Your favourite poem?

marzic

Slightly off topic, but this is the first time I've shared this. I wrote a poem on a flight to chicago in summer 1994, while looking out the window I thought it was strange clouds at first, but realised it was Greenland. I dont remember all the words but this is my favourite bit.../ahem:

...the sea like a glass hand, gripping the rocky fingers of the land,
a pure and virgin land - veiled by its obstacality to man,
but men are tough, and sooner or later succeed... in fcuking up

by marzic

MattHelders

Bogland and The Forge by Heaney

Wonderful poetry

ene

my favourite poem is 'dear mum' by brian patten. i learnt it in school when i was about 12 and it has made me laugh ever since!


"dear mom" -Brian Patten

Dear Mum,
while you were out
a cup went and broke itself,
a crack appeard in the blue vase
your great-great grandad
brought back from Mr. Ming in China.
Somehow, without me even turning on the tap,
the sink mysteriously overflowed.
A strange jam-stain,
about the size of a boy's hand,
appeard on the kitchen wall.
I don't think we will ever dicover
exactly how the cat
managed to turn on the washer-machine
(especialy from inside),
or how sis's pet rabbit went out and mistook
the waste-desposal unit for a burrow.
Ican teel you i was scared when,
as if by magic,
a series of muddy footprints
appeared on the new white carpet.
I was being good
(honest)
buti think the house id haunted so
knowing you're going to have a fit
I've gone to gran's for a bit.

--Kaiser--

An excerpt from An Essay on Man

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Alexaner Pope

john the revelator

Hand in hand
Gland in hand
Gland in gland
Grand!

kincsem

The Quiet Life

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread
Whose flocks supply him with attire
Whose trees in summer yield him shade
In winter fire

Blest who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixt, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Lady Chatterton

How Do I Love Thee?

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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Edit: Not my favourite, more a poem that means something right now!

Tony Soprano.

MrsD007 wrote: »

How Do I Love Thee?

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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Head back to the Late Late Show thread where you belong. :pac:

Or else, start listening to Leonard Cohen for some serious poetry.

Say Your Number

The Don't Quit Poem

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]- Author unknown[/FONT]

Wee Willy Harris

I don't have one... that would go so far as to call emselves that though I'm sure the hiphopsters amongst us are more cultured that way...

Give it another few years n they'll be passing as the arts on RTÈ 1 Radio.

GalwayGuy2

This is one of the only poems that really caught me, A poison Tree by William Blake.

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

aaronjumper

It's a nonsense poem I don't know who by:

One fine day,
in the middle of the night,
two dead men got up to fight,
back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot each other.

It's not exactly deep but it makes me smile.

Ciderswigger

I don't really have a favourite poem (says she who is doing a degree in English! ) but Be Glad Your Nose is on Your face by Jack Prelutsky always made me smile. Not exactly a deep and meaningful topic, but fun all the same.

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.

Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.

Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!




My favourite line is from The Great Gatsby. I think it is full of passion and the one sentence speaks volumes.
'That any one should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head made damp the pyjama pocket over his heart.'

*sigh*

Super-Rush

Tony Soprano. wrote: »

Head back to the Late Late Show thread where you belong. :pac:

Or else, start listening to Leonard Cohen for some serious poetry.

Quit being a dick ok.

jupiterjack

just love inniskeen road july evening...

cloptrop

Im lookin for feedback on this one .


It was kinda startlin,
It was kinda sore,
That first taste of malt whiskey,
Left my sense out on the shore ,
I went swimmin with my demons ,
I tore the floor out the seeds they bore,
Explainin myself to chameleons,
To avoid the knee jerk feeble law.

It was pretty liberatin,
Seein the outside of the court ,
I longed for more that malt whiskey ,
Id have to mug and steel and whore,
I stuck on 2 player with the devil ,
Stole the seat out the pants he wore ,
He told his parents he was wedgied,
Its not as if he never lied before.



Me mate just wrote that in about twenty minutes . What you think ?

Edit : he wrote it on an etch a sketch then passed out . True story .

hairyprincess

One I wrote myself ;-)

cloptrop

Im not sure now . Its still wrote on the etch a sketch thingy and the rooms fairly clean . But I dont remember much else . I must ask him when i find him.

TwoBirds

The Mermaid


A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

William Butler Yeats

rain10

Daffodils - William Wordsworth

TURRICAN

I love this one from lee Evans.

There was a young man from gosham
Who took out his balls to wash em
His wife said jack if ya don't put em back
Il stand on the buggers and squash em!

Boom.

biko

Miss Lockhart

What a great thread - has brought back some great memories.

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned - The Listeners and Silver (de la Mare), Memories of a Christmas Childhood (Kavanagh), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost), I felt a funeral in my brain.. (Dickinson), The Road not Taken (Frost).

Others I love are:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats.

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen.

The Night Mail by WH Auden.

Moments When the Light by Brendan Kennelly.

This Moment by Eavan Boland. (probably my favourite in terms of beautiful imagery)

And this section of Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas:

There's the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles of the humming streets, hammering of horse- shoes, gobble quack and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring whinny and morning moo from the clog dancing farms, the gulls' gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs Organ Morgan's general shop where everything is sold: custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar, stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles.

cranks

Cheers for thread OP.
Poetry with my beer is going down well this Sunday night.

Thomas Kinsella's 'Mirror in February' (posted a few pages back) - still a goodie after all these years!

I think this is quite gorgeous:

Along the Sun-Drenched Roadside

Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great
hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations
has been a trough, renewing in itself
an inch or two of rain, I satisfy
my thirst: taking the water's pristine coolness
into my whole body through my wrists.
Drinking would be too powerful, too clear;
but this unhurried gesture of restraint
fills my whole consciousness with shining water.

Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Reindeer

I live my life as I have learned from Frost and Dylan. I take the road less traveled, and I do not intend to go gently into the night.

thefasteriwalk

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

I also love 'Mehibbel dances with Boreas' by Don Marquis. Lovely reading of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pb__Tm31qU
In fact, this youtube account is well worth subscribing to.

Howl is another one. Loves me some Ginsberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdnlSh3_KF4 'Alcohol, cock and endless balls'. Pure poetry, sir!

Ann22

Just a clip from Patrick Kavanagh's 'A Christmas Childhood'. I emboldened my favourite lines.

My father played the melodeon
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside the cow‑house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable‑lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water‑hen screeched in the bog,
Mass‑going feet
Crunched the wafer‑ice on the pot‑holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Beautiful! And this... mentioned already but I thought it deserved a repost.

Silver by Walter De La Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Mr. Pink

My favourite poem is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" but i was beaten to it so here's a couple of songs I love that ive always found poetic and have always gotten lost in listening to them

"Right In Two"

Angels on the sideline,
Puzzled and amused.
Why did Father give these humans free will?
Now they're all confused.

Don't these talking monkeys know that
Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys,
Where there's one you're bound to divide it.
Right in two.

Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
And this is what they choose...

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs,
They forge a blade,
And where there's one
they're bound to divide it,
Right in two.
Right in two.

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey.
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs.
They make a club.
And beat their brother, down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery.

Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven conscious of his fleeting time here.

Cut it all right in two

Fight over the clouds, over wind, over sky
Fight over life, over blood, over prayer,
overhead and light
Fight over love, over sun,
over another, Fight...

Angels on the sideline again.
Benched along with patience and reason.
Angels on the sideline again
Wondering when this tug of war will end.


"Reflection"

I have come curiously close to the end, though
Beneath my self-indulgent pitiful hole,
Defeated
I concede and
Move closer
I may find comfort here
I may find peace within the emptiness
How Pitiful

It's calling me...

And in my darkest moment, feeble and weeping
The moon tells me a secret, a confidant
As full and bright as I am
This light is not my own and
A million light reflections pass over me
Its source is bright and endless
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her, we are lifeless satellites drifting

And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt
You wanna peer down here survey my narcissism
I must crucify the ego before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out
Before I pine away.

So crucify the ego, before it's far too late
And leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical
And you will come to find that we are all one mind
Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable
So let the light touch you so that the words spill through
And let the past break through bringing out our hope and reason
Before we hide away.

tony 2 tone

Oliphant
Grey as a mouse,
Big as a house,
Nose like a snake,
I make the earth shake,
As I tramp through the grass;
Trees crack as I pass.
With horns in my mouth
I walk in the South,
Flapping big ears.
Beyond count of years
I stump round and round,
Never lie on the ground,
Not even to die.

Oliphant am I,
Biggest of all,
Huge, old, and tall.
If ever you’d met me.
If you never do,
You won’t think I’m true;
But old Oliphant am I,
And I never lie.

Slurryface

tayto lover wrote: »

Can't see how you can like a poem like that Slurryface with you're history of posts on economic threads. You remind me of Alestair

Tough, I get to like what I like, and you dont get an opinion on it.