my plight
I found that they were angry with me.

My heart is not a stone;
It cannot be rolled.
My heart is not a mat;
It cannot be folded away.
I have borne myself correctly
In rites more than can be numbered.

My sad heart is consumed, I am harassed
By a host of small men.
I have borne vexations very many,
Received insults not few.
In the still of night I brood upon it;
In the waking hours I rend my breast.

O sun, ah, moon,
Why are you changed and dim ?
Sorrow clings to me
Like an unwashed dress.
In the still of night I brood upon it,
Long to take wing and fly away.

泛彼柏舟,亦泛其流。耿耿不寐,如有隐忧。微我耿酒,以敖以游。

我心匪鉴,不可以茹。亦有兄弟,不可以据。薄言往愬,逢彼之怒。

我心匪石,不可转也。我心匪席,不可卷也。威仪棣棣,不可选也。

忧心悄悄,愠于群小。觏闵既多,受侮不少。静言思之,寤辟有摽。

日居月诸,胡迭而微?心之忧矣,如匪澣衣。静言思之,不能奋飞。

James Legge's version here: Book of Poetry : Lessons from the states : Odes Of Bei : Bo Zhou - moon - Chinese Text Project
 

Colonel John Okie's LAMENTATION, OR A RUMPER CASHIERED.​

To the tune of, And a Begging we will go.

OF a Famous Brewer my purpose is to tell,
Now mighty Roaring Oliver and Pride are gone to Hell,
The Noble Stoker Okey that doth the rest Excel,
And give him more Ale and Grains:

The Rumps great Champion, the defender of the State,
The Commonwealths Sir Guy o'recome by cunning Fate,
Packing out of England, with the Divels Excise Rate,
And give, &c.

And I (quoth this John) must now bring up the Rear,
And Tally the Account of our State Stinking Beer,
I wish I had my complices again to help me here,
And give, &c.

My Trade hath had the Honour, the State to overturn,
How often times did I, and Pride the House Adjourn?
I know I must be hang'd for I'm too Wett to Burn,
And give, &c.

Yet when I think how slighly, my partners me forsooke,
And never put the totall Summe to Bible nor to Book,
I wish the Div'l for comp'ny had Okey also took,
And give, &c.

Then had I spar'd my angry Corking Knife,
Which I drew at th' Exchange against a Hawkers Wife,
For crying against the Rump end, our gainful strife,
And give, &c.

They say I am indited, for Secluding of the Members,
One thousand six hundred forty eight in December,
Would the Inditement was rak't in my Stoake hole Embers,
And give him, &c.

My strong Irons beaten into broad Swords and Spears,
My thick Smoke did vanish into Jealousies and Fears,
But now all my wash is limbeckt into Tears,
And give him, &c.

A Fat Tub-woman was my Goddesse great of War,
My Hostesse by Bellona that lived at the Starr,
No matter if to Tyburn, I ride in Dray or Carr,
And give him, &c.

But my Dray is transformd to An Ammunition Wagon,
My Horses swopt for light Nags, for service of the Dragoon,
With which I overtooke the Welch, when they came from St. Fagon,
And give him, &c.

My brazen impudence, now leaves me at my Copper,
And that will go ere long, then I'le be bottle stopper,
And then Sepulchres Bell, O how I fear that Clapper,
And give him, &c.

Adieu then all my Vailes, my Tilts, my Dregs and Yest,
A Rump, and a Free State, shield me from an Inquest,
I am not bound for Portsmouth but Tyburn in the West.
And give him, &c.

I'le now betake my self again unto the old Mash Tun,
And with my Brewing Oares, I'le Row to Wimbleton,
I Murdered Charls the Father, I may'nt endure the Son,
And give him, &c.

My old guile will be best, now I am stricken out 'oth Role,
I'le Cunningly retreat again into my warm Stoke Hole,
Sir Arthur is to find me store of Newcastle Cole.
And give him more Ale and Grains.
 
“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal -- a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire --
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
 
I forget what
mind is

like, all that
thought and private
history. Luckily,
even without
it, its distances

remain: desert,
mountain, sky. I

won’t say
I’m any happier
now, no
happier than sunlit

almond orchards
finding themselves

suddenly in bloom.
 
“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal -- a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire --
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
This is
'The Buddha's Last Instruction' by Mary Oliver

I don't know who wrote the second poem you quoted but it would be good to know.
 
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