Poems 2 (1 Viewer)

[David Kronenbourg]

The other thread is too old

He had the ploughman's strength
in the grasp of his hand;
he could see a crow
three miles away,
and the trout beneath the stone.
He could hear the green oats growing,
and the south-west wind making rain.
He could hear the wheel upon the hill
when it left the level road.
He could make a gate, and dig a pit,
and plough as straight as stone can fall.
And he is dead.

Ernest Rhys

 

[europhile]

The Next Poem by Dennis O'Driscoll

My next poem is quite short and it’s about something most of you will recognise. It came out of an experience I had on holiday a couple of years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m correct in saying that it’s the only poem I’ve ever managed to write during my holidays, if you could have called this a holiday - it bore all the hallmarks of an endurance test.

There’s a reference in the poem to roller canaries, which become more or less mythical birds in the last line. I hope the context will make that clear. Incidentally, this poem has gone down extremely well in Swedish translation - which maybe reveals a bit about me! A word I’d better gloss is ‘schizont’; if I can locate the slip of paper, I’ll give you the dictionary definition. Yes, here we are: “a cell formed from a trophozoite during the asexual stage of the life cycle of protozoans of the class Sporozoa.”

OK then, I’ll read this and just two or three further sequences before I finish. By the way, I should perhaps explain that the title is in quotations. It’s something I discovered in a book on early mosaics; I wanted to get across the idea of diversity and yet unity at the same time, especially with an oriental, as it were, orientation. And I need hardly tell this audience which of my fellow poets is alluded to in the phrase “dainty mountaineer” in the second section. Anyway, here it is. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that the repetition of the word ‘nowy’ is deliberate. As I said, it’s quite short. And you have to picture it set out on the page as five sonnet-length trapezoids. Here’s the poem.

 

[hydromancer]

Der König in Thule ("The King in Thule") is a German poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1774

The King in Thule

There was a king in Thule,
So faithful to the grave.
His love, when she was dying,
a goblet of gold him gave.

He used to love it deeply,
And always drank from it.
His eyes they filled with tears
Whenever he emptied it.

And when his time to die came
He counted all his wealth,
And everything gave to his heirs,
But only kept that cup.

He sat at the royal banquet,
With all his knights around,
In his forefathers' lofty hall
There in his castle by the sea.

There stood the old carouser,
And drank life's final glow,
Then threw the holy goblet far
Deep down into the waves.

He watched it fall, and drinking
it sank deep into the sea.
He closed his eyes forever,
And never drank a drop more.

 

[hermie]

Girl In a Miniskirt Reading the Bible Outside My Window by Charles Buckowski

Sunday, I am eating a
grapefruit, church is over at the Russian
Orthadox to the
west.

she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving, moving,
she is doing a slow rythmic dance
reading the Bible. . .

long gold earrings;
2 gold bracelets on each arm,
and it’s a mini-suit, I suppose,
the cloth hugs her body,
the lightest of tans is that cloth,
she twists this way and that,
long yellow legs warm in the sun. . .

there is no escaping her being
there is no desire to. . .

my radio is playing symphonic music
that she cannot hear
but her movements coincide exactly
to the rythms of the
symphony. . .

she is dark, she is dark
she is reading about God.
I am God.

 

[jonah]

i like this poem.

Raw With Love
little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

 

[dudley]

There are holes in the sky
where the rain gets in,
but they're ever so small,
and that's why rain is thin.

 

[therealjohnny]

Moribund Clive James' "Japanese Maple" has been doing the rounds


I heard him recite it during an interview over the weekend and was reminded it of it as I was doing the dishes this morning looking at our neighbours' tree

“Japanese Maple”


Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Call your Ma

 

[Deadmanposting]

Winter Morning by James Crews | Poetry Foundation

When I can no longer say thank you

www.poetryfoundation.org

Winter Morning​

BY JAMES CREWS
When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside flashing
off one by one like old men blinking their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you’ve finished peeling it.

 

[egg_]

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

— Wendy Cope