This is not from a poem, but it aches like one:


We drank a little longer and then we went to bed, but it wasn't the same, it never is – there was space between us, things had happened. I watched her walk to the bathroom, saw the wrinkles and folds under the cheeks of her ass. Poor thing. Poor poor thing. Joyce had been firm and hard – you grabbed a handful and it felt good. Betty didn't feel so good. It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching.

We had both been robbed.


--Charles Bukowski, Post Office



Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1971; p 96.

A bonafide poem:

'oh yes'

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.


-- Charles Bukowski

From Neruda's "Tonight I Can Write" in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"

"I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her."

From Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts"

In Brueghel's Icarus, for example: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The fifth poem particularly...


Saigyo Hoshi
(1118-1190)

SEVEN POEMS


1.
In my boat that goes
Over manifold salt-ways
Towards the open sea
Faintly I hear
The cry of the first wild-goose.

2.
Mingling my prayer
With the clang of the bell
Which woke me from my dreams,
Lo, ten times I have recited the
Honorable Name.

3.
Since I am convinced
That Reality is in no way
Real,
How am I to admit
That dreams are dreams?

4.
Startled
By a single scream
Of the crane which is reposing
On the surface of the swamp,
All the other birds are crying.

5.
Those ships which left
Side by side
The same harbor
Towards an unknown destination
Have rowed away from one another!

6.
Like those boats which are returning
Across the open sea of Ashiya
Where the waves run high,
I think that I too shall pass
Scatheless through the storms of life.

7.
Although I do not know
At all whether anything
Honorable deigns to be there,
Yet in extreme awe
My tears well forth.




(Translated by Arthur Waley)

Okay, okay, okay, one more...


This Close

In the room where we lie,
light stains the drawn shades yellow.
We sweat and pull at each other, climb
with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.
Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh
comes alive. Head and need, like invisible
animals, gnaw at my breast, the soft
insides of your thighs. What I want
I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now,
the dark human bread I eat handful
by greedy handful. Eyes fingers, mouths,
sweet leeches of desire. Crazy woman,
her brain full of bees, see how her palms curl
into fists and beat the pillow senseless.
And when my body finally gives in to it
then pulls itself away, salt-laced
and arched with its final ache, I am
so grateful I would give you anything, anything.
If I loved you, being this close would kill me.


Dorianne Laux

Okay, I know I said "one more," but these four sentences, they could be a poem. They're not, technically. It's from Don DeLillo's Underworld:


Sometimes I see something so moving I know I'm not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.

Jeez, that's kindv stabby.

And they should teach us that when we're children so we aren't always caught off guard.

It'd be so easy to get carried away on this thread ... so just 2 short ones I love from William Carlos Williams -

"Descent", in Poems of 1953

From disorder (a chaos)
order grows
- grows fruitful.
The chaos feeds it. Chaos
feeds the tree.

And

"The Hurricane", in The Clouds

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.

That's actually my favorite Neruda line. The first time I read it I was just kind of stunned, and it really hit home. I think reading that line actually turned me on to poetry in general too.

Nobody had my favorite poem, or one of my favorite poets.

The Flea by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

My favorite....

If there were in my kalendar
No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now -
A hermit's? - wanderer's weary? -
How should I live and how
Near would be death, or far?

Could it have been the other eyes
Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
Would catch from this dim byway
Prized figures different quite
From those that now arise?

With how strange aspect would there creep
The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
In song-time, toil, or pray-time. -
O were it else than this,
I'd pass to pulseless sleep!!

. . . and my favorite

Forgotten in autumn

It was half past seven
in autumn
and I was waiting
for someone or other.
Time,
tired of being there with me,
little by little left
and left me alone.

I was left with the sand
of the day, with the water,
wrack
of a sad week, murdered away.

"What's going on?" the leaves
of Paris asked me. "Who are you waiting for?"

And a few times I was humiliated,
first by the light as it left,
then by dogs, cats and policemen.

I was left alone
like a solitary horse
which knows no night or day in the grass,
only the salt of winter.

I stayed
so alone, so empty
that the leaves were weeping,
the last ones, and later
they fell like tears.

Never before
or after
did I feel so suddenly alone.
It was waiting for someone that did it--
I don't remember,
it was crazily,
fleetingly,
suddenly just loneliness,
that moment,
the sense of something
lost along the way,
which suddenly like the shadow itself
spread the long flag of its presence.

Later I fled from that
insane corner,
walking as quickly as possible,
as if running away from the night,
from a black and rolling boulder.
What I am telling is nothing,
but it happened to me once while I was waiting
for someone or other.

Pablo Neruda
(translated by Alastair Reid)

I.

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

from "Waste Land Limericks" by Wendy Cope

This topic is so engrossing..I don´t normally think of myself as someone who loves poestry, but, you may change my mind yet!


I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife,
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.



The mountains are singing, and the Lady comes.


Evil days our race befallen.
Far and wide the story travelled,
Far away men spread the knowledge
Of the chanting of the hero,
Of the song of Wainamoinen;
To the South were heard the echoes,
All of Northland heard the story.


The fifth of the five fives followed by this knight
Were beneficence boundless and brotherly love
And pure mine and manners, that none might impeach,
And compassion most precious--these peerless five
Were forged and made fast in him, foremost of men.

Lord Byron of course:

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Canto IV

CLXXVIII

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean -- roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin -- his control
Stops with the shore; -- upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.



Byron rules!

Todd

Hear, hear!
Byron rules, indeed!

Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of withered flowers,
But bid it flow as now--until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

--A Fragment 1830 (Lord Byron, of course)

From William Shakespeare's As You Like It

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

--Roy

Invictus- William Ernest Henley

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


Written from a hospital bed, essentially gives adversity the finger eloquently...

That's "Desiderata." There is a bit of a scandal as to its origins.

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
How can anybody, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins, engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

W. B. Yeats

Conrad Aiken

IT is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

WB Yeats - When You Are Old and Grey

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.


Q. Horatius Flaccus

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis
.......arboribusque comae;
mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas
.......flumina praetereunt;

I also must add another of my favorites. I would nominate this for greatest poem of all time. Though written at the end of the 19th century, it fits our era perfectly...


The Stolen Child


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.


--William Butler Yeats (1886)

I write the Desiderata on the last page of each of my journals. Thanks for citing this one! I first heard it from a woman I was particularly fond of, and each time I read it, I feel young again.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

It's great to see so much Yeats and the several references to Elizabeth Bishop's stunning "One Art."

I have too many cherished lines to label any one poet a "favorite" but high up on my list are Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Yeats, Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin. "To His Coy Mistress" by Marvell is great--"Time's winged chariot". Anthony Hecht wrote some knock-out poems. I don't know of anyone alive today who measures up to the best poets who wrote primarily before 1975 or thereabouts.

My husband had a professor who wanted to get rid of as many students as possible so he gave them 48 hours to memorize "Lycidas". We spent those two days soaked in the poem.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Sorry, just saw someone had already put this in. I was watching the Disney version with my daughter tonight.

On of my favorites, alongside The Reaper and the Flowers


O ye dead Poets, who are living still
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,

Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
With drops of anguish falling fast and red
From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head
Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?

Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
Have something in them so divinely sweet,
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamour of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

I used it to start my journal, to remind myself why I write.

Neither more nor less significant than the first three notes to Beethoven's Fifth...

I saw Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink,
"I'm not real!" it cried,
"Just a rumour spread by life..."

Gregory Corso

Me being me, I adore my own poetry :

This one is titled: ON QUEEN'S ORDERS

1066, Waterloo
1918, World War 2
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori: They said

Now it has come to me
Will I for Queen and Country?
I took the
Oath

A burden, I carry
A curse

I had rather wished not to be here
On this battle ground
not against the armies of men
but against the words which i pen

The warrant which I send
shall cause a thousand to fall
But far from me

I have no peace
no rest.
My words on the printed paper
haunt me
The words which i pen
the poetry of death.

* note : dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori- (Latin) - it is good and honorable for one to die for his country.

i guessed that this was the most appropriate for this forum.

A poem from a mother to her adopted child.

Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone,
But still, totally,
My Own.

Never forget,
For one single minute,
That you didn't grow under my heart,
But in it.