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Archive for the ‘poem’ Category

Poem of the Day: The Shivering Beggar

Posted in humor, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, robert, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/14/2007| Leave a Comment »

The Shivering Beggar
Near Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.

Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old gray-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.”

He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet
And wrapped it round the aged varlet,
Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse,
Quaking and chattering seven times worse.

Said Edward, “Sir, it would seem you freeze
Most bitter at your extremities.
Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also,
That warm upon your way you may go.”

The man took stocking and shoe and glove,
Blaspheming Christ our Saviour’s love,
Yet seemed to find but little relief,
Shaking and shivering like a leaf.

Said the saint again, “I have no great riches,
Yet take this tunic, take these breeches,
My shirt and my vest, take everything,
And give due thanks to Jesus the King.”

The saint stood naked upon the snow
Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe,
Praying, “O God! my faith, it grows faint!
This would try the temper of any saint.

“Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray,
And drive these sinful thoughts away.
Make clean my heart if it be Thy will,
This damned old rascal’s shivering still!”

He stooped, he touched the beggar man’s shoulder;
He asked him did the frost nip colder?
“Frost!” said the beggar, “no, stupid lad!
’Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad.”

-Robert Graves

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Poem of the Day: How like a winter hath my absence been (Sonnet 97)

Posted in lonely, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Shakespeare, sonnet, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/13/2007| Leave a Comment »

How like a winter hath my absence been (Sonnet 97)

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

-William Shakespeare

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Poem of the Day: Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/11/2007| Leave a Comment »

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Now winter nights enlarge
This number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well:
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys
They shorten tedious nights.

-Thomas Campion

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Poem of the Day: The Visionary

Posted in bronte, holiday, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, vision, visionary, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/10/2007| Leave a Comment »

The Visionary
Silent is the house: all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out o’er the snow-wreaths deep,
Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze
That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees.

Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor;
Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door;
The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far:
I trim it well, to be the wanderer’s guiding-star.

Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame!
Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame:
But neither sire nor dame nor prying serf shall know,
What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.

What I love shall come like visitant of air,
Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;
What loves me, no word of mine shall e’er betray,
Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.

Burn, then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear—
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:
He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy.

-Emily Brontë

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Poem of the Day: The Snow Man

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, snow, snow man, stevens, wallace, winter, Write, Writer, writing on 12/07/2007| Leave a Comment »

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-Wallace Stevens

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Poem of the Day: On the Road Home

Posted in home, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, road, stevens, truth, wallace, words, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/06/2007| 4 Comments »

On the Road Home

It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said
“There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth.”
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
“Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye”;

It was when you said,
“The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth”;

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

-Wallace Stevens

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Poem of the Day: Why is the Color of Snow?

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Shaughnessy, snow, why is the color of snow, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/05/2007| 1 Comment »

Why is the Color of Snow?

Let’s ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.

What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.

Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn’t?
Do you see how it is for me.

Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.

A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.

It’s true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that’s occasional.
What is constant is white,

or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,

is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!

Who won’t stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.

Don’t we melt it?
Aren’t we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question—

if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?

A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.

Oh Materialists! Thinking matter matters.
If we dream of snow, of banks and blankets
to keep our treasure safe forever,

what world is made, that made us that we keep
making and making to replace the dreaming at last.
To stop the terrible dreaming.

-Brenda Shaughnessy

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Poem of the Day: Winter-Time

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, snow, stevenson, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/04/2007| Leave a Comment »

Winter-Time

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

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Poem of the Day: Fishing in Winter

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, winter, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/03/2007| Leave a Comment »

Fishing in Winter

A man staring at a small lake sees

His father cast light line out over

The willows. He’s forgotten his

Father has been dead for two years

And the lake is where a blue fog

Rolls, and the sky could be, if it

Were black or blue or white,

The backdrop of all attention.

He wades out to join the father,

Following where the good strikes

Seem to lead. It’s cold. The shape

Breath takes on a cold day is like

Anything else–a rise on a small lake,

The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub–

A shape already inside a shape,

Two songs, two breaths on the water.

-Ralph Burns

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Poem of the Day: Enueg 29

Posted in alvarez, enueg, nina, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Write, Writer, writing on 12/01/2007| 1 Comment »

Enueg 29

I think about Bukowski
vomiting out half-god poetry
and calling it the rallying cry
and saying that the new poetry
doesn’t feel good, doesn’t feel like poetry
doesn’t have substance, like a hot steaming shit
I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.
These years since college have done something to me.
I didn’t even realize, but I’m trying to turn myself
into a safe idea,

with my writing blog, and how little I push
at the edges, but I am surrounded
by moles
and they think I’m a daisy

oh god, is it supposed to be like this?
to be 29 and not looking anymore, not for men
or work, or rainbows or Heideggar
but just turning silent, like stone inside
just breathing so shallow
and not able to want the past
nor the future, just certain
there will be too many worlds you must
be just on the tip of
the ikea world
and the furnished living room
world and the kids eating their
sandwiches world and the easy to understand
world
that is not actually easy, but appears easy,
because it is loud
and the tv shows and commercials
and what that one poet said about how
everything we do is important
and I watched seven hours of tv today,
so this is shaping, heavily, who I am
what my life is

and god, there was supposed to be something
that came after that hell, after the depression
of those ten years, when the mind fully fused
and there was less falling into the abyss, and more
acceptance of the routines and responsibilities of
this nation, I thought there would be something
in the quiet after that, I thought it would mean
I had gotten somewhere.
but when the storms ended,
I saw that what they had blurred out was
this great unmoving silence, that throbs in long
meters and is like the confused ghost looking back
at her body in the snow.

-Nina Alvarez

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