Post your favourite Poems

[Florestan]

William Butler Yeats

When You are Old
   
WHEN you are old and gray 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.

[Florestan]

George Gordon, Lord Byron

When we two parted

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

[Florestan]

William Wordsworth

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
   
   I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves


EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, … stupendous   
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.   
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height   
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,   
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-          
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steedèd and páshed—qúite   
Disremembering, dísmémbering ' áll now. Heart, you round me right   
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.   
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,   
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind          
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety ' upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck   
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind   
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack   
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.

[Ephemerid]

William Butler Yeats

When You are Old
   
WHEN you are old and gray 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.

One of the amazing thing about Yeats is that he is so sonorous. 




AND YET THE BOOKS


And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of the fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

                                          ~ Czeslaw Milosz

[sidoze]

William Wordsworth

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

My grandmother used to recite this one to me. I love early Wordsworth, and The Prelude, but I have my limits and they are reached with this poem.



   
De Profundis
     
There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

Georg Trakl
Translated by Jurek Kirakowski

[Florestan]

Charles Baudelaire

The Voyage

(translated by T. S. Eliot)


For the boy playing with his globe and stamps,
the world is equal to his appetite--
how grand the world in the blaze of the lamps,
how petty in tomorrow's small dry light!

One morning we lift anchor, full of brave
prejudices, prospects, ingenuity--
we swing with the velvet swell of the wave,
our infinite is rocked by the fixed sea.

Some wish to fly a cheapness they detest,
others, their cradles' terror -- others stand
with their binoculars on a woman's breast,
reptilian Circe with her junk and wand.

Not to be turned to reptiles, such men daze
themselves with spaces, light, the burning sky;
cold toughens them, they bronze in the sun's blaze
and dry the sores of their debauchery.

But the true voyagers are those who move
simply to move -- like lost balloons! Their heart
is some old motor thudding in one groove.
It says its single phrase, "Let us depart!"

They are like conscripts lusting for the guns;
our sciences have never learned to tag
their projects and designs -- enormous, vague
hopes grease the wheels of these automatons!



II

We imitate, oh horror! tops and bowls
in their eternal waltzing marathon;
even in sleep, our fever whips and rolls--
like a black angel flogging the brute sun.

Strange sport! where destination has no place
or name, and may be anywhere we choose--
where man, committed to his endless race,
runs like a madman diving for repose!

Our soul is a three-master seeking port;
a voice from starboard shouts, "We're at the dock!"
Another, more elated, cries from port,
"Here's dancing, gin and girls!" Balls! it's a rock!

The islands sighted by the lookout seem
the El Dorados promised us last night;
imagination wakes from its drugged dream,
sees only ledges in the morning light.

Poor lovers of exotic Indias,
shall we throw you in chains or in the sea?
Sailors discovering new Americas
who drown in a mirage of agony!

The worn-out sponge, who scuffles through our slums
sees whiskey, paradise and liberty
wherever oil-lamps shine in furnished rooms--
we see Blue Grottoes, Caesar and Capri.


III

Stunningly simple tourists, your pursuit
is written in the tear-drops in your eyes!
Spread out the packing cases of your loot,
your azure sapphires made of seas and skies!

We want to break the boredom of our jails
and cross the oceans without oars or steam--
give its visions to stretch our minds like sails,
the blue, exotic shoreline of your dream!

Tell us, what have you seen?


IV


"We've seen the stars,
a wave or two -- we've also seen some sand;
although we peer through telescopes and spars,
we're often deadly bored as you on land.

The shine of sunlight on the violet sea,
the roar of cities when the sun goes down:
these stir our hearts with restless energy;
we worship the Indian Ocean where we drown!

No old chateau or shrine besieged by crowds
of crippled pilgrims sets our soul on fire,
as these chance countries gathered from the clouds.
Our hearts are always anxious with desire.

(Desire, that great elm fertilized by lust,
gives its old body, when the heaven warms
its bark that winters and old age encrust;
green branches draw the sun into its arms.

Why are you always growing taller, Tree--
Oh longer-lived than cypress!) Yet we took
one or two sketches for your picture-book,
Brothers who sell your souls for novelty!

We have salaamed to pagan gods with horns,
entered shrines peopled by a galaxy
of Buddhas, Slavic saints, and unicorns,
so rich Rothschild must dream of bankruptcy!

Priests' robes that scattered solid golden flakes,
dancers with tattooed bellies and behinds,
charmers supported by braziers of snakes . . ."


V

Yes, and what else?


VI


Oh trivial, childish minds!
You've missed the more important things that we
were forced to learn against our will. We've been
from top to bottom of the ladder, and see
only the pageant of immortal sin :

there women, servile, peacock-tailed, and coarse,
marry for money, and love without disgust
horny, pot-bellied tyrants stuffed on lust,
slaves' slaves -- the sewer in which their gutter pours!

old maids who weep, playboys who live each hour,
state banquets loaded with hot sauces, blood and trash,
ministers sterilized by dreams of power,
workers who love their brutalizing lash;

and everywhere religions like our own
all storming heaven, propped by saints who reign
like sybarites on beds of nails and frown--
all searching for some orgiastic pain!

Many, self-drunk, are lying in the mud--
mad now, as they have always been, they roll
in torment screaming to the throne of God:
"My image and my Lord, I hate your soul!"

And others, dedicated without hope,
flee the dull herd -- each locked in his own world
hides in his ivory-tower of art and dope--
this is the daily news from the whole world!


VII

How sour the knowledge travellers bring away!
The world's monotonous and small; we see
ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday,
an oasis of horror in sands of ennui!

Shall we move or rest? Rest, if you can rest;
move if you must. One runs, but others drop
and trick their vigilant antagonist.
Time is a runner who can never stop,

the Wandering Jew or Christ's Apostles. Yet
nothing's enough; no knife goes through the ribs
of this retarius throwing out its net;
others can kill and never leave their cribs.

And even when Time's heel is on our throat
we still can hope, still cry, "On, on, let's go!"
Just as we once took passage on the boat
for China, shivering as we felt the blow,

so we now set our sails for the Dead Sea,
light-hearted as the youngest voyager.
If you look seaward, Traveller, you will see
a spectre rise and hear it sing, "Stop, here,

and eat my lotus-flowers, here's where they're sold.
Here are the fabulous fruits; look, my boughs bend;
eat yourself sick on knowledge. Here we hold
time in our hands, it never has to end."

We know the accents of this ghost by heart;
our comrade spreads his arms across the seas;
"On, on, Orestes. Sail and feast your heart--
Here's Clytemnestra." Once we kissed her knees.


VIII

It's time. Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!
The land rots; we shall sail into the night;
if now the sky and sea are black as ink
our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.

Only when we drink poison are we well--
we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,
to drown in the abyss -- heaven or hell,
who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. 



 

[Florestan]

My grandmother used to recite this one to me. I love early Wordsworth, and The Prelude, but I have my limits and they are reached with this poem.



   
De Profundis
     
There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

Georg Trakl
Translated by Jurek Kirakowski

Trakl is one of my all-time favourite poets.

[Ephemerid]

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps   


For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.

                                         ~ Galway Kinnell

[orbital]

Poetry loses so much in translation that, I feel with some it is almost at the brink of being pointless 

Here is a very favorite of mine from the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet Ran, written during one of his many many imprisonments  I hope the translation can at least reflect its essence.


ON LIVING (1947-1948)

1
Living is no laughing matter,
You have to live with great seriousness
just like a squirrel for example,
I mean, without looking for something outside and beyond living itself,
I mean, living must be your whole occupation.

You must take living seriously,
To such an extent that,
Say, your arms are tied behind your back,
Your back to the wall,
Or, say, wearing your big glasses,
And your white coat in a laboratory,
Dying for other people.
For those you have never seen even,
Even when no one has forced you to do so,
Even though you know living is the most beautiful, the most real thing there is.

I mean, you will take living so seriously that,
You will plant olive trees even when you are seventy.
And not for your children either,
Simply because you don't believe in death no matter how much you are afraid of it,
I mean just because living weighs heavier.

-1947-


2
Say, we are about to undergo a major surgery,
Which is to say, we might not be getting up from that white table.
Even if it is not possible not to feel sad about going a little too soon,
We will still laugh at the jokes being told,
We will peak out the window to see if there's rain,
Or, we will wait, with great anticipation, for the next round of evening news.

Say we are at the front, ready to fight for something worth fighting for,
It is possible to fall right there, on the first day, at the first round of fire.
This we will know with a curious anger,
But we will still be madly curious about the outcome of this,
This war, even if it lasts for years to come.

Say, we are in prison,
And we are close to, say, fifty,
And there are eighteen more years before those iron gates open for us.
We will still live as if we are outside,
Outside with all its men, women, animals, struggles and winds,
I mean live with the outside, outside these walls.
Which is to say, no matter how and where we are,
We will live as if we will never die.

-1948-


3
This earth will grow cold,
A star among stars, one of the tiniest out there, even.
I mean, this whole wide world is like a gilded mote on blue velvet.

This earth will go cold one day,
And not like a block of ice or a dead cloud either,
It will roll like an emptied walnut in pitch-black space.

This, you must grieve for right now
This sorrow, you have to feel today,
This is how much you must love this world,
Just to be able to say "I have lived".

Nazim Hikmet
February, 1948

[toledobass]

ee cummings


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

[Sergeant Rock]

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps   

                                         ~ Galway Kinnell

Kinnell writes so beautifully about the joys of marriage and monogamy. One of my favorites ends:

Isn't it worth missing whatever joy
you might have dreamed, to wake in the night and find
you and your beloved holding hands in your sleep?
                                               --Galway Kinnell "Why Regret"

[Ephemerid]

Here is a very favorite of mine from the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet Ran...

Wow!  I don't think I've heard of him before (just looked at an entry on him on Wikipedia).  I love that poem!!

This is a favourite poem of mine (which I have posted on my bulletin board right here next to my desk at work), which Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music.  It reminds me so much of a very special day shared with someone very dear to me last year, an unforgettable day... (ok I'll stop now)


SILENT NOON


Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass--
   The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
   Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
   Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
   Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:
   So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
   When twofold silence was the song of love.

                                ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[Ephemerid]

Kinnell writes so beautifully about the joys of marriage and monogamy. One of my favorites ends:

Isn't it worth missing whatever joy
you might have dreamed, to wake in the night and find
you and your beloved holding hands in your sleep?
                                               --Galway Kinnell "Why Regret"

Yeah, Kinnell is really good, Sarge!  The Book of Nightmares is my favourite (especially "Little Sleep's Head")


Here's a funny, surreal sort of poem by Mark Strand I get a kick out of:


Eating Poetry


Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

                                     ~ Mark Strand

[Drasko]

Poetry loses so much in translation that, I feel with some it is almost at the brink of being pointless 

Predosećanje Budućnosti

Njihove su noći surove i dolge
jao
gde su sada burlaci sa Volge
U Serbiji sebri
svuda
ista tuga
istorijo strašna
bolna i preduga
Proleće je opet!
Kiša poljubaca!
Ljubeći me ljubiš budućeg
mrtvaca.

O reci mi reci
Da li si u stanju
Da zamisliš moju
Glavu ko lobanju?
U pustome polju
Prazno
I duboko
I mrava što živi gde je
Bilo oko…
I poljskoga miša
Što potajno
Želi
Da istera mrava
Pa da se useli…
I pčelu!
Što sleti
Kada vetar duva
Na cvet što je niko
Iz bivšega uva!
Budućnosti strašna
Sudbo nevesela
Kad bih bar mogao
Da budem ta pčela...

Kad gori čovek
Ceo svet se
Greje -
Kad izgori
Čovek
Tad
Pepeo sve je.

      ~ Brana Petrović

Branko Miljković - Uzalud je budim (I wake her in vain) - Rade Serbedzija reading (with rather atrocious background music)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0N-iJgsPCM

Matija Bećković - Kad dodjes u bilo koji grad (When you arrive at any given city) - author reading (though poem is very long and his reading was better when he was younger)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg12TGTD3cE

Vasko Popa - Vratite mi moje krpice (english translation by Charles Simic)
http://www.exilequarterly.com/authors/popa.html

And excerpt of the same poem in completely different translation (can't recall whose)

Give me back my rags
My rags of pure dreaming
Of silk smiling
Of striped foreboding
Of my lacy cloth
My rags of spotted hope
Of shot desire
Of chequered looks
Of my face's skin
Give me back my rags
Give me when I ask you nicely

[MishaK]

Oof. That Petrovic poem is depressing. More from our national school of glorified martyrdom. I like the Popa.

[sidoze]

Here is a very favorite of mine from the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet Ran

I was given a book of wonderful poems by Orhan Veli Kanik. If that's anything to go by, Turkey seems as good a place as any to write sad lyrics.

Oof. That Petrovic poem is depressing.

out of curiosity, how many languages do you understand? I wouldn't mind reading the Petrovic one somehow.

[MishaK]

out of curiosity, how many languages do you understand?

Four.

[orbital]

I was given a book of wonderful poems by Orhan Veli Kanik. If that's anything to go by, Turkey seems as good a place as any to write sad lyrics.

Not always sad, but always with a bit of 'saudade' nevertheless.

Here's one from Nazim you might like: called The Tale of Tales. Norshteyn borrowed the title for his animated film.

THE TALE OF TALES
Here we are at the edge of the water
the sycamore and I.
Our figures emerge in the water
the sycamore's and mine.
The water casts light back on us
the sycamore and me.

Here we are at the edge of the water
the sycamore and I, and with us, a cat.
Our figures emerge in the water
the sycamore's and mine and the cat's.
The water casts light back on us
the sycamore, me, and the cat.

Here we are at the edge of the water
the sycamore and I, the cat—and the sun.
Our figures emerge in the water
the sycamore's and mine, the cat's and the sun's.
The water casts light back on us
the sycamore and me, the cat and the sun.

Here we are at the edge of the water,
the sycamore and I, the cat and the sun with all that we are.
Our figures emerge in the water
the sycamore's and mine, the cat's and the sun's with all that we are.
The water casts light back on us
the sycamore and me, the cat and the sun and all that we are.

Here we are at the edge of the water
the sycamore and I, the cat and the sun with all that we are.
First the cat will go
and its figure will fade from the water.
I will go next
and my figure, too, will fade from the water.
Then the sycamore will go
and its figure will fade from the water as well.
Then the water will go
and the sun will be all that is left
but then it, too, will go.

Here we are at the edge of the water
the sycamore and I, the cat and the sun with all that we are.
The water is cool
the sycamore magnificent
I am writing poetry
the cat dozing.
The sun is warm—
how wonderful to be alive.
The water casts light back on us
the sycamore and me, the cat and the sun and all that we are.
----

[Drasko]

Oof. That Petrovic poem is depressing. More from our national school of glorified martyrdom.

The poem is bleak but where you see glorification I see just resignation, and concluding desire to be a bee is hardly martyrdom. Nihilism would be easier objection in my opinion.