In my Profile I put this as my favourite poem. Anon/The Classics?The Bible...Your favct piece of verse here!

Anon.


"Two Little Shadows"


I saw a young mother
With eyes full of laughter
And two little shadows
Came following after.


Wherever she moved,
They were always right there
Holding onto her skirts,
Hanging onto her chair.
Before her, behind her -
An adhesive pair.


"Don't you ever get weary
As, day after day,
your two little tagalongs
Get in your way?"


She smiled as she shook
Her pretty young head,
And I'll always remember
The words that she said.


"It's good to have shadows
That run when you run,
That laugh when you're happy
And hum when you hum -
For you only have shadows


When your life's filled with sun."

i can see why this is a favorite of yours....a mothers love is a special thing indeed....

Something quick from the Bible then. Song of Solomon 2:14
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs...


and a favorite from Denise Levertov


Something to Wear

To sit and sit like the cat
and think my thoughts through--
that might be a deep pleasure:


to learn what news
persistence might discover,
and like a woman knitting

make something from the
skein unwinding, unwinding,
something I could wear

or something you could wear
when at length I rose to meet you
outside the quiet sitting-room

(the room of thinking and knitting
the room of cats and women)
among the clamor of

cars and people,
the stars drumming and poems
leaping from shattered windows.

"Stand In" A.R. Ammons

A young woman
on the bridge tosses
rocks of
old snow

over the rail and leans to
watch them
streak
down into the gorge: all

the pleasures of flight with
none of the harmful side
effects.

Looks like there promises to be some excellent poems here.

Jesus Dies by Anne Sexton

From up here in the crow's nest
I see a small crowd gather.
Who do you gather, my townsmen?
There is no news here.
I am not a trapeze artist.
I am busy with My dying.
Three heads lolling,
bobbing like bladders.
No news.
The soldiers down below
laughing as soldiers have done for centuries.
No news.
We are the same men,
you and I,
the same sort of nostrils,
the same sort of feet.
My bones are oiled with blood
and so are yours.
My heart pumps like a jack rabbit in a trap
and so does yours.
I want to kiss God on His nose and watch Him sneeze
and so do you.
Not out of disrespect.
Out of pique.
Out of a man-to-man thing.
I want heaven to descend and sit on My dinner plate
and so do you.
I want God to put His steaming arms around Me
and so do you.
Because we need.
Because we are sore creatures.
My townsmen,
go home now.
I will do nothing extraordinary.
I will not divide in two.
I will not pick out My white eyes.
Go now,
this is a personal matter,
a private affair and God knows
none of your business.

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

1
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
2
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
3
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Rainrose posted what I was going to post...bah. I'll have to go with Robert Service's The Nostomaniac.

The Nostomaniac

On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam,
And the home of the wolf shall be my home,
And a bunch of bones on the boundless snows
The end of my trail . . . who knows, who knows!

I'm dreaming to-night in the fire-glow, alone in my study tower,
My books battalioned around me, my Kipling flat on my knee;
But I'm not in the mood for reading, I haven't moved for an hour;
Body and brain I'm weary, weary the heart of me;
Weary of crushing a longing it's little I understand,
For I thought that my trail was ended, I thought I had earned my rest;
But oh, it's stronger than life is, the call of the hearthless land!
And I turn to the North in my trouble, as a child to the mother-breast.

Here in my den it's quiet; the sea-wind taps on the pane;
There's comfort and ease and plenty, the smile of the South is sweet.
All that a man might long for, fight for and seek in vain,
Pictures and books and music, pleasure my last retreat.
Peace! I thought I had gained it, I swore that my tale was told;
By my hair that is grey I swore it, by my eyes that are slow to see;
Yet what does it all avail me? to-night, to-night as of old,
Out of the dark I hear it -- the Northland calling to me.

And I'm daring a rampageous river that runs the devil knows where;
My hand is athrill on the paddle, the birch-bark bounds like a bird.
Hark to the rumble of rapids! Here in my morris chair
Eager and tense I'm straining -- isn't it most absurd?
Now in the churn and the lather, foam that hisses and stings,
Leap I, keyed for the struggle, fury and fume and roar;
Rocks are spitting like hell-cats -- Oh, it's a sport for kings,
Life on a twist of the paddle . . . there's my "Kim" on the floor.

How I thrill and I vision! Then my camp of a night;
Red and gold of the fire-glow, net afloat in the stream;
Scent of the pines and silence, little "pal" pipe alight,
Body a-purr with pleasure, sleep untroubled of dream:
Banquet of paystreak bacon! moment of joy divine,
When the bannock is hot and gluey, and the teapot's nearing the boil!
Never was wolf so hungry, stomach cleaving to spine. . . .
Ha! there's my servant calling, says that dinner will spoil.

What do I want with dinner? Can I eat any more?
Can I sleep as I used to? . . . Oh, I abhor this life!
Give me the Great Uncertain, the Barren Land for a floor,
The Milky Way for a roof-beam, splendour and space and strife:
Something to fight and die for -- the limpid Lake of the Bear,
The Empire of Empty Bellies, the dunes where the Dogribs dwell;
Big things, real things, live things . . . here on my morris chair
How I ache for the Northland! "Dinner and servants" -- Hell!!

Am I too old, I wonder? Can I take one trip more?
Go to the granite-ribbed valleys, flooded with sunset wine,
Peaks that pierce the aurora, rivers I must explore,
Lakes of a thousand islands, millioning hordes of the Pine?
Do they not miss me, I wonder, valley and peak and plain?
Whispering each to the other: "Many a moon has passed . . .
Where has he gone, our lover? Will he come back again?
Star with his fires our tundra, leave us his bones at last?"

Yes, I'll go back to the Northland, back to the way of the bear,
Back to the muskeg and mountain, back to the ice-leaguered sea.
Old am I! what does it matter? Nothing I would not dare;
Give me a trail to conquer -- Oh, it is "meat" to me!
I will go back to the Northland, feeble and blind and lame;
Sup with the sunny-eyed Husky, eat moose-nose with the Cree;
Play with the Yellow-knife bastards, boasting my blood and my name:
I will go back to the Northland, for the Northland is calling to me.

Then give to me paddle and whiplash, and give to me tumpline and gun;
Give to me salt and tobacco, flour and a gunny of tea;
Take me up over the Circle, under the flamboyant sun;
Turn me foot-loose like a savage -- that is the finish of me.
I know the trail I am seeking, it's up by the Lake of the Bear;
It's down by the Arctic Barrens, it's over to Hudson's Bay;
Maybe I'll get there, -- maybe: death is set by a hair. . . .
Hark! it's the Northland calling! now must I go away. . . .

Go to the Wild that waits for me;
Go where the moose and the musk-ox be;
Go to the wolf and the secret snows;
Go to my fate . . . who knows, who knows!

The Winos on Pitrero Hill

Alas, they get
their bottles
from a small
neighborhood store.
The old russian
sells them port
and passes no moral
judgement. They go
and sit under
the green bushes
that grow along
the wooden stairs.
They could almost
be exotic flowers,
they drink so
quietly.

Richard Brautigan

by Ai

The Anniversary

You raise the ax,
the block of wood screams in half,
while I lift the sack of flour
and carry it into the house.
I'm not afraid of the blade
you've just pointed at my head.
If I were dead, you could take the boy,
hunt, kiss gnats, instead of my moist lips.
Take it easy, squabs are roasting,
corn, still in husks, crackles,
as the boy dances around the table:
old guest at a wedding party for two sad-faced clowns,
who together, never won a round of anything but hard times.
Come in, sheets are clean,
fall down on me for one more year
and we can blast another hole in ourselves without a sound.

Two from Stephen Crane, because they're short...But I love them.

Many Red Devils Ran From My Heart

Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page,
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.


In The Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

I love this poem, Theodore Roethke.

Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.


Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.


My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.


If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.


We had to write an essay on it for the AP Literature exam, which we took today. It is a heavy heavy poem. I cried when I read it. No othe poem has ever made me cry after reading it.

Omg, I just wrote a paper on that poem, I loved it.

in the interest of keeping this thread going...

i think this poet is still alive. oh well. i'm going to post a series of poems, because they all come consecutively from the same book and tell a story. the poems come from the book "Drop Dead Beautiful" by Belle Randall. these poems are not for the squeamish but should be read them anyway.

Once Upon a Time

Out of the darkness came
the silhoutted stranger
in the deep creased hat.

She watched from the curtain
his knock at the door.
I've come to rob you,

Said his grin. I'm the only
jewel in this house
replied her stammer.

O God, who works us from within
like fist puppets, what now?
Cordon off the walk

With yellow tape. Let no one enter.
The walls are scrawled
with hidden agenda.

There was so much junk
and trash in the trunk,
I thought they might

Overlook it, but no,
everything has to be explained,
even the tin enamelled cup

Splattered with stars.



What the Body in the Trunk Sang

I'm only seventeen but I'm older than you,
more widely travelled. I've been across the border.
An ocean overflows my mouth, black water

Drunk from the fountain of secrets unravelled.
Polyester fibers in my bloody hair
doubled like an embryo, folded

Like an aluminum chair. Life did this.
God let it happen. To surrender was
my one last wish. It was not granted.

Trash is homogenous, garbage is not.
I am a piece of meat among
three crowbars and a jack,

________________My eyelid's bruised sunrise
to greet the young detective who
pries open the lid of this great clam,

Covers his mouth with a handkerchief
and turns his head.


Green River

Hey little girl, would you like to be
a sexy little swinger?
Come go with me
skinny dipping in Green River.

Hey little girl, let's leave this world
like a heap of clothes upon
the scum-polluted beach.
Let's swim beyond

The concrete pilings, way out beyond
the last Big Gulp of horror.
Let's lose ourselves
in the roar of Aurora.

I will make you famous.
Among my victims you will be
the thirty-seventh smiling
photo on a fake I.D.

I will make you shiver.
You will leave your mother
a lump of gold amalgum
forensic experts finger.

Whew, those were so medical-like and intensive, I much enjoyed, especially the Body in the Trunk piece. I'm seventeen too! Hey, no fair!

April

17? Well, it was in the back of my mind. You'll probably find this one relevant then too, no doubt, in a geographic sense at least, if not otherwise. I bought the book this poem comes from on a whim because it was written by a Floridian whose last name was similar to my first.


Book IV: The Revelations of Florida

The greatest piece of good luck Jesus had was that He died young. Had He lived to be sixty, He would have given us His memoirs instead of the cross --Cioran

In the Presence of Cardinals
by Debora Greger

They scatter before me:
down the walk the anoles bow and scrape.
I could get used to this, God said,

If I were just a man. Don't tell me
that Emerson was right.
If a man is a god in ruins,

not an animal, then I am
just a mirror walking down the road,
past the white cemetary.

They hoard their dead in the ground.
After the rain they bring plastic flowers
and a red toy telephone

bearing the words "Jesus called."
What do they want me to say, cardinal?
You--you love to do the "whip, whip, whip!"

that is your cry alone.
And then there you are, neck snapped,
a little fistful of blood-colored feathers,

who fell for your own reflection
in the plate glass
of Allmighty G Bail Bonds.

Stevie Smith


"Not Waving, but Drowning."


Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.


Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.


Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

This poet is not dead, but I'm gonna put this one here anyway.


Lot’s Wife
by Wislawa Szymborska

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now--every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.

It's been too long since someone posted a poem here. Can't tell you all how much I've enjoyed reading all the poems.

"I flew upward/until darkness fell from the heavens."
"I was much too far out all my life/And not waving but drowning."
"My maimed darling, my skittery pidgeon."
"To write in this red muck/Of things from my heart."
"fall down on me for one more year."
"Alas."
wow.

Here's something I stumbled across recently.

A Little Skull
by James Tate

I found a skull on the beach,
it was just a little skull,
maybe that of a canary.
White sand trickled through the sockets.
It seemed to smile at me
and I tried feeding it some crumbs.
Oh well, cookies are for frogs,
and maybe this isn’t a skull at all,
but an egg or a bulb of some sort.
Maybe I will glue some sequins on it
and donate it to the local monastery.
It would be happy there, supervising
the luncheon menu, pounding its forehead
through the lilac sermons, patrolling
the starched brainwaves in the library.
But what if it’s my own long-lost ancestor?
Shouldn’t I guzzle a toast about now?
Raise a kite, or faint in a spiral upward?
The whole episode is lamentable, I’m simply
rehearsing for another kind of scrutiny,
an expedition into the heart of heresy
where dowdy, abusive hobgoblins lounge
yanking at one another’s hair and snapping
newcomers with hot towels. I expect
to be incarcerated there for some time.
All nectar will taste like insecticide.
Privileges, such as holding this bird’s skull
in the palm of my hand, will surely be rare.
And so, better to forfeit it now, savor forever
its twirling arc back into the sea, and circulate
among the clustered natives, sniffing for honey,
whisking flies from laughing faces.

Your Feet


When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

© Pablo Neruda

Ellen Hinsey

Not a dead poet, so someone please please buy one of her two books of poetry here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-h...6599836-7360700.

Maybe then I won't go to hell for transcribing one of her many excellent poems.

I'd love to share a bunch of her poems, especially the three poems in her book Cities of Memory--The Approach of War, Lebensraum, and The Disasters of War, Spain 1810--that follow the poem I am going to share, but then I know I'd really go to hell. All four of these poems are all loosely related in theme(s)--sound, death, war, purpose...the usual metaphysics--expressed through seemingly unrelated snippets of history, each poem presaging the poems that follow. It's tough to just choose one of her poems to share, and I don't want to forget the poem that first hooked me called The Sermon to Fishes. Bryan made me think of it when he said I should be an editor (I am out of work. Is that an offer?). That one is on page 61, the first page I turned to when I picked her book up from the clearance bin, but I will choose this one.

...reminds me of LP's poems about silence.

March 26, 1827
by Ellen Hinsey
from "Cities of Memory"


March 26, 1827
Plaudite amici, comoedia finita est!
Beethoven on his deathbed



I


In the room where the figure lay,
a damped ivory under time's
finger, agitated voices betrayed

their fear that, with his passing,
the last of sound would be carted off--
the price exacted in recompense.

They had to admit, in retrospect,
he had only ever been borrowed.
Now he was being taken back.

So when a voice outside displayed
the range of limited vocal flight
the exclamation was received

with relief. The body was watched.
In the final hour the pallid frame
offered to explain a thing or two

if only in the register of dreams:
Do you here the tolling?
Change the scene! In an alley

of memory with light dimming,
the opera's curtain rose out of habit,
falling to the sound of trumpets.


II


That music is not the note
but the interval--
that it is not the note but
the possibility that lies between,

the sparrow in the field
and the silence after,
the approach of rain and the road's
washed shadow.

The world with eighty-eight
tones that wait to tell us of agony
and agony's lifting,
the done and left undone.


III


When over, all Vienna came,
Death had called them in their
best. So black-gloved with
lilies on their northern shoulders,

they followed dutifully the
funeral bier, four abreast.
The opera chorus, then the friars,
the conductors and the socialites.

Trombones sounded, but once
emitted, music sank to the soil,
as on the coldest days, when a shout
disappears quickly as vapor

dissolved in the air's oceanic vast.
Beyond, it was sound
that wept, and played a march
in the loved octaves,

knowing the future's empty
shape, seeing events and figures
in the angled glass--dark times
would henceforth call it back.



footnote: The singer Lablanche, seeking news of Beethoven, arrived to find him in a coma, delirious, and could make out but these few words: "do you here the tolling? Change the scene..." It could not, in this context, pertain to anything but the bells in the theaters of Vienna that, during this period, announced the changing of the acts." See Jean and Brigitte Massin, Ludwig van Beethoven (Paris: Fayard, 1967), 494.

This is a James Tate poem I like from a book I grabbed out of the bargain bin.

Haunted Aquarium by James Tate

A white pigeon is digging for something in the snow.
As it digs further, it is disappearing.
A young girl finds it in the Spring,
a handkerchief of thin bones,
or a powder-puff she carries in her purse
for the rest of her days. Toward the end,
she gives it to her granddaughter,
who immediately recognizes it as the death
of the grandmother herself,
and flings it out the window.
It takes flight, utterly thankful
to feel like it's old self again.
For a few precious moments it flies
in circles, then back in the window.
The grandmother pitches forward, dead.
The granddaughter lugs her toward the window:
Adieu! Godspeed!

She and the pigeon talk long into the night.

At breakfast, the grandmother says nothing.

Another one I enjoy. Perhaps ironic, perhaps not.

Manuel Comnenus by C.P. Cavafy

The King Kyr Manuel Comnenus
one melancholy day in September
felt that death was near. The court
astrologers (the paid ones) babbled
that he would live for many more years.
But while they were discoursing,
he remembered old hallowed customs,
and from the cells of the monks he bids
them bring ecclesiastical robes,
and he wears them, and rejoices that he presents
the modest mien of a priest or a monk.

All are lucky who believe
and like the King Kyr Manuel end their days
most modestly dressed in their faith.

Sindhi Woman by John Stallworthy

Barefoot through the bazaar,
and with the same undulant grace
as the cloth brown back from her face,
she glides with a stone jar
high on her head
and not a ripple in her tread.

Watching her cross erect
stones, garbage, excrement, and crumbs
of glass in the Karachi slums,
I, with my stoop, reflect
they stand most straight
who learn to walk beneath a weight.

Always for the first time
by Andre Breton



Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at
an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road
in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim
enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that
may well scratch you in the forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time