Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
To Imagination
When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again
O my true friend, I am not lone
While thou canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without,
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world where guile and hate and doubt
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou and I and Liberty
Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it that all around
Danger and grief and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright unsullied sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?
Reason indeed may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy newly blown.
But thou art ever there to bring
The hovering visions back and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted spring
And call a lovelier life from death,
And whisper with a voice divine
Of real worlds as bright as thine.
I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet still in evening's quiet hour
With never-failing thankfulness I
welcome thee, benignant power,
Sure solacer of human cares
And brighter hope when hope despairs.
Emily Bronte
Plead for Me
BY EMILY BRONTË
O thy bright eyes must answer now,
When Reason, with a scornful brow,
Is mocking at my overthrow;
O thy sweet tongue must plead for me
And tell why I have chosen thee!
Stern Reason is to judgment come
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou my advocate be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say
Why I did cast the world away;
Why I have persevered to shun
The common paths that others run;
And on a strange road journeyed on
Heedless alike of Wealth and Power—
Of Glory's wreath and Pleasure's flower.
These once indeed seemed Beings divine,
And they perchance heard vows of mine
And saw my offerings on their shrine—
But, careless gifts are seldom prized,
And mine were worthily despised;
So with a ready heart I swore
To seek their altar-stone no more,
And gave my spirit to adore
Thee, ever present, phantom thing—
My slave, my comrade, and my King!
A slave because I rule thee still;
Incline thee to my changeful will
And make thy influence good or ill—
A comrade, for by day and night
Thou art my intimate delight—
My Darling Pain that wounds and sears
And wrings a blessing out from tears
By deadening me to real cares;
And yet, a king—though prudence well
Have taught thy subject to rebel.
And am I wrong to worship where
Faith cannot doubt nor Hope despair,
Since my own soul can grant my prayer?
Speak, God of Visions, plead for me
And tell why I have chosen thee!
Posts: 595
Threads: 83
Joined: Apr 2016
Bad Mother Blues
When you were arrested, child, and I had to take your pocketknife
When you were booked and I had to confiscate your pocketknife
It had blood on it from where you'd tried to take your life
It was the night before Thanksgiving, all the family coming over
The night before Thanksgiving, all the family coming over
We had to hide your porno magazine and put your handcuffs undercover
Each naked man looked at you, said, Baby who do you think you are
Each man looked straight down on you, like a waiting astronomer's star
Solely, disgustedly, each wagging his luster
I've decided to throw horror down the well and wish on it
Decided I'll throw horror down the well and wish on it
And up from the water will shine my sweet girl in her baby bonnet
A thief will blind you with his flashlight
but a daughter be your bouquet
A thief will blind you with his flashlight
but a daughter be your bouquet
When the thief's your daughter you turn your eyes the other way
I'm going into the sunflower field where all of them are facing me
I'm going into the sunflower field so all of them are facing me
Going to go behind the sunflowers, feel all the sun that I can't see
~Sandra McPherson
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
Don Juan
D. H. Lawrence
It is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
Here this round ball of earth
Where all the mountains sit
Solemn in groups,
And the bright rivers flit
Round them for girth.
Here the trees and troops
Darken the shining grass,
And many people pass
Plundered from heaven,
Many bright people pass,
Plunder from heaven.
What of the mistresses,
What the beloved seven?
— They were but witnesses,
I was just driven.
Where is there peace for me?
Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH LOVE.
Walt Whitman
I AM he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter,
aching, attract all matter?
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.
The End, The Beginning
D. H. Lawrence
If there were not an utter and absolute dark
of silence and sheer oblivion
at the core of everything,
how terrible the sun would be,
how ghastly it would be to strike a match, and make a light.
But the very sun himself is pivoted
upon a core of pure oblivion,
so is a candle, even as a match.
And if there were not an absolute, utter forgetting
and a ceasing to know, a perfect ceasing to know
and a silent, sheer cessation of all awareness
how terrible life would be!
How terrible it would be to think and know, to have consciousness!
But dipped, once dipped in dark oblivion
the soul has peace, inward and lovely peace.
POST-MORTEM effects?
But what of Walt Whitman?
The ‘good grey poet’.
Was he a ghost, with all his physicality?
The good grey poet.
Post-mortem effects. Ghosts.
A certain ghoulish insistency. A certain horrible pottage of human parts. A certain stridency and portentousness. A luridness about his beatitudes.
DEMOCRACY! THESE STATES! EIDOLONS! LOVERS, ENDLESS LOVERS!
ONE IDENTITY!
ONE IDENTITY!
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE.
Do you believe me, when I say post-mortem effects ?
When the Pequod went down, she left many a rank and dirty steamboat still fussing in the seas. The Pequod sinks with all her souls, but their bodies rise again to man innumerable tramp steamers, and ocean-crossing liners. Corpses.
What we mean is that people may go on, keep on, and rush on, without souls. They have their ego and their will, that is enough to keep them going.
So that you see, the sinking of the Pequod was only a metaphysical tragedy after all. The world goes on just the same. The ship of the soul is sunk. But the machine-manipulating body works just the same: digests, chews gum, admires Botticelli and aches with amorous love.
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE.
What do you make of that? I AM HE THAT ACHES. First generalization. First uncomfortable universalization. WITH AMOROUS LOVE! Oh, God! Better a bellyache. A bellyache is at least specific. But the ACHE OF AMOROUS LOVE!
Think of having that under your skin. All that!
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE.
Walter, leave off. You are not HE. You are just a limited Walter. And your ache doesn’t include all Amorous Love, by any means. If you ache you only ache with a small bit of amorous love, and there’s so much more stays outside the cover of your ache, that you might be a bit milder about it.
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE.
CHUFF! CHUFF! CHUFF!
CHU-CHU-CHU-CHU-CHUFF!
Reminds one of a steam-engine. A locomotive. They’re the only things that seem to me to ache with amorous love. All that steam inside them. Forty million foot-pounds pressure. The ache of AMOROUS LOVE. Steam-pressure. CHUFF!
An ordinary man aches with love for Belinda, or his Native Land, or the Ocean, or the Stars, or the Oversoul: if he feels that an ache is in the fashion.
It takes a steam-engine to ache with AMOROUS LOVE. All of it.
Walt was really too superhuman. The danger of the superman is that he is mechanical.
Bavarian Gentians
Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
light,
lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
lost bride and groom.
The Ship of Death
I
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
II
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can’t you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
III
And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?
IV
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we this, our own quietus, make?
V
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.
Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.
Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.
VI
Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
VII
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood’s black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening black darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!
VIII
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
she is gone.
It is the end, it is oblivion.
IX
And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there’s the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.
Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
X
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
Posts: 35
Threads: 4
Joined: Sep 2023
Fear
Stephen Dobyns
His life frightened him. The sun in the sky,
the man next door--they all frightened him.
Fear became a brown dog that followed him home.
Instead of driving it away, he became its friend.
The brown dog named fear followed him everywhere.
When he looked in the mirror, he saw it under
his reflection. When he talked to strangers,
he heard it growl in their voices. He had a wife:
fear chased her away. He had several friends:
fear drove them from his home. The dog fear
fed upon his heart. He was too frightened
to die, too frightened to leave the house.
Fear gnawed a cave in his chest where it
shivered and whined in the night. Wherever
he went, the dog found him, until he became
no more than a bone in its mouth, until fear
fixed its collar around his throat, fixed
its leash to the collar. The dog named fear
became the only creature he could count on.
He learned to fetch the sticks it threw for him,
eat at the dish fear filled for him. See him
on the street, seemingly lost, nose pressed
against the heel of fear. See him in his backyard,
barking at the moon. It is his own face he
finds there, hopeless and afraid, and he leaps at it,
over and over, biting and rending the night air.
Posts: 595
Threads: 83
Joined: Apr 2016
The Selfishness of the Poetry Reader
Sometimes I think I'm the only man in America
who reads poems
and who walks at night in the suburbs,
calling the moon names.
And I'm certain I'm the single man who owns
a house with bookshelves,
who drives to work without a CD player,
taking the long way, by the ocean breakers.
No one else, in all America,
quotes William Meredith verbatim,
cites Lowell over ham and eggs, and Levertov;
keeps Antiworlds and Ariel beside his bed.
Sometimes I think no other man alive
is changed by poetry, has fought
as utterly as I have over "Sunday Morning"
and vowed to love those difficult as Pound.
No one else has seen a luna moth
flutter over Iowa, or watched
a woman's hand lift rainbow trout from water,
and snow fall onto Minnesota farms.
This country wide, I'm the only man
who spends his money recklessly on thin
volumes unreviewed, enjoys
the long appraising look of check-out girls.
How could another in America know why
the laundry from a window laughs,
and how plums taste, and what an auto wreck
feels like—and craft?
I think that I'm the only man who speaks
of fur and limestone in one clotted breath;
for whom Anne Sexton plunged in Grimm; who can't
stop quoting haikus at some weekend guest.
The only man, in all America, who feeds
on something darker than his politics,
who writes in margins and who earmarks pages—
in all America, I am the only man.
~Dick Allen
Posts: 595
Threads: 83
Joined: Apr 2016
Death, The Last Visit
Hearing a low growl in your throat, you'll know that it's started.
It has nothing to ask you. It has only something to say, and
it will speak in your own tongue.
Locking its arm around you, it will hold you as long as you ever wanted.
Only this time it will be long enough. It will not let go.
Burying your face in its dark shoulder, you'll smell mud and hair and
water.
You'll taste your mother's sour nipple, or your favorite salty cock
and swallow a word you thought you'd spit out once and be done with.
Through half-closed eyes you'll see that it's shadow looks like yours,
a perfect fit. You could weep with gratefulness. It will take you
as you like it best, hard and fast as a slap across your face,
or so sweet and slow you'll scream give it to me give it to me until it does.
Nothing will ever reach this deep. Nothing will ever clench this hard.
At last (the little girls are clapping, shouting) someone has pulled
the drawstring of your gym bag closed enough and tight. At last
someone has knotted the lace of your shoe so it won't ever come undone.
Even as you turn into it, even as you begin to feel yourself stop,
you'll whistle with amazement between your residual teeth oh jesus
oh sweetheart, oh holy mother, nothing nothing nothing ever felt this
good.
~Marie Howe
Posts: 595
Threads: 83
Joined: Apr 2016
First Love
It was a flower.
There had been,
before I could even speak,
another infant, girl or boy unknown,
who drew me—I had
an obscure desire to become
connected in some way to this other,
even to be what I faltered after, falling
to hands and knees, crawling
a foot or two, clambering
up to follow further until
arms swooped down to bear me away.
But that one left no face, had exchanged
no gaze with me.
This flower:
suddenly
there was Before I saw it, the vague
past, and Now. Forever. Nearby
was the sandy sweep of the Roman Road,
and where we sat the grass
was thin. From a bare patch
of that poor soil, solitary,
sprang the flower, face upturned,
looking completely, openly
into my eyes.
I was barely
old enough to ask and repeat its name.
"Convolvulus," said my mother.
Pale shell-pink, a chalice
no wider across than a silver sixpence.
It looked at me, I looked
back, delight
filled me as if
I, not the flower,
were a flower and were brimful of rain.
And there was endlessness.
Perhaps through a lifetime what I've desired
has always been to return
to that endless giving and receiving, the wholeness
of that attention,
that once-in-a-lifetime
secret communion.
~Denise Levertov
Posts: 379
Threads: 54
Joined: May 2022
Lizzie dateline='[url=tel:1697237456' Wrote: 1697237456[/url]']
First Love
It was a flower.
There had been,
before I could even speak,
another infant, girl or boy unknown,
who drew me—I had
an obscure desire to become
connected in some way to this other,
even to be what I faltered after, falling
to hands and knees, crawling
a foot or two, clambering
up to follow further until
arms swooped down to bear me away.
But that one left no face, had exchanged
no gaze with me.
This flower:
suddenly
there was Before I saw it, the vague
past, and Now. Forever. Nearby
was the sandy sweep of the Roman Road,
and where we sat the grass
was thin. From a bare patch
of that poor soil, solitary,
sprang the flower, face upturned,
looking completely, openly
into my eyes.
I was barely
old enough to ask and repeat its name.
"Convolvulus," said my mother.
Pale shell-pink, a chalice
no wider across than a silver sixpence.
It looked at me, I looked
back, delight
filled me as if
I, not the flower,
were a flower and were brimful of rain.
And there was endlessness.
Perhaps through a lifetime what I've desired
has always been to return
to that endless giving and receiving, the wholeness
of that attention,
that once-in-a-lifetime
secret communion.
~Denise Levertov
I was just telling my daughter last night at dinner about a poet I had run across that I loved named, you guessed it, Denise Levertov. I’m reading one of her collections right now and was trying to decide which of her poems to post on this thread. I hadn’t run across this one yet. I haven’t read all the Black Mountain poets but she is my favorite by far.
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
Folly on Royal Street before the Raw Face of God
Robert Penn Warren
Drunk, drunk, drunk, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably drunk, total eclipse or,
At least, almost, and in New Orleans once,
In French Town, spring,
Off the Gulf, without storm warnings out,
Burst, like a hurricane of
Camellias, sperm, cat-squalls, fish-smells, and the old
Pain of fulfilment-that-is-not-fulfilment, so
Down Royal Street—Sunday and the street
Blank as my bank account
With two checks bounced—we—
C. and M. and I, every
Man-jack skunk-drunk—
Came.
A cat,
Gray from the purple shadow of bougainvillea,
Fish-head in dainty jaw-clench,
Flowed fluid as thought, secret as sin, across
The street. Was gone. We,
In the shock of that sudden and glittering vacancy, rocked
On our heels.
A cop,
Of brachycephalic head and garlic breath,
Toothpick from side of mouth and pants ass-bagged and holster low,
From eyes the color of old coffee grounds,
Regarded with imperfect sympathy
La condition humaine—
Which was sure-God what we were.
We rocked on our heels.
At sky-height—
Whiteness devoured in dazzle and frazzle of light like
A match-flame in noon-blaze—a gull
Kept screaming above the doomed city.
It screamed for justice against the face of God.
Raw-ringed with glory like an ulcer, God’s
Raw face started down.
And winked.
We
Mouthed out our Milton for magnificence.
For what is man without magnificence?
Delusion, delusion!
But let
Bells ring in all the churches.
Let likker, like philosophy, roar
In the skull. Passion
Is all. Even
The sleaziest.
War
Came. Among the bed-sheet Arabs, C.
Sported his gold oakleaf. Survived.
Got back. Back to the bank. But
One morning was not there. His books,
However, were in apple-pie order. His suits,
All dark, hung in the dark closet. Drawn up
In military precision, his black shoes,
Though highly polished, gave forth
No gleam in that darkness. In Mexico,
He died.
For M.,
Twenty years in the Navy. Retired,
He fishes. Long before dawn the launch slides out.
Land lost, he cuts the engine. The launch
Lifts, falls, in the time of the sea’s slow breath.
Eastward, first light is like
A knife-edge honed to steel-brightness
And laid to the horizon. Sometimes,
He comes back in with no line wet.
As for the third,
The tale is short. But long,
How long the art, and wisdom slow!—for him who
Once rocked on his heels, hearing the gull scream,
And quoted Milton amid the blaze of noon.
Conversation
Elizabeth Bishop
The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions.
And then it stops and undertakes to answer
in the same tone of voice.
No one could tell the difference.
Uninnocent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses,
only half-meaning to.
And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;
until a name
and all its connotation are the same.
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
To You
Walt Whitman
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.
I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color'd light,
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?)
The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
Emily Dickinson poem
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
I wanted to ask a question, due to the word Lead in this poem. I've noticed that many British people use the word Lead in place of the word Led. I've never taken the time to see if that is a thing or a typo. Actually I have, but I don't trust the source of the information. Maybe I will look into that again, now.
Also, while I'm on the subject, I think that there is a difference between a typo and a conscious error. By conscious error, I mean: to think something is correct when it's not.
Enjoy the poem.
My favorite Emily Dickinson poem seems to've, for a long year, been this one:
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
Posts: 379
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Painted Eyes
BY HENRI COLE
Dusty and treeless, the street sloped beneath us.
Somewhere a hammer made thunderclaps,
forging the night-sky.
Then the children,
seeing us, dashed from the Moorish houses,
vigorously shouting, vying for position,
while the bravest,
in worn underpants and plastic sandals,
climbed a high crater-like wall
and plunged, with murderous cries,
into the Roman pool
where blue-lipped fish waited.
Ah, those glorious soaked heads, spiked like palm fronds!
Seeing one in our group clutch her purse—
repelled by the wet black princes
who shivered in circles of yellow mud
and begged from us—
I felt ashamed.
In the brief African twilight,
a canary chirped something
shrewdly about avarice.
Far off, in the little neighborhood
where I grew—with neat cement walkways
and crab-apple blossoms—
money ran through the fingers
of our house, with nothing much
to record its loss but unhappiness:
one of us ironing servilely,
one of us sobbing in a bedroom,
one of us sleeping on a rifle,
one of us seizing another by the hair,
demanding the animal-like submission
we thought was love.
Sunday evening.
Mother is wearing a big cotton shift
and tweezing her eyebrows.
Her head is a thicket of hairpins.
In the round hand-mirror
that parodies her face,
the world looks greater than it is.
I am next to bathe in the water
of the poor earth, reused by each of us
in order of birth. Gray with sodium and grit,
it covers me like a black robe,
and yet I feel exalted.
Soon the violent rain,
like wet Sahara sand, would fall,
scrubbing the hot labyrinthine
corridors of shuttered houses and aimless dogs,
where the sparse life is
purgative and inexhaustible,
where little pilfering hands
moved freely in and out
of my trouser pockets,
though there were no diamonds
except those the eyes mined.
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
Lautreamont
Les chants de Maldoror
3
Let us recall the names of those imaginary angel-like beings
whom my pen during the second lay has drawn from a brain
shining with a radiance derived from those beings
themselves. They are still-born on the scorched paper like
sparks the rapid extinction of which the eye can hardly
follow. Leman! . . . Lohengrin! . . . Lombano! . . . Holzer! . . .
For an instant you appeared, covered with the insignia of
youth, within my enchanted horizon. But I let you fall back
into chaos like diving-bells. You will never return. It is
enough that I have retained the memory of you. You must
make room for other substances, less beautiful perhaps, to
which the stormy overflow of a love that has resolved never
to appease its thirst with the human race will give birth. A
ravenous love, that would devour itself if it did not seek its
nourishment in celestial fictions: creating, in the long run, a
pyramid of seraphim more numerous than the insects that
swarm in a drop of water, it will interweave them into an
ellipse that it will cause to revolve around itself. Meanwhile
if the traveler, pausing before the appearance of a cataract,
will raise his head he will see in the distance a human being
borne towards the cavern of hell by a garland of living
camellias! But . . . silence! The floating image of the fifth
ideal traces itself slowly, like the blurred folds of an aurora
borealis, upon the vaporous surface of my intelligence, and
takes on a more and more precise consistency. . . .
Mario and I were riding along the beach. Our horses,
necks outstretched, clove through the membranes of space
and struck sparks from the pebbles on the beach. An icy
blast struck us full in the face, penetrated our cloaks, and
swept back our hair on our twin heads. The sea-gull tried in
vain to warn us by his outcries and the agitation of his wings
of the possible proximity of the storm, and cried out: “Where
are they off to at that mad gallop?” We said nothing;
plunged in meditation we let ourselves be carried away by
that furious race. The fisherman, seeing us pass by swift as
an albatross, and realizing that he was seeing before him
the two mysterious brothers as we had been called because
we were always together, hastened to cross himself and
hide with his paralysed dog in the deep shadows of a rock.
The inhabitants of the coast had heard tell of many
strange things concerning these two persons, who appeared
on earth amid clouds during periods of great disaster, when
a frightful war threatened to plant its harpoon in the breasts
of two enemy countries, or when cholera was preparing to
hurl out from its sling putrefaction and death through entire
cities. The oldest beachcombers frowned gravely, affirming
that the two phantoms, whose vast black wingspread every
one had noticed during hurricanes above the sandbanks and
reefs, were the evil genius of the land and the genius of the
sea, who promenade their majesty up in the air during great
natural revolutions, united by an eternal friendship the rarity
and glory of which have given birth to the astonishment of
unlimited chains of generations.
It was said that, flying side by side like two Andean
condors, they loved to soar in concentric circles amid the
layers of atmosphere close to the sun; that in these places
they fed upon the pure essence of light; but that they
resigned themselves only reluctantly to reversing the
inclination of their vertical flight towards the dismayed orbit
where the human globe turns deliriously, inhabited by cruel
spirits who massacre one another on battlefields (when they
are not killing one another secretly in their cities with the
dagger of hatred or ambition) and who feed upon beings as
full of life as themselves and placed a few degrees lower in
the scale of existence.
Or again, when the pair firmly resolved, in order to excite
men to repentance by the verses of prophecy, to swim in
great strokes towards the sidereal regions where the planet
stirs in the midst of the dense exhalations of avarice, pride,
curses and mockery, given off like pestilential vapors from
the loathsome surface, seeming no larger than a ball and
almost invisible because of the distance, they did not fail to
find occasions on which they repented bitterly of their
benevolence, misunderstood and spurned, and hid
themselves in the depths of volcanoes to converse with the
tenacious fire that boils in the vats of the central vaults, or
at the bottom of the sea to rest their disillusioned eyes in
the contemplation of the most ferocious monsters of the
deep, which to them appeared as models of gentleness
compared with the bastards of humanity.
When night fell with her propitious gloom they rushed
from the porphyry-crested craters and from the subaqueous
currents, and left well behind them the craggy chamber-pot
where the constipated anus of the human cockatoo
wriggles: left it so far behind that they could no longer
distinguish the suspended silhouette of the filthy planet.
Then, aggrieved by their fruitless attempt, the angel of the
land and the angel of the sea kissed, weeping, amid the
compassionate stars and under the eye of God! . . .
Mario and he who galloped at his side were not unaware
of the vague and superstitious rumors that were recounted
during their evening vigils by the fishermen whispering
around the hearth behind closed doors and windows, while
the night-wind, desirous of warming itself, making its plaint
heard around the thatched cottage, shaking the frail walls
that are surrounded at the base by fragments of crushed
shells washed up by the dying ripples of the waves.
We did not speak. What do two hearts that love say to
each other? Nothing. But our eyes expressed all. I warn him
to wrap himself more closely in his cloak, and he points out
to me that my horse goes too far ahead of his. Each takes
as much interest in the life of the other as in his own life. We
do not laugh. He tries to smile at me, but I perceive that his
countenance bears the weight of terrible impressions
engraved there by meditation, constantly inclined towards
the sphynxes that lead astray, with oblique glances, the
great anguish of mortal intelligence. Seeing that his attempt
is useless he turns aside his gaze, gnaws his earthly chains
with the saliva of rage and stares into the horizon that flees
at our approach.
In my turn I try to remind him of his golden youth which
asks nothing better than to parade like a queen through the
palace of pleasures. But he notices that my words emerge
from my shrunken mouth with difficulty, and that the years
of my own springtime have passed, sad and glacial like an
implacable dream that stalks over banquet tables and beds
of satin where the pale priestess of love slumbers paid with
the glitter of gold, the bitter pleasures of disenchantment,
the pestilential furrows of age, the terrors of solitude, and
the torches of pain. Seeing that my attempt is useless, I am
not surprised I am unable to make him happy.
The Omnipotent appears before me armed with his
instruments of torture, in the whole resplendent halo of his
horror; I turn away my eyes and stare into the horizon that
flees before our approach.
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
from the human eye. . . .
Mario is younger than I. The humidity of the weather and
the salty foam that splashes up over us bring the contact of
cold to his lips. I tell him: “Beware! . . . Beware! . . . Close
your lips, press them together. Do you not see the sharp
talons of cold-chap furrowing your skin with burning
wounds?” He stares at me and replies with motions of his
tongue: “Yes, I see them, those green claws. But I will not
disturb the natural position of my mouth to repel them.
Look, to see if I lie. Since it seems to be the will of
Providence I shall conform to it. But its will could have been
better.” And I cry out: “I admire that noble vengeance!” I
want to tear out my hair, but he forbids me with a severe
glance and I obey him with respect.
It is growing late and the eagle is returning to its nest
hollowed out in the anfractuosity of a rock. My brother says
to me: “I am going to loan you my coat to shield you from
the cold. I do not need it.” I reply: “Woe unto you if you do
as you say. I do not wish that another suffer in my place,
especially you.” He makes no reply, because I am right. But
then I set out to console him because of the too impetuous
tone of my words . . . .
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
from the human eye. . . .
I raise up my head like the prow of a vessel thrown up by
a huge wave and I say to him:
“Are you weeping? I ask you this, king of fogs and snows. I
see no tears on your face, beautiful as the cactus-flower,
and your eyes are dry as a riverbed; but I perceive in the
depths of your eye a vat full of blood in which boils your
innocence, stung in the neck by a large species of scorpion.
A violent wind blows upon the fire that heats the cauldron
and spreads gloomy flames even outside your sacred eye socket. I brought my hair close to your rosy brow and I
smelled a smell of burning because the hair had caught fire.
Close your eyes, for if you do not your countenance,
reduced to cinders like lava from a volcano, will fall in ashes
into the hollow of my hand.”
He turns towards me paying no heed to the reins he holds
in his hand and contemplates me tenderly while slowly
raising and lowering his lily-white eyelids like the rising and
falling of the sea. He wants to reply to my audacious
question and this is what he says:
“Pay no attention to me. Even as the river-mists climb
along the hillsides and having arrived at the summit, melt
into the atmosphere in the form of clouds; even so has your
anxiety on my account insensibly increased without
reasonable motive, and forms over your imagination the
deceptive outline of a desolate mirage. I assure you that
there is no fire in my eyes, although I do have a feeling as if
my head were plunged into a helmet of blazing coals. How
do you suppose the flesh of my innocence should be boiling
in a vat, since I hear nothing but the feeblest and most
confused outcries, that to me are nothing but the wailing of
the wind as it passes over our heads? It is impossible that a
scorpion should have taken up residence and fastened its
sharp pincers into the depths of my jagged eye-socket. I
think they are rather powerful tongs that crush the optic
nerve. However I am of your opinion that the blood filling
the vat was extracted from my veins by an invisible
executioner during last night’s sleep. I waited for you a long
time, beloved son of the ocean; and my sleep-heavy arms
engaged in a vain combat with one who entered the
vestibule of my house. . . . Yes, I feel that my soul is
padlocked in my body and cannot free itself to flee far from
coasts beaten by the human sea and be no longer witness
to the livid pack of sorrows that pursues the human izard
without respite across morasses and the abyss of vast
despondency. But I make no complaint. I received life like a
wound, and I have forbidden suicide to heal the gash. I wish
the Creator to contemplate this yawning crevice every hour
of his eternity. This is the punishment I inflict upon him. Our
steeds slow down the speed of their bronze feet; their
bodies tremble like a hunter surprised by a flock of
peccaries. They must not listen to what we are saying. By
dint of attention their intelligences might increase and they
would be able to understand us. Woe unto them! For they
would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the wild boars of
humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates
them from other beings of the creation seem to have been
accorded them only at the irremediable price of incalculable
sufferings? Imitate my example and plunge your silver spurs
into the flanks of your steed. . . .”
Our horses gallop along the coast as if they were fleeing
the human eye.
Goya
BY CONRAD AIKEN
Goya drew a pig on a wall.
The five-year-old hairdresser’s son
Saw, graved on a silver tray,
The lion; and sunsets were begun.
Goya smelt the bull-fight blood.
The pupil of the Carmelite
Gave his hands to a goldsmith, learned
To gild an aureole aright.
Goya saw the Puzzel’s eyes:
Sang in the street (with a guitar)
And climbed the balcony; but Keats
(Under the halyards) wrote ‘Bright star.’
Goya saw the Great Slut pick
The chirping human puppets up,
And laugh, with pendulous mountain lip,
And drown them in a coffee cup;
Or squeeze their little juices out
In arid hands, insensitive,
To make them gibber . . . Goya went
Among the catacombs to live.
He saw gross Ronyons of the air,
Harelipped and goitered, raped in flight
By hairless pimps, umbrella-winged:
Tumult above Madrid at night.
He heard the seconds in his clock
Crack like seeds, divulge, and pour
Abysmal filth of Nothingness
Between the pendulum and the floor:
Torrents of dead veins, rotted cells,
Tonsils decayed, and fingernails:
Dead hair, dead fur, dead claws, dead skin:
Nostrils and lids; and cauls and veils;
And eyes that still, in death, remained
(Unlidded and unlashed) aware
Of the foul core, and, fouler yet,
The region worm that ravins there.
Stench flowed out of the second’s tick.
And Goya swam with it through Space,
Sweating the fetor from his limbs,
And stared upon the unfeatured face
That did not see, and sheltered naught,
But was, and is. The second gone,
Goya returned, and drew the face;
And scrawled beneath it, ‘This I have known’ . . .
And drew four slatterns, in an attic,
Heavy, with heads on arms, asleep:
And underscribed it, ‘Let them slumber,
Who, if they woke, could only weep’ . . .
Posts: 489
Threads: 182
Joined: Jan 2013
Snow - David Berman
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn't know where I was going with this.
When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbour.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
Posts: 489
Threads: 182
Joined: Jan 2013
I was watching youtube videos, and came across this:
I think this joke could be considered a poem about humour - I like it. I have edited the formatting to make it more of a poem.
----
Today I accidentally stepped on a snail
on the sidewalk in front of our house.
And I thought, I too am like that snail.
I build a defensive wall around myself,
a "shell" if you will.
But my shell isn't made out of a hard, protective substance.
Mine is made out of
tin foil and paper bags.
Posts: 379
Threads: 54
Joined: May 2022
Peonies
by Mary Oliver
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open–
pools of lace,
white and pink–
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities–
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again–
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
Posts: 404
Threads: 353
Joined: Sep 2014
Delmore Schwartz
Baudelaire
When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Dear Mother, is any time left to us
In which to be happy? My debts are immense.
My bank account is subject to the court’s judgment.
I know nothing. I cannot know anything.
I have lost the ability to make an effort.
But now as before my love for you increases.
You are always armed to stone me, always:
It is true. It dates from childhood.
For the first time in my long life
I am almost happy. The book, almost finished,
Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument
To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust.
Debts and inquietude persist and weaken me.
Satan glides before me, saying sweetly:
“Rest for a day! You can rest and play today.
Tonight you will work.” When night comes,
My mind, terrified by the arrears,
Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence,
Promises: “Tomorrow: I will tomorrow.”
Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself
With the same resolution, the same weakness.
I am sick of this life of furnished rooms.
I am sick of having colds and headaches:
You know my strange life. Every day brings
Its quota of wrath. You little know
A poet’s life, dear Mother: I must write poems,
The most fatiguing of occupations.
I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me.
I write from a café near the post office,
Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes,
The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write
“A History of Caricature.” I have been asked to write
“A History of Sculpture.” Shall I write a history
Of the caricatures of the sculptures of you in my heart?
Although it costs you countless agony,
Although you cannot believe it necessary,
And doubt that the sum is accurate,
Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.
Charles Baudelaire,
in desperate translations
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.
Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.
There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant
That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.
Meditation
Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.
While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,
away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.
The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.
Elevation
Over gutters and over parking lots,
over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay,
beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills
unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known
universe, ghost, you slip out of me
with the ease of a swimmer
at one with the waves, furrowing the deep
with a pleasure we can’t articulate
as we fly from the contagion
of the world, bathing in vibrations
shed in silence from the stars, drinking up
the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.
Only when you ferry us
here, beyond the tedium and despair
that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when
animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift
up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds
trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky
and hover over life, understanding without effort
the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die.
The Abyss
Pascal had his abyss, that moved with him.
All is abyss—action, desire, dream,
words! And I often feel against my skin,
setting my hair on end, the wind of Fear.
All around me—the brink, the depths, the space;
I'm spellbound, petrified, frozen in place;
And on my midnights, God's skilled fingers trace
an ever-changing and unceasing nightmare.
I fear my dreams, as I would fear big holes
filled with vague dread, and leading who knows where.
I see infinity through every window,
and my mind, always plagued by vertigo,
yearns to become as numb as empty air.
Ah! Never stray from Numbers and from Souls!
Posts: 5
Threads: 15
Joined: Aug 2024
On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on.
Say for be said. Missaid. From now say for missaid.
Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still.
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.
It stands. What? Yes. Say it stands. Had to up in the end and stand. Say bones. No bones but say bones. Say ground. No ground but say ground. So as to say pain. No mind and pain? Say yes that the bones may pain till no choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Or better worse remains. Say remains of mind where none to permit of pain. Pain of bones till no choice but up and stand. Somehow up. Somehow stand. Remains of mind where none for the sake of pain. Here of bones. Other examples if needs must. Of pain. Relief from. Change of.
All of old. Nothing else ever. But never so failed. Worse failed. With care never worse failed.
Dim light source unknown. Know minimum. Know nothing no. Too much to hope. At most mereminimum. Meremost minimum.
No choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Somehow stand. That or groan. The groan so long on itsway. No. No groan. Simply pain. Simply up. A time when try how. Try see. Try say. How first it lay. Then somehow knelt. Bit by bit. Then on from there. Bit by bit. Till up at last. Not now. Fail better worse now.
Another. Say another. Head sunk on crippled hands. Vertex vertical. Eyes clenched. Seat of all. Germ of all.
No future in this. Alas yes.
It stands. See in the dim void how at last it stands. In the dim light source unknown. Before the downcast eyes. Clenched eyes. Staring eyes. Clenched staring eyes.
That shade. Once lying. Now standing. That a body? Yes. Say that a body. Somehow standing. In the dim void.
A place. Where none. A time when try see. Try say. How small. How vast. How if not boundless bounded.Whence the dim. Not now. Know better now. Unknow better now. Know only no out of. No knowing how know only no out of. Into only. Hence another. Another place where none. Whither once whence noreturn. No. No place but the one. None but the one where none. Whence never once in. Somehow in. Beyondless. Thenceless there. Thitherless there. Thenceless thitherless there.
Where then but there see--
See for be seen. Misseen. From now see for be misseen.
Where then but there see now--
First back turned the shade astand. In the dim void see first back turned the shade astand. Still.
Where then but there see now another. Bit by bit an old man and child. In the dim void bit by bit an old man and child. Any other would do as ill.
Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands - no. Free empty hands. Backs turned both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.Backs turned. Both bowed. Joined by held joining hands. Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade.
Head sunk on crippled hands. Clenched staring eyes. At in the dim void shades. One astand at rest. One old man and child. At rest plodding on. Any others would do as ill. Almost any. Almost as ill.
They fade. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade? No. Sudden go. Sudden back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both.
Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged. Somehow unchanged. Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed. Somehow changed. Each time somehow changed.
The dim. The void. Gone too? Back too? No. Say no. Never gone. Never back. Till yes. Till say yes. Gone too. Back too. The dim. The void. Now the one. Now the other. Now both. Sudden gone. Sudden back. Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged. Somehow unchanged. Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed. Somehow changed. Each time somehow changed.
First sudden gone the one. First sudden back. Unchanged. Say now unchanged. So far unchanged. Back turned. Head sunk. Vertex vertical in hat. Cocked back of black brim alone. Back of black greatcoat cut off midthigh. Kneeling. Better kneeling. Better worse kneeling. Say now kneeling. From now kneeling. Could rise but to its knees. Sudden gone sudden back unchanged back turned head sunk dark shade on unseen knees. Still.
Next sudden gone the twain. Next sudden back. Say now unchanged. So far unchanged. Backs turned. Heads sunk. Dim hair. Dim white and hair so fair that in that dim light dim white. Black greatcoats to heels. Dim black. Bootheels. Now the two right. Now the two left. As on with equal plod they go. No ground. Plod as on void. Dim hands. Dim white. Two free and two as one. So sudden gone sudden back unchanged as one dark shade plod unreceding on.
The dim. Far and wide the same. High and low. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Whence no knowing.No saying. Say only such dim light as never. On all. Say a grot in that void. A gulf. Then in that grot or gulfsuch dimmest light as never. Whence no knowing. No saying.
The void. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Void were not the one. The twain. So far were not the one and twain. So far.
The void. How try say? How try fail? No try no fail. Say only--
First the bones. On back to them. Preying since first said on foresaid remains. The ground. The pain. No bones. No ground. No pain. Why up unknown. At all costs unknown. If ever down. No choice but up if ever down. Or never down. Forever kneeling. Better forever kneeling. Better worse forever kneeling. Say from now forever kneeling. So far from now forever kneeling. So far.
The void. Before the staring eyes. Stare where they may. Far and wide. High and low. That narrow field.Know no more. See no more. Say no more. That alone. That little much of void alone.
On back to unsay void can go. Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go. All not already gone. Till dim back. Then all back. All not still gone. The one can go. The twain can go. Dim can go. Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go.
On back better worse to fail the head said seat of all. Germ of all. All? If of all of it too. Where if not there it too? There in the sunken head the sunken head. The hands. The eyes. Shade with the other shades. In the same dim. The same narrow void. Before the staring eyes. Where it too if not there too? Ask not. No. Ask in vain. Better worse so.
The head. Ask not if it can go. Say no. Unasking no. It cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go. Oh dim go. Go for good. All for good. Good and all.
Whose words? Ask in vain. Or not in vain if say no knowing. No saying. No words for him whose words. Him? One. No words for one whose words. One? It. No words for it whose words. Better worse so.
Something not wrong with one. Meaning - meaning! - meaning the kneeling one. From now one for the kneeling one. As from now two for the twain. The as one plodding twain. As from now three for the head.The head as first said missaid. So from now. For to gain time. Time to lose. Gain time to lose. As the soul once. The world once.
Something not wrong with one. Then with two. Then with three. So on. Something not wrong with all. Far from wrong. Far far from wrong.
The words too whosesoever. What room for worse! How almost true they sometimes almost ring! How wanting in inanity! Say the night is young alas and take heart. Or better worse say still a watch of night alas to come. A rest of last watch to come. And take heart.
First one. First try fail better one. Something there badly not wrong. Not that as it is it is not bad. The noface bad. The no hands bad. The no -. Enough. A pox on bad. Mere bad. Way for worse. Pending worse still. First worse. Mere worse. Pending worse still. Add a -. Add? Never. Bow it down. Be it bowed down. Deep down. Head in hat gone. More back gone. Greatcoat cut off higher. Nothing from pelvis down.Nothing but bowed back. Topless baseless hindtrunk. Dim black. On unseen knees. In the dim void. Better worse so. Pending worse still.
Next try fail better two. The twain. Bad as it is as it is. Bad the no--
First back on to three. Not yet to try worsen. Simply be there again. There in that head in that head. Be it again. That head in that head. Clenched eyes clamped to it alone. Alone? No. Too. To it too. The sunken skull. The crippled hands. Clenched staring eyes. Be that shade again. In that shade again. With the other shades. Worsening shades. In the dim void.
Next--
First how all at once. In that stare. The worsened one. The worsening two. And what yet to worsen. To try to worsen. Itself. The dim. The void. All at once in that stare. Clenched eyes clamped to all.
Next two. From bad to worsen. Try worsen. From merely bad. Add -. Add? Never. The boots. Better worse bootless. Bare heels. Now the two right. Now the two left. Left right left right on. Barefoot unreceding on. Better worse so. A little better worse than nothing so.
Next the so-said seat and germ of all. Those hands! That head! That near true ring! Away. Full face from now. No hands. No face. Skull and stare alone. Scene and seer of all.
On. Stare on. Say on. Be on. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Till dim gone. At long last gone. All at long last gone. For bad and all. For poor best worst and all.
Dim whence unknown. At all costs unknown. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Far and wide. High and low. Say a pipe in that void. A tube. Sealed. Then in that pipe or tube that selfsame dim. Old dim. Whenever what else? Where all always to be seen. Of the nothing to be seen. Dimly seen. Nothing ever unseen. Of the nothing to be seen. Dimly seen. Worsen that?
Next the so-said void. The so-missaid. That narrow field. Rife with shades. Well so-missaid. Shade-ridden void. How better worse so-missay?
Add others. Add? Never. Till if needs must. Nothing to those so far. Dimly so far. Them only lessen. But with them as they lessen others. As they worsen. If needs must. Others to lessen. To worsen. Till dim go.At long last go. For worst and all.
On. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Say all gone. So on. In the skull all gone. All? No. All cannot go. Till dim go. Say then but the two gone. In the skull one and two gone. From the void. From the stare. In the skill all save the skull gone. The stare. Alone in the dim void. Alone to be seen. Dimly seen. In the skull the skull alone to be seen. The staring eyes. Dimly seen. By the staring eyes. The others gone. Long sudden gone. Then sudden back. Unchanged. Say now unchanged. First one. Then two. Or first two. Then one. Or together. Then all again together. The bowed back. The plodding twain. The skull. The stare. All back in the skull together. Unchanged. Stare clamped to all. In the dim void.
The eyes. Time to--
First on back to unsay dim can go. Somehow on back. Dim cannot go. Dim to go must go for good. True then dim can go. If but for good. One can go not for good. Two too. Three no if not for good. With dim gone for good. Void no if not for good. With all gone for good. Dim can worsen. Somehow worsen. Go no. If not for good.
The eyes. Time to try worsen. Somehow try worsen. Unclench. Say staring open. All white and pupil. Dim white. White? No. All pupil. Dim black holes. Unwavering gaping. Be they so said. With worsening words.From now so. Better than nothing so bettered for the worse.
Still dim still on. So long as still dim still somehow on. Anyhow on. With worsening words. Worsening stare. For the nothing to be seen. At the nothing to be seen. Dimly seen. As now by way of somehow on where in the nowhere all together? All three together. Where there all three as last worse seen? Bowed back alone. Barefoot plodding twain. Skull and lidless stare. Where in the narrow vast? Say only vasts apart. In that narrow void vasts of void apart. Worse better later.
What when words gone? None for what then. But say by way of somehow on somehow with sight to do.With less of sight. Still dim and yet -. No. Nohow so on. Say better worse words gone when nohow on.Still dim and nohow on. All seen and nohow on. What words for what then? None for what then. No words for what when words gone. For what when nohow on. Somehow nohow on.
Worsening words whose unknown. Whence unknown. At all costs unknown. Now for to say as worst they may only they only they. Dim void shades all they. Nothing save what they say. Somehow say. Nothing save they. What they say. Whosesoever whencesoever say. As worst they may fail ever worse to say.
Remains of mind then still. Enough still. Some whose somewhere somehow enough still. No mind and no words? Even such words. So enough still. Just enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only!
Enough still not to know. Not to know what they say. Not to know what it is the words it says say. Says? Secretes. Say better worse secretes. What it is the words it secretes say. What the so-said void. The so-said dim. The so-said shades. The so-said seat and germ of all. Enough to know no knowing. No knowing what it is the words it secretes say. No saying. No saying what it is they somehow say.
That said on back to try worse say the plodding twain. Preying since last worse said on foresaid remains.But what not on them preying? What seen? What said? What of all seen and said not on them preying? True. True! And yet say worst perhaps worst of all the old man and child. That shade at last worse seen.Left right left right barefoot unreceding on. They then the words. Back to them now for want of better on and better fail. Worser fail that perhaps of all the least. Least worse failed of all the worse failed shades.Less worse than the bowed back alone. The skull and lidless stare. Though they too for worse. But whatnot for worse. True. True! And yet say first the worst perhaps worst of all the old man and child. Worst in need of worse. Worst in--
Blanks for nohow on. How long? Blanks how long till somehow on? Again somehow on. All gone when nohow on. Time gone when nohow on.
Worse less. By no stretch more. Worse for want of better less. Less best. No. Naught best. Best worse.No. Not best worse. Naught not best worse. Less best worse. No. Least. Least best worse. Least never to be naught. Never to naught be brought. Never by naught be nulled. Unnullable least. Say that best worst. With leastening words say least best worse. For want of worser worse. Unlessenable least best worse.
The twain. The hands. Held holding hands. That almost ring! As when first said on crippled hands the head. Crippled hands! They there then the words. Here now held holding. As when first said. Ununsaid when worse said. Away. Held holding hands!
The empty too. Away. No hands in the--. No. Save for worse to say. Somehow worse somehow to say. Say for now still seen. Dimly seen. Dim white. Two dim white empty hands. In the dim void.
So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to dimmer still. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst.
What words for what then? How almost they still ring. As somehow from some soft of mind they ooze. From it in it ooze. How all but uninane. To last unlessenable least how loath to leasten. For then in utmost dim to unutter leastmost all.
So little worse the old man and child. Gone held holding hands they plod apart. Left right barefoot unreceding on. Not worsen yet the rift. Save for some after nohow somehow worser on.
On back to unsay clamped to all the stare. No but from now to now this and now that. As now from worsened twain to next for worse alone. To skull and stare alone. Of the two worse in want the skull preying since unsunk. Now say the fore alone. No dome. Temple to temple alone. Clamped to it and stare alone the stare. Bowed back alone and twain blurs in the void. So better than nothing worse shade three from now.
Somehow again on back to the bowed back alone. Nothing to show a woman's and yet a woman's. Oozed from softening soft the word woman's. The words old woman's. The words nothing to show bowed back alone a woman's and yet a woman's. So better worse from now that shade a woman's. An old woman's.
Next fail see say how dim undimmed to worsen. How nohow save to dimmer still. But but a shade so aswhen after nohow somehow on to dimmer still. Till dimmost dim. Best bad worse of all. Save somehow undimmed worser still.
Ooze on back not to unsay but say again the vasts apart. Say seen again. No worse again. The vasts of void apart. Of all so far missaid the worse missaid. So far. Not till nohow worse missay say worsemissaid. Not till for good nohow on poor worst missaid.
Longing the so-said mind long lost to longing. The so-missaid. So far so-missaid. Dint of long longing lostto longing. Long vain longing. And longing still. Faintly longing still. Faintly vainly longing still. For fainterstill. For faintest. Faintly vainly longing for the least of longing. Unlessenable least of longing. Unstillable vain least of longing still.
Longing that all go. Dim go. Void go. Longing go. Vain longing that vain longing go.Said is missaid. Whenever said said said missaid. From now said alone. No more from now now said andnow missaid. From now said alone. Said for missaid. For be missaid.
Back is on. Somehow on. From now back alone. No more from now now back and now back on. From now back alone. Back for back on. Back for somehow on.
Back unsay better worse by no stretch more. If more dim less light then better worse more dim. Unsaid then better worse by no stretch more. Better worse may no less than less be more. Better worse what? The say? The said? Same thing. Same nothing. Same all but nothing.
No once. No once in pastless now. No not none. When before worse the shades? The dim before more? When if not once? Onceless alone the void. By no stretch more. By none less. Onceless till no more.
Ooze back try worsen blanks. Those then when nohow on. Unsay then all gone. All not gone. Only nohow on. All not gone and nohow on. All there as now when somehow on. The dim. The void. The shades. Only words gone. Ooze gone. Till ooze again and on. Somehow ooze on.
Preying since last worse the stare. Something there still far so far from wrong. So far far far from wrong.Try better worse another stare when with words than when not. When somehow than when nohow. While all seen the same. No not all seen the same. Seen other. By the same other stare seen other. When with words than when not. When somehow than when nohow. How fail say how other seen?
Less. Less seen. Less seeing. Less seen and seeing when with words than when not. When somehow than when nohow. Stare by words dimmed. Shades dimmed. Void dimmed. Dim dimmed. All there as when no words. As when nohow. Only all dimmed. Till blank again. No words again. Nohow again. Then all undimmed. Stare undimmed. That words had dimmed.
Back unsay shades can go. Go and come again. No. Shades cannot go. Much less come again. Nor bowed old woman's back. Nor old man and child. Nor fore skull and and stare. Blur yes. Shades can blur.When stare clamped to one alone. Or somehow words again. Go no nor come again. Till dim if ever go.Never to come again.
Blanks for when words gone. When nohow on. Then all seen as only then. Undimmed. All undimmed that words dim. All so seen unsaid. No ooze then. No trace on soft when from it ooze again. In it ooze again.Ooze alone for seen as seen with ooze. Dimmed. No ooze for seen undimmed. For when nohow on. No ooze for when ooze gone.
Back try worsen twain preying since last worse. Since atwain. Two once so one. From now rift a vast. Vast of void atween. With equal plod still unreceding on. That little better worse. Till words for worser still.Worse words for worser still.
Preying but what not preying? When not preying? Nohow over words again say what then when not preying. Each better worse for naught. No stilling preying. The shades. The dim. The void. All alwaysfaintly preying. Worse for naught. No less than when but bad all always faintly preying. Gnawing.
Gnawing to be gone. Less no good. Worse no good. Only one good. Gone. Gone for good. Till then gnaw on. All gnaw on. To be gone.
All save void. No. Void too. Unworsenable void. Never less. Never more. Never since first said never unsaid never worse said never not gnawing to be gone.
Say child gone. As good as gone. From the void. From the stare. Void then not that much more? Say oldman gone. Old woman gone. As good as gone. Void then not that much more again? No. Void mostwhen almost. Worst when almost. Less then? All shades as good as gone. If then not that much morethan that much less then? Less worse then? Enough. A pox on void. Unmoreable unlessableunworseable evermost almost void.
Back to once so-said two as one. Preying ever since not long since last failed worse. Ever since vastatween. Say better worse now all gone save trunks from now. Nothing from pelves down. From napes up.Topless baseless hindtrunks. Legless plodding on. Left right unreceding on.
Stare clamped to stare. Bowed backs blurs in stare clamped to stare. Two black holes. Dim black. In through skull to soft. Out from soft through skull. Agape in unseen face. That the flaw? The want of flaw?Try better worse set in skull. Two black holes in foreskull. Or one. Try better still worse one. One dimblack hole mid-foreskull. Into the hell of all. Out from the hell of all. So better than nothing worse say starefrom now.
Stare outstared away to old man hindtrunk unreceding on. Try better worse kneeling. Legs gone say better worse kneeling. No more if ever on. Say never. Say never on. Ever kneeling. Legs gone from staresay better worse ever kneeling. Stare away to child and worsen same. Vast void apart old man and child dim shades on unseen knees. One blur. One clear. Dim clear. Now the one. Now the other.
Nothing to show a child and yet a child. A man and yet a man. Old and yet old. Nothing but ooze how nothing and yet. One bowed back yet an old man's. The other yet a child's. A small child's.
Somehow again and all in stare again. All at once as once. Better worse all. The three bowed down. The stare. The whole narrow void. No blurs. All clear. Dim clear. Black hole agape on all. Inletting all. Outletting all.
Nothing and yet a woman. Old and yet old. On unseen knees. Stooped as loving memory some old gravestones stoop. In that old graveyard. Names gone and when to when. Stoop mute over the graves of none. S
ame stoop for all. Same vasts apart. Such last state. Latest state. Till somehow less in vain. Worse invain. All gnawing to be naught. Never to be naught.
What were skull to go? As good as go. Into what then black hole? From out what then? What why of all? Better worse so? No. Skull better worse. What left of skull. Of soft. Worst why of all of all. So skull not go.What left of skull not go. Into it still the hole. Into what left of soft. From out what little left.
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole.In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther.Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.
Said nohow on.
Samuel Beckett (Worstward Ho)
Posts: 325
Threads: 90
Joined: Apr 2013
Seamus Heaney - A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretches each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).
But death and human beings took second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. ‘Human beings,’ he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
‘Human beings want death to last forever.’
Then Chukwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in the mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
 wae aye man ye radgie
Posts: 440
Threads: 194
Joined: Dec 2017
(01-07-2025, 05:43 AM)Magpie Wrote: Seamus Heaney - A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretches each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).
But death and human beings took second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. ‘Human beings,’ he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
‘Human beings want death to last forever.’
Then Chukwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in the mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
This is haunting stuff
Thanks for posting
(I should read more Heaney)
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