A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

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.

feargale

Ringsend

by Oliver St. John Gogarty

I will live in Ringsend
With a red-headed whore,
And the fan-light gone in
Where it lights the hall-door;
And listen each night
For her querulous shout,
As at last she streels in
And the pubs empty out.
To soothe that wild breast
With my old-fangled songs,
Till she feels it redressed
From inordinate wrongs,
Imagined, outrageous,
Preposterous wrongs,
Till peace at last comes,
Shall be all I will do,
Where the little lamp blooms
Like a rose in the stew;
And up the back-garden
The sound comes to me
Of the lapsing, unsoilable,
Whispering sea.

donegal_man

To His Iron Clad Mistress


You don't need no chain mail bra, dear.
You don't need no brass pants, too.
You don't need to dress in armor
When I'm snuggled close to you.

Don't think that you can charm me,
Or prove our love more real,
By buying all your underwear
From the boutique at U.S. Steel.

So what say we drop the hardware,
The swords and shields and toys,
And make love less like Sherman tanks,
And more like girls and boys.


Kent Patterson

feargale

donegal_man wrote: »

To His Iron Clad Mistress

Kent Patterson

That one tore my heartstrings apart, donegal_man. So romantic!

SmallTeapot

feargale wrote: »

That one tore my heartstrings apart, donegal_man. So romantic!

Ha! I just looked up the author on Wikipedia (poem is featured in a book of short stories) - as per this link, and it states that 'Kent patterson' is a professional U.S. Ice hockey player......... Can anyone verify if they're one in the same :pac:



Always knew those ice hockey players were the poetic types :P

donegal_man

Glad you liked it. Not the ice hockey player I'm sorry to say. Kent Patterson (4 April 1941 - 14 March 1995) was an American fantasy writer. Think his output was mainly short stories and "To His Iron Clad Mistress" was his only poem

tayto lover

I Love A Lonely Winding Road



I love a lonely winding road
That takes me where I cannot see
Until each softly rounded hill
Reveals its landscaped mystery.
Where nature's stage creates the plot,
What ever the scene may be.

I love the crocus call in spring,
The first to wake from winter's sleep.
Translucent bits of ivory joy,
So patient under snow banks deep,
'Til they can lift each star like face
And proudly nature's rhythm keep.

I love the fiery autumn hues,
Too harsh to bear in gentle spring
But welcomed by the strident wind
That makes the mighty pine tree sing,
Freeing the crimson leaves that dance
Like bright birds, high on wing.

I love the wonders of this world,
The secrets nature guards so well
From those who have no time to spend,
Who will not lift the ocean's shell
And listen to the murmured tale
That each one has to tell.


By Alora M Knight

So on the seventh day
The serpent rested,
God came up to him.
"I've invented a new game," he said.

The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper.
But God said: "You see this apple?"
I squeeze it and look-cider."

The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark.
Adam drank and said: "Be my god."
Eve drank and opened her legs

And called to the cockeyed serpent
And gave him a wild time.
God ran and told Adam
Who in drunken rage tried to hang himself in the orchard.

The serpent tried to explain, crying "Stop"
But drink was splitting his syllable.
And Eve started screeching: "Rape! Rape!"
And stamping on his head.

Now whenever the snake appears she screeches
"Here it comes again! Help! O Help!"
Then Adam smashes a chair on his head,
And God says: "I am well pleased"

And everything goes to hell.

isntlee

Endings

Things do not explode,
they fail, they fade,

as sunlight fades from the flesh,
as the foam drains quick in the sand,

even love's lightning flash
has no thunderous end.

it dies with the sound
of flowers fading like the flesh

from sweating pumice stone,
everything shapes this

till we are left
with the silence that surrounds Beethoven's head.


-Derek Walcott

Spanish Eyes

We all have our favourites. This is mine.

"A Martian sends a postcard home" by Craig Raine.

Always struck me how we might be looked at from a different planet, or by a very young child.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings –

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside –
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves –
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

B00!

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the water
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue
Anum Chara (Soul Friend)

Insect Overlord

Escapist's Woods

The soothing scent of conifers
And the aroma of cut grass
Haze slowly by, with dragonflies
Like winged rainbows or oil stains,
And twitters fly from hidden birds
In bushes bearing yellow bloom
’Neath rustling leaves as in a rush
The breeze plays branches like ocean waves.

An edge of broken rock protrudes
Its dirty point from underfoot
And prods into a booted heel
As clouds erupt from dusty path,
While daisies bend their sunshine heads
Away from shadows under leaves
And a beetle flutters emerald wings
But keeps its stroll along the track.

A single drop of water drips
To run along its streamy way
From blossomed branch to sweating brow,
Past a blinking eye and down his cheek,
Until it rests into his neck
Amongst his lightly sprouting stubble
And dries above his open collar
In setting orange evening heat.

He stands with chest half-bathed in light,
The other half, with right arm bare,
Shivers a little, under shadow,
And hairs stand up to catch warm air.
Alone in the woods, he flicks a hand
To ward a midge-swarm from his face,
And gently steps o’er moss and mushrooms,
Between cool boughs and into peace.

Tommy Collins

http://www.tommycollinspoetry.com/

Swiper the fox

An File wrote: »

Escapist's Woods

The soothing scent of conifers
And the aroma of cut grass
Haze slowly by, with dragonflies
Like winged rainbows or oil stains,
And twitters fly from hidden birds
In bushes bearing yellow bloom
’Neath rustling leaves as in a rush
The breeze plays branches like ocean waves.

An edge of broken rock protrudes
Its dirty point from underfoot
And prods into a booted heel
As clouds erupt from dusty path,
While daisies bend their sunshine heads
Away from shadows under leaves
And a beetle flutters emerald wings
But keeps its stroll along the track.

A single drop of water drips
To run along its streamy way
From blossomed branch to sweating brow,
Past a blinking eye and down his cheek,
Until it rests into his neck
Amongst his lightly sprouting stubble
And dries above his open collar
In setting orange evening heat.

He stands with chest half-bathed in light,
The other half, with right arm bare,
Shivers a little, under shadow,
And hairs stand up to catch warm air.
Alone in the woods, he flicks a hand
To ward a midge-swarm from his face,
And gently steps o’er moss and mushrooms,
Between cool boughs and into peace.

Tommy Collins

http://www.tommycollinspoetry.com/

Not your best or most accessible effort but very nice, I followed your link and absolutely loved some of those poems, outstanding work.

feargale

In Defence of Hedgehogs

I am very fond of hedgehogs
Which makes me want to say,
That I am struck with wonder,
How there's any left today,
For each morning as I travel
And no short distance that,
All I see are hedgehogs,
Squashed. And dead. And flat.

Now, hedgehogs are not clever,
No, hedgehogs are quite dim,
And when he sees your headlamps,
Well, it don't occur to him,
That the very wisest thing to do
Is up and run away,
No! he curls up in a stupid ball,
And no doubt starts to prey.

Well, motor cars do travel
At a most alarming rate,
And by lunch time you sees him,
It is very much too late,
And thus he gets a-squasho'd,
Unrecorded but for me,
With me pen and paper,
Sittin' in a tree.

It is statistically proven,
In chapter and in verse,
That in a car and hedgehog fight,
The hedgehog comes off worse,
When whistlin' down your prop shaft,
And bouncin' down your diff,
His coat of nice brown prickles
Is not effect-iff.

A hedgehog cannot make you laugh,
Whistle, dance or sing,
And he ain't much to look at,
And he don't make anything,
and in amongst his prickles,
There's fleas and bugs and that,
But there ain't no need to leave him,
Squashred. And dead. And flat.

Oh spare a thought for hedgehogs,
Spare a thought for me,
Spare a thought for hedgehogs,
As you drink your cup of tea,
Spare a thought for heedgehogs,
Hoverin' on the brinkt,
Spare a thought for hedgehogs,
Lest they become extinct.

- Pam Ayres.

Lady Chatterton

The Hawser
Throwing a Line

In the deep pause of night
I can think of you
heavy-limbed and lying

turn to me across the ocean
throw out an arm
let its weight fall across me

as a rope from boat to shore.

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan

Lady Chatterton

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock

donegal_man

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if the were all,
Whose elaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes' sake along the all.

Robert Frost

Clea

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.