<p>I liked, “Without her, you would never have set out.” </p>
<p>Which I took to mean: without the rocks up ahead, why would anyone get off his/her duff to really live?</p>
<p>I love it. I took, “Without her, you would never have set out” to mean: If you are disappointed in the end, think again. Without the vision you had in your mind all along of where you might be going, you might never have gone anywhere. </p>
<p>BTW all my life I have had an odd attachment to Scylla and Charybdis. Now what on earth is that about? Just reading the Odyssey at too early an age?</p>
<p>No it just means that, despite your Ferragamos and groovy hair, you are a nerd. ;)</p>
<p>hehehehehehehe:)</p>
<p>I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.</p>
<p>I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.</p>
<p>The years shall run like rabbits
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
And the first love of the world.</p>
<p>-from W H Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening</p>
<p>ADad, what a great injustice you do to Auden by not including Time’s rebuttal, making him seem like one of the rosy types!</p>
<p>But all the clocks in the city
began to whirr and chime:
'"o let not Time deceive you,
you cannot conquer time.</p>
<p>"in the burrows of the nightmare
where Justice naked is
Time watches from the shadow
and coughs when you would kiss.</p>
<p>"in headaches and in worry
vaguely life leaks away
and Time will have his fancy
tomorrow or today.</p>
<p>"into many a green valley
drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
and the diver’s brilliant bow.</p>
<p>"o plunge your hands in the water,
plunge them in up to the wrist;
stare, stare at the basin
and wonder what you’ve missed.</p>
<p>"the glacier knocks in the cupboard,
the desert sighs in the bed,
and the crack in the teacup opens
a lane to the land of the dead.</p>
<p>"where beggars raffle the banknotes
and the Giant is enchanting to Jack
and the Lily-white boy is a Roarer
and Jill goes down on her back.</p>
<p>"o look, look in the mirror,
o look in your distress;
life remains a blessing
although you cannot bless.</p>
<p>o stand, stand at the window
as the tears scald and start;
you shall love your crooked neighbor
with all your crooked heart."</p>
<p>I just noticed that this thread was started by Cheers. I really miss her. :(</p>
<p>where is ol’ cheers, btw? anyone know? I miss her too :(</p>
<p>alpha, I am aware that in the poem the passage is not presented as the voice of Auden. I simply liked the passage and wanted to share it. No statement about Auden’s underlying or final views was intended.</p>
<p>A new one for the thread, found online, really like it:</p>
<p>Changing Woman, by Kathryn Kirkpatrick</p>
<p>She’s as old as she looks
and younger. Her delicate jawline
has yielded to certain strength.</p>
<p>A river has washed her.
She has lain in the bed of it.
In drought. In flood.
Water and the lack of water
have carved her.</p>
<p>Tell her your income
and she’ll know how you’ve spent
your time as she knows the state
of your heart, what you have done
with your wounds.</p>
<p>And if you have spoken to the eternal.
And how you hold the unloved.</p>
<p>If you’re brave enough,
ask her what she sees.
She may answer.</p>
<p>She may ask you
what you plan to do
before you finally die.</p>
<p>This one is beautiful!</p>
<p>Courage, by Anne Sexton</p>
<p>It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.</p>
<p>Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.</p>
<p>Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.</p>
<p>Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.</p>
<p>I love the stanza on enduring a great despair. It is only later when you pick the scabs off that you even know how bad it was in the first wound. Love the sock image.</p>
<p>I particularly liked “simple as shaving soap.”</p>
<p>What happened to all the poetry lovers???</p>
<p>Langston Hughes - had this in my senior yearbook</p>
<p>Dreams</p>
<p>Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. </p>
<p>And…my father taught my brothers & I this poem, about how the grass is not necessarily greener for those who seemed to have everything</p>
<p>RICHARD CORY</p>
<p>Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.</p>
<p>And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,</p>
<p>“Good morning,”
And he glittered when he walked.</p>
<p>And he was rich, yes richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish we were in his place.</p>
<p>So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.</p>
<p>This is a wonderful thread!</p>
<p>The poem “Hope” by Randall Jarrell has stuck with me since I encountered it during my senior year in high school (back when all of the decisions came in the mail):</p>
<p>The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
The week is dealt out like a hand
That children pick up card by card.
One keeps getting the same hand.
One keeps getting the same card.
But twice a day – except on Saturday –
The wheel stops, there is a crack in Time:
With a hiss of soles, a rattle of tin,
My own gray Daemon pauses on the stair,
My own bald Fortune lifts me by the hair.
Woe’s me! woe’s me! In Folly’s mailbox
Still laughs the postcard, Hope:
Your uncle in Australia
Has died and you are Pope,
For many a soul has entertained
A Mailman unawares –
And as you cry, Impossible,
A step is on the stairs.
One keeps getting the same dream
Delayed, marked “Payment Due,”
The bill that one has paid
Delayed, marked “Payment Due” –
Twice a day, in rotting mailbox,
The white grubs are new:
And Faith, once more, is mine
Faithfully, but Charity
Writes hopefully about a new
Asylum – but Hope is as good as new.
Woe’s me! woe’s me! In Folly’s mailbox
Still laughs the postcard, Hope:
Your uncle in Australia
Has died and you are Pope,
For many a soul has entertained
A mailman unawares –
And as you cry, Impossible,
A step is on the stairs.</p>
<p>epistrophy brought up Wislawa Szymborska, who is one of my favorite poets. This is one of hers:</p>
<p>Listen</p>
<p>I owe so much
to those I dont love.
The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.
The happiness that Im not
the wolf to their sheep.
The peace I feel with them,
the freedom
love can neither give
nor take that.
I dont wait for them,
as in window-to-door-and-back.
Almost as patient
as a sundial,
I understand
what love cant.
and forgive
as love never would.
From a rendezvous to a letter
is just a few days or weeks,
not an eternity.
Trips with them always go smoothly,
concerts are heard,
cathedrals visited,
scenery is seen.
And when seven hills and rivers
come between us,
the hills and rivers
can be found on any map.
They deserve the credit
if I live in three dimensions,
in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space
with a genuine, shifting horizon.
They themselves dont realize
how much they hold in their empty hands.
I dont owe them a thing,
would be loves answer
to this open question.</p>
<p>Tr. from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh</p>
<p>I’m also very fond of her poem “There but for the Grace”</p>
<p>It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened sooner. Later.
Nearer. Farther.
It happened not to you.</p>
<p>You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because of people.
Because you turned left. Because you turned right.
Because rain fell. Because a shadow fell.
Because sunny weather prevailed.</p>
<p>Luckily there was a wood.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily there was a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the surface.</p>
<p>Thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of.
What would have happened had not a hand, a foot,
by a step, a hairsbreadth
by sheer coincidence.</p>
<p>So you’re here? Straight from a moment ajar?
The net had one eyehole, and you got through it?
There’s no end to my wonder, my silence.
Listen
how fast your heart beats in me.</p>
<p>lovely Quant Mech; this thread is pretty quiet, but I thank you for posting…</p>
<p>Loved the Anne Sexton & “There but for the Grace”!</p>
<p>This is long, old (17th century) & probably not many will like it but I did… :-)</p>
<p>The Collar
by George Herbert</p>
<p>I struck the board, and cried “No more!
I will abroad.
What, shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s head there: tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load.
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methoughts I heard one calling “Child!”
And I replied “My Lord”.</p>
<p>The Dance, by CK Williams</p>
<p>A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
But when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she’s with get up to dance,
Her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardour athwart his shoulder,
Drawing him to her with such a firm compelling warmth, and moving him with effortless grace,
Into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all rythmically solid music in this second-rate cafe,</p>
<p>That something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
Nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be
admired or be repentant for,
But something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
Which might have consoling implications about how we misbelieve ourselves, and so the world,
That world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.</p>
<p>This is ever so slightly off topic (since it’s not a poem, but a piece about poetry), but the poet and essayist Donald Hall wrote a fine short essay on the pleasures and rewards of poetry, which, I found, is available on the 'net.</p>
<p>It begins:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The rest of the piece, which is titled “The Unsayable Said,” can be found here: </p>
<p>[The</a> Unsayable Said Donald Hall](<a href=“http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:f4PSLZ1ysRsJ:www.wbuued.org/Caddy%2520-%2520Hall%2520The%2520Unsayable%2520Said.PDF+donald+hall+unsayable+said&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us]The”>http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:f4PSLZ1ysRsJ:www.wbuued.org/Caddy%2520-%2520Hall%2520The%2520Unsayable%2520Said.PDF+donald+hall+unsayable+said&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us)</p>