Poetry You Still Like

Poetry You Still Like

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(W. H. Auden)
.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

(William Carlos Williams)
.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

brilliant a poetry thread, i love this poem, from the Irish,

Tá Mé 'mo Shuí (I Am Awake)

I am up since the moon arose last night
Putting down a fire again and again and keeping it lit
The family is in bed and here am I by myself
The cocks are crowing and the country is asleep but me.
I love your mouth, your eyebrows and your cheeks
Your bright blue eyes for whose sake I gave up contentment
In longing for you I cannot see to walk the road
Friend of my bosom, the mountains lie between me and you.
Learned men say that love is a fatal sickness
I never admitted it until now that my heart is broken
It’s a very painful illness, alas, I have not avoided it
And it sends a hundred arrows through the core of my heart.
I met a fairy woman in the hollow of Béal an Átha
I asked her would any key unlock the love in my heart
And she said in soft, simple language
“When love enters the heart it will never be driven from it.”

YouTube

you cannot reach me people, i am already torn and out there!

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]Poetry You Still Like

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always ...[text shortened]... y falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(W. H. Auden)
.[/b]

Originally posted by JS357
Just about any part of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald's Translation. It's in AABA Rhyme scheme.

Here is a verse that speaks to me about some of the RHP forums:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went."

YouTube

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]Poetry You Still Like

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always ...[text shortened]... y falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(W. H. Auden)
.[/b]

Originally posted by rookie54
i like pottery...

this thread might be better suited in the culture forum...

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

(Billy Collins)

Originally posted by rookie54
this thread might be better suited in the culture forum...

Originally posted by HandyAndy
Suited for the culture forum
That lofty shrine of rare decorum
Edifying sanctum sanctorum
For all who know what's good for 'em

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! They'd banish us – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

(Emily Dickinson)

A Cowboy's Hat
Author: Baxter Black

The rules of the range are simple at best
Should you venture in that habitat.
Don't cuss a man's dog, be good to the cook
And don't mess with a cowboy's hat.

Now I'll admit there's dogs that need cussin'
And when Cookie starts out in the spring
His grub ain't fit for buzzard consumption
But a hat? That's a personal thing!

Sometimes it's all that a cowboy owns
Or, at least, that he owns free and clear
So when someone suggests that he check it
He'll prob'ly act like he didn't hear

'Cause he'd no more think of leavin' his hat
Than he'd consider crossin' a pard.
Id be like a zebra leavin' his stripes
Or a lawyer forgettin' his card!

In a dance hall, a court room or cafe
If asked, he'll stick it under his chair
Or decide to himself if hats ain't welcome
Then just maybe he shouldn't be there.

He subscribes to a loose code of conduct
That's unwritten but here's how it's said,
"There's only one place that a hat belongs
And that's settin' on top of yer head!"

If you're givin' some thought to my comments
You'd expect and exception whereat
A place exists that's propitiously sound
For a cowboy to take off his hat.

If you're thinkin' a wedding, forget it!
That's half a hitch a cowboy can't tie
And if your final guess is a funeral,
I can tellya friend, they never die!

So a word to the wise is sufficient
And I guess I should leave it at that.
Suffice it to say, you can bum his last chew
But don't mess with a cowboy's hat!
Repeat after me

Don't mess with a cowboy's hat!

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]Poetry You Still Like

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always ...[text shortened]... y falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(W. H. Auden)
.[/b]

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

(Denise Levertov)