Come, said my Soul
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smiles I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning – as, first, I here and now,
Singing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
Walt Whitman
-Walt Whitman
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A Shropshire Lad, II
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
-A. E. Housman
Happy Easter, from Nina
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Hissa Hilal, woman poet and master of bedouin dialect poetry, rocked the Arab world (and my world) by winning the Million’s Poet competition aired on Abu Dhabi state television.
She has since received death threats for the words of this poem. I think the real power is in her voice. And in the incredibly brave stance she is taking. Read more about the story at Times Online.
The Chaos of Fatwas
I have seen evil from the eyes of the subversive fatwas
in a time when what is lawful is confused with what is not lawful;
When I unveil the truth, a monster appears from his hiding place;
barbaric in thinking and action, angry and blind;
wearing death as a dress and covering it with a belt
He speaks from an official, powerful platform,
terrorizing people and preying on everyone seeking peace;
the voice of courage ran away and the truth is cornered and silent,
when self-interest prevented one from speaking the truth.
-Hissa Hilal
Posted in chaos of fatwa, hissa hilal, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing | Tagged middle east | 5 Comments »
I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.
–Walt Whitman
Left as a comment by Karen 5.0.
Thank you, Karen. Whitman always does it for me.
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from “Tamburlaine the Great” (Part 1, Act V, 160-173)
What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?
If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feelings of their masters’ thoughts
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein as in a mirror we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit —
If these had made one poem’s period
And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.
-Christopher Marlowe
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I
The book lies open
in all the hallways
in all the oases
in all the dreams
around every corner
behind every sand dune
in this dream too
you have to add a line
your place is between
the already written
& the unwritten,
in the white empty space.
In this dream
Stalin smiled, & Heidegger too
in this dream
cockroaches
scuttled from the book–but it had to be written in, despite
the smiles.
A dream of a book
a dream of a desert in a book
a dream of a desert that runs from the book
a dream of a book and a desert
a dream of sand through fingers
a dream of white
a dream of mica
a dream of fennecs
a dream of a desert spilling from the book
into and through the hallway and out the door
And a voice said
write the book
& you will be healed
A voice said a voice said
my middle my voice my will
write in the book
write the desert
the dream
write the sand the white write the running
dream the book.
-Pierre Joris, from H.J.R.
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Spring and Fall
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Posted in corso, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
-D.H. Lawrence
Posted in d.h. lawrence, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing | 3 Comments »
In honor of Valentine’s Day:
The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem
—Is where space ends called death or infinity?
Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions
A mere eyelid’s distance between you and me.
It took us a long time to discover the number zero.
John’s brother is afraid to go outside.
He claims he knows
the meaning of zero.
I want to kiss you.
A mathematician once told me you can add infinity
to infinity.
There is a zero vector, which starts and ends
at the same place, its force
and movement impossible
to record with
rays or maps or words.
It intersects yet runs parallel
with all others.
A young man I know
wants me to prove
the zero vector exists.
I tell him I can’t,
but nothing in my world
makes sense without it.
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Poem of the Month 