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[batyatoon]

I like this meme.

If you feel like participating, post a poem in the comments when you see this.

Litany
Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

Comments

[dawning-star.livejournal.com]

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
By William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

This is my favorite poem right now.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

The Ivy Crown
William Carlos Williams

The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
It break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement—
or find a deeper well.
Antony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all.

Daffodil time
is past. This is
summer, summer!
the heart says,
and not even the full of it.
No doubts
are permitted—
though they will come
and may
before our time
overwhelm us.
We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win! We do not
look to see
jonquils and violets
come again
but there are,
still,
the roses!

Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which,
by our wills,
we transform
to live together.
It has its seasons,
for and against,
whatever the heart
fumbles in the dark
to assert
toward the end of May.
Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep
the briars out,
they say.
You cannot live
and keep free of
briars.

Children pick flowers.
Let them.
Though having them
in hand
they have no further use for them
but leave them crumpled
at the curb's edge.

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse—
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.

[miscellanny.livejournal.com]

*beams*

I love that one. :D

[mneme]

I am the flaw in the tea-bowl
I will not dance death
I will not lie down here in peace
And release my last breath
All of our hopes have been cast on the reefs and are gone
Still my salt blood reaches out for the sky
Still my warm song touches notes clear and high
Outward I go and I know I will fly a new dawn
Chorus: Starship and Haiku
Dying hate and living love
Reach beyond our sin
Starship and Haiku
One last flawed reminder of
All we might have been
I am a discord in deathsong I cannot be still
I am an infinite paean a permanent trill
I am a leap to the stars I am song to the sky
Always I shun the bleak burial grounds
Always I listen for life's vibrant sounds
Always my hollow-reed heartbeat resounds with its cry
Chorus
Repeat Verse 1
Words and music: Kathy Mar
Copyright 1984 Kathy Mar

[nightface.livejournal.com]

The Dream

(copyight 1991, C.M. Joserlin, "Raven")

Friend, when you and I were younger, and the world was strange and vast,
How our eager hearts would hunger for the legends of the past:
Dreams of swords and spears uplifted, gleaming armour in the sun,
Streams of banners bravely flying where the battle had begun.
Oh, to see the truth triumphant, setting Right ahead of Might,
Hear the gentle judgments afterward, at Court by candlelight,
Or the revelry and laughter while the merry minstrels sing
Of Heorot Hall with Grendel gone, or Camelot in Spring.

We have joined in joy and sadness with each hero in his plight,
Shared the fine inspired madness of La Mancha's woeful knight;
Parents little know the path they chart for children when they bring
All the stories, songs, and sagas about Camelot in Spring.

How those visions filled our childhood, strengthened us as nothing could,
Put our world in moral order, set our standard of the good;
For the lessons that we heeded, shining from the printed page,
Were the virtues that were needed to bring on the Golden Age.
But perhaps our elders mocked our dreams of dragons on their hoards,
So, for lack of worthy foes, we packed away our magic swords;
Then our schools and jobs distracted us with all the work they bring,
And no more we thought of Heorot, or Camelot in Spring.

Bid farewell to bold adventures and our comrades of the mind,
To the Wizards wise and subtle, and the Ladies fair and kind,
To the Knights of the Round Table, and the Fellows of the Ring;
Farewell Narnia and Middle-Earth and Camelot in Spring.

But when danger came to challenge us, and fear cried, "hide or flee",
What compelled us to embrace the threat, and not the coward's plea?
Was it that we found the courage to confront it on our own,
Or had help from him of Heorot who fought the troll alone?
And the day we faced injustice, hypocrites who held truth caged,
Then we showed our true upbringing when our indignation raged,
Saying, "THIS is not the right way, THIS would not have pleased the King
Who set justice at the Table Round, at Camelot in Spring!"

And we've mourned for other dreamers who had followed the same star,
And who died before they ever knew if truth would win the war;
But their names still live within us, and in legend they will ring
Along with those of Heorot and Camelot in Spring.

What though now our world grows older, and our castles fade away?
Still our dreams can make us bolder, bear our standards through the fray;
Still the quest for honour bids us battle lies and unjust laws;
Still the memory of heroes gives us comrades in our cause --
Beowulf and mighty Arthur, they knew what the battle cost;
And their songs may lend us courage when we feel alone and lost.
Even in the darkest Winter, we can raise our voice to sing
Of the vision of the glory that was Camelot in Spring.

What if we should be forgotten, all our efforts go in vain,
Hopes and plans die misbegotten, with but insults for our pain?
What if no-one hears our story? Still, they'll know us when they sing
Of all those who dreamed the glory that was Camelot in Spring.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's spectacular.

Probing
R S Thomas

No one would know you had lived,
but for my discovery
of the anonymous undulation
of your grave, like the early swelling
of the belly of a woman
who is with child. And if I entered
it now, I would find your bones
huddled together, but without
flesh, their ruined architecture
a reproach, the skull luminous
but not with thought.
Would it help us to learn
what you were called in your forgotten
language? Are not our jaws
frail for the sustaining of the consonants'
weight? Yet they were balanced
on tongues like ours, echoed
in the ears' passages, in intervals when
the volcano was silent. How
tenderly did the woman handle
them, as she leaned her haired body
to yours? Where are the instruments
of your music, the pipe of hazel, the
bull's horn, the interpreters
of your loneliness on this
ferocious planet?
We are domesticating
it slowly; but at times it rises
against us, so that we see again
the primeval shadows you built
your fire amongst. We are cleverer
than you; our nightmares
are intellectual. But we never awaken
from the compulsiveness of the mind's
stare into the lenses' furious interiors.

"Crow's Theology" by Ted Hughes.

[aberrantangels]

Crow realized God loved him—
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

And he realized that God spoke Crow—
Just existing was His revelation.

But what
Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?

And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?

Crow realised there were two Gods—

One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.

[infiniteviking]

Great meme! Heh.... I wonder whether that author was serious, or laughing up his sleeve? Could have been either one.


Revelation
(Robert Frost)

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hid-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
_____

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Nearly A Valediction
Marilyn Hacker

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

[ladyiapetus]

Touch of the Master's Hand
Myra B. Welch

'Twas battered and scared, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But he held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar - now who"ll make it two _
Two dollars, and who"ll make it three?

"Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
Going for three". . . but no!
From the room far back a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody,pure and sweet,
As sweet as an angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bidden for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow;
"A thousand dollars - and who'll make it two?
Two thousand - and who'll make it three?
Three thousand once, three thousand twice
And going - and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand -
What changed its worth?" The man replied:
"The touch of the masters hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and torn with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd.
Much like the old violin.

A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on,
He's going once, and going twice -
He's going - and almost gone!
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd,
Never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul, and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

I *love* that one.



Alastair Reid
Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats change too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

[fclbrokle.livejournal.com]

I sure am getting around with this latest error.

So: six years ago, I manually typed this poem for a summer camp yearbook. While typing it up, I accidentally made an error with the last stanza, typing "Dogs say cats change too much" instead of the correct "Dogs say cats love too much" (which, by the way, makes it a better poem!). When I then posted the poem online at my home page (which I presume is where you got this from), I made the same error, and it seems to have propagated around the 'net.

I'm now going about trying to correct all of these errors! So to anyone who reads this poem and tries to copy it from here, be aware of the last line, and you may also want to know. Sorry for all the confusion!

By the way, if you didn't get this from my page (or if you did), I'd be interested in hearing from where you did. I'm always curious to track how someone's actions make waves around the 'net. :)

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

I don't remember where I found it, to be honest. Whenever I want to post it, I ususally just Google "curiosity" and/or "Reid," since I don't have it in hard copy anywhere.

Thanks for pointing this out!