A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Lavinia

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!




Pablo Neruda
(1904 - 1973)

That's beautiful Lavinia.

I Like Sheep

On arrival, I found the Poop Deck
Captained by two lonely spinners,
One young Spartan
Under the tutelage
Of a rugged thesaurus of the Sea.
Their top turned then rolled
Standing to attention,
It’s peg leg stuck to the open deck,
A frozen asset, quiet immovable.
Here third would entertain,
Profligate about the seasons,
Pass on their prospective knowledge,
In an open field of information,
Uncultivated, unkempt.

Then to the middle’s Lair of ripened papered
History, reeking of an Adam’s style in
Sumptuous first’s surrounds.
It is a
Glassed Libraried room, with tables
Painted in Postcarded litter,
Situated within the crowded
Tent of recently dined explorers.
Many strain to read the
Massive Progress Charts,
Teachers, Miners, Bankers, Lawyers,
Most gambling on speed and time of landing.

feargale

Guest, by Rabindranath Tagore

Lady, you have filled these exile days of mine
With sweetness, made a foreign traveler your own
As easily as these unfamiliar stars, quietly,
Coolly smiling from heaven, have likewise given me
Welcome. When I stood at this window and stared
At the southern sky, a message seemed to slide
Into my soul from the harmony of the stars,
A solemn music that said, "We know you are ours-
Guest of our light from the day you passed
From darkness into the world, always our guest."

Lady, your kindness is a star, the same solemn tune
In your glance seems to say, "I know you are mine."
I do not know your language, but I hear your melody:
"Poet, guest of my love, my guest eternally."

Translated by William Radice

B00!

wow, lovely feargale

B00!

(from a childs book of feelings)

What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About?
By Judith Viorst

If you had just one color to paint the whole world,
Would it be orange or gray?
If you had just one message to give to the world,
Would it be grrr or hooray?
If you had just one place you could live in this world,
Would you choose here or away?
What are you glad about?
What are you mad about?
How are you feeling today?

Did you wake up this morning all smiley inside?
Does life taste like ice cream and cake?
Or does it seem more like your goldfish just died
And your insides are one great big ache?
Do you wish you could go in a closet and hide?
Or would you rather go play?
What are you glad about?
Mad about? Sad about?
How are you feeling today?

When they ask you to do something, will you say yes?
Or will your answer be no?
Do you think that you get what you want - or much less?
Are you shrinking or starting to grow?
Is that person you see in the mirror a mess?
Or is that person okay?
What are you glad about?
Mad, sad, or bad about?
How are you feeling today?

Lavinia

when I look back now

at the abuse I took from

her

I feel shame that I was so

innocent,

but I must say

she did match me drink for

drink,

and I realized that her life

her feelings for things

had been ruined

along the way

and that I was no mare than a

temporary

companion;

she was ten years older

and mortally hurt by the past

and the present;

she treated me badly:

desertion, other

men;

she brought me immense

pain,

continually;

she lied, stole;

there was desertion,

other men,

yet we had our moments; and

our little soap opera ended

with her in a coma

in the hospital,

and I sat at her bed

for hours

talking to her,

and then she opened her eyes

and saw me:

"I knew it would be you,"

she said.

then she closed her

eyes.


the next day she was

dead.


I drank alone

for two years

after that.



Charles Bukowski

I Like Sheep

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Swiper the fox

That's an absolute cracker Lavinia, you're on a roll.

I Like Sheep

A Blank Letter
by Sudeep Sen

An envelope arrives unannounced from overseas
containing stark white sheets,

perfect in their presentation of absence.
Only a bold logo on top

revealed its origin, but absolutely nothing else.
I examined the sheets,

peered through their grains —
heavy cotton-laid striations —

concealing text, in white ink, postmarked India.
Even the watermark's translucence

made the script’s invisibility transparent.
Buried among the involute contours, lay sheets

of sophisticated pulp, paper containing
scattered metaphors — uncoded, unadorned,

untouched — virgin lines that spill, populate
and circulate to keep alive its breathings.

Corpuscles of a very different kind —
hieroglyphics, unsolved, but crystal-clear.

B00!

Lines by Kate Northrup

The unluckiest among us fall in love
with such a thing as a line,

and from the beginning, it goes badly.

You can bring a line into your home
but your gestures so alarm it
it breaks into two, four,

sixteen lines and they keep
breeding, breeding. There’s no

maneuvering them. One line
escapes you

and appears years later
aimless in the garden. If you had been wise,

you would not have fallen for a nature
so given to infidelity:

Lines always go in two directions.

I myself was in love with a line.
I took it to a field
And lay down next to it

Whispering Relax, we’re alone
but the line would have none of it.

Soon night had fallen
and rising over the hill came cars, stories,

came windows through which I saw
everything as it must remain:

singular, burning, private.

marienbad

Though There Are Torturers


Though there are torturers in the world
There are also musicians.
Though, at this moment,
Men are screaming in prisons,
There are jazzmen raising storms
Of sensuous celebration,
And orchestras releasing
Glories of the Spirit.
Though the image of God
Is everywhere defiled,
A man in West Clare
Is playing the concertina,
The Sistine Choir is levitating
Under the dome of St. Peter’s,
And a drunk man on the road
Is singing, for no reason.

Michael Coady

I've been trying to write something myself for a while now. It isn't happening for me. All I have are a bunch of words like "I'm thinking of
you", "coward". Today I sat somewhere busy and watched all the people. Still nothing came. It's easy when I'm sad and part of me is a little so maybe there is some more sitting and watching to be done. So instead of my ramblings here is the beautiful Dorianne Laux.

Heart

The heart shifts shape of its own accord—
from bird to ax, from pinwheel
to budded branch. It rolls over in the chest,
a brown bear groggy with winter, skips
like a child at the fair, stopping in the shade
of the fireworks booth, the fat lady's tent,
the corn dog stand. Or the heart
is an empty room where the ghosts of the dead
wait, paging through magazines, licking
their skinless thumbs. One gets up, walks
through a door into a maze of hallways.
Behind one door a roomful of orchids,
behind another, the smell of burned toast.
The rooms go on and on: sewing room
with its squeaky treadle, its bright needles,
room full of file cabinets and torn curtains,
room buzzing with a thousand black flies.
Or the heart closes its doors, becomes smoke,
a wispy lie, curls like a worm and forgets
its life, burrows into the fleshy dirt.

Heart makes a wrong turn.
Heart locked in its gate of thorns.
Heart with its hands folded in its lap.
Heart a blue skiff parting the silk of the lake.
It does what it wants, takes what it needs, eats
when it's hungry, sleeps when the soul shuts down.
Bored, it watches movies deep into the night,
stands by the window counting the streetlamps
squinting out one by one.
Heart with its hundred mouths open.
Heart with its hundred eyes closed.
Harmonica heart, heart of tinsel,
heart of cement, broken teeth, redwood fence.
Heart of bricks and boards, books stacked
In devoted rows, their dusty spines
unreadable. Heart
with its hands full.
Hieroglyph heart, etched deep with history's lists,
things to do. Near-sighted heart. Club-footed heart.

Hard-headed heart. Heart of gold, coal.
Bad juju heart, singing the low down blues.
Choir boy heart. Heart in a frumpy robe.
Heart with its feet up reading the scores.
Homeless heart, dozing, its back against the Dumpster.
Cop-on-the-beat heart with its black billy club,
banging on the lid.

Dorianne Laux.

B00!

Quarantine

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Eavan Boland

B00!

Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

Mary Oliver

Lavinia

.......

Lavinia

"After a while you learn the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and
that company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes open and with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow`s ground is too uncertain for your plans.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you will learn that you can endure that you really are special
and that you really do have worth.
So live to learn and know yourself.
In doing so, you will learn to live."




Mario Quintana
(from beautiful Joü)

Harry Angstrom

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.



In perpetuum et unum diem

B00!

What Was It That I Wanted? by Julia Alvarez

What was it that I wanted? I forget ---
To have a place called home, these quiet hills
I look on as I write, the trees I grew
As seedlings now full-blown and full of birds,
Sparrows and thrushes singing as I work;
Even the snow beating against the panes ---
I wanted that. And you, dear one, stopping
Outside my study door, then going on . . .
That loving pause that longs but still respects
My solitude - - - I wanted you most of all!

I wanted a voice, oh yes, one that would tell
Simply but with the mute heart’s eloquence
Who I was, what my brief time on earth
Was all about. And more, there was always more:
I wanted to be wanted, to belong
In school, country, gender, neighbourhood ---
One of the good girls everybody loves,
The heroine of the story of my own life
With a happy ending. I wanted that ---
Who knows why anymore? --- but yes, I did.

Some things I wanted but I couldn’t get
I wanted not to want --- my mother’s love,
That look of urgent cherishing I’ve glimpsed
In the soft eyes of dogs and the dying,
I wanted Papa’s love, unhinged from shame,
His own and mine. I wanted not to feel
That yearning for the child I never had.
What else was it I wanted? I forget.
Or could it be that longing that I want
To make my stretch beyond the lot I got?

tayto lover

One from Super Tramp, William Henry Davies -

Leisure.



What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
William Henry Davies

tayto lover

Another from WH Davies -

Money


When I had money, money, O!
I knew no joy till I went poor;
For many a false man as a friend
Came knocking all day at my door.
Then felt I like a child that holds
A trumpet that he must not blow
Because a man is dead; I dared
Not speak to let this false world know.
Much have I thought of life, and seen
How poor men’s hearts are ever light;
And how their wives do hum like bees
About their work from morn till night.
So, when I hear these poor ones laugh,
And see the rich ones coldly frown—
Poor men, think I, need not go up
So much as rich men should come down.
When I had money, money, O!
My many friends proved all untrue;
But now I have no money, O!
My friends are real, though very few.

William Henry Davies

Lavinia

Think like a Tree

Soak up the sun

Affirm life’s magic

Be graceful in the wind

Stand tall after a storm

Feel refreshed after it rains

Grow strong without notice

Be prepared for each season

Provide shelter to strangers

Hang tough through a cold spell

Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring

Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky

Be still long enough to

hear your own leaves rustling.


Karen I. Shragg
(thanks to Helga Kvam )

wreade1872

Thus-Gone to Thus-Gone, I with a Buddha's hand
Offer the unplucked flower, the frog's soliloquy
Among the lotus leaves, the milk-smeared mouth
At my full breast and love and, like the cloudless
Sky that makes possible mountain and setting moon,
This emptiness that is the womb of love
This poetry of silence.

Written by one of the characters in 'Island' by Aldous Huxley (1962)

Dave!

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTglCBLomXA

Lavinia

Who wrote that, Dave?
Really like the atmosphere.. The pace.. The sentiment...
Old times, old souls, old characters...
it....

Dave!

That's Robert Frost, Lavinia

tomasocarthaigh

[font=Oswald, sans-serif]Whisht Held Well[/font]

Whisht for a people fond of talking, we keep quiet when we want to about the things we should talk the most about

[font=Georgia, 'URW Bookman L', serif][font=Georgia, 'URW Bookman L', serif] Hoult yer whisht
~ keep quiet about that

Dedicated to the women and the children
of the Magdelene Laundries and the Mother & Baby Homes[/font][/font]

[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]A whisht held well, held for too long[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]So none could tell of the wrong and the wronged[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Silence not alone deafened all to cries but struck dumb[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]A judgmental society about those on the bottom rung[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]By birth, by breeding, by belief[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Pride took their pride, dignity, like a thief[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Victims, survivors, words cannot describe[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]What they went through as church bells rang singing that faith here does thrive[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Silent that evil moreso in the hearts it is wrought[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Of the talking tongues who are silent on sins of folk of the cloth[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]For their keep beat to labour little more than a slave[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Imprisoned for life for love, their baby in the grave[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]More gave birth after rape and though known his name[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]It was covers up to be respectable and she got the blame[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]The quiet village street she through the window does see[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]He goes to the chapel to pray, and to prey is still free[/font]
[font=Open Sans, sans-serif]Heavens full of angels of the Magdalene Home
[/font][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hell has cast out its demons to make way for the Men of Rome[/font]

A few more poems:

The Bright Star of Ireland - To Kill a Child
In "Irish Legend"

Ghost at the Gate at Willie Carty's
In "Family Stories"

Abduction at Legan Bridge
In "Civil Rights"

Lavinia

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZxYjogqB2E

Aftermath - Siegfried Sassoon

HAVE you forgotten yet? ...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same -- and War's a bloody game. ...

Have you forgotten yet? ...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets.
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads - those ashen-grey
Mask of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

Day Lewin

Eleven Addresses to the Lord

by John Berryman

1.
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,
thank you for such as it is my gift.

I have made up a morning prayer to you
containing with precision everything that most matters.
‘According to Thy will’ the thing begins.
It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence.

You have come to my rescue again & again
in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.
You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves
and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.

Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs:
how can I ‘love’ you?
I only as far as gratitude & awe
confidently & absolutely go.

I have no idea whether we live again.
It doesn’t seem likely
from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view
but certainly all things are possible to you,

and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter & to Paul
as I believe I sit in this blue chair.
Only that may have been a special case
to establish their initiatory faith.

Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.
May I stand until death forever at attention
for any your least instruction or enlightenment.
I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.