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A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

13468927

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,048 ✭✭✭Amazotheamazing


    marienbad wrote: »
    Pushkin certainly knew about love,in a way he died for it I suppose.

    There's a few different translations of that poem, think that's my favourite though. Fairly legendary way to go out, fight a duel, get shot in the stomach, manage to wound the other guy and then forgive him. It's Dangerous Liaisons all over again.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    There's a few different translations of that poem, think that's my favourite though. Fairly legendary way to go out, fight a duel, get shot in the stomach, manage to wound the other guy and then forgive him. It's Dangerous Liaisons all over again.

    And all for the love of a woman. My favourite translation also , some of the others are a bit clunky if you know what I mean. Fine art to translate poetry correctly is'nt it. To convey the meaning but retain the poetry .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,048 ✭✭✭Amazotheamazing


    marienbad wrote: »
    And all for the love of a woman. My favourite translation also , some of the others are a bit clunky if you know what I mean. Fine art to translate poetry correctly is'nt it. To convey the meaning but retain the poetry .

    There is a real, subtle art to translation that all too frequently gets overlooked, imo.


  • Registered Users Posts: 221 ✭✭tomasocarthaigh


    Robert Burns



    ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY'S BONNET AT CHURCH Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie! Your impudence protects you sairly: I canna say but ye strunt rarely Owre gauze and lace; Tho' faith, I fear ye dine but sparely On sic a place. Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner, Detested, shunned by saunt an' sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her, Sae fine a lady! Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner, On some poor body. Swith, in some beggar's haffet squattle; There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle Wi' ither kindred, jumpin cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn or bane ne'er daur unsettle Your thick plantations. Now haud ye there, ye're out o' sight, Below the fatt'rels, snug an' tight; Na faith ye yet! ye'll no be right Till ye've got on it, The vera tapmost, towering height O' Miss's bonnet. My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump an' grey as onie grozet: O for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o't, Wad dress your droddum! I wad na been surprised to spy You on an auld wife's flainen toy; Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, On's wyliecoat; But Miss's fine Lunardi!—fie! How daur ye do't? O Jenny, dinna toss your head, An' set your beauties a' abread! Ye little ken what cursed speed The blastie's makin! Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin! O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n Devotion!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 196 ✭✭mikeyboy


    A Belgian Orphan"

    Daddy was a Belgian and so was Mammy too,
    And why I'm now in Larne I want to tell to you:
    Daddy was a soldier and fought his level best
    For both his King a Country, and I'll tell you the rest.
    Our home was snug and cosy and how happy we were all,
    Until Daddy he was ordered to obey his country's call. . . .

    One day a short time after, a troop of Germans came,
    While we sat around the table, playing a childish game;
    Mammy was busy baking bread for all our tea,
    When the door was flung wide open and in stepped Germans three.

    One spoke to mammy saying, "Stay your labour for your kids,
    Give to us all this bread! or we'll stab your bony ribs!"
    And raising high his glittering sword one cut off Mammy's head,
    Her body fell upon me, while her poor neck bled and bled!

    Three shots soon followed after, and my dear wee brothers three
    Fell dead across poor Mammy whose neck bled on my knee;
    I screamed, "Oh sirs wee Hors is shot, and Buhn and Wilhelm too!"
    Then on my knees I fell and begged they'd spare wee brother Dhu;

    Just then they raised the little lad and threw him on the fire,
    And wreathed in smiles they watched him burn until he did expire;
    My poor wee sisters screamed and cried, and clutched dead Mammy's hands,
    When lo! they cut off baby's head and also her wee hands.

    Ah sirs, I begged, just kill me now, else I shall die with fear.
    One drew his sword - cut off my hand, I reached the other out,
    "Cut this off too, ye cowards?" I then began to shout.
    In rushed some neighbor women with knives both bright and sharp
    And stabbed the Kaiser's butchers into their very hearts.

    Take warning all ye British Boys, turn out in thousands strong;
    Go fight for King and Country and France will aid you on!
    If you should meet the Kaiser, cut off his only arm,
    For his "wee one," it won't matter, it can't do any harm.

    I've just heard Daddy, too, is killed, so all alone I'm left,
    Of brothers, sisters, parents dear, I have been made bereft.
    Some day I'll die and meet them all, 'twill be a joyous sight,
    For us to live in glory, and view the Kaiser's plight -
    Tortured with remorseful flames, he won't have power to quell
    If nobody conquer him on earth the devil will in hell

    Amanda McKittrick Ros.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,113 ✭✭✭cailinoBAC


    I've been looking for love poems, but I don't think you could quite describe this as one...I do like it though!

    He loved three things alone:

    White peacocks, evensong,
    Old maps of America.

    He hated children crying,
    And raspberry jam with his tea,
    And womanish hysteria.

    … And he had married me

    Anna Akhmatova


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    cailinoBAC wrote: »
    I've been looking for love poems, but I don't think you could quite describe this as one...I do like it though!

    He loved three things alone:

    White peacocks, evensong,
    Old maps of America.

    He hated children crying,
    And raspberry jam with his tea,
    And womanish hysteria.

    … And he had married me

    Anna Akhmatova

    Oh it is a love poem allright and by one of the greatest , No one knew love and loss better the Akhmatova


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,113 ✭✭✭cailinoBAC


    Oh I've read plenty about Akhmatova (and this one somewhere along the way) but only reading her poetry by itself now, as opposed to quotes in other reading. I know that it is about love...but more the loss of it, than the love itself, I think.
    I haven't read much poetry in a while and I am looking for, I suppose, more optimistic love poetry at the moment, but in buying some books, I just had to pick up a book of hers and of course it's the first one I'm reading.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    The Waste Land: Five Limericks (by Wendy Cope)

    I
    In April one seldom feels cheerful;
    Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
    Clairvoyants distress me,
    Commuters depress me
    Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

    II
    She sat on a mighty fine chair,
    Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
    She asks many questions,
    I make few suggestions--
    Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

    III
    The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
    Tiresias fancies a peep--
    A typist is laid,
    A record is played--
    Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

    IV
    A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
    About birds and his business--the lot,
    Which is no surprise,
    Since he'd met his demise
    And been left in the ocean to rot.

    V
    No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
    Then thunder, a shower of quotes
    From the Sanskrit and Dante.
    Da. Damyata. Shantih.
    I hope you'll make sense of the notes.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    The Waste Land: Five Limericks (by Wendy Cope)

    I
    In April one seldom feels cheerful;
    Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
    Clairvoyants distress me,
    Commuters depress me
    Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

    II
    She sat on a mighty fine chair,
    Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
    She asks many questions,
    I make few suggestions--
    Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

    III
    The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
    Tiresias fancies a peep--
    A typist is laid,
    A record is played--
    Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

    IV
    A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
    About birds and his business--the lot,
    Which is no surprise,
    Since he'd met his demise
    And been left in the ocean to rot.

    V
    No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
    Then thunder, a shower of quotes
    From the Sanskrit and Dante.
    Da. Damyata. Shantih.
    I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

    Brilliant, just brilliant- T.S pompous git will not be pleased


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34 bain_triail_as


    e.e. cummings - anyone lived in a pretty how town

    http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/11880


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (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 that 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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,959 ✭✭✭_Whimsical_


    cailinoBAC wrote: »
    I've been looking for love poems...

    A more on the nose love poem despite being called "I do not love you":)



    I do not love you... (Pablo Neruda)


    I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
    or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
    I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
    in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

    I love you as the plant that never blooms
    but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
    thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
    risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

    I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
    I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
    so I love you because I know no other way

    that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
    so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
    so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


    Check Neruda out if you are looking for love poems. There are even some very sensuous raunchy ones!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    Days (Philip Larkin)

    What are days for?
    Days are where we live.
    They come, they wake us
    Time and time over.
    They are to be happy in:
    Where can we live but days?

    Ah, solving that question
    Brings the priest and the doctor
    In their long coats
    Running over the fields.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 196 ✭✭mikeyboy


    Morning Dictation

    Come in, Miss Jones, and take a letter,
    How’s your mother, hope she’s better?
    Now let’s see, ah, Gunn and Frame,
    Their plea for time, it is quite lame,
    So, my dear sirs, I do regret,
    I must foreclose, I won’t forget,
    I want the farm, the pigs, the corn,
    Please do vacate by Monday morn.
    That’s all dealt with, now let’s see,
    I think we’ll take our morning tea,
    Then we’ll write to Freddie Mann
    And repossess his caravan,
    Then send a bill to Dewar’s garage,
    His profits I can duly ravage,
    Foreclose the deal and repossess,
    You do look lovely in that dress,
    Then go kick out old Uncle Tom
    And pile his stuff out on the lawn.
    Ah, Miss Jones, Miss Jones, would you marry me,
    And bring me up my morning tea?
    I know it’s sudden, please don’t mind,
    But I am solvent, warm and kind,
    What’s that, my love, you spurn this banker?
    And where did you learn a word like…?



    Max Scratchman


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,747 ✭✭✭fisgon


    from The Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

    The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.Who has done his day's work who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me?Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

    This poem is half a book long, the above is only one small part, part 51. A stunning work, containing one of the greatest lines in literature - "I am large, I contain multitudes". A work of genius.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 12,536 Mod ✭✭✭✭Amirani


    Living in Sin

    "She had thought the studio would keep itself;
    no dust upon the furniture of love.
    Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
    the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
    a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
    stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
    had risen at his urging.
    Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
    under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
    so coldly would delineate the scraps
    of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
    that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
    a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own---
    envoy from some village in the moldings . . .
    Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
    sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
    declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
    rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
    while she, jeered by the minor demons,
    pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
    a towel to dust the table-top,
    and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
    By evening she was back in love again,
    though not so wholly but throughout the night
    she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
    like a relentless milkman up the stairs."

    Adrienne Rich


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    From The Waste Land

    At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
    Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
    Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
    I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
    Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
    At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
    Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
    The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
    Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
    Out of the window perilously spread
    Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
    On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
    Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
    I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
    Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
    I too awaited the expected guest.
    He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
    A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
    One of the low on whom assurance sits
    As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire,
    The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
    The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
    Endeavours to engage her in caresses
    Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
    Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
    Exploring hands encounter no defence;
    His vanity requires no response,
    And makes a welcome of indifference.
    (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
    Enacted on this same divan or bed;
    I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
    And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
    Bestows one final patronising kiss,
    And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. . .
    She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
    Hardly aware of her departed lover;
    Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
    "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
    When lovely woman stoops to folly and
    Paces about her room again, alone,
    She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
    And puts a record on the gramophone.

    T.S.Eliot


  • Registered Users Posts: 788 ✭✭✭marty1985


    Brendan Kennelly - Begin
    Begin again to the summoning birds
    to the sight of light at the window,
    begin to the roar of morning traffic
    all along Pembroke Road.
    Every beginning is a promise
    born in light and dying in dark
    determination and exaltation of springtime
    flowering the way to work.
    Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
    the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
    bridges linking the past and the future
    old friends passing through with us still.
    Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
    since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
    begin to wonder at unknown faces
    at crying birds in the sudden rain
    at branches stark in the willing sunlight
    at seagulls foraging for bread
    at couples sharing a sunny secret
    alone together while making good.
    Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
    that always seems about to give in
    something that will not acknowledge conclusion
    insists that we forever begin.

    One night on The Late Late Show, Gay Byrne rang a woman to tell her she had won a car. The jovial atmosphere came to a sudden halt when she responded to his teasing about her not being in a good mood with "my daughter died last night."

    The rest, was television history. Gay handled it superbly, and turned to his guest Brendan Kennelly to offer some words of support. Keeping calm, Brendan, from memory, recited the above poem and ended it with "that's for you."


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  • Registered Users Posts: 788 ✭✭✭marty1985


    Though There Are Torturers
    by Michael Coady

    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    The Road Not Taken

    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveller, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
    Though as for that the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.
    Oh, I marked the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
    I took the one less travelled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

    Robert Frost


  • Registered Users Posts: 247 ✭✭MadameGascar


    Pike

    Ted Hughes

    Pike, three inches long, perfect
    Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
    Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
    They dance on the surface among the flies.

    Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
    Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
    Of submarine delicacy and horror.
    A hundred feet long in their world.

    In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
    Gloom of their stillness:
    Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
    Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

    The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
    Not to be changed at this date:
    A life subdued to its instrument;
    The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

    Three we kept behind glass,
    Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
    And four and a half: red fry to them-
    Suddenly there were two. Finally one

    With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
    And indeed they spare nobody.
    Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
    High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

    One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
    The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
    The same iron in this eye
    Though its film shrank in death.

    A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
    Whose lilies and muscular tench
    Had outlasted every visible stone
    Of the monastery that planted them-

    Stilled legendary depth:
    It was as deep as England. It held
    Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
    That past nightfall I dared not cast

    But silently cast and fished
    With the hair frozen on my head
    For what might move, for what eye might move.
    The still splashes on the dark pond,

    Owls hushing the floating woods
    Frail on my ear against the dream
    Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
    That rose slowly toward me, watching.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    Meeting The British

    We met the British in the dead of winter.
    The sky was lavender

    and the snow lavender-blue.
    I could hear, far below,

    the sound of two streams coming together
    (both were frozen over)

    and, no less strange,
    myself calling out in French

    across that forest-
    clearing. Neither General Jeffrey Amherst

    nor Colonel Henry Bouquet
    could stomach our willow-tobacco.

    As for the unusual
    scent when the Colonel shook out his hand-

    kerchief: C'est la lavande,
    une fleur mauve comme le ciel.

    They gave us six fishhooks
    and two blankets embroidered with smallpox.

    Paul Muldoon 1987


  • Registered Users Posts: 221 ✭✭tomasocarthaigh


    The Atheist and the Thief

    Written by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh


    Two men in life once came to grief,
    One was an atheist, the other, a thief,
    They shared a cell for a time brief,
    And discussed their views on life.
    As they passed the time along,
    They discussed right and debated wrong,
    An occasionally burst into song,
    Lamenting the world and its strife.


    Read the full poem here >>>


    Similar posts



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,461 ✭✭✭--Kaiser--


    The Eagle - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
    Close to the sun in lonely lands,
    Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

    The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
    He watches from his mountain walls,
    And like a thunderbolt he falls.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    A clerihew, by Harry S. Angstrom

    Prolific playwright William Shakespeare
    Carped at his wife, while penning King Lear
    "Forsooth my dear, for when I'm dead
    I'll leave to thee my second best bed!"


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 27 Alice Milligan


    The sleep sea calls
    To my mariner bold,
    Come hither to me,
    The night is cold.

    Mine arms are wide
    And my deeps are kind,
    For never to me
    Comes stormy wind.

    My rocks are dreams,
    Where, a-drift, a-drift,
    My cradle-ship
    May fall and lift.

    My shoals are isles
    Of slumbery sweets
    Where never a wave
    In anger beats.

    Do shut thine eyes
    My mariner bold:
    The sleep sea calls,
    The night is cold.

    Mary Gilmore


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 361 ✭✭jazz101


    Bobby Sands: The Rhythm of Time

    There’s an inner thing in every man,
    Do you know this thing my friend?
    It has withstood the blows of a million years,
    And will do so to the end.
    It was born when time did not exist,
    And it grew up out of life,
    It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
    Like a slashing searing knife.
    It lit fires when fires were not,
    And burnt the mind of man,
    Tempering leadened hearts to steel,
    From the time that time began.
    It wept by the waters of Babylon,
    And when all men were a loss,
    It screeched in writhing agony,
    And it hung bleeding from the Cross.
    It died in Rome by lion and sword,
    And in defiant cruel array,
    When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
    Along the Appian Way.
    It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
    And frightened lord and king,
    And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
    As e’er a living thing.
    It smiled in holy innocence,
    Before conquistadors of old,
    So meek and tame and unaware,
    Of the deathly power of gold.
    It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
    And stormed the old Bastille,
    And marched upon the serpent’s head,
    And crushed it ‘neath its heel.
    It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
    And starved by moons of rain,
    Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
    But it will come to rise again.
    It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
    As it was knelt upon the ground,
    And it died in great defiance,
    As they coldly shot it down.
    It is found in every light of hope,
    It knows no bounds nor space
    It has risen in red and black and white,
    It is there in every race.
    It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
    It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
    It has reached the peak of mountains high,
    It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
    It lights the dark of this prison cell,
    It thunders forth its might,
    It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
    That thought that says ‘I’m right!’

    I have little sympathy for his plight or his background, but this is fantastic in my opinion.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 565 ✭✭✭thefasteriwalk


    Monet Refuses The Operation

    Doctor, you say 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 dissolves
    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 change 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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,981 ✭✭✭[-0-]


    jazz101 wrote: »
    Bobby Sands: The Rhythm of Time

    There’s an inner thing in every man,
    Do you know this thing my friend?
    It has withstood the blows of a million years,
    And will do so to the end.
    It was born when time did not exist,
    And it grew up out of life,
    It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
    Like a slashing searing knife.
    It lit fires when fires were not,
    And burnt the mind of man,
    Tempering leadened hearts to steel,
    From the time that time began.
    It wept by the waters of Babylon,
    And when all men were a loss,
    It screeched in writhing agony,
    And it hung bleeding from the Cross.
    It died in Rome by lion and sword,
    And in defiant cruel array,
    When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
    Along the Appian Way.
    It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
    And frightened lord and king,
    And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
    As e’er a living thing.
    It smiled in holy innocence,
    Before conquistadors of old,
    So meek and tame and unaware,
    Of the deathly power of gold.
    It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
    And stormed the old Bastille,
    And marched upon the serpent’s head,
    And crushed it ‘neath its heel.
    It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
    And starved by moons of rain,
    Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
    But it will come to rise again.
    It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
    As it was knelt upon the ground,
    And it died in great defiance,
    As they coldly shot it down.
    It is found in every light of hope,
    It knows no bounds nor space
    It has risen in red and black and white,
    It is there in every race.
    It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
    It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
    It has reached the peak of mountains high,
    It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
    It lights the dark of this prison cell,
    It thunders forth its might,
    It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
    That thought that says ‘I’m right!’

    I have little sympathy for his plight or his background, but this is fantastic in my opinion.

    This is wonderful.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,981 ✭✭✭[-0-]


    Bobby Sands: A Place to Rest

    As the day crawls out another night crawls in
    Time neither moves nor dies.
    It’s the time of day when the lark sings,
    The black of night when the curlew cries.

    There’s rain on the wind, the tears of spirits
    The clink of key on iron is near,
    A shuttling train passes by on rail,
    There’s more than God for man to fear.

    Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie,
    And like ships in the night they blindly sail,
    Blown by a thought — that breaks the heart —
    Of forty women in Armagh jail.

    Oh! and I wish I were with the gentle folk,
    Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen,
    Away from the black devils of H-Block hell,
    Who torture my heart and haunt my dream.

    I would gladly rest where the whin bush grow,
    Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing
    In Carnmoney Graveyard ‘neath its hill
    Fearing not what the day may bring!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 337 ✭✭girlonfire


    I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
    Emily Dickinson

    I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
    And Mourners to and fro
    Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
    That Sense was breaking through –

    And when they all were seated,
    A Service, like a Drum –
    Kept beating – beating – till I thought
    My Mind was going numb –

    And then I heard them lift a Box
    And creak across my Soul
    With those same Boots of Lead, again,
    Then Space – began to toll,

    As all the Heavens were a Bell,
    And Being, but an Ear,
    And I, and Silence, some strange Race
    Wrecked, solitary, here –

    And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
    And I dropped down, and down –
    And hit a World, at every plunge,
    And Finished knowing – then –


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    A Pig’s-Eye View Of Literature by Dorothy Parker

    The Lives and Times of John Keats,
    Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
    George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron


    Byron and Shelley and Keats
    Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
    The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
    And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
    And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
    But it didn’t impair the poetical feats
    Of Byron and Shelley,
    Of Byron and Shelley,
    Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 361 ✭✭jazz101


    [-0-] wrote: »
    Bobby Sands: A Place to Rest

    As the day crawls out another night crawls in
    Time neither moves nor dies.
    It’s the time of day when the lark sings,
    The black of night when the curlew cries.

    There’s rain on the wind, the tears of spirits
    The clink of key on iron is near,
    A shuttling train passes by on rail,
    There’s more than God for man to fear.

    Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie,
    And like ships in the night they blindly sail,
    Blown by a thought — that breaks the heart —
    Of forty women in Armagh jail.

    Oh! and I wish I were with the gentle folk,
    Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen,
    Away from the black devils of H-Block hell,
    Who torture my heart and haunt my dream.

    I would gladly rest where the whin bush grow,
    Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing
    In Carnmoney Graveyard ‘neath its hill
    Fearing not what the day may bring!

    Again I admire his own commitment to his plight, not so much the actions of the group he was associated with, but the guy was a gifted poet. Absolutely gifted. Michael D take note, this is how a politician should write.

    Sands is one of the first poets whose work I've found myself looking up consistently, I keep coming back to read it, lyrical but with depth in every line.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,461 ✭✭✭--Kaiser--


    The Stolen Child

    W. B. Yeats


    Where dips the rocky highland
    Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
    There lies a leafy island
    Where flapping herons wake
    The drowsy water rats;
    There we've hid our faery vats,
    Full of berrys
    And of reddest stolen cherries.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Where the wave of moonlight glosses
    The dim gray sands with light,
    Far off by furthest Rosses
    We foot it all the night,
    Weaving olden dances
    Mingling hands and mingling glances
    Till the moon has taken flight;
    To and fro we leap
    And chase the frothy bubbles,
    While the world is full of troubles
    And anxious in its sleep.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Where the wandering water gushes
    From the hills above Glen-Car,
    In pools among the rushes
    That scarce could bathe a star,
    We seek for slumbering trout
    And whispering in their ears
    Give them unquiet dreams;
    Leaning softly out
    From ferns that drop their tears
    Over the young streams.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Away with us he's going,
    The solemn-eyed:
    He'll hear no more the lowing
    Of the calves on the warm hillside
    Or the kettle on the hob
    Sing peace into his breast,
    Or see the brown mice bob
    Round and round the oatmeal chest.
    For he comes, the human child,
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,937 ✭✭✭implausible


    Monet Refuses The Operation

    Doctor, you say 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.

    Lisel Mueller

    Wow! I have just read this out loud to myself a few times, it's fantastic. I love poems that dramatically recreate a moment - The Last Duchess is another example. The poet brings you along with the speaker and convinces the reader to 'banish the edges'.

    I must go and look up some of Sands's work now too.

    I love this thread!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    Wild Nights - Wild Nights!

    Wild nights - Wild nights!
    Were I with thee
    Wild nights should be
    Our luxury!

    Futile - the winds -
    To a Heart in port -
    Done with the Compass -
    Done with the Chart!

    Rowing in Eden -
    Ah - the Sea!
    Might I but moor - tonight -
    In thee!

    Emily Dickinson


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 27 Alice Milligan


    Lady Lazurus
    by
    Sylvia Plath


    I have done it again.
    One year in every ten
    I manage it

    A sort of walking miracle, my skin
    Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
    My right foot

    A paperweight,
    My face a featureless, fine
    Jew linen.

    Peel off the napkin
    O my enemy.
    Do I terrify?

    The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
    The sour breath
    Will vanish in a day.

    Soon, soon the flesh
    The grave cave ate will be
    At home on me

    And I a smiling woman.
    I am only thirty.
    And like the cat I have nine times to die.

    This is Number Three.
    What a trash
    To annihilate each decade.

    What a million filaments.
    The peanut-crunching crowd
    Shoves in to see

    Them unwrap me hand and foot
    The big strip tease.
    Gentlemen, ladies

    These are my hands
    My knees.
    I may be skin and bone,

    Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
    The first time it happened I was ten.
    It was an accident.

    The second time I meant
    To last it out and not come back at all.
    I rocked shut

    As a seashell.
    They had to call and call
    And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

    Dying
    Is an art, like everything else.
    I do it exceptionally well.

    I do it so it feels like hell.
    I do it so it feels real.
    I guess you could say I've a call.

    It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
    It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
    It's the theatrical

    Comeback in broad day
    To the same place, the same face, the same brute
    Amused shout:

    'A miracle!'
    That knocks me out.
    There is a charge

    For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
    For the hearing of my heart
    It really goes.

    And there is a charge, a very large charge
    For a word or a touch
    Or a bit of blood

    Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
    So, so, Herr Doktor.
    So, Herr Enemy.

    I am your opus,
    I am your valuable,
    The pure gold baby

    That melts to a shriek.
    I turn and burn.
    Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

    Ash, ash
    You poke and stir.
    Flesh, bone, there is nothing there

    A cake of soap,
    A wedding ring,
    A gold filling.

    Herr God, Herr Lucifer
    Beware
    Beware.

    Out of the ash
    I rise with my red hair
    And I eat men like air.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

    Take this kiss upon the brow!
    And, in parting from you now,
    Thus much let me avow-
    You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
    All that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore,
    And I hold within my hand
    Grains of the golden sand-
    How few, Yet how they creep
    Through my fingers to the deep,
    While I weep- while I weep!
    O God! Can I not grasp
    Them with a tighter clasp?
    O God! Can I not save
    One from the pitiless wave?
    Is all that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 337 ✭✭girlonfire


    'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day'
    Gerard Manley Hopkins

    I [SIZE=-1]WAKE[/SIZE] and feel the fell of dark, not day.
    What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
    And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
    With witness I speak this. But where I say[SIZE=-2][/SIZE]
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
    To dearest him that lives alas! away.

    I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
    Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;[SIZE=-2][/SIZE]
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
    Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
    The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 221 ✭✭tomasocarthaigh


    http://www.writingsinrhyme.com/random.php
    =================================================

    In a doorway he stands, in his pockets his hands
    As he sways, he swears and he spits
    And others walk by, stare at him and sigh
    He cares not for their look, and then sits
    On the pavement wet, cares not he might get
    From the wet on the pavement a chill
    A happy man with in his hand a can
    With a shout from his can takes a swill.
    He shouts not philosophy outside the bar
    But he has his opinions on everything all the same…
    And maybe says most when he says nothing at all
    And yet that he stays silent may be his shame…

    - Poem by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    Begin Again

    "Begin again to the summoning birds
    to the sight of light at the window,
    begin to the roar of morning traffic
    all along Pembroke Road.

    Every beginning is a promise
    born in light and dying in dark determination
    and exaltation of springtime
    flowering the way to work.
    Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
    the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
    bridges linking the past and the future
    old friends passing through with us still.

    Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
    since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
    begin to wonder at unknown faces
    at crying birds in the sudden rain
    at branches stark in the willing sunlight
    at seagulls foraging for bread
    at couples sharing a sunny secret
    alone together while making good.

    Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
    that always seems about to give in
    something that will not acknowledge conclusion
    insists that we forever begin."

    Brendan Kennelly


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45,631 ✭✭✭✭Mr.Nice Guy


    The Wounded Otter by Michael Hartnett


    A wounded otter

    on a bare rock

    a bolt in her side,

    stroking her whiskers

    stroking her webbed feet.

    Her ancestors

    told her once

    that there was a river,

    a crystal river,

    a waterless bed.

    They also said

    there were trout there

    fat as tree-trunks

    and kingfishers

    bright as blue spears -

    men there without cinders

    in their boots,

    men without dogs

    on leashes.

    She did not notice

    the world die

    nor the sun expire.

    She was already

    swimming at ease

    in the magic crystal river.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    Postscript

    And some time make the time to drive out west
    Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
    In September or October, when the wind
    And the light are working off each other
    So that the ocean on one side is wild
    With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
    The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
    By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
    Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
    Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
    Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
    Useless to think you'll park or capture it
    More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
    A hurry through which known and strange things pass
    As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
    And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

    Seamus Heaney


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    One I remember from school ................


    A Christmas Childhood

    I

    One side of the potato-pits was white with frost—
    How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
    And when we put our ears to the paling-post
    The music that came out was magical.

    The light between the ricks of hay and straw
    Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
    With its December-glinting fruit we saw—
    O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

    To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
    And death the germ within it! Now and then
    I can remember something of the gay
    Garden that was childhood's. Again

    The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
    A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
    Or any common sight the transfigured face
    Of a beauty that the world did not touch.



    II

    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.

    Cassiopeia was over
    Cassidy's hanging hill,
    I looked and three whin bushes rode across
    The horizon. The Three Wise Kings.

    An old man passing said:
    ‘Can’t he make it talk’—
    The melodeon. I hid in the doorway
    And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

    I nicked six nicks on the door-post
    With my penknife’s big blade.
    There was a little one for cutting tobacco,
    And I was six Christmases of age.

    My father played the melodeon,
    My mother milked the cows,
    And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
    On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

    Patrick Kavanagh


    Copyright © Estate of Katherine Kavanagh


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,351 ✭✭✭✭Harry Angstrom


    When You Are Old by WB Yeats

    When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
    And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
    And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
    Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
    How many loved your moments of glad grace,
    And loved your beauty with love false or true,
    But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
    And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
    And bending down beside the glowing bars,
    Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
    And paced upon the mountains overhead
    And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    When in the soul of the serene disciple
    Thomas Merton

    When in the soul of the serene disciple
    With no more Fathers to imitate
    Poverty is a success,
    It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:
    He has not even a house.

    Stars, as well as friends,
    Are angry with the noble ruin.
    Saints depart in several directions.

    Be still:
    There is no longer any need of comment.
    It was a lucky wind
    That blew away his halo with his cares,
    A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

    Here you will find
    Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
    There are no ways,
    No methods to admire
    Where poverty is no achievement.
    His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

    What choice remains?
    Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
    It is the usual freedom
    Of men without visions.


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    An Attempt at Jealousy
    Marina Tsvetaeva

    How is your life with that other one?
    Simpler, is it? A stroke of the oars
    and a long coastline—
    and the memory of me

    is soon a drifting island
    (not in the ocean—in the sky!)
    Souls—you will be sisters—
    sisters, not lovers.

    How is your life with an ordinary
    woman? without the god inside her?
    The queen supplanted—

    How do you breathe now?
    Flinch, waking up?
    What do you do, poor man?

    “Hysterics and interruptions—
    enough! I’ll rent my own house!”
    How is your life with that other,
    you, my own.

    Is the breakfast delicious?
    (If you get sick, don’t blame me!)
    How is it, living with a postcard?
    You who stood on Sinai.

    How’s your life with a tourist
    on Earth? Her rib (do you love her?)
    is it to your liking?

    How’s life? Do you cough?
    Do you hum to drown out the mice in your mind?

    How do you live with cheap goods: is the market rising?
    How’s kissing plaster-dust?

    Are you bored with her new body?
    How’s it going, with an earthly woman,
    with no sixth sense?

    Are you happy?
    No? In a shallow pit—how is your life,
    my beloved? Hard as mine
    with another man?

    1924



    It's a sad poem I guess but I laughed instead. I think the honesty was so adorable.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,585 ✭✭✭✭Lady Chatterton


    Epic

    I have lived in important places, times
    When great events were decided, who owned
    That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
    Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
    I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
    And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
    Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
    "Here is the march along these iron stones."
    That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
    Was more important? I inclined
    To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
    Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
    He said: I made the Iliad from such
    A local row. Gods make their own importance.

    Patrick Kavanagh


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  • Registered Users Posts: 107 ✭✭Miprocin


    Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

    From childhood's hour I have not been
    As others were; I have not seen
    As others saw; I could not bring
    My passions from a common spring.
    From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken
    My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone.
    Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
    Of a most stormy life- was drawn

    From every depth of good and ill
    The mystery which binds me still:
    From the torrent, or the fountain,
    From the red cliff of the mountain,
    From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold, From the lightning in the sky
    As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm,
    And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
    Of a demon in my view.


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