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A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

1246727

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,170 ✭✭✭E.T.


    I've read that poem so many times - it never even dawned on me to question the sexuality of the poet! Unfortunately, it seems that if someone thinks homosexuality is "unnatural" or "wrong", nothing will dissuade them from their beliefs. It's amazing how prejudice can blind people to so many things.


  • Registered Users Posts: 814 ✭✭✭Tesco Massacre


    The Ecclesiast

    "Worse than the sunflower," she had said.
    But the new dimension of truth had only recently
    Burst in on us. Now it was to be condemned.
    And in vagrant shadow her mothball truth is eaten.
    In cool, like-it-or-not shadow the humdrum is consumed.
    Tired housewives begat it some decades ago,
    A small piece of truth that is it was honey to the lips
    Was also millions of miles from filling the place reserved for it.
    You see how honey crumbles your universe
    Which seems like an institution – how many walls?

    Then everything, in her belief, was to be submerged
    And soon. There was no life you could live out to its end
    And no attitude which, in the end, would save you.
    The monkish and the frivolous alike were to be trapped
    in death's capacious claw
    But listen while I tell you about the wallpaper –
    There was a key to everything in that oak forest
    But a sad one. Ever since childhood there
    Has been this special meaning to everything.
    You smile at your friend's joke, but only later, through tears.

    For the shoe pinches, even though it fits perfectly.
    Apples were made to be gathered, also the whole host of the
    world’s ailments and troubles.
    There is no time like the present for giving in to this temptation.
    Once the harvest is in and the animals put away for the winter
    To stand at the uncomprehending window cultivating the desert
    With salt tears which will never do anyone any good.
    My dearest I am as a galleon on salt billows.
    Perfume my head with forgetting all around me.

    For some day these projects will return.
    The funereal voyage over ice-strewn seas is ended.
    You wake up forgetting. Already
    Daylight shakes you in the yard.
    The hands remain empty. They are constructing an osier basket
    Just now, and across the sunlight darkness is taking root anew
    In intense activity. You shall never have seen it just this way
    And that is to be your one reward.

    Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living.
    The night is cold and delicate and full of angels
    Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up,
    The chime goes unheard.
    We are together at last, though far apart.

    John Ashbery


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,170 ✭✭✭E.T.


    WH Davies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,311 ✭✭✭Procasinator


    That's an excellent poem. WH Auden was homosexual, so the poem was presumably written for a man. I challenge anyone who says homosexuality is "unnatural" or "wrong" to read that poem and see it in emotion scarcely seen in "natural" "correct" heterosexuals.

    I would only challenge your assumption. I have read that the poem exists in 2 versions, and that the first was for a play and meant to be taken as satire.

    It doesn't appear he wrote the poem for a lover at all.

    http://everything2.com/user/jwfxpr/writeups/Funeral+Blues


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    Let me introduce Chinese poetry.

    The one below is one of my favourites. It is a very old poem, in Song (Sung) Dynasty My heart feels the sorrow every time I read the poem. Here I am going to list three versions of translations:


    Jiang Cheng Zi

    writted by: Su Dong Po (January 8, 1037 – August 24, 1101)

    十年生死兩茫茫,不思量,自難忘。
    千里孤墳,無處話淒涼。
    縱使相逢應不識,塵滿面,鬢如霜。

    夜來幽夢忽還鄉,小軒窗,正梳妝;
    相對無言,惟有淚千行。
    料想年年腸斷處,明月夜,短松岡。


    Version 1: translated by[SIZE=-1] Liu Lao Shi
    [/SIZE]
    To the Tune of Jiang-cheng Zi
      
      1.
      For ten years of parting
      Thou dead, I’m still living.
      So rarely of thee I think
      But memories ever link.
      
      Thou art buried lonely and afar,
      Knowin’ not of my heart’s scar.
      If we’d meet thou would not know
      Me face dusted and hairs like snow.
      
      2.
      When night fell I dreamed,
      That home again I seemed.
      By the window thou were beheld
      With a lovely comb nicely held.
      
      We looked at each other speechless,
      Only tears streaming down ceaseless.
      Every year my heart is thus split
      On that short-pine hillock moonlit.


    Version 2: translated by Yángxiànyi

      
    Recording my dream on the night of the twentieth of the first month of the year Yimao.

      Ten years parted, one living, one dead;
      Not thinking
      Yet never forgetting;
      A thousand Li from her lonely grave
      I have nowhere to tell my grief;
      Yet should we meet again she would hardly know
      This ravaged face,
      These temples tinged with gray.
      
      At night in a dream I am suddenly home again:
      By my small study window
      She sits at her dressing-table;
      We look at each other and find no words.
      But hte tears course down our cheeks.
      Year after year heart-broken I fancy her
      On moonlit nights
      By the hill covered with young pines.


    Version 3: translated by Burton Watson


    Ten years, dead and living dim and draw apart.
      I don't try to remember,
      But forgetting is hard.
      Lonely grave a thousand miles off,
      Cold thoughts, where can I talk them out?
      Even if we met, you wouldn't know me,
      Dust on my face,
      Hair like frost.

      In a dream last night suddenly I was home.
      By the window of the little room,
      You were combing your hair and making up.
      You turned and looked, not speaking,
      Only lines of tears coursing down.
      Year after year will it break my heart?
      The moonlit grave,
      The stubby pines.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    <repeated post>


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


    Somewhat appropriate for the times ,

    The Leader

    I wanna be the leader
    I wanna be the leader
    Can I be the leader ?
    Can I ? Can I ?
    Promise ? Promise ?
    Yipee I'm the leader
    I'm the leader

    O.K. what shall we do ?

    Roger McGough


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    My favourite Roger McGough poem:

    Only trouble with
    Japanese haiku is that
    you write one, and then

    Only seventeen
    syllables later you want
    to write another.


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    guys, Chinese New Year today, let me introduce a lovely modern Chinese poem.

    鱼化石(一条鱼或一个女子说)
    卞之琳 (1910.12.8-2000.12.2)

    我要有你的怀抱的形状,
    我往往溶于水的线条。
    你真像镜子一样的爱我呢,
    你我都远了乃有了鱼化石。


    An Ichthyolite
    Written by: Biàn Zhīlín
    Translated by: Beita

    I want to have the shape of your embrace,
    I am always dissolved into the lines of water.
    Just like a mirror, you truly love me. Both you and I
    Has gone into the distance and the ichthyolite emerges.

    1936,6,4



    Ichthyolite is the fossil of fish. I dont know why the translator did not translate the words in the brackets. The title should be: An Ichthyolite (a fish or a woman says).

    It's a love poem. Bian Zhilin loved Zhāng chōng hé (famous in the literature circle as well) for a very long time. He was shy and subtle, and not sure about Zhāng's love to him. He had never made a move but just wrote poems. He studied her interest, he found ways to meet her... But never directly told her his love. Anyway she married an American who expertised in Chinese and went to America. About 8 years later, Bian married another woman. But every time he mentioned about Zhāng, he still showed the love and care.

    This is one of the poems for Zhāng. In the Chinese version, the third line has a tone of hesitation, uncertainty.

    Hahaha, this poem is not very suitable for the Chinese New Year, anyway, hope you guys like this poem.

    Happy Chinese New Year!


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


    Relationship

    What a silence, when you are here. What a hellish silence.
    You sit and I sit.
    You lose and I lose.

    János Pilinszky
    Translated from the Hungarian by Peter Jay


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    Recently, thanks to an entry in Simon Critchley's The Book of Dead Philosophers, I came across the genre of death poems written by Japanese Buddhist monks. These short poems were written by monks who were on the verge of dying. According to Critchley, "Ideally, the dying monk would anticipate the moment of his death, write his poem, set aside his ink brush, cross his arms, straighten his back, and die." I have no idea how often the authors managed to realise this ideal, but the practice is still intriguing. Here's a trio of examples, starting with a haiku:
    The joy of dewdrops
    In the grass as they
    Turn back to vapour.
    - Koraku (d. 1837)
    Inhale, exhale
    Forward, back
    Living, dying:
    Arrows, let flown each to each
    Meet midway and slice
    The void in aimless flight-
    Thus I return to the source.
    - Gesshu Soko (d. 1696)

    My whole long life I've sharpened my sword
    And now, face to face with death
    I unsheathe it, and lo-
    The blade is broken-
    Alas!

    - Dairin Soto (d. 1568)


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    The Ballad Of A Bachelor

    Ellis Parker Butler



    Listen, ladies, while I sing
    The ballad of John Henry King.

    John Henry was a bachelor,
    His age was thirty-three or four.

    Two maids for his affection vied,
    And each desired to be his bride,

    And bravely did they strive to bring
    Unto their feet John Henry King.

    John Henry liked them both so well,
    To save his life he could not tell

    Which he most wished to be his bride,
    Nor was he able to decide.

    Fair Kate was jolly, bright, and gay,
    And sunny as a summer day;

    Marie was kind, sedate, and sweet,
    With gentle ways and manners neat.

    Each was so dear that John confessed
    He could not tell which he liked best.

    He studied them for quite a year,
    And still found no solution near,

    And might have studied two years more
    Had he not, walking on the shore,

    Conceived a very simple way
    Of ending his prolonged delay--

    A way in which he might decide
    Which of the maids should be his bride.

    He said, "I'll toss into the air
    A dollar, and I'll toss it fair;

    If heads come up, I'll wed Marie;
    If tails, fair Kate my bride shall be."

    Then from his leather pocket-book
    A dollar bright and new he took;

    He kissed one side for fair Marie,
    The other side for Kate kissed he.

    Then in a manner free and fair
    He tossed the dollar in the air.

    "Ye fates," he cried, "pray let this be
    A lucky throw indeed for me!"

    The dollar rose, the dollar fell;
    He watched its whirling transit well,

    And off some twenty yards or more
    The dollar fell upon the shore.

    John Henry ran to where it struck
    To see which maiden was in luck.

    But, oh, the irony of fate!
    Upon its edge the coin stood straight!

    And there, embedded in the sand,
    John Henry let the dollar stand!

    And he will tempt his fate no more,
    But live and die a bachelor.

    Thus, ladies, you have heard me sing
    The ballad of John Henry King.


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


    As we are delving into Japanese poems , here is a Haiku by Gavin Ewart

    God is a flasher.
    He reveals himself to some,
    but not to others.


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    I'll see your Ellis Parker Butler and raise you William F Marshall:


    Me An' Me Da

    I'm livin' in Drumlister,
    An' I'm gettin very oul',
    I have to wear an Indian bag
    To save me from the coul'.
    The deil a man in this townlan'
    Wos claner raired nor me,
    But I'm livin' in Drumlister
    In clabber to the knee.
    Me da lived up in Carmin,
    An' kep' a sarvint boy;
    His second wife wos very sharp,
    He birried her with joy:
    Now she wos thin, her name was Flynn,
    She come from Cullentra,
    An' if me shirt's a clatty shirt
    The man to blame's me da.


    Consarnin' weemin, sure it wos
    A constant word of his,
    `Keep far away from them that's thin,
    Their temper's aisy riz.'
    Well, I knowed two I thought wud do,
    But still I had me fears,
    So I kiffled back an' forrit
    Between the two, for years.


    Wee Margit had no fortune
    But two rosy cheeks wud plaze;
    The farm of lan' wos Bridget's,
    But she tuk the pock disayse:
    An' Margit she wos very wee,
    An' Bridget she wos stout
    But her face wos like a gaol dure
    With the boults pulled out.


    I'll tell no lie on Margit,
    She thought the worl' of me;
    I'll tell the truth, me heart wud lep
    The sight of her to see
    But I wos slow, ye surely know,
    The raison of it now,
    If I left her home from Carmin
    Me da wud rise a row.


    So I swithered back an' forrit
    Till Margit got a man;
    A fella come from Mullaslin
    An' left me jist the wan.
    I mind the day she went away,
    I hid wan strucken hour,
    An' cursed the wasp from Cullentra
    That made me da so sour.


    But cryin' cures no trouble,
    To Bridget I went back,
    An' faced her for it that night week
    Beside her own turf-stack.
    I axed her there, an' spoke her fair,
    The handy wife she d make me,
    I talked about the lan' that joined
    - Begob, she wudn't take me!


    So I'm livin' in Drumlister
    An' I'm get'tin' very oul'
    I creep to Carmin wanst a month
    To thry an' make me sowl:
    The deil a man in this townlan'
    Wos claner raired nor me,
    An' I'm dyin' in Drumlister
    In clabber to the knee.


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    Bearhunter wrote: »
    I'll see your Ellis Parker Butler and raise you William F Marshall:


    Lovely. :D

    Now the famous Irish poet writing about his dad who's dead. it's a bit sad though. well, yet had a very subtle sense of humor / sarcasm. so true!

    Memory of My Father

    Patrick Kavanagh

    Every old man I see
    Reminds me of my father
    When he had fallen in love with death
    One time when sheaves were gathered.

    That man I saw in Gardiner Street
    Stumble on the kerb was one,
    He stared at me half-eyed,
    I might have been his son.

    And I remember the musician
    Faltering over his fiddle
    In Bayswater, London.
    He too set me the riddle.

    Every old man I see
    In October-coloured weather
    Seems to say to me
    "I was once your father."


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    I love that Kavanagh poem. ANd this one by FR Higgins on the death of Padraic O Conaire:

    They've paid the last respects in sad tobacco
    And silent is this wakehouse in its haze;
    They've paid the last respects; and now their whiskey
    Flings laughing words on mouths of prayer and praise;
    And so young couples huddle by the gables.
    O let them grope home through the hedgy night -
    Alone I'll mourn my old friend, while the cold dawn
    Thins out the holy candlelight.

    Respects are paid to one loved by the people;
    Ah, was he not - among our mighty poor -
    The sudden wealth cast on those pools of darkness,
    Those bearing, just, a star's faint signature;
    And so he was to me, close friend, near brother,
    Dear Padraic of the wide and sea-cold eyes -
    So, lovable, so courteous and noble,
    The very west was in his soft replies.

    They'll miss his heavy stick and stride in Wicklow -
    His story-talking down Winetavern Street,
    Where old men sitting in the wizen daylight
    Have kept an edge upon his gentle wit;
    While women on the grassy streets of Galway,
    Who hearken for his passing - but in vain,
    Shall hardly tell his step as shadows vanish
    Through archways of forgotten Spain.

    Ah, they'll say, Padraic's gone again exploring;
    But now down glens of brightness, O he'll find
    An alehouse overflowing with wise Gaelic
    That's braced in vigour by the bardic mind,
    And there his thoughts shall find their own forefathers -
    In minds to whom our heights of race belong,
    in crafty men, who ribbed a ship or turned
    The secret joinery of song.

    Alas, death mars the parchment of his forehead;
    And yet for him, I know, the earth is mild -
    The windy fidgets of September grasses
    Can never tease a mind that loved the wild;
    So drink his peace - this grey juice of the barley
    Runs with a light that ever pleased his eye -
    While old flames nod and gossip on the hearthstone
    And only the young winds cry.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 220 ✭✭Jimmy the Wheel


    Flowers by Wendy Cope (for the day that's in it)


    Some men never think of it.
    You did. You’d come along
    And say you’d nearly brought me flowers
    But something had gone wrong.

    The shop was closed. Or you had doubts —
    The sort that minds like ours
    Dream up incessantly. You thought
    I might not want your flowers.

    It made me smile and hug you then.
    Now I can only smile.
    But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
    Have lasted all this while.


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


    One Night

    The room was poor and squalid,
    hidden above the dubious tavern.
    From The window you could see the alley
    filthy and narrow. From below
    came the voices of some workmen
    playing cards and carousing.

    And there on the much-used, lowly bed
    I had the body of love,I had the lips,
    the voluptuous and rosy lips of ecstasy-
    rosy lips of such ecstasy, that even now
    as I write, after so many years !
    in my solitary house, I am drunk again .

    From the Greek of C.P.Cavafy


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    Bearhunter wrote: »
    ANd this one by FR Higgins on the death of Padraic O Conaire:

    Need some more time to read this one. As I need to research on Padriic O Conaire for the background information. :o Although my Irish friend told me a bit about him.

    And I shared the poem of Me an' Me Da with my Irish friends. Found out I misinterpreted 'a bit' 'cos of the Irish English. Had great laugh. We had a great time reading that poem. Really a nice one. THANKS!! :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    I'm nobody!
    Emily Dickinson

    I 'm nobody! Who are you?
    Are you nobody, too?
    Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
    They ’d banish us, you know.

    How dreary to be somebody!
    How public, like a frog
    To tell your name the livelong day
    To an admiring bog!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    Flowers by Wendy Cope (for the day that's in it) ..... Have lasted all this while.

    Do you think it's a long while or a short while that the flowers last....?:rolleyes::rolleyes:

    Nice one...! Hahha!


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


    The Fiddler of Dooney

    When I play on my fiddle in Dooney.
    Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
    My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
    My brother in Mocharabuiee.

    I passed my brother and cousin:
    They read in their books of prayer;
    I read in my book of songs
    I bought at the Sligo fair.

    When we come at the end of time
    To Peter sitting in state,
    He will smile on the three old spirits,
    But call me first through the gate;

    For the good are always the merry,
    Save by an evil chance,
    And the merry love the fiddle,
    And the merry love to dance:

    And when the folk there spy me,
    They will all come up to me,
    With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'
    And dance like a wave of the sea.


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


    On The Antiquity Of Microbes

    Adam
    Had'em

    Said to be the shortest poem in the English Language. Author unknown. A variant of the title is ''On the Antiquity of Fleas''


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    The Road Not Taken
    Robert Frost


    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, 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 traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 202 ✭✭johnthemull


    Should lanterns shine, the holy face,
    Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,
    Would wither up, an any boy of love
    Look twice before he fell from grace.
    The features in their private dark
    Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come
    And from her lips the faded pigments fall,
    The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

    I have been told to reason by the heart,
    But heart, like head, leads helplessly;
    I have been told to reason by the pulse,
    And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace
    Till field and roof lie level and the same
    So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman
    Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind.

    I have heard may years of telling,
    And many years should see some change.

    The ball I threw while playing in the park
    Has not yet reached the ground.


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


    On The Beach At Fontana

    Wind whines and whines the shingle,
    The crazy pierstakes groan;
    A senile sea numbers each single
    Slimesilvered stone.

    From whining wind and colder
    Greysea I wrap him warm
    And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder
    And boyish arm.

    Around us fear, descending
    Darkness of fear above
    And in my heart how deep unending
    Ache of love !

    James Joyce for his young son Giorgio. That last line -''deep unending ache of love'' - best expression of parental love ever. Very underrated poet, our James.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10 theendpoint


    This poem helped me through some tough times :)

    Life Is Fine by Langston Hughes

    I went down to the river,
    I set down on the bank.
    I tried to think but couldn't,
    So I jumped in and sank.

    I came up once and hollered!
    I came up twice and cried!
    If that water hadn't a-been so cold
    I might've sunk and died.

    But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

    I took the elevator
    Sixteen floors above the ground.
    I thought about my baby
    And thought I would jump down.

    I stood there and I hollered!
    I stood there and I cried!
    If it hadn't a-been so high
    I might've jumped and died.

    But it was High up there! It was high!

    So since I'm still here livin',
    I guess I will live on.
    I could've died for love--
    But for livin' I was born

    Though you may hear me holler,
    And you may see me cry--
    I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
    If you gonna see me die.

    Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,337 ✭✭✭✭monkey9


    THE LITTLE VAGABOND

    Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold;
    But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.
    Besides, I can tell where I am used well;
    Such usage in heaven will never do well.

    But, if at the Church they would give us some ale,
    And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
    We'd sing and we'd pray all the livelong day,
    Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.

    Then the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing,
    And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring;
    And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church,
    Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

    And God, like a father, rejoicing to see
    His children as pleasant and happy as He,
    Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel,
    But kiss him, and give him both drink and apparel.


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


    A Flower Given to My Daughter

    Frail the white rose and frail are
    Her hands that gave
    Whose soul is sere and paler
    Than time's wan wave.

    Rosefrail and fair -- yet frailest
    A wonder wild
    In gentle eyes thou veilest,
    My blueveined child.

    James Joyce

    This one is to his daughter Lucia - his blue veined child - just so sad in the light of subsequent events.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,337 ✭✭✭✭monkey9


    The Irish Rover


    On the fourth of July eighteen hundred and six
    We set sail from the sweet cove of Cork
    We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
    For the grand city hall in New York
    'Twas a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore-and-aft
    And oh, how the wild winds drove her.
    She'd got several blasts, she'd twenty-seven masts
    And we called her the Irish Rover.

    We had one million bales of the best Sligo rags
    We had two million barrels of stones
    We had three million sides of old blind horses hides,
    We had four million barrels of bones.
    We had five million hogs, we had six million dogs,
    Seven million barrels of porter.
    We had eight million bails of old nanny goats' tails,
    In the hold of the Irish Rover.

    There was awl Mickey Coote who played hard on his flute
    When the ladies lined up for his set
    He was tootin' with skill for each sparkling quadrille
    Though the dancers were fluther'd and bet
    With his sparse witty talk he was cock of the walk
    As he rolled the dames under and over
    They all knew at a glance when he took up his stance
    And he sailed in the Irish Rover

    There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee,
    There was Hogan from County Tyrone
    There was Jimmy McGurk who was scarred stiff of work
    And a man from Westmeath called Malone
    There was Slugger O'Toole who was drunk as a rule
    And fighting Bill Tracey from Dover
    And your man Mick McCann from the banks of the Bann
    Was the skipper of the Irish Rover

    We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out
    And the ship lost it's way in a fog.
    And that whale of the crew was reduced down to two,
    Just meself and the captain's old dog.
    Then the ship struck a rock, oh Lord what a shock
    The bulkhead was turned right over
    Turned nine times around, and the poor dog was drowned
    I'm the last of the Irish Rover


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


    Death of a Son (who died in a mental hospital aged one), By Jon Silkin

    Something has ceased to come along with me.
    Something like a person: something very like one.
    And there was no nobility in it
    Or anything like that.

    Something was there like a one year
    Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings
    Sang like birds and laughed
    Understanding the pact

    They were to have with silence. But he
    Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence
    Like bread, with words.
    He did not forsake silence.

    But rather, like a house in mourning
    Kept the eye turned in to watch the silence while
    The other houses like birds
    Sang around him.

    And the breathing silence neither
    Moved nor was still.

    I have seen stones: I have seen brick
    But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
    But a house of flesh and blood
    With flesh of stone

    And bricks for blood. A house
    Of stones and blood in breathing silence with the other
    Birds singing crazy on its chimneys.
    But this was silence,

    This was something else, this was
    Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn
    Into silence, this was
    Something religious in his silence,

    Something shining in his quiet,
    This was different this was altogether something else:
    Though he never spoke, this
    Was something to do with death.

    And then slowly the eye stopped looking
    Inward. The silence rose and became still.
    The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
    With the birds still shrilling around him.
    And as if he could speak

    He turned over on his side with his one year
    Red as a wound
    He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
    And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
    and he died.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,678 ✭✭✭nompere


    Slate magazine (http://www.slate.com/) publishes a poem every week, and gives a link to a reading by the author. This is the current one—and I don't like it. Am I alone in that view? Do others here think it's worthwhile? The asterisks aren't mine—the swear filter here steps in, and I'm not savvy enough to beat it.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2290958/

    "Ode to a Composting Toilet"
    By Sharon Olds


    And then, at the green inn, there
    it was, the magic chamber—in goes
    one thing, out comes another—where what we
    make is made into fertilizer,
    the hopper an enamel tank where the liquids
    are separated from the solids, where the enzymes
    and vinegar, in the forest-green
    interior, do their unpaid
    labor, and what can be used again
    sinks down to where it can be harvested,
    near-odorless. We do not think
    our **** smells good, but we do not think
    the earth should be turned into a great cesspool
    to accommodate our desire to part from our
    offal as fast as possible.
    In this drying cabinet, **** happens,
    and then, over time, it alters its nature,
    its little busy toxins die,
    it turns to arable waste—waste
    no longer, waste not want not. As in
    a blood bank, but dirtier,
    soilier, the effluvium of the offspring
    of the earth mingles: fertilizer of
    New Hampshire, Kenya, New York, Boston—
    Yankees ****, Red Sox ****,
    in excremental harmony;
    vegan ****, kosher ****,
    slow food, fast, vegetarian,
    fruititarian, even the sorrowful
    wisps of anorexic ****,
    and Calvinist ****, and Kabbala ****,
    Halliburton employee ****,
    Orthodox ****, Puritan ****,
    lesbian ****, nympho virgin
    poet chick ****. Seas and rivers
    love the composting toilet, lakes and
    streams sparkle its praises, and the small
    creatures of the pond and creek
    keen for it—dark green machine
    like a porcelain throne, though its royal flush
    is inside it. Come sit on it, come be
    its queen or king.


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    A bit crap, if you'll pardon the pun. Doesn't speak to me at all or resonate. Unlike this little beauty:

    The Ballad of the 46A.

    Sydney Bernard Smith

    When you're feeling the urge to retreat and to flee
    from work that's a cartload of ess haitch one tee
    when people are plastic - the plastic is cracked,
    and barely believable fiction is fact -
    when you need to meander, to rest from the race
    (be it human or rat), to explore a new space;
    gift-wrap your troubles & throw them away
    and take the great trip on the 46A.


    Thru leafy suburbia, starting from docks,
    up round the mountain and down by the rocks;
    past much that's familiar and little that's strange -
    MacCormack's of Mounttown - Tandoori, Deansgrange -
    thru Foxrock, Stillorgan, and Galloping Green
    it waddles and lurches and sways like a queen,
    swings thru Dun Laoghaire and parks near the quay -
    there's a life and a half in the 46A.

    O there's ones that are hostile to every illusion
    excepting their own - not averse to collusion
    they infiltrate everywhere, stamp on dissent
    in the name of a vandalous higher intent.
    But no pseudo-science can marry that route,
    that *mystery tour on the by-road to truth.
    If lightning struck twice they'd explain it away,
    but they'll never account for the 46A.


    Ye parents who puzzle the meaning of life -
    and how does it happen ye're still man'n'wife
    after years of contention? - the kids want to know
    not how did they come but what way did ye GO!
    Is there life without love, is there life without sex?
    Oblige them by stating, ye pair of old wrecks:
    It's never that simple, we'll put it this way:
    there's love, and there's sex, and there's 46A.


    The party is over and time has run out
    fond expectations are all up the spout.
    You're on your last legs, and your money's all spent,
    you can't afford fags, let alone the week's rent;
    and the X-ray said - buster, you haven't a hope...
    Don't lie down aisy, don't sit there and mope;
    it's round the next corner, it's headed your way -
    where there's life there's a chance of a 46A!



    [The 46A is an improbably eccentric bus. It's not so much that it has a mind of its own; it reputedly has two or three minds, none of which would appear to be its own.]


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 130 ✭✭thecookingapple


    46 a go through dorset st? the pony club have a song about it also.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 278 ✭✭chasmcb


    Bearhunter wrote: »
    The Ballad of the 46A.

    Sydney Bernard Smith

    Good poem! I knew Sydney; he could be a cranky cuss at times but could also be really funny and was very erudite. I last met him a few months before he died of cancer, I remember him emailing me as the dread event approached with the heading "ready for the off!" When he died he willed his body to medical science.

    Really enjoyed the FR Higgins poem on Padraic O'Conaire you posted also, hadn't read that before.

    Haven't read through all twelve pages of this thread so I hope I amn't posting a duplicate. Here's 'Accordion Music' by Les Murray:

    Accordion Music

    A backstrapped family bible that consoles virtue and sin,
    for it opens top and bottom, and harps both out and in:

    it shuffles a deep pack of cards, flirts an inverted fan
    and stretches to a shelf of books about the pain of man.

    It can play the sob in Jesus!, the cavernous baastards note,
    it can wheedle you for cigarettes or drop a breathy quote:

    it can conjure Paris up, or home, unclench a chinstrap jaw
    but it never sang for a nob’s baton or lured the boys to war.

    Underneath the lone streetlight outside a crossroads hall
    where bullocks pass and dead girls waltz and mental
    gum trees fall

    two brothers play their plough-rein days and long gone
    spoon-licked nights.
    The fiddle stitching through this quilt lifts up in singing
    flights,

    the other’s mourning, meaning tune goes arching up and
    down
    as life undulates like a heavy snake through the rocked
    accordion.

    [This poem also reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoon, the panel is in two halves; in top half new arrival at Pearly Gates is being greeted by St Peter "Welcome to Heaven, here's yr harp". In bottom half, new arrival Down Below is greeted with the words "Welcome to Hell, here's your accordion"]


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  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    @ Chasmcb: As someone who normally thinks the best way to play the accordion is with a steamroller, I found that quite lovely. Cheers.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,540 ✭✭✭Giselle


    booksale wrote: »
    The Road Not Taken
    Robert Frost



    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 traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

    I love these last lines more than I love any other assembly of words in the language, in spite of them being just a little corny.:)


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    An appropriate one from Edgar Allan Poe, as I am about to head to the pub:

    Fill with mingled cream and amber,
    I will drain that glass again.
    Such hilarious visions clamber
    Through the chamber of my brain.
    Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
    Come to life and fade away.
    What care I how time advances?
    I am drinking ale today.


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


    Connoisseur

    I love the ballet.
    As I watch them plie
    I keep wondering who's gay,
    but by oath.
    I simply could not say if
    Dear Rudi Nureyev
    Is AC or DC
    Or both.

    As he leaps through the air
    With his taut derriere,
    His thighs engineered
    Like an ox.
    His nostrils aflare...
    I think I know where
    He conveniently keeps
    His old socks.

    Joan Van Poznak


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,540 ✭✭✭Giselle


    marienbad wrote: »
    Connoisseur

    I love the ballet.
    As I watch them plie
    I keep wondering who's gay,
    but by oath.
    I simply could not say if
    Dear Rudi Nureyev
    Is AC or DC
    Or both.

    As he leaps through the air
    With his taut derriere,
    His thighs engineered
    Like an ox.
    His nostrils aflare...
    I think I know where
    He conveniently keeps
    His old socks.

    Joan Van Poznak

    Thank you so much for this.:)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 872 ✭✭✭micayla


    He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half-light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    W. B. Yeats

    A line in a song made me think of this today and as I remembered each word I couldn't help smiling, perked up my day:)


  • Registered Users Posts: 90 ✭✭red_red_wine


    Wishes of an Elderly Man Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914

    I wish I loved the Human Race;
    I wish I loved its silly face;
    I wish I liked the way it walks;
    I wish I liked the way it talks;
    And when I'm introduced to one
    I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

    - Walter Alexander Raleigh


  • Registered Users Posts: 90 ✭✭red_red_wine


    There is another sky,
    Ever serene and fair,
    And there is another sunshine,
    Though it be darkness there;
    Never mind faded forests, Austin,
    Never mind silent fields -
    Here is a little forest,
    Whose leaf is ever green;
    Here is a brighter garden,
    Where not a frost has been;
    In its unfading flowers
    I hear the bright bee hum:
    Prithee, my brother,
    Into my garden come!

    - Emily Dickinson


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    One of my favourite short poems, from JM Synge.

    The Curse

    To a sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of The Playboy

    Lord, confound this surly sister,
    Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
    Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
    In her guts a galling give her.
    Let her live to earn her dinners
    In Mountjoy with seedy sinners:
    Lord, this judgement quickly bring,
    And I'm Your servant, J. M. Synge.


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


    For the day of the wedding...


    Fire and Ice

    by Robert Frost


    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I've tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if I had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say thay for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.


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


    Remember the chameleon. He was a well-behaved chameleon and nothing could be brought against his record. As a chameleon he had done the things that should have been done and left undone.
    He was a first -class unimpeachable chameleon and nobody had anything on him.
    But he came to a Scotch plaid and tried to cross it. In order to cross he had to imitate six different colours, first one and then another and back to the first or second.
    He was a brave chameleon and died at the crossroads true to his chameleon instincts.

    What kind of a liar are you?
    People lie because they don't remember clear what they saw.
    People lie because they can't help making a story better than it was the way it happened.
    People tell "white lies" so as to be decent to others.
    People lie in a pinch, hating to do it, but lying on because it might be worse.

    And people lie just to be liars for a crooked personal gain.
    What sort of a liar are you?
    Which of these liars are you?


    Carl Sandburg


  • Registered Users Posts: 656 ✭✭✭Bearhunter


    James Stephens

    The Glass of Beer


    The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
    Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:
    May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair
    And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.



    That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will ever see
    On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
    Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me,
    And threw me out of the house on the back of my head.



    If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day;
    But she with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
    May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten and may
    The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.


  • Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭booksale


    Sometimes it happens
    Brian Patten

    And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then
    You are not friends,
    And friendship has passed.
    And whole days are lost and among them
    A fountain empties itself.

    And sometimes it happens that you are loved and then
    You are not loved,
    And love is past.
    And whole days are lost and among them
    A fountain empties itself into the grass.

    And sometimes you want to speak to her and then
    You do not want to speak
    Then the opportunity has passed.
    Your dreams flare up, they suddenly vanish.

    And also it happens that there is nowhere to go and then
    There is somewhere to go,
    Then you have passed.
    And the years flare up and are gone,
    Quicker than a minute.

    So you have nothing.
    You wonder if these things matter and then
    As soon as you begin to wonder if these things matter
    They cease to matter,
    And caring is past.
    And a fountain empties itself into the grass.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 850 ✭✭✭Hookah


    "Paris, April 1, 1922"

    A mile of clean sand.
    I will write my name here, and the trouble that is in my heart.
    I will write the name & place of my birth,
    What I was to be,
    And what I am.
    I will write my forty sins, my thousand follies,
    My four unspeakable acts. . . .
    I will write the names of the cities I have fled from,
    The names of men & women I have wronged.
    I will write the holy name of her I serve,
    And how I serve her ill.
    And I will sit on the beach & let the tide come in.
    I will watch with peace the great calm tongue of the tide
    Licking from the sand the unclean story of my heart.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,031 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    Sarah Williams: The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

    Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
    When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
    He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
    We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

    Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
    Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
    And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
    And the obliquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

    But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
    You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
    What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;
    What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.

    You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
    But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
    Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
    I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

    What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight;
    You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night.
    I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known.
    You "have none but me," you murmur, and I "leave you quite alone"?

    Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow,
    There has been a something wanting in my nature until now;
    I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind,
    Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind.

    I "have never failed in kindness"? No, we lived too high for strife,
    Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life;
    But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you still
    To the service of our science: you will further it? you will!

    There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,
    To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;
    And remember, "Patience, Patience," is the watchword of a sage,
    Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.

    I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap;
    But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep
    So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name;
    See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.

    I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak;
    Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak:
    It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,
    God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.

    Death has this much to be said for it:
    You don’t have to get out of bed for it.
    Wherever you happen to be
    They bring it to you—free.

    — Kingsley Amis



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