A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Professor Moriarty

My Father in a White Space Suit

Yehuda Amichai


My father, in a white space suit,
walks around with the light, heavy steps of the dead
over the surface of my life that doesn’t
hold on to a thing.

He calls out names: This is the Crater of Childhood.
This is an abyss. This happened at your Bar Mitzvah. These
are white peaks. This is a deep voice
from then. He takes specimens and puts them away in his gear:
sand, words, the sighing stones of my dreams.
He surveys and determines. He calls me
the planet of his longings, land of my childhood, his
childhood, our childhood.

“Learn to play the violin, my son. When you are
grown-up, music will help you
in difficult moments of loneliness and pain.”
That’s what he told me once, but I didn’t believe him.

And then he floats, how he floats, into the grief
of his endless white death.

William Frederick Burton

Nothing

I take a jewel from a junk-shop tray
And wish I had a love to buy it for.
Nothing I choose will make you turn my way.
Nothing I give will make you love me more.

I know that I’ve embarrassed you too long
And I’m ashamed to linger at your door.
Whatever I embark on will be wrong.
Nothing I do will make you love me more.

I cannot work. I cannot read or write.
How can I frame a letter to implore.
Eloquence is a lie. The truth is trite.
Nothing I say will make you love me more.

So I replace the jewel in the tray
And laughingly pretend I’m far too poor.
Nothing I give, nothing I do or say,
Nothing I am will make you love me more.

James Fenton

Professor Moriarty

Sorry Chloe

Martial - Translated from Latin by AS Kline


Chloe, I could live without your face,
without your neck, and hands, and legs
without your breasts, and ass, and hips,
and Chloe, not to labour over details,
I could live without the whole of you.

Ipso

Someone in AH posted Shelley's Ozymandius. Reading about it on Wikipedia I learned that he had a competition with another poet, Horace Smith, to write a poem with the same idea.
Below is Smith's version.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place

donegal_man

It's All I Have To Bring Today

It's all I have to bring today
This, and my heart beside
This, and my heart, and all the fields
And all the meadows wide
Be sure you count - should I forget
Some one the sum could tell
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Emily Dickinson

Professor Moriarty

Late Love

Jackie Kay


How they strut about, people in love,
How tall they grow, pleased with themselves,
Their hair, glossy, their skin shining.
They don't remember who they have been.

How filmic they are just for this time.
How important they've become - secret, above
The order of things, the dreary mundane.
Every church bell ringing, a fresh sign.

How dull the lot that are not in love.
Their clothes shabby, their skin lustreless;
How clueless they are, hair a mess; how they trudge
Up and down the streets in the rain,

remembering one kiss in a dark alley,
A touch in a changing room, if lucky, a lovely wait
For the phone to ring, maybe, baby.
The past with its rush of velvet, its secret hush

Already miles away, dimming now, in the late day.

twignme

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Naomi Shihab Nye

daisyos1

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round,
or listened to rain slapping the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight,
or gazed at the sun fading into the night?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly,
when you ask “How are you?”, do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

Ever told your child, we’ll do it tomorrow,
and in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a friendship die,
’cause you never had time to call and say hi?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere,
you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
it’s like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life isn’t a race, so take it slower,
hear the music before your song is over.

Wowbagger

As a result of a conversation with my parents, I "remembered" this one, Hadn't really forgotten it...



Hilaire Belloc

Tarantella
(1929)

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in --
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

donegal_man

To A Mouse
On Turning her up in her Nest with the Plough

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
O what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request:
I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave,
And never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin':
And naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin'
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till, crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, oh! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Robert Burns

donegal_man

Haiku No. 1

To-con-vey one’s mood
In sev-en-teen syll-able-s
Is ve-ry dif-fic

John Cooper Clarke

Professor Moriarty

General Review Of The Sex Situation

Dorothy Parker


Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

marienbad

How Are The Children Robin

(for Robin Skelton)



It does not matter how are you how are
The children flying leaving home so early?
The song is lost asleep, the blackthorn breaks
Into its white flourish. The poet walks
At all odd times hoping the road is empty.
I mean me walking hoping the road is empty.

Not that I would ever expect to see
Them over the brow of the hill coming
In scarlet anoraks to meet their Dad.
A left, a right, my mad feet trudge the road
Between the busy times. It raineth now
Across the hedges and beneath the bough.

It does not matter let that be a lesson
To cross the fields. Keep off the roads. The Black
Wood of Madron with its roof of rooks
Is lost asleep flying into the dusk.
When shall we see the children older returning
Into the treetops? And what are they bringing?

WS Graham

Professor Moriarty

How to Disappear

Amanda Dalton


First rehearse the easy things.
Lose your words in a high wind,
walk in the dark on an unlit road,
observe how other people mislay keys,
their diaries, new umbrellas.
See what it takes to go unnoticed
in a crowded room. Tell lies:
I love you. I'll be back in half an hour.
I'm fine.

The childish things.
Stand very still behind a tree,
become a cowboy, say you have died,
climb into wardrobes, breathe on a mirror
until there's no one there, and practice magic,
tricks with smoke and fire --
a flick of the wrist and the victim's lost
his watch, his wife, his ten pound note. Perfect it.
Hold your breath a little longer every time.

The hardest things.
Eat less, much less, and take a vow of silence.
Learn the point of vanishing, the moment
embers turn to ash, the sun falls down,
the sudden white-out comes.
And when it comes again - it will -
just walk at it. walk into it, and walk,
until your know that you're no longer
anywhere.

Professor Moriarty

In Defence of Adultery

Julia Copus


We don’t fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does –
whether a symphony or ballad –
and it is sepia-coloured,
like spilt tea that inches up
the tiny tube-like gaps inside
a cube of sugar lying by a cup.
Yes, love’s like that: just when we least
needed or expected it
a part of us dips into it
by chance or mishap and it seeps
through our capillaries, it clings
inside the chambers of the heart.
We’re victims, we say: mere vessels,
drinking the vanilla scent
of this one’s skin, the lustre
of another’s eyes so skilfully
darkened with bistre. And whatever
damage might result we’re not
to blame for it: love is an autocrat
and won’t be disobeyed.
Sometimes we manage
to convince ourselves of that.

Professor Moriarty

The Way Through the Woods

Rudyard Kipling


They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

Professor Moriarty

Switch

Seán O'Riordáin

Translated from the Irish the by Patrick Crotty


Come here,' said Turnbull, 'till you see the sadness
In the horse's eyes,
If you had such big hooves under you there'd be sadness
In your eyes too.'

It was clear that he understood so well the sadness
In the horse's eyes,
And had pondered it so long that in the end he'd plunged
Into the horse's mind.

I looked at the horse to see the sadness
Obvious in its eyes,
And saw Trumbull's eyes looking in my direction
From the horse's head.

I looked at Turnbull one last time
And saw on his face
Outsize eyes that were dumb with sadness –
The horse's eyes.

donegal_man

Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Said “I like my name immensely
But sometimes when I’ve had a few
I call myself Edmund Bentley Clerihew”

Mark Hoult

Professor Moriarty

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wowbagger

For the days that are in it!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


By Robert Frost



Whose woods these are I think I know.


His house is in the village though;


He will not see me stopping here


To watch his woods fill up with snow.





My little horse must think it queer


To stop without a farmhouse near


Between the woods and frozen lake


The darkest evening of the year.





He gives his harness bells a shake


To ask if there is some mistake.


The only other sound’s the sweep


Of easy wind and downy flake.





The woods are lovely, dark and deep,


But I have promises to keep,


And miles to go before I sleep,


And miles to go before I sleep.

Professor Moriarty

Traveling Through the Dark

William Stafford


Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason–
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all–my only swerving–,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Professor Moriarty

Fight Song

Deborah Garrison


Sometimes you have to say it:
Fúck them all.

Yes fúck them all-
the artsy posers,
the office blowhards
and brown-nosers;

Fúck the type who gets the job done
and the type who stands on principle;
the down to earth and the understated;

Project director?
Get a bullshít detector.

Client’s mum?
Up your bum.

You can’t be nice to everyone.

When your back is to the wall
When they don’t return your call
When you’re sick of saving face
When you’re screwed in any case

Fúck culture scanners, contest winners,
subtle thinkers and the hacks who offend them,
people who give catered dinners
and (saddest of sinners) the sheep who attend them-

which is to say fúck yourself
and the person you were: polite and mature,
a trooper for good. The beauty is
they’ll soon forget

And if they don’t
they probably should.

Malayalam

Divine Wrath by Adelia Prado


When I was wounded
whether by God, the devil, or myself
—I don’t know yet which—
it was seeing the sparrows again
and clumps of clover, after three days,
that told me I hadn’t died.
When I was young,
all it took were those sparrows,
those lush little leaves,
for me to sing praises,
dedicate operas to the Lord.
But a dog who’s been beaten
is slow to go back to barking
and making a fuss over his owner
—an animal, not a person
like me who can ask:
Why do you beat me?
Which is why, despite the sparrows and the clover,
a subtle shadow still hovers over my spirit.
May whoever hurt me, forgive me.

Professor Moriarty

How Many Times

Marie Howe


No matter how many times I try I can't stop my father
from walking into my sister's room

and I can't see any better, leaning from here to look
in his eyes. It's dark in the hall

and everyone's sleeping. This is the past
where everything is perfect already and nothing changes,

where the water glass falls to the bathroom floor
and bounces once before breaking.

Nothing. Not the small sound my sister makes, turning
over, not the thump of the dog's tail

when he opens one eye to see him stumbling back to bed
still drunk, a little bewildered.

This is exactly as I knew it would be.
And if I whisper her name, hissing a warning,

I've been doing that for years now, and still the dog
startles and growls until he sees

it's our father, and still the door opens, and she
makes that small oh turning over.

Lisha

That’s horrifying and sad as you realise that people feel they can’t stop such horror.

Malayalam

Freedom by Seán O Riordain

(I love this poem, sometimes I read the Irish version aloud for myself, to keep the language alive in my head, and because i think it sounds better in the Irish original. PS it's a satire)

I’ll go out and mingle with people.
I’ll head down on my own two feet.
I’ll walk down tonight.

I’ll go down looking for Confinedom,
counteract the rabid freedom
coursing here.

I’ll fetter the pack of snarling thoughts
hounding me
in my aloneness.

I’ll look for a regular chapel
chock-a-block with people
at a set time.

I’ll seek the company of folk
who never practise freedom,
nor aloneness,

and listen to pennythoughts
exchanged
like something coined.

I’ll bear affection for people
without anything original
in their stockthoughts.

I’ll stay with them day and night.
I’ll be humble
and loyal to their snuffed minds

since I heard them
rising in my mind
without control.

I’ll give all my furious affection
to everything that binds them
to every stockthing:

to control, to contracts, to the communal temple,
to the poor common word,
to the concise time,

to the cowl, to the cockerel, to the cook,
to the weak comparison,
to the coward,

to the cosy mouse, to the cost, to the covert flea,
to the code, to the codex,
to the codicil,

to the cocky coming and going,
to the costly night gambling,
to the conferred blessing,

to the concerned farmer testing
the wind, contemplating
a field of corn,
to co-understanding, to co-memory,
to the co-behaviour of co-people,
to the co-stockthing.

And I condemn now and forever
the goings-on of freedom,
independence.

The mind is finished
that falls into the abyss of freedom.
There’s no hills made by god there,
only abstract hills — specifically of the imagination.
Every hill crawls with desires
that climb without ever reaching fulfilment.
There’s no limit to freedom
on Mount Fancy,
nor is there limit to desire,
nor any relief
to be found.



Saoirse

Raghaidh mé síos i measc na ndaoine
De shiúl mo chos
Is raghaidh mé síos anocht.

Raghaidh mé síos ag lorg daoirse
Ón mbinibshaoirse
Tá ag liú anseo

Is ceanglód an chonairt smaointe
Tá ag drannadh im thimpeall
San uaigneas

Is loirgeod an teampall rialta
Bhionn lán de dhaoine
Ag am fé leith

Is loirgeod comhluadar daoine
Nár chleacht riamh saoirse,
Ná uaigneas.
Is éistfead leis na scillingsmaointe,
A malartaítear
Mar airgead.

Is bhféarfad gean mo chroí do dhaoine
Nár samhlaidh riamh leo
Ach macsmaointe.

Ó fanfad libh de ló is d’oiche,
Is beidh mé íseal,
Is beidh mé dílis,
D’bhur snabsmaointe.

Mar do chuala iad ag fás im intinn,
Ag fás gan chuimse,
Gan mheasarthacht.

Is do thugas gean mo chroí go fíochmhar
Don rud tá srianta,
Don gach macrud.

Don smacht, don reacht, don teampall daoineach,
Don bhfocal bocht coitianta
Don am fé leith.

Don ab, don chlog, don seirbhiseach
Don chomparáid fhaitíosach,
Don bheaguchtach.

Don luch, don tomhas, don dreancaid bhideach,
Don chaibidil, don líne
Don aibítir.

Don mhórgacht imeachta is tíochta,
Don chearrbhachas istoíche,
Don bheannachtain.

Don bhfeirmeoir ag tomhas na gaoithe
Sa bhfómhar is é ag cuirnhneamh
Ar pháirc eornan.

Don chomhthuiscint, don chomh-sheanchuimhne,
Do chomhiompar comhdhaoine,
Don chomh-mhacrud

Is bheirim fuath anois is choíche
Do imeachtaí na saoirse,
Don neamhspleáchas.

Is atuirseach an intinn
A thit in iomar doimhin na saoirse,
Ní mhaireann cnoc dar chruthaigh Dia ann,
Ach cnoic theibi, sainchnoic shamhlaíochta.
Is bíonn gach cnoc díobh lán de mhianta
Ag dreapadóireacht gan chomhlíonadh,
Nil teora leis an saoirse
Ná le cnoca na samhlaíochta,
Ná níl teora leis na mianta,
Ná faoiseamh
Le fail.

DunnoKidz

Now I wish boards had audio, if only to listen to that ^

DunnoKidz

I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart

Edna St Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.

No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.

Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

Gremlinertia

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Call To Account!


The drum of war thunders and thunders.
It calls: thrust iron into the living.
From every country
slave after slave
are thrown onto bayonet steel.
For the sake of what?
The earth shivers
hungry
and stripped.
Mankind is vapourised in a blood bath
only so
someone
somewhere
can get hold of Albania.
Human gangs bound in malice,
blow after blow strikes the world
only for
someone’s vessels
to pass without charge
through the Bosporus.
Soon
the world
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out.
And trampled down
only for someone,
to lay
their hands on
Mesopotamia.
Why does
a boot
crush the Earth — fissured and rough?
What is above the battles’ sky -
Freedom?
God?
Money!
When will you stand to your full height,
you,
giving them your life?
When will you hurl a question to their faces:
Why are we fighting?

DunnoKidz

Mutability

Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. —A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. —One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! —For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.