Post your favourite Poems

[EmpNapoleon]

"The Lay of the Pomegranate"- Andre Gide, The Fruits of the Earth

"The greatest joys of my senses
Have been thirsts I have quenched."

[MishaK]

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.

Sorry, you're right. I meant that it falls in a line with a lot of other stuff glorifying suffering, denying any effects of our own actions, since everything is hopeless.

[Ephemerid]

Orbital, can your recommend a particular translation in English of his poems?  I'd really like to check him out.  

[Ephemerid]

Apparently these are the only two English translations of Nazim Hikmet's poetry still in print:

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Walls-Selected-Nazim-Hikmet/dp/0856463299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204141704&sr=1-3






http://www.amazon.com/Poems-Nazim-Hikmet-Revised-Expanded/dp/0892552743/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204141704&sr=1-1





Hm.  Orbital, are you familiar with either one of these translations?  Thanks!

[orbital]

Apparently these are the only two English translations of Nazim Hikmet's poetry still in print:

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Walls-Selected-Nazim-Hikmet/dp/0856463299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204141704&sr=1-3






http://www.amazon.com/Poems-Nazim-Hikmet-Revised-Expanded/dp/0892552743/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204141704&sr=1-1





Hm.  Orbital, are you familiar with either one of these translations?  Thanks!

Hey Josh,
Unfortunately no, I am not familiar with the translations. However, I am holding in my hand, a copy of Beyond the Walls right now (since we sell the book ourselves). And from the introduction and preface, this one seems to be quite a comprehensive collection. The only downside is that the poems in this book are those that were written during his multiple imprisonments and thus may give a somewhat limited reflection of his works. He has many other poems that he wrote both as a free man in Turkey and also when in exile in Russia, which this book does not seem to cover. Still, IMO, some of his best works were actually written under confinement (the verse letters to his wife and his friends).
I just went through a few pages of the book casually, and the translation seems to be fine, although a bit ornate and involuted perhaps, something I would not associate with his style of prose.

I do not know about the other book, but the reviews seem to be very favorable.

[Ephemerid]

Hey Josh,
Unfortunately no, I am not familiar with the translations. However, I am holding in my hand, a copy of Beyond the Walls right now (since we sell the book ourselves). And from the introduction and preface, this one seems to be quite a comprehensive collection. The only downside is that the poems in this book are those that were written during his multiple imprisonments and thus may give a somewhat limited reflection of his works. He has many other poems that he wrote both as a free man in Turkey and also when in exile in Russia, which this book does not seem to cover. Still, IMO, some of his best works were actually written under confinement (the verse letters to his wife and his friends).
I just went through a few pages of the book casually, and the translation seems to be fine, although a bit ornate and involuted perhaps, something I would not associate with his style of prose.

I do not know about the other book, but the reviews seem to be very favorable.

Hmmm decisions, decisions... I'll think about it more tonight & may break down & buy one or the other.  Thank you, Orbital!

[Ephemerid]

Two by Wilfred Owen:

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.



Dulce et Decorum Est   


Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. 

                                ~ Wilfred Owen

[sidoze]

Four.

sorry, I should have been blunt. How is it you can read the Petrovic poem?

[sidoze]

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

Thanks for that. I was only familiar with a short excerpt of it (the one on Wikipedia -- perhaps someone could copy the whole poem there?).

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thanks for those Wilfred Owen poems, just josh. Terribly powerful.

[Ephemerid]

I know this is a rather long-ish poem, but trust me, its a really terrific one by Stanley Kunitz!    



THE WELLFLEET WHALE


A few summers ago, on Cape Cod, a whale foundered on the beach, a sixty-three foot finback whale.  When the tide went out, I approached him.  He was lying there, in monstrous desolation, making the most terrifying noises—rumbling—groaning.  I put my hands on his flanks and could feel the life inside him.  And while I was standing there, suddenly he opened his eye.  It was a big, red, cold eye, and it was starting directly at me.  A shudder of recognition passed between us.  Then the eye closed forever.  I've been thinking about whales ever since. —Journal entry


          1

You have your language too,
     an eerie medley of clicks
          and hoots and trills,
location-notes and love calls,
     whistles and grunts.  Occasionally,
          it's like furniture being smashed,
or the creaking of a mossy door,
     sounds that all melt into a liquid
          song with endless variations,
as if to compensate
     for the vast loneliness of the sea.
          Sometimes a disembodied voice
breaks in as if from distant reefs,
     and it's as much as one can bear
          to listen to its long mournful cry,
a sorrow without name, both more
     and less than human.  It drags
          across the ear like a record
running down.


          2

No wind.  No waves.  No clouds.
     Only the whisper of the tide,
          as it withdrew, stroking the shore,
a lazy drift of gulls overhead,
     and tiny points of light
          bubbling in the channel.
It was the tag-end of summer.
     From the harbor's mouth
          you coasted into sight,
flashing news of your advent,
     the crescent of your dorsal fin
          clipping the diamonded surface.
We cheered at the sign of your greatness
     when the black barrel of your head
          erupted, ramming the water,
and you flowered for us
     in the jet of your spouting.


          3

All afternoon you swam
     tirelessly round the bay,
          with such an easy motion,
the slightest downbeat of your tail,
     an almost imperceptible
          undulation of your flippers,
you seemed like something poured,
     not driven; you seemed
          to marry grace with power.
And when you bounded into air,
     slapping your flukes,
          we thrilled to look upon
pure energy incarnate
     as nobility of form.
          You seemed to as of us
Not sympathy, or love,
     or understanding,
          but awe and wonder.

That night we watched the you
     swimming in the moon.
          Your back was molten silver.
We guessed your silent passage
     by the phosphorescence in your wake.
          At dawn we found you stranded on the rocks.


          4

There came a boy and a man
     and yet other men running, and two
          schoolgirls in yellow halters
and a housewife bedecked
     with curlers, and whole families in beach
          buggies with assorted yelping dogs.
The tide was almost out.
     We could walk around you,
          as you heaved deeper into the shoal,
crushed by your own weight,
     collapsing into yourself,
          your flippers and your flukes
quivering, your blowhole
     spasmodically bubbling, roaring.
          In the pit of your gaping mouth
you bared your fringework of baleen,
     a thicket of horned bristles.
          When the Curator of Mammals
arrived from Boston
     to take samples of your blood
          you were already oozing from below.
Somebody had carved his initials
     in your flank.  Hunters of souvenirs
          had peeled off strips of your skin,
a membrane thin as paper.
     You were blistered and cracked by the sun.
          The gulls had been pecking at you.
The sound you made was a hoarse and fitful bleating.

What drew us, like a magnet, to your dying?
     You made a bond between us,
          the keepers of the nightfall watch,
who gathered in a ring around you,
     boozing in the bonfire light.
          Toward dawn we shared with you
your hour of desolation,
     the huge lingering passion
          of your unearthly outcry,
as you swung your blind head
     toward us and laboriously opened
          a bloodshot, glistening eye,
in which we swam with terror and recognition.


          5

Voyager, chief of the pelagic world,
     you brought with you the myth
          of another country, dimly remembered,
where flying reptiles
     lumbered over the steaming marshes
          and trumpeting thunder lizards
wallowed in the reeds.
     While empires rose and fell on land,
          your nation breasted the open main,
rocked in the consoling rhythm
     of the tides.  Which ancestor first plunged
          head-down thru zones of colored twilight
to scour the bottom of the dark?
     You ranged the North Atlantic track
          from Port-of-Spain to Baffin Bay,
edging between the ice-floes
     through the fat of summer,
          lob-tailing, breaching, sounding,
grazing in the pastures of the sea
     on krill-rich orange plankton
          crackling with life.
You prowled down the continental shelf,
     guided by the sun and stars
          and the taste of alluvial silt
on your way southward
     to the warm lagoons,
          the tropic of desire,
where lovers lie belly to belly
     in the rub and nuzzle of their sporting;
          and you turned, like a god in exile,
out of your wide primeval element,
     delivered to the mercy of time.

          Master of the whale-roads,
let the white wings of the gulls
     spread out their cover.
          You have become like us,
Disgraced and mortal.

            ~ Stanley Kunitz

[Ephemerid]

I ended up getting this one instead:

http://www.amazon.com/Poems-Nazim-Hikmet-Revised-Expanded/dp/0892552743/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204141704&sr=1-1



It appears to cover a wider range.  I hate it because neither of these books have a few pages to view, but I found a good handful of his poems (from this translation) on Poemhunter.com so I ordered this one, at least for starters.   

[Ephemerid]

Yusef Komunyakaa is a really good contemporary poet from the US.  This is from his excellent collection of poems on his experiences in Vietnam, Dien Cai Dau:


Facing It

     
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

               ~ Yusef Komunyakaa



And another heartbreaking one by Komunyakaa:



My Father's Love Letters     


On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

                        ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

[MishaK]

sorry, I should have been blunt. How is it you can read the Petrovic poem?

By the coincidence of his language being one of the four. 

[bwv 1080]

From Trurl's Electronic Bard

Love & Tensor Algebra

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!

[Florestan]

From Trurl's Electronic Bard

Love & Tensor Algebra

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!

Excellent!

[Florestan]

One from the greatest Romanian Romantic poet, Mihai Eminescu, the original and a very good translation

Şi dacă...

Şi dacă ramuri bat în geam
Şi se cutremur plopii,
E ca în minte să te am
Şi-ncet să te apropii.

Şi dacă stele bat în lac
Adâncu-i luminându-l,
E ca durerea mea s-o-mpac
Înseninându-mi gândul.

Şi dacă norii deşi se duc
De iese-n luciu luna,
E ca aminte să-mi aduc
De tine-ntotdeauna.

And If...

And if the branches tap my pane
And the poplars whisper nightly,
It is to make me dream again
I hold you to me tightly.

And if the stars shine on the pond
And light its sombre shoal,
It is to quench my mind's despond
And flood with peace my soul.

And if the clouds their tresses part
And does the moon outblaze,
It is but to remind my heart
I long for you always.

[sidoze]

Once,
I heard him,
he was washing the world,
unseen, nightlong,
real.

One and infinite,
annihilated,
ied.

Light was. Salvation.

Paul Celan

[sidoze]

Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas.
Half the catalogue of ships is mine:
that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line,
that once rose, out of Hellas.

To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes –
Foam of the gods on the heads of kings –
Where do you sail? What would the things
of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?

The sea, or Homer – all moves by love's glow.
Which should I hear? Now Homer is silent,
and the Black Sea thundering its oratory, turbulent,
and, surging, roars against my pillow.

Osip Mandelshtam

[Haffner]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

      -- Dylan Thomas