POET MAGAZINE
December 2014
A Lunar Eclipse An original Poem by Upcoming Egyptian Poet HANIA SALEM
Cairo Through Their Lenses
THE SEA Mystery, Nostaligia, Cold is is the issue of the SEA
Page 39
Page 32
Editor’s note page 6 from the readers page 7 In focus palestinian poet; Mahmoud Darwish page 9 Art of Poetry page 17 Why are Poets Fascinated with Birds? page 19 Cairo Through their Lenses page 21 Lunar Eclipse page 32 About the SEA page 39
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Table of Contents
Editors’ Note This special issue of Poetry wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Ilya Kaminsky and the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, Catherine Halley and poetryfoundation.org, Jonathan Galassi and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and the Pulitzer Center. In the spring of 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux will release I Am The Beggar Of The World: Landays From Contemporary Afghanistan. On July 30, 2013, The Pulitzer Center will present the reading and film screening event I am the beggar of the world at Culture Project in New York City. And finally, this summer in Chicago we will mount an exhibit at the Poetry Foundation, at 61 West Superior Street, featuring additional photographs by Seamus .Murphy }From Poetry Magazine{
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FROM THE READERS
From PoemHunter.com
Rudyard Kipling
Mary Havran
Charles Bukowski
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on ;you If you can trust yourself when all ,men doubt you But make allowance for their :doubting too If you can wait and not be tired by ,waiting Or, being lied about, don’t deal in ,lies Or being hated don’t give way to ,hating And yet don’t look too good, nor ;talk too wise
Somewhere, sometime, you were Wounded Maybe as early as infancy when you were denied All the essentials of the bonding experience Perhaps the wounds were inflicted
the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and ,sometimes a soul and the women break vases against the walls and the men drink too much and nobody finds the one but keep looking crawling in and out .of beds flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than .flesh
If you can dream---and not make ;dreams your master If you can think---and not make ,thoughts your aim If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just .:the same If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap ,for fools Or watch the things you gave your ,life to, broken And stoop and build’em up with ;worn-out tools If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch,and-toss And lose, and start again at your ,beginnings
nothing in yo Or walk with KiIf neither foes a !Man, my son
When another toddler refused to return the toy you readily shared Or by the mean girl who broke your favorite colored crayon Or the bully who pushed you on the playground Or perhaps it happened that first time Someone more sophisticated, ,though lacking empathy Assailed your ears with a course ,laughter Aimed at you like a lethal weapon Contrasting the cheerful chorus
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there's no chance :at all we are all trapped by a singular .fate nobody ever finds .the one the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill .nothing else fills
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In Focus: Palesinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Mahmoud Darwish March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet.[1] In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.[2][3] He has been described as incarnating and reflecting “the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of .”action whose action is poetry
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]to her son at his funeral *** Oh watchmen! Are you not weary Of lying in wait for the light in our salt And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound Are you not weary, oh watch?men *** A little of this absolute and blue infinity Would be enough To lighten the burden of these times And to cleanse the mire of this .place *** It is up to the soul to come down from its mount And on its silken feet walk By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime Friends who share the ancient bread And the antique glass of wine May we walk this road together And then our days will take dif:ferent directions I, beyond nature, which in turn Will choose to squat on a high.up rock *** On my rubble the shadow grows ,green And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat He dreams as I do, as the angel does .That life is here...not over there *** In the state of siege, time be-
*** Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment Were it not for the visits of the .rainbows *** We have brothers behind this .expanse Excellent brothers. They love .us. They watch us and weep Then, in secret, they tell each :other Ah! if this siege had been" declared..." They do not finish :their sentence Don’t abandon us, don’t leave" ".us *** Our losses: between two and .eight martyrs each day .And ten wounded .And twenty homes ...And fifty olive trees Added to this the structural flaw that Will arrive at the poem, the .play, and the unfinished canvas *** A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved For my clothing is drenched .with his blood *** If you are not rain, my love Be tree Sated with fertility, be tree If you are not tree, my love Be stone Saturated with humidity, be stone If you are not stone, my love Be moon In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon So spoke a woman[
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,Come out of our morningtimes We shall feel reassured to be !Men like you *** When the planes disappear, the white, white doves Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves Fly off. Ah, if only the sky Were real [a man passing be.]tween two bombs said to me *** Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel Soldiers piss—under the watch—ful eye of a tank And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in A street as wide as a church ...after Sunday mass *** To a killer] If you had contem�] plated the victim’s face And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way .to find one’s identity again *** The siege is a waiting period Waiting on the tilted ladder in .the middle of the storm
Don’t Apologize for What you Have Done
Passport
Don't apologize for what you've done - I'm saying this in secret. I say to my personal :other Here all of your memories are :visible Midday ennui in a cat's somno,lence ,the cock's comb ,a scent of sage ,mother's coffee ,a straw mat with pillows ,the iron door to your room ,a fly buzzing around Socrates ,the cloud above Plato ,Diwan al-Hamasa ,father's photograph ,Mu'jam al-Buldan ,Shakespeare your three brothers and three ,sisters - your childhood friends :and a klatch of meddlers '?Is that him' :The witnesses disagree '.Maybe' '.It seems to be' :I ask '?And who is he' .I get no answer :I whisper to my other Is he the one that was you‌' '?that was me .He looks away The witnesses turn to my mother to confirm he is me and she readies herself to sing :her unique song ,I'm the one who bore him' '.but the wind brought him up And I say to my other: 'Don't apologize, except to your '.mother
They did not recognize me in the shadows That suck away my color in this Passport And to them my wound was an exhibit For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs ,They did not recognize me Ah... Don't leave The palm of my hand without the sun Because the trees recognize me Don't leave me pale like the !moon
Under Seige
All the birds that followed my palm To the door of the distant airport All the wheatfields All the prisons All the white tombstones All the barbed Boundaries All the waving handkerchiefs All the eyes ,were with me But they dropped them from my passport Stripped of my name and iden?tity On soil I nourished with my ?own hands Today Job cried out :Filling the sky Don't make and example of me !again ,Oh, gentlemen, Prophets Don't ask the trees for their names Don't ask the valleys who their mother is From my forehead bursts the> sward of light
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Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time Close to the gardens of broken ,shadows ,We do what prisoners do :And what the jobless do .We cultivate hope *** A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent For we closely watch the hour :of victory No night in our night lit up by the shelling Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us .In the darkness of cellars *** ."Here there is no "I Here Adam remembers the dust .of his clay *** :On the verge of death, he says :I have no trace left to lose Free I am so close to my liberty. .My future lies in my own hand ,Soon I shall penetrate my life I shall be born free and parent,less And as my name I shall choose ...azure letters *** You who stand in the doorway, ,come in Drink Arabic coffee with us And you will sense that you are men like us You who stand in the doorways of houses
.Greetings to my apparition *** My friends are always preparing ,a farewell feast for me A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees A marble epitaph of time And always I anticipate them at :the funeral \?Who then has died...who *** Writing is a puppy biting nothingness Writing wounds without a trace .of blood
The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, !in fullest liberty *** Resisting means assuring one,self of the heart’s health The health of the testicles and of :your tenacious disease .The disease of hope *** And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exte
“
Why are poets so fascinated ?with birds From the Anglo-Saxons to Don Paterson, poets’ imaginations have always hankered after wings
“
*** Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall To another like a gazelle The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories Reveal that this morning is pow,erful and splendid And that we are the guests of .eternity
rior And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of foot.steps inside me *** Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the !Blackness of this tunnel *** Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me In the denseness of a night out:flanking the two spaces
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comes space Transfixed in its eternity In the state of siege, space becomes time That has missed its yesterday .and its tomorrow *** The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day And questions me: Where were you? Take every word You have given me back to the dictionaries And relieve the sleepers from .the echo’s buzz *** The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse I did not look For the virgins of immortality for I love life On earth, amid fig trees and ,pines But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it With my last possession: the .blood in the body of azure *** The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph How did we trade roles, my son, .how did you precede me !I first, I the first one *** The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are .all that I have changed ,I put a gazelle on my bed And a crescent of moon on my finger .To appease my sorrow ***
From PoetHunter.com
e Art of Poetry From Poets&Writers.org
Muradov's Accidental Inspiration by Kevin Larimer San Francisco–based artist Roman Muradov is the sixth artist we’ve asked to create an original cover for our annual Inspiration Issue—a tradition that started in 2010 when veteran designer Chip Kidd returned from a trip to Istanbul with a set of Spirographs that inspired his work on our January/February 2010 issue. Muradov, a prolific illustrator who has worked for publications such as the New Yorker, Vogue, and Time, as well as for Penguin Random House, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Knopf, is the author of the graphic novel (In a Sense) Lost & Found, published in September 2014 by Nobrow Press. He recently spoke about the endlessly fascinating illustration on our cover, and about .his artistic process How would you describe your ?work My work is a lifelong celebration of futility. I see everything I make as a process of simultaneous deciphering and encryption heavily layered and divorced from the search for artistic truth of any kind. My characters are always in the middle of writ-
description of his process as “plugging literature into other literature,” and I was going for something along these lines—an endless procession of styles and information layering upon each other. Drawing each element separately with ink washes—such a natural medium— works well because it allows for shapes to overlap subtly and have planned and unexpected .interactions How important to your work is the written word—the text underneath the cover of the magazine or the book to which you are lend?ing your art More important than anything. I see my work as writing in pictures, so I spend much more time o
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my experience of looking at the cover illustration you created for us. Part of what makes it so fascinating is that one can’t quite tell where one element begins and another ends. Can you talk a bit about the process through which you are able to create ?this effect I struggle with the concept of inspiration a great deal myself, and I like the OuLiPian idea of escape from inspiration through selfimposed constraints. In that sense, I approach pieces like the cover with a mix of accident and design, structuring everything tightly in a sketch, then allowing chance variations on paper, and finally editing the whole thing in an attempt to preserve both the structure .and the spontaneity I also like novelist Tom McCarthy’s
ing or reading or making something, but there’s never a beginning or an end to their endeavors. The function of the visual side is partly to seduce the reader into looking at the piece and partly to interpret the theory .behind it all How did you arrive at your style of il?lustration People tell me I have a recognizable style, but I myself try to change it all the time, chiefly out of boredom. As soon as I’m confident with a medium, I pick a different approach to make myself feel uncomfortable again. Ideally I strive to do with images what James Joyce did with words, and the futility of that aspiration justifies it .even further I love that description of your style, because it matches
The
cinated with
birds?
Paul Farley's "For the House Sparrow, in Decline", meanwhile, tenderly imagines "a roofless world where no one hears your cheeps / only a starling's modem mimicry / will remind you how you once supplied / the incidental music of our lives''. Once again birds provide a metaphor for the crisis of our .time But poets' relationship with birds is a fragile one, and it isn't always so tender or concerned. Consider the "rapid eyes" of the birds' disquieting presence in Emily Dickinson's "A Bird Came Down" who "bit an angleworm in halves / And ate the fellow, raw" or Elizabeth Bishop's portrait of the obsessive and obsessed Sandpiper with its "dark, brittle feet". Birds can just as easily lead us into murkier, more disturbed areas of .our psyche My theory is that birds provide a natural metaphor for the song all poets aspire to. We envy them their ease of expression, as their song provides a bridge into the mysteries of a world the animal .in us fondly half-remembers Edward Thomas was acutely attuned to the negotiations between the man-made and the natural worlds. It is perhaps no coincidence that in “Adlestrop”, his meditation on the strange
lacunae of the machine age, that as an express train pulls in at the deserted station and progress and momentum ebbs, we hear a blackbird’s song and then simply the song of “all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucester.”shire
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Why are poets so fasc From the Anglo-Saxons to Don Paterson, poets' imaginations have From The Guardian always hankered after wings The birds are back in woods behind my house. Wrens, nuthatches, tree-creepers; from first light their bright calls spill into my sleep. After a winter watching a monoculture of jackdaws floating over the lake like delicately made marionettes, the inhabitants of An Atlas of Breeding Birds in Cumbria have begun to spill into the peripher.ies of my poems What is that draws poets to birds? And why have so many turned to them at critical points in their own writing? The collective nouns we all remember from childhood speak of language's innate fascination with all things avian: a murder of crows, a murmuration of starlings, a parliament of fowls. And it's no coincidence we afford them the most poetic collective nouns: right from the birth of literature birds have .been present In “The Seafarer”, the AngloSaxon poem of spiritual longing and exile, birds become astringent emblems of solitude as earthly pleasures are traded for the “the gannet’s noise and the voice of the curlew” while the laughter of men is replaced by .”“the singing gull
And once discovered it's hard to shake the haunting, spiritually exact, idea in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica that our passage through life is like a sparrow flying through the mead-hall on a winter night: from darkness through the bright light and out again into the unknown dark. Later, Chaucer's rhyme royal dream-vision, The Parliament of Foules, sees the bickering birds provide the perfect form for a discussion of love and the imperatives of the natural world (in a poem notable also for the first reference to St Valentine's .)Day as a day for lovers In modern poetry, birds have been just as visible – and not simply as ornament. Ted Hughes found in birds the symbols of his own concerns, first in the shining, terrible, power of The Hawk in the Rain whose "wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet" and later going as far as to forge his own gospel story in .Crow We see birds ally themselves easily to desire in the Paul Muldoon’s “Whim”, where two lovers meet over a discussion of which is the superior translation of the poem “Cu Chulainn and ”the Birds of Appetite
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They become a piercing motif for the grief we carry through life in Heaney's Blackbird of Glanmore "on the grass when I arrive / filling the stillness with life". The blackbird becomes a bridge to memory of his young brother's death: a symbol of consolation for Heaney but remembered as a portent by a neighbour: "I never liked yon ."bird In his collection Landing Light, Don Paterson signalled his rise to formal and imaginative eminence in "St Bride: Sea Mail" a poem displaying breathtaking control and technique with an awareness of mankind's fragile, often destructive, relationship with the natural world. The poem itself echoes the earlier story of the "candle bird" he tells in "God's Gift to Women" – of a creature valued for its precious oil and rumoured to burn whole should a wick be placed .in it
Abdulrahman Muhamed
@boodyam
The Strenght of Women
Cairo Through Their Lenses
How Instagram Became a new platform for Photographers to show their Art. We feature six local Egyptian artisits who see thing we don’t all see and who capture it . and share the beauty in our city
}From Instagram{
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Twist and Shout 24
Owise Abuzaid @owiseabuziad
Ghost Town
Maria Saba @saba_maria
Amjad Aggag @amjadaggag
Left Alone I may disapear leaving behind me no worldly possessions just a few old socks and love letters, and windows overlooking Notre-Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart whose motto is “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest �,they be angels in disguise
THE GUEST HOUSE .This being human is a guest house .Every morning a new arrival ,A joy, a depression, a meanness some momentary awareness comes .as an unexpected visitor !Welcome and entertain them all ,Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house ,empty of its furniture .still, treat each guest honorably He may be clearing you out .for some new delight .The dark thought, the shame, the malice meet them at the door laughing and invite .them in .Be grateful for whatever comes because each has been sent .as a guide from beyond Jelaluddin Rumi --
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Mariam Satour @mariamsatour
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BY Hania Salem
Lunar Eclipse
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“
!?But how could she It’s her forever mind that brought her here The lunar was her one and only inspiration The fuel of her forever stimulation ..But the words The words are now her whole universe She has become in oneness with all the letters The rhythm was her veins And all she wrote was all she was And is and will always be ?And the lunar Some say he never came back ..Some say he never will Others say he was never there at all Maybe it has always been in her delusion Maybe it was all in her head But their souls are unbreakable Their blended spirits were devoted The tense is ,is and was, and will always be For the lunar is inseparable He is and was and will always be her wholeness ..And she Will always be a queen Twinkling in her own universe ?Didn’t I tell you this isn’t a fairytale
“
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Once upon time there is a sun This is not a fairytale Or at least I don’t want you to believe it is The sun once, and the sun is still is And in every morning She would shine up the whole world She was the queen Of the universe empire As she sparkles beneath the space She wasn’t just another star …Twinkling She was the only star At least in her shield of imagination There was no one who twinkled the way she did Until that day The day that market the end of integrity She discovered someone unusual Staggering in his rightfulness Calm and witty His convictions was all he was All he’d do is chase what excites him And what the sun never knew Is that they shared The same universe …With a steady humorous lunar He wasn’t just another astound He was and still is and will always be the only astound that ever Shock the universe underneath her heart
Once upon time he was here, and he still is They both cycle in a way were they can never meet But as they wander in unmistakable way ..They met The lunar wasn’t just another astound He was the part that made her universe complete And whether she had noticed it sooner or later .…It was a fact undeniable To resist The tense is and was, and will always be ..For the lunar is inseparable , Beautiful innocence in such he was He brought a bouquet of grace Desperate eyes And a virtuous heart But as the sun has noticed his devotion upon her She knew that her universe was full with emptiness But fear has grown teeth eating up in her flesh But it was only one flower One innocent flower that wanted to devour her garden one flower in my garden is“ enough” she uttered On Brown Mud Lightly Falls“ the Rain Falls Out of Pain Continuing Drops On the Plain Then Grows my land in to Green To notice I should lightly take care of one bean
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Tick tock the clock goes on ticking again My heart is not a car for you to maintain Now I thank god that the past pain Is finely sucked out through my vain Ticking louder and louder and I can’t hear your voice Please don’t remain silent for what you think was my choice I don’t want innocence to turn so evil Green lands becoming yellow once again And again I’m losing the retrieval Hang up and nothing but silence for nothing remains And nothing louder than mind’s words and complains Challenges between the mind and the clock Tick tock tick tock again & again Heart beats louder & darkness grows around this room Darker and darker and on it gloom Tick tock tick tock goes on the clock Beats harder & harder from pain ”and shock The sun has fallen that day in an ocean of shame Where did my heavenly go The orbiting went as it has always been For it was, and is and always be And remember …This is not a fairytale “
The lunar was devouring her ..Demolishing her They would wander together In the infinite space Discovering the beauty within the infinite universe ..That they owned ,A flourishing universe And they have turned it A whole And for a missed second my“ head wasn't you My soul was given it's freedom And you weren't looking too For a second I heard your voice It was my name And by the passion of our spirit Our eyes had met Had met so tight Tightly for a second of years to describe My eyes tasting and knowing nothing but your innocent glare As fate had bonded our forever love As fate had released our internal freedom of passionate feelings keep tightly holding on to this look While you slip away with a sweet smile And you keep smiling to me for a while The eyes of heaven shined my soul Cause your vision was shining upon my face And I felt so engulfed in pas”sion
While you slip away with a sweet smile And you keep smiling to me for a while The eyes of heaven shined my soul Cause your vision was shining upon my face And I felt so engulfed in pas”sion It was a whole world of fiction They were the starts of the universe They haven’t knew it at a time That it was a world of their own imagination The universe bowed them love And the stars were intimidated by their devotion But by the power of life It stings And nothing stays the same for its own sake
The sun strolls around the galaxies ?Am I losing something She recalls her soul My heart Is set on fire“ From the passion, love and desire My heart is burning to ashes My heart is cracked down so deep The sound of tears crashing down my skin But again pounding out of fear I need your heart to be kept tightly here Because my heart is unwillingly sincere
Hania Salem
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But then I figure out I’m stuck between what I want and what I need And then my brain keeps on bleeding and bleeding And i keep apologizing for you inside For the pain i keep and for the sore hide I’m a little lamb that lost her way Down in the lonely meadow And my thoughts came over like leopard Hunt me, kill me slowly And then i feel like I’m Drown in an immortal Sea of thoughts that has no definite islands nor Coasts Till I meet all my inner ghosts And they make me chose between apples and trees I tired myself a lot to conceive them they weren’t the same But then love comes in front me like a candle Flame ”like an irresistible candle flame The sun writes out her soul A stream of words, an ocean of letters A simple clarity That he is and was and will always be her whole And it flipped in her mind And with their unbreakable hands
For good and forever I want to ”stay And as they merged together There was nothing in the whole universe more Celestial like they were The sun shines upon the skies And in a way of mixture ’The sun would scream out Ignite my wings and set me in a shield of freedom Am on my way in way of mixture Haven’t I told you am on my way for a journey To the lunar, you see So I pack up my devotion Tuck with me all my motivation Seeking the purification of a moment Of clarity
}
He stretches his arms towards her Comes along the lunar In a way of wholeness …They were one The irresistible is driving me“ weak Pouring every feeling along to a hideous leak In the Lands of Trees, red flowers and Leaves Were the Beautiful scents that flies and leaps I’ve found you Took my hands slowly to heavenly gates To an imaginary world that doesn’t contain a drop of malice Along with the shield you came protecting me With an unmerciful strength that I can see
{
But then I figure out I’m stuck between what I want and what I need
Ignite my hopes and set them free Am off for a journey in a way of mixture And suffering is a friend I cannot leave behind And off with me, he’s a must And on my way of mixture, if I collapse Remember am human A combination of bones, blood and skin And am on my way in way of mixture
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You’re my one and only Guardian angel There to Guide in your path of heaven I cannot escape you I’m trapped into your dreams forever
My Heart is like a thirsty sponge Has no boredom of your Guidance And between your shelters is ”exactly where I shine Sun tries to protect her melting And no matter how strongly she tries She couldn’t
Alfred Lord Tennyson
|Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Crossing the Bar
The Tide Rises the Tide Falls
,Sunset and evening star !And one clear call for me And may there be no moaning of ,the bar ,When I put out to sea But such a tide as moving seems ,asleep ,Too full for sound and foam When that which drew from out the boundless deep .Turns again home
,The tide rises, the tide falls The twilight darkens, the curlew ;calls Along the sea-sands damp and brown The traveller hastens toward the ,town And the tide rises, the tide .falls Darkness settles on roofs and ,walls But the sea, the sea in the dark;ness calls The little waves, with their soft, ,white hands Efface the footprints in the ,sands And the tide rises, the tide .falls
,Twilight and evening bell !And after that the dark And may there be no sadness of ,farewell ;When I embark For though from out our bourne of Time and Place ,The flood may bear me far I hope to see my Pilot face to face .When I have crossed the bar
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler ;calls 40
Water in my head Poems about The Sea
Wallace Stevens
William Blake
Siegfried Sassoon
The River of Rivers in Connecticut
To the Muses
Ancestors
WHETHER on Ida's shady brow Or in the chambers of the East The chambers of the Sun that now From ancient melody have ;ceased Whether in heaven ye wander fair 5 Or the green corners of the earth Or the blue regions of the air
BEHOLD these jewelled merchant Ancestors Foregathered in some chancel;lery of death Calm provident discreet they stroke their beards And move their faces slowly in the gloom And barter monstrous wealth with speech subdued 5 Lustreless eyes and acquiescent .lids
There is a great river this side of Stygia Before one comes to the first black cataracts And trees that lack the intelli.gence of trees In that river, far this side of ,Stygia The mere flowing of the water is ,a gayety .Flashing and flashing in the sun ,On its banks
And oft in pauses of their conference They listen to the measured breath of nightÂĄÂŻs Hushed sweep of wind aloft the swaying trees In dimly gesturing gardens; then a voice 10 Climbs with clear mortal song .half-sad for heaven
.No shadow walks ,The river is fateful .Like the last one .But there is no ferryman He could not bend against its .propelling force It is not to be seen beneath the appearances .That tell of it The steeple at Farmington Stands glistening and Haddam .shines and sways It is the third commonness with ,light and air A curriculum, a vigor, a local . abstraction . Call it, one more, a river, an un,named flowing
Where the melodious winds ;have birth Whether on crystal rocks ye rove Beneath the bosom of the sea 10 Wandering in many a coral ;grove ;Fair Nine forsaking Poetry
Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore Of each of the senses; call it, ,again and again The river that flows nowhere,
How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoy'd in !you The languid strings do scarcely
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A silent-footed message flits and brings The ghostly Sultan from his ;glimmering halls A shadow at the window turbaned vast He leans; and pondering the sweet influence 15 That steals around him in remembered flowers Hears the frail music wind along the slopes Put forth and fade across the .whispering sea
Edgar Allan Poe
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
Sylvia Plath
The One in Paradise
You Are Tired
Morning Song
THOU wast that all to me love -- For which my soul did pine A green isle in the sea love A fountain and a shrine All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers .And all the flowers were mine !Ah dream too bright to last Ah starry Hope! that didst arise !But to be overcast A voice from out the Future cries On! on!" -- but o'er the Past" Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering( lies !Mute motionless aghast For alas! alas! with me !The light of Life is o'er No more -- no more -- no more -Such language holds the solďż˝) emn sea )To the sands upon the shore Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree !Or the stricken eagle soar And all my days are trances And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances And where thy footstep gleams -In what ethereal dances .By what eternal streams
You are tired )I think( Of the always puzzle of living ;and doing .And so am I Come with me then And we'll leave it far and far -away )!Only you and I understand( You have played )I think( And broke the toys you were fondest of ;And are a little tired now -Tired of things that break and .Just tired .So am I But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight And knock with a rose at the -hopeless gate of your heart !Open to me For I will show you the places Nobody knows And if you like .The perfect places of Sleep !Ah come with me I'll blow you that wonderful bubble the moon ;That floats forever and a day I'll sing you the jacinth song ;Of the probable stars I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream Until I find the Only Flower Which shall keep (I think) your little heart While the moon comes out of .the sea
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Love set you going like a fat .gold watch The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the ele.ments Our voices echo, magnifying .your arrival .New statue In a drafty museum, your nakedness .Shadows our safety We stand round blankly as .walls I'm no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow .Effacement at the wind's hand All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink .roses :I wake to listen .A far sea moves in my ear One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral .In my Victorian nightgown Your mouth opens clean as a .cat's The window square Whitens and swallows its dull .stars And now you try ;Your handful of notes The clear vowels rise like bal-
.II Then a mile of warm sea-scent;ed beach Three fields to cross till a farm ;appears A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted ,match And a voice less loud, thro' its ,joys and fears Than the two hearts beating !each to each
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
|Meeting at Night .I The grey sea and the long ;black land And the yellow half-moon ;large and low And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their ,sleep As I gain the cove with push,ing prow And quench its speed i' the .slushy sand
Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor ,I never saw a moor ;I never saw the sea Yet know I how the heather ,looks .And what a wave must be ,I never spoke with God ;Nor visited in heaven Yet certain am I of the spot .As if the chart were given
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Sara Teasdale
I Am Not Yours ,I am not yours, not lost in you Not lost, although I long to be ,Lost as a candle lit at noon .Lost as a snowflake in the sea You love me, and I find you still ,A spirit beautiful and bright Yet I am I, who long to be .Lost as a light is lost in light Oh plunge me deep in love - put out My senses, leave me deaf and ,blind Swept by the tempest of your ,love .A taper in a rushing wind