Poetry Selected Just For You

2/13

 

So We'll Go No More a Roving

By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

So, we'll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a roving

By the light of the moon.

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THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE

by: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,

Hid in this silent, dull retreat,

Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,

Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,

No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature’s self in white arrayed,

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,

And planted here the guardian shade,

And sent soft waters murmuring by;

Thus quietly thy summer goes,

Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,

I grieve to see your future doom;

They died--nor were those flowers more gay,

The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn’s power

Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews

At first thy little being came;

If nothing once, you nothing lose,

For when you die you are the same;

The space between is but an hour,

The frail duration of flower.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.





Beloved

You, lost from the start,

Beloved, never-achieved,

I don’t know what melodies might please you.

I no longer try, when the future surges up,

to recognise you. All the vast

images in me, in the far off, experienced, landscape,

towns, and towers and bridges and un-

suspected winding ways

     and those lands, once growing

tremendous with gods:

rise to meaning in me,

yours, who escape my seeing.

      Ah, you were the gardens,

ah, I saw them with such

hope. An open window

in a country house – and you almost appeared,

near me, and pensive. Streets I discovered –

you’d walked straight through them,

and sometimes the mirror in the tradesman’s shop

was still dizzy with you and, startled, gave back

my too-sudden image. - Who knows, if the same

bird did not sound there, through us,

yesterday, apart, in the twilight?

Rainer Maria Rilke

Diego Fernández Espiro — Argentina, 1872 (Translated by José Wan Díaz)


Bohemian

He was born to triumph, and victory

he scorned with stoical arrogance.

His existence was a turbulent orgy,

and a long dream was his ruined history.



Nostalgic of the arts and the glory,

of which he felt the sublime vertigo,

with sarcastic glee, he tore the leaves

of the laurels promised in his memory.



His noble heart was torn in pieces

by the cruel blows of his horrible fate.

And now broken his earthly ties,



of his brilliant tired youth,

sinking into night's death,

he fled the world into nothingness.

Julián del Casal — Cuba, 1863 (Translated by José Wan Díaz)





The arts





When life, like an immense bundle,

weighs over the weary soul

and the final grain of fragrant incense

floats exhausted before the last god;



when we taste, with intense eagerness,

of every bitter poisoned fruit,

and boredom, with a masked face,

interrupts our progress in the long road;



the great, lonely and pure soul

that the miserable reality scorns,

finds ignored happiness in the arts,



like the kingfisher, in cold dark nights,

seeks asylum on the moss-covered crag

that the blue sea floods with silvery waves.

Rafael Pombo — Colombia, 1833 (Translated by José Wan Díaz)

The memory





Oh perfect present from the past,

life of so many dead loved ones,

that populating that funereal desert

evade the pitiless iron hand of time!



In my today, more mundane and desolate

than the dead yesterday, you offer me more

than one port where I may return to seek in my

waking dreams a poetic and sacred asylum:



a temple, at the entrance of which I anoint

my heart with tears, and in another world,

the echo of unforgettable voices, gold and song.



Would such delight be a game, a delusion

and not a true prize, a mysterious rite,

an aurora borealis of the infinite?





Be Near Me by Faiz Ahmed Faiz



Be near me now,

My tormenter, my love, be near me—

At this hour when night comes down,

When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes

With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,

When it comes with cries of lamentation,

with laughter with songs;

Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.

At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,

Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil

For hands still enfolded in sleeves;

When wine being poured makes the sound

of inconsolable children

who, though you try with all your heart,

cannot be soothed.

When whatever you want to do cannot be done,

When nothing is of any use;

At this hour when night comes down,

When night comes, dragging its long face,

dressed in mourning,

Be with me,

My tormenter, my love, be near me.

3/14

GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY

SLOW TRAIN COMING

BOB DYLAN

(two of my favorites...but then...where do you start?)

Sugar for your tea…

Well there are many who are able to make astute observations and line up words in an engaging, diverting, impressive, poetic way…but only Bob Dylan employs this particular aspect of his talent  to combine with  great music.

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                                                                       3/10

 THE GENESIS OF BUTTERFLIES

HE dawn is smiling on the dew that covers

The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers

That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings

In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,

That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,

With muffled music, murmured far and wide.

Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays

That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,

Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,

Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,

The messages of love that mortals write

Filled with intoxication of delight,

Written in April and before the May time

Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,

We dream that all white butterflies above,

Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,

And leave their lady mistress in despair,

To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,

Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies

Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies.

Victor Hugo

3/6

"DREAMIN' OF YOU" 

"DIGNITY"

"COLD IRONS BOUND" 

by Bob Dylan

3/5

“You know I can’t believe we’ve lived so long and are still so far apart “ Bob Dylan

GOT MY MIND MADE UP

***

'When I was just as far as I could walk

From here today,

There was an hour

All still

When leaning with my head again a flower I heard you talk.

Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say—

You spoke from that flower on the window sill-

‘Do you remember what it was you said?'

 'First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'

'Having found the flower and driven a bee away, I leaned on my head

And holding by the stalk,

I listened and I thought I caught the word—

What was it?

‘Did you call me by my name?

 Or did you say-- Someone said "Come" –

I heard it as I bowed.'

 'I may have thought as much, but not aloud’.

Well, so I came” Robert Frost

“For whom does the bell toll for, love? It tolls for you and me” 

Bob Dylan

"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."  John Donne 1624

It tolls for you and me....of that I am certain.  For what reason I know not.

3/1

"The Sun, the hearth of

affection and life, pours

burning love on the

delighted Earth"

Arthur Rimbaud

IN THE SUMMERTIME

SHOOTING STAR

MOONLIGHT

Bob Dylan

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2/29

Pertaining to Logic ("borrowed" from a novel)

Either it , X is true, or it isn’t, Y.

They can’t both be right, X and Y? So one of them has to be false.

So that means either X or Y is the case for B (Bob, Hazel or both)

Okay, your problem if you rely on logic is that you can’t assert the proposition such that X is the case for B, and you can’t assert the proposition such that Y is the case for B.  All you can assert is that either X or Y is the case for B.

It’s only a problem if you rely on logic.  That’s my point. What you’ve got to do Kid, is forget logic, admit its limitations, suspend your disbelief and believe!  It’s the only way you’ll be free to act.  Otherwise you’re stuck, frozen in disbelief and as good as dead.

***

"Wittgenstein from the Tractatus:  “Language disguises thought.  So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing, it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it; a peculiarly self-defeating statement:. Obviously Wittegenstein’s observation about the inexpressibility of thought is expressed in language; how then, can Wittgenstein possibly claim to know that language disguises thought,  more to the point, how can this claim escape contradiction inasmuch as the insistence that language disguises thought belies itself.

It was a shibboleth of self-help gurus and talk-show hosts that the truth was the necessary and adequate answer to an unmastered past.  But who was to say that myth and invention delivered a means of reconciliation, accommodation, and perseverance any less potent?  The Truth will set you free -- why did people place such stock in this belief?  Free from what?  From Untruth?  If that is the answer, then the statement collapses into tautology. If the answer is misery, then it states a hope, an article of faith.  And it certainly does not follow that the truth alone will set you free.  Stories, lies, fiction might do just as neat a job.  Possibly better.

Consider Cavell’s question in “Knowing and Acknowledging:  What does it mean to say ‘I know he’s in pain,; and how does this differ from saying, ‘I know I am in pain?  Cavell rightly points out that the statement “I know I am in pain” is utterly senseless as the experience of one’s own pain cannot property be said to be an article of knowledge I can know my limitations, I can know I should have done better, I can know that  (            ) has a wet climate, but I cannot properly know I am in pain. (Say what?!!!)

Tomlinson insists that we come to know our true self only times of extremis.  Nothing could be more absurd.  The self in extremis is simply a different being than the self under conditions of normality.  We can no more predict how this other self will behave than we can predict the behavior of a complete stranger.

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"Under Your Spell"

"Beyond the Horizon"

"When the Deal Goes Down"

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"Let's Keep It Between Us"

"Let's Stick Together"

"Oh Sister"

by Bob Dylan

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shelter.from.storm@hotmail.com

From ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

…“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

Bob Dylan

 

“Suppose the word were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?’

George Bernard Shaw

From The Shore --A lone gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults Of night and the sea And the stars and storms. Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers, Out into the gloom it swings and batters, Out into the wind and the rain and the vast, Out into the pit of a great black world, Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown, Love of mist and rapture of flight, Glories of chance and hazards of death On its eager and palpitant wings. Out into the deep of the great dark world, Beyond the long borders where foam and drift Of the sundering waves are lost and gone On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

Carl Sandburg