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Post by tannis on Feb 28, 2010 2:27:46 GMT
A POPULAR CALENDAR AND SOME SAYINGS
Monday.--Go into debt for your food, but do not work on a Monday. Do not visit an infirm person on a Monday, for your doing so will augment his sufferings. If you spend any of your money on Monday morning you will be a loser the whole week through. Maidens fast on Mondays, in order that they may be soon married; and old women in order that St Michael may be with them when they die.
Wednesday.--Every Wednesday has at least one unlucky hour.
Friday.--Whoever falls sick on a Friday will die. If a person is born on a Friday he will either die himself, or else his father or mother will. If a mother strike her son on the eye on a Friday, whilst standing on the door-step at the time when the muezzin calls to prayer, she causes the Jân to ride the child and drive him mad. The great underground river which runs past the Damascus gate stops running, in order to worship, on Fridays. Do not draw water from a well on Fridays at the time of the muezzin's call to prayer. Should you do so the Jân in the well will snatch away your intellect.
Saturday.--It is a meritorious act to visit (the graves of) the dead on Saturdays.
Kanûn el Awwal = December. On St Barbara's Day (Dec. 4), water gushes out at the mouse-hole. Maidens put kohl to their eyes; and in every family corn is boiled. A plate of this boiled grain is set apart for each member of the household, relatives, friends, etc., respectively, and, with sugar and pomegranate seeds sprinkled over it, is put away for the night, in order that Mar Saba, whose day is that immediately after St Barbara's, may trample upon it and bless the household and the household stores. The local form of the legend of St Barbara is curious and runs thus:-- "Barbara's father was a great Roman officer, a Pagan, who lived in the Kula‘a or Citadel at Jerusalem, where, it is said, his dwelling still exists. The daughter was converted to Christianity, and as she refused to recant, her father and brother were so angry that they shut her up for four days in a hot oven. When, at the end of the time they opened the oven, the maiden, to their great surprise, came forth alive and well. As she still refused to deny Christ it was resolved to boil her to death. A great cauldron full of water, was therefore put on the fire; but when it began to boil and the heathen were about to put Barbara in, it was found to be so full of wheat that there was no room for the saint. Her father and brother then took their swords and between them slew her, but were themselves struck by lightning immediately afterwards." St Barbara's Day is kept by Latins, Greeks, and Armenians.
Kanûn eth Thâni = January. This month is dumb (i.e. damp and miserable) and so cold that the hens lay blood-stained eggs. On New Year's Day the table is left as it is, with the dishes and food upon it, after meals in order that the mighty ones amongst the Jân (El furrâs el Janìyeh) may deposit bags of gold upon it. On other days of the year, however, the table is not left in this condition. If it were it would be carried off by angels. At the Feast of the Epiphany, the dough rises without being leavened, and leaven made from this dough must on no account be lent to anyone. Special graces are showered down at the Epiphany, and it is said that the trees on the banks of the Jordan adore the Saviour on this festival. (See "Animal and Plant-lore" chapter.) Whoever eats lentils during the twelve days following the Feast of the Nativity is sure to be smitten with the mange.
Shebât = February. A smiter, a plunger, or wallower, and nevertheless with a summer-scent about him. No reliance can be placed on February. This is the month for cats to kitten. The sunshine of February sets the head throbbing, i.e. causes violent headaches.
Adâr = March. Adâr is the father of earthquakes and showers. Save up your largest pieces of charcoal for your uncle Adâr. He will satisfy you with seven great snow-falls, not reckoning small ones. And yet, during Adâr, the shepherd can dry his drenched clothing without a fire. It is said that the sunshine of Adâr causes clothes hung out to dry to become exceedingly white. For this reason it is a favourite time for women to do their washing and more especially to wash their "azârs," i.e. the white sheets in which they envelop themselves when they go abroad. The sunshine of Adâr also makes the complexion fair. Therefore old women say, "The sunshine of Shebât for my daughter-in-law (because it causes headache); that of Adâr for my daughter, (because it beautifies the complexion); and of Nisân (April) for my senility (because it brings fresh life and vigour). On the Festival of the Forty Martyrs it is customary to light forty wicks, placed in oil, in honour of those saints "who were Christians of the days of Nero. In order to force them to recant they were exposed naked the whole of a snowy night in Adâr, with revelry and festivity going on before their eyes in a palace in front of them; and they were informed that if during the night any of them desired to deny Christ, all he had to do was to enter the palace and join in the festivities. At midnight one of them did so; but his place was immediately taken by one of the Roman sentries, who thus proved his sincerity in confessing the Saviour. Next morning the whole party, whose number had thus been preserved intact, were found frozen to death." The three first days of Adâr are called "El Mustakridât" a name which means "Lent out ones," and is generally explained by the following legend:-- "An aged Bedawi shepherdess, keeping her flocks in one of the wadies trending downwards to the Dead Sea, was heard by Shebât, who is thought of as a personality, mocking him because he had failed to send rain. Furious at being thus derided Shebât said to Adâr, 'O my brother Adâr, I have only three days left me, and they are not sufficient to enable me to be revenged on the old woman who has derided me. Lend me, therefore, three days of thine.' Adâr willingly granted his brother's request. Six days of heavy rain were the result, and the seyls, or winter-torrents from the hills swept the old woman and her flock into the sea." If the year is to be good, it depends upon Adâr. The Moslems say, "The meat and leben of Adâr are forbidden to the infidels," meaning that they are so good that the Christians must not taste them--a chuckle at the strict Fast of Lent.
Nisân = April. Nisân is the life of mankind, i.e. it revives and invigorates. During the rain-showers of Nisân, the bivalves (oysters) living at the bottom of the sea, rise to the surface and open their shells. As soon as a rain-drop falls into one of these open oysters, the shell closes and the creature sinks to the bottom. The rain-drop inside it becomes a pearl. It is customary for people to pic-nic out during Nisân and drink milk at such pic-nics.
Iy-yâr = May. Iy-yâr ripens the apricots and cucumbers. Serpents and partridges become white (I suppose that this means that during this month snakes change their skins and partridges moult).
Hezeran and Tammûz = June and July. Boil the water in the cruze, i.e. these are hot months.
Ab = August. The dreaded month. However, pluck the cluster (of grapes) and fear nought, i.e. the grapes are ripe, and may be eaten with impunity. Beware of holding a knife on Ab 29, the Day of the beheading of St John the Baptist.
Eylûl = September. On the Eve of the Festival of the Cross (Holy Cross Day, Sept. 14th) it is customary to expose on the house-top during the night seven small heaps of salt, which respectively represent the seven months following Eylûl. By noticing next morning which of these heaps of salt is dampest it is possible to know in which months there will be heavy rain.
Tashrìn el Awwal and Tashrìn eth-thâni = October and November. People born during these two months are swift to be angry. In case of a death in the house, it is not permitted to sweep it for three days, lest other members of the household should die in consequence. Be careful never to spill out water without "naming," otherwise the Jân may molest and stick to you. Beware never to step over a boy's head lest he either get a scabby head or die in consequence. During the period between the Carnival and Palm Sunday, the souls (ghosts) of the departed have permission to visit their living friends. Every odd number, and especially the number eleven, is unlucky. It is better to meet a demon (kird) the first thing in the morning than to meet a man who has naturally a hairless face. A one-eyed man is very difficult to get on with, and a man with a "kussa" or pointed goat's beard is more cunning than Iblìs himself. Boils are the consequence of the sufferer's having attempted to count the stars. He who spills salt will suffer from tumours. It is a sin to kill a turtle-dove because this bird was tinged with drops of the Saviour's blood at the Crucifixion. If a quarrel is proceeding, and a person present turns a shoe upside down, the strife will become more violent. Tall people are simpletons. If a dog howls at night under the window of a house, it is a sign that someone in that house will die. Should you hear a dog howling at night turn a shoe upside down and he will be sure to stop.
NOTE.--The overturning of a shoe has been explained to me as an act of respect towards the Jân. When Allah is worshipped the face is directed towards Him and the soles of the feet are furthest away. By turning the sole of a shoe, therefore, furthest away from the Jân, one implies a respect bordering on worship. The demons accept the compliment and are mollified, and Allah, who is good, and knows that no insult is intended to Him, does not resent the act.
Folk-lore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish, by J. E. Hanauer [1907]www.sacred-texts.com/asia/flhl/flhl39.htm
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 10, 2010 1:23:01 GMT
A Song Of Despair by Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
**********
Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her. How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her. And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees. We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses. Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me, and this may be the last poem I write for her.
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 18, 2010 1:14:19 GMT
POET Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)
BIOGRAPHY
"No writer of world renown is perhaps so little known to North Americans as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda," observed New York Times Book Review critic Selden Rodman. Numerous critics have praised Neruda as the greatest poet writing in the Spanish language during his lifetime, although many readers in the United States have found it difficult to disassociate Neruda's poetry from his fervent commitment to communism. An added difficulty lies in the fact that Neruda's poetry is very hard to translate; his works available in English represent only a small portion of his total output. Nonetheless, declared John Leonard in the New York Times, Neruda "was, I think, one of the great ones, a Whitman of the South."
Born Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes y Basoalto, Neruda adopted the pseudonym under which he would become famous while still in his early teens. He grew up in Temuco in the backwoods of southern Chile. Neruda's literary development received assistance from unexpected sources. Among his teachers "was the poet Gabriela Mistral, who would be a Nobel laureate years before Neruda," reported Manuel Duran and Margery Safir in Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. "It is almost inconceivable that two such gifted poets should find each other in such an unlikely spot. Mistral recognized the young Neftali's talent and encouraged it by giving the boy books and the support he lacked at home."
By the time he finished high school, Neruda had published in local papers and Santiago magazines, and had won several literary competitions. In 1921 he left southern Chile for Santiago to attend school, with the intention of becoming a French teacher but was an indifferent student. While in Santiago, Neruda completed one of his most critically acclaimed and original works, the cycle of love poems titled Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada—published in English translation as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. This work quickly marked Neruda as an important Chilean poet.
Veinte poemas also brought the author notoriety due to its explicit celebration of sexuality, and, as Robert Clemens remarked in the Saturday Review, "established him at the outset as a frank, sensuous spokesman for love." While other Latin American poets of the time used sexually explicit imagery, Neruda was the first to win popular acceptance for his presentation. Mixing memories of his love affairs with memories of the wilderness of southern Chile, he creates a poetic sequence that not only describes a physical liaison, but also evokes the sense of displacement that Neruda felt in leaving the wilderness for the city. "Traditionally," stated Rene de Costa in The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, "love poetry has equated woman with nature. Neruda took this established mode of comparison and raised it to a cosmic level, making woman into a veritable force of the universe."
"In Veinte poemas," reported David P. Gallagher in Modern Latin American Literature, "Neruda journeys across the sea symbolically in search of an ideal port. In 1927, he embarked on a real journey, when he sailed from Buenos Aires for Lisbon, ultimately bound for Rangoon where he had been appointed honorary Chilean consul." Duran and Safir explained that "Chile had a long tradition, like most Latin American countries, of sending her poets abroad as consuls or even, when they became famous, as ambassadors." The poet was not really qualified for such a post and was unprepared for the squalor, poverty, and loneliness to which the position would expose him. "Neruda travelled extensively in the Far East over the next few years," Gallagher continued, "and it was during this period that he wrote his first really splendid book of poems, Residencia en la tierra, a book ultimately published in two parts, in 1933 and 1935." Neruda added a third part, Tercera residencia, in 1947.
Residencia en la tierra, published in English as Residence on Earth, is widely celebrated as containing "some of Neruda's most extraordinary and powerful poetry," according to de Costa. Born of the poet's feelings of alienation, the work reflects a world which is largely chaotic and senseless, and which—in the first two volumes—offers no hope of understanding. De Costa quoted Spanish poet García Lorca as calling Neruda "a poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to insight, closer to blood than to ink. A poet filled with mysterious voices that fortunately he himself does not know how to decipher." With its emphasis on despair and the lack of adequate answers to mankind's problems, Residencia en la tierra in some ways foreshadowed the post-World War II philosophy of existentialism. "Neruda himself came to regard it very harshly," wrote Michael Wood in the New York Review of Books. "It helped people to die rather than to live, he said, and if he had the proper authority to do so he would ban it, and make sure it was never reprinted."
Residencia en la tierra also marked Neruda's emergence as an important international poet. By the time the second volume of the collection was published in 1935 the poet was serving as consul in Spain, where "for the first time," reported Duran and Safir, "he tasted international recognition, at the heart of the Spanish language and tradition. At the same time . . . poets like Rafael Alberti and Miguel Hernandez, who had become closely involved in radical politics and the Communist movement, helped politicize Neruda." When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Neruda was among the first to espouse the Republican cause with the poem España en el corazon—a gesture that cost him his consular post. He later served in France and Mexico, where his politics caused less anxiety.
Communism rescued Neruda from the despair he expressed in the first parts of Residencia en la tierra, and led to a change in his approach to poetry. He came to believe "that the work of art and the statement of thought—when these are responsible human actions, rooted in human need—are inseparable from historical and political context," reported Salvatore Bizzarro in Pablo Neruda: All Poets the Poet. "He argued that there are books which are important at a certain moment in history, but once these books have resolved the problems they deal with they carry in them their own oblivion. Neruda felt that the belief that one could write solely for eternity was romantic posturing." This new attitude led the poet in new directions; for many years his work, both poetry and prose, advocated an active role in social change rather than simply describing his feelings, as his earlier oeuvre had done.
This significant shift in Neruda's poetry is recognizable in Tercera residencia, the third and final part of the "Residencia" series. Florence L. Yudin noted in Hispania that the poetry of this volume was overlooked when published and remains neglected due to its overt ideological content. "Viewed as a whole," Yudin wrote, "Tercera residencia illustrates a fluid coherence of innovation with retrospective, creativity with continuity, that would characterize Neruda's entire career." According to de Costa, as quoted by Yudin, "The new posture assumed is that of a radical nonconformist. Terra residencia must, therefore, be considered in this light, from the dual perspective of art and society, poetry and politics."
"Las Furias y las penas," the longest poem of Tercera residencia, embodies the influence of both the Spanish Civil War and the works of Spanish Baroque poet Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas on Neruda. The poem explores the psychic agony of lost love and its accompanying guilt and suffering, conjured in the imagery of savage eroticism, alienation, and loss of self-identity. Neruda's message, according to Yudin, is that "what makes up life's narrative ('cuento') are single, unconnected events, governed by chance, and meaningless ('suceden'). Man is out of control, like someone hallucinating one-night stands in sordid places." Yudin concluded that, "Despite its failed dialectic, 'Las Furias y las penas' sustains a haunting beauty in meaning and tone" and "bears the unmistakable signature of Neruda's originality and achievement."
While some critics have felt that Neruda's devotion to Communist dogma was at times extreme, others recognize the important impact his politics had on his poetry. Clayton Eshleman wrote in the introduction to Cesar Vallejo's Poemas humanos/ Human Poems that "Neruda found in the third book of Residencia the key to becoming the twentieth-century South American poet: the revolutionary stance which always changes with the tides of time." Gordon Brotherton, in Latin American Poetry: Origins and Presence, expanded on this idea by noting that "Neruda, so prolific, can be lax, a 'great bad poet' (to use the phrase Juan Ramon Jimenez used to revenge himself on Neruda). And his change of stance 'with the tides of time' may not always be perfectly effected. But . . . his dramatic and rhetorical skills, better his ability to speak out of his circumstances, . . . was consummate. In his best poetry (of which there is much) he speaks on a scale and with an agility unrivaled in Latin America."
Neruda expanded on his political views in the poem Canto général, which, according to de Costa, is a "lengthy epic on man's struggle for justice in the New World." Although Neruda had begun the poem as early as 1935—when he had intended it to be limited in scope only to Chile—he completed some of the work while serving in the Chilean senate as a representative of the Communist Party. However, party leaders recognized that the poet needed time to work on his opus, and granted him a leave of absence in 1947. Later that year, however, Neruda returned to political activism, writing letters in support of striking workers and criticizing Chilean President Videla. Early in 1948 the Chilean Supreme Court issued an order for his arrest, and Neruda finished the Canto général while hiding from Videla's forces.
"Canto général is the flowering of Neruda's new political stance," Don Bogen asserted in the Nation. "For Neruda food and other pleasures are our birthright—not as gifts from the earth or heaven but as the products of human labor." According to Bogen, Canto général draws its "strength from a commitment to nameless workers—the men of the salt mines, the builders of Macchu Picchu—and the fundamental value of their labor. This is all very Old Left, of course." Commenting on Canto général in Books Abroad, Jaime Alazraki remarked, "Neruda is not merely chronicling historical events. The poet is always present throughout the book not only because he describes those events, interpreting them according to a definite outlook on history, but also because the epic of the continent intertwines with his own epic."
Although, as Bizzarro noted, "In [the Canto général], Neruda was to reflect some of the [Communist] party's basic ideological tenets," the work itself transcends propaganda. Looking back into American prehistory, the poet examined the land's rich natural heritage and described the long defeat of the native Americans by the Europeans. Instead of rehashing Marxist dogma, however, he concentrated on elements of people's lives common to all people at all times. Nancy Willard wrote in Testimony of the Invisible Man, "Neruda makes it clear that our most intense experience of impermanence is not death but our own isolation among the living. . . . If Neruda is intolerant of despair, it is because he wants nothing to sully man's residence on earth."
"In the Canto," explained Duran and Safir, "Neruda reached his peak as a public poet. He produced an ideological work that largely transcended contemporary events and became an epic of an entire continent and its people." According to Alazraki, "By bringing together his own odyssey and the drama of the continent, Neruda has simultaneously given to Canto général the quality of a lyric and an epic poem. The lives of conquistadors, martyrs, heroes, and just plain people recover a refreshing actuality because they become part of the poet's fate, and conversely, the life of the poet gains new depth because in his search one recognizes the continent's struggles. Canto général is, thus, the song of a continent as much as it is Neruda's own song."
Neruda returned to Chile from exile in 1953, and, said Duran and Safir, spent the last twenty years of his life producing "some of the finest love poetry in One Hundred Love Sonnets and parts of Extravagaria and La Barcarola; he produced Nature poetry that continued the movement toward close examination, almost still shots of every aspect of the external world, in the odes of Navegaciones y regresos, in The Stones of Chile, in The Art of Birds, in Una Casa en la arena and in Stones of the Sky. He continued as well his role as public poet in Canción de geste, in parts of Cantos ceremoniales, in the mythical La Espada encendida, and the angry Incitement to Nixonicide and Praise for the Chilean Revolution."
At this time, Neruda's work began to move away from the highly political stance it had taken during the 1930s. Instead of concentrating on politicizing the common folk, Neruda began to try to speak to them simply and clearly, on a level that each could understand. He wrote poems on subjects ranging from rain to feet. By examining common, ordinary, everyday things very closely, according to Duran and Safir, Neruda gives us "time to examine a particular plant, a stone, a flower, a bird, an aspect of modern life, at leisure. We look at the object, handle it, turn it around, all the sides are examined with love, care, attention. This is, in many ways, Neruda . . . at his best."
In 1971 Neruda reached the peak of his political career when the Chilean Communist party nominated him for president. He withdrew his nomination, however, when he reached an accord with Socialist nominee Salvador Allende. After Allende won the election he reactivated Neruda's diplomatic credentials, appointing the poet ambassador to France. It was while Neruda was serving in Paris that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, in recognition of his oeuvre. Poor health soon forced the poet to resign his post, however, and he returned to Chile, where he died in 1973—only days after a right-wing military coup killed Allende and seized power. Many of his last poems, some published posthumously, indicate his awareness of his death's approach. As Fernando Alegria wrote in Modern Poetry Studies, "What I want to emphasize is something very simple: Neruda was, above all, a love poet and, more than anyone, an unwavering, powerful, joyous, conqueror of death."
Commenting on Passions and Impressions, a posthumous collection of Neruda's prose poems, political and literary essays, lectures, and newspaper articles, Mark Abley wrote in Maclean's, "No matter what occasion provoked these pieces, his rich, tireless voice echoes with inimitable force." As Neruda eschewed literary criticism, many critics found in him a lack of rationalism. According to Neruda, "It was through metaphor, not rational analysis and argument, that the mysteries of the world could be revealed," remarked Stephen Dobyns in the Washington Post. However, Dobyns noted that Passions and Impressions "shows Neruda both at his most metaphorical and his most rational. . . . What one comes to realize from these prose pieces is how conscious and astute were Neruda's esthetic choices. In retrospect at least his rejection of the path of the maestro, the critic, the rationalist was carefully calculated." In his speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize, Neruda noted that "there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are."
In 2003, thirty years after Neruda's death, an anthology of 600 of Neruda's poems arranged chronologically was published as The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The anthology draws from thirty-six different translators, and some of his major works are also presented in their original Spanish. Writing in the New Leader, Phoebe Pettingell pointed out that, although some works were left out because of the difficulty in presenting them properly in English, "an overwhelming body of Neruda's output is here . . . and the collection certainly presents a remarkable array of subjects and styles." Reflecting on the life and work of Neruda in the New Yorker, Mark Strand commented, "There is something about Neruda—about the way he glorifies experience, about the spontaneity and directness of his passion—that sets him apart from other poets. It is hard not to be swept away by the urgency of his language, and that's especially so when he seems swept away."
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 18, 2010 1:25:43 GMT
Tower Of Light
by Pablo Neruda
O tower of light, sad beauty that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea, calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife of the Oceanian wind, O separate rose from the long stem of the trampled bush that the depths, converted into archipelago, O natural star, green diadem, alone in your lonesome dynasty, still unattainable, elusive, desolate like one drop, like one grape, like the sea.
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Post by tannis on Mar 18, 2010 13:27:15 GMT
You, Doctor Martin Anne Sexton, 1960
You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel or the laughing bee on a stalk
of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk
in school. There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break
tomorrow. Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry.
What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall
like floods of life in frost. And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.
Like Kate Bush, Anne Sexton searches for an exit from a labyrinth of mundane difficulty, psychological pain, and emotional extremes. "You, Doctor Martin" comprises six seven-line stanzas, each with the diagonal left margin that we have seen in the first stanza, each with the end rhyme a b c a b c b (except for the first stanza, which employ the slight variation a b c a b c a). Throughout the poem as in the first stanza, end rhymes and internal rhymes enhance the sense. Enjambments surprise us and dramatize the meaning. The rhythm is basically iambic; the occasional spondee ("I speed") demands attention.
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 28, 2010 21:25:21 GMT
If You Forget Me I want you to know one thing.
You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
Pablo Neruda
Does it matter now?...
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 5, 2010 23:29:41 GMT
‘In the wave-strike over unquiet stones’
In the wave-strike over unquiet stones the brightness bursts and bears the rose and the ring of water contracts to a cluster to one drop of azure brine that falls. O magnolia radiance breaking in spume, magnetic voyager whose death flowers and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness: shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean. Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence while the sea destroys its continual forms, collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness, because in the weft of those unseen garments of headlong water, and perpetual sand, we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
pn
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 5, 2010 23:49:00 GMT
The Annals of Persephone
"Whatever the riddle, the laws and comforts of men mean nothing here in this quivering city of deep."
1. The Warning
Love is the only thing that we can keep for pleasure will lift its wings and be done with us and joy will be mingled with sorrow, the sharpness of honey as we long for something bitter on the tongue that lasts.
Loss will come I feel it hovering in the windows like a ghost. I whispered, stay away but couldn't speak aloud to make it more than a dream...
I wish we could run together to some distant country where leopards and lions only accost us, or we sleep under the thousand beneficent eyes of the northern lights I imagine disguises and aeroplanes, dull gray wings like an angel, the atmosphere - whisking us away.
Your gypsy wife, the girl who can't ever be found I'd be afraid to set my bare feet on the ground. For comfort I'd lay my head on your shoulder, and hide my wet face. No one can punish us for the stray dreams in our heads. If only I had believed you.
That dreams are safe that dreams are indissoluble...
In a dream my shoes are floating down a river like boats, in pink and yellow and rudderless out of control and yet empty, therefore meaningless. I wish I could erase my name and find myself a new one for your sake - and then my heart would be unknown.
All I've ever wanted is a place to hide. Some mountain where hoarfrost descends and smoke rises from hearths or factories of sly fire and embers buried in fox dens. Your loving, precarious wife of many forms The wings, the paws, the honey and treasure chests lugged so far - so tired and footsore they all mark my only home as heaven.
As if my plumage were caught in the frame of your door and I begged you to open your house to a traveler,
Ravished too far for insanity by fairy fire Charmed fatally by the milk in my bones from which wings grew like the mother who tortured her owl-daughter And I begged you to close my ears to the call of the sea with lullabies or the sound of children's laughter isn't this the way the story always goes?
Persephone visits the field mouse's cabin or takes refuge in the kingdoms of meadowlarks and sun which stick to her beauty like flies sticking to deathly honey
As she mourns, and feels on her wrist the sweet hand of the darkness and feels in her shoulders the ache of her bones as they stir.
I thought I could be human, once upon a time and forever afterwards inter disasters in your tenderness. I plucked my silvern feathers out and shed them soft upon the bed I took my cygnean vocal chords, and tore them from the throat of hell
I thought to live among poppies and bluebells, the summer sojourn of songbirds, smote with song. I thought to warble of passing joys, and still sing you to sleep at night (Still sleep at night, unaccosted by dancing shoes.)
And hang like stars my vengeful wings in jewellery boxes inlaid with lacquer and brocade to sleep tense as lyres, and taciturn as rubies each feather a silent, ivory coloured key To the twinging celestial music of loss and aleatories.
Like vows to eternity, gossamer and foxfire. I made promises I thought only angels could keep. When flowers and songbirds alike trust only the turning earth and we are simply the star-crossed, crushed under its wheel.
But humans are such fools for thinking they've suffered enough. The birds, unawares, let themselves take the wound and its glory. _
(Who would dare say that she did not love him enough to lay her shivering wings on the doorstep, the altar? Who would dare say that the stunning magnetism of atlantean depths and heights overcame her love?
The spirit of love is lissome as a willo' the wisp elusive as mercury and often only shows herself in loss, and in unearthly hope. In birdsong, and in spring's false starts.)
_
She was trying to put things together the lumbering bears and swift wolves, that knocked on their door in the guise of milk or lovers with glimmering lupine pelts and insatiable hunger Looking for honey to steal or sad women to marry.
Cunning foxes to leave our nests as feathers stern officers saying the girl isn't yours, she's not yours.
She said once again, beware, my love of these threats and thrills at hand by the threshold step beware of the flying beast in me with her ill foretold wings. Keep the most precious dreams in the fist and the fire and our necessities close by. Do not let me go.
For even when you have twined up my accursed wings Even when you have buried them with your tenderness the grains of honey and salt will gnaw at us to measure. Oh, press your mouth to my heart and swallow, swallow, my wings in the maw of the fire, molted and outgrown.
Who could bid me follow but the angels and yet they will whirr their milky machinery but you know the angels are the same ones that bit us apart and the angels are the same that let me fall and yet you know the angels are in us
And only us as sudden as wings grow
When they caused loss to shimmer around the house and my dreams were slipping into wanderlust.
_
2. Ceridwen's leaving
Ceridwen left her dreams once in the snow she folded them into her mouth and forsook their wings And offered them to the hand that told her how her smelted silver feather ends must molt. _
It was only a frowned upon fairy marriage her plumage boxed up in his heart. And yet who would dare say she did not love him enough to leave her sea, her wind, her star
Love him enough to lock up her heart in a box her wings in the closet, her mysteries in the white bedsheets. The way she watched him sleep, always awake after every twinkling lamp had given up its semblance of a star to the dark, to the milk of the moon, mother for our lost child and human dreams she was not privy to.
She was brushing your hair aside from your forehead wondering what was inside your sleep that soft music, those lost languages was your soul like her soul, the one she could never decipher?
Or was that because she was so young, because she was a woman. The spiders spun their gossamer over her sea Where growing children unfolded their human hands in every blossom with its slow debt of sleep We live our lives before our destiny. Before the muscle of the uncompromising light. Before the deep, the glowing fearsome deep. Who would dare say she did not love him enough! to make their end a secret from herself...
Give the seas and all their costly salt their godly, colossal azure, and indifference to ships For one tear of tenderness more precious than any god could dream with their blood blue.
A tenderness that her dreams had engendered. a tenderness her dreams would rend in two. _
So for seven years, the plumage festered lovely and slender, inhuman as snow stillborn feathers fostering untold lights and eating frailties in the darkness like moths.
So for seven years, the things our hands touched, prospered for seven years she folded prayers on colored paper and floated them down rivers: for seven years she wrote poems that were litanies to prove love lasts forever. The fire did not escape the fireplace even in the longest winter of those seven years.
And our child grew like an unfathomed star. And the sieve of old stories is almost enough to contain -
The music that drifts unwanted from tuning orchestras and every beauty thought out against a million unspoken and every dream bearing a bonny omen brings up a brilliant thousand more that bear ill fortune No matter how beautiful they are. No matter how beautiful they are -
Like whales with their singing mouths still open, so heartbreakingly Spit out from the foaming, gnashing teeth of the sea
Her unwanted knowledge of earthly destinies with no way to cover her ears from the dreamlike bad news That drips like lead from a headline in the papers Into the soles of her shoes. Fortunes pouring blood from their yanked feathers Make her rise and batter the house with her wingspan and her cry.
The storm that you held by its arrows, but could not overcome my poor heart, left alone in the dark, in the nothingness. As she rose like a swan casting silver plumes from pinions of bone (lacing her wings like a corset, baleen and buttonhole) And the flames rose in white misgiving from her wedding dress Poked from each aperture that the moths' mouths had found.
And of dreams there is no guarantee that one will wake at all, or ever be forgiven. (Were you asleep, enchanted by the frost were you asleep, imprinted on her lips - )
When then she rose, you stirred And then she flew
When then she rose, you slept and then she wept.
_
And then grief rose, leaving only dead fire Immolated on its own lust-pyre,
She left only a fine dust of immortal gold elusive as the hair of one long-ago-loved on your bedsheets. The clouds spun round her lips, and she couldn't have told the mute pale stars it was her hair below it was the thread of yarn looped round her finger like a noose Blotting its tip blue.
And wanderlust - she never meant to leave. The swans stole her throat, my dear. The bears stole her cloak of fur from the closet where it was meant to be The selkies bid her don her sealskin and come to the sea
They said
Whatever the riddle, the laws and comforts of love mean nothing here in this quivering city of deep.
Whatever the tenderest promises you beg to keep mercy is nothing against the muscle of dreams.
nrp
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 6, 2010 0:44:27 GMT
Such sorrow does not become you, Although you consider yourself cheated Excessive sorrow gains nothing
"Fair Elphin, cease your lament! Swearing profits no-one. It is not evil to hope Nor does any man see what supports him, Not an empty treasure is the prayer of Cynllo, Nor does God break his promise. No catch in Gwyddno's weir Was ever as good as tonight's.
"Fair Elphin, dry your cheeks! Such sorrow does not become you, Although you consider yourself cheated Excessive sorrow gains nothing, Nor will doubting God's miracles. Although I am small, I am skillful. From the sea and the mountain, From the river's depth God gives His gifts to the blessed.
"Elphin of the generous spirit, Cowardly is your purpose, You must not grieve so heavily. Better are good than evil omens. though I am weak and small, Spumed with Dylan's wave, I shall be better for you Than three hundred shares of salmon.
"Elphin of noble generosity, Do not sorrow at your catch. Though I am weak on the floor of my basket, There are wonders on my tongue. "While I am watching over you, no great need will overcome you. be mindful of the name of the Trinity And none shall overcome you."
"How can this be, that you, a babe, can talk?" marveled Elphin. Again Taliesin replied with a poem.
"Firstly I was formed in the shape of a handsome man, in the hall of Ceridwen in order to be refined. Although small and modest in my behavior, I was great in her lofty sanctuary.
"While I was held prisoner, sweet inspiration educated me and laws were imparted to me in a speech which had no words; but I had to flee from the angry, terrible hag whose outcry was terrifying.
"Since then I have fled in the shape of a crow, since then I have fled as a speedy frog, since then I have fled with rage in my chains, - a roe-buck in a dense thicket.
"I have fled in the shape of a raven of prophetic speech, in the shape of a satirizing fox, in the shape of a sure swift, in the shape of a squirrel vainly hiding.
"I have fled in the shape of a red deer, in the shape of iron in a fierce fire, in the shape of a sword sowing death and disaster, in the shape of a bull, relentlessly struggling.
"I have fled in the shape of a bristly boar in a ravine, in the shape of a grain of wheat. I have been taken by the talons of a bird of prey which increased until it took the size of a foal.
"Floating like a boat in its waters, I was thrown into a dark bag, and on an endless sea, I was set adrift.
"Just as I was suffocating, I had a happy omen, and the master of the Heavens brought me to liberty."
...from taliesin
jhm
though grandiose the embellished and decadent morose paltry are the shackles that bind such earthbound desire how the pornography of lugubriousness and selfish flagellation suffices for substance at the peril of beauty the maternal smothering the ignorance of truth lead you further from the joy that was yours a joy that died in vain that could live in a heart not filled with self that could exist like a lapis ring always there always safe always true given with the knowledge of honor
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Apr 26, 2010 3:06:13 GMT
Balloon
A green balloon held on a string Was blessed though he saw not how He danced within the length of his tether He smiled in sunny or storming weather And laughed like the little dog in the poem When the cow jumped over the moon
His keeper was a little girl Who held tightly onto his string She got him at the circus one day And loved the bright and cheery way He bounced at the end of string when she'd tug And how he shone like the green cheese moon
She payed the vendor a dollar and half To purchase this miniature moon a string She had him for a week and a day Before he started to lose his way And he sank to the floor of her bedroom and sat And he sighed and mourned his own death
But the little girl was gentle and kind And she lifted him up from the floor She said 'Don't you cry', and gave him a hug And grabbed up his string and gave it a tug and carried him off, though fly he could not And loved him the same, anyway.
When at last there was no air at all Inside the balloon that once was so fine The girl made a wish on the green cheese moon For a reincarnation of her special balloon The next morning she found a dear little puppy And took him in and named him Balloon.
~Christina E. R. (posted with permission - thank you to the person who sent me this on a bad day)
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Post by Al Truest on Jun 26, 2010 18:43:02 GMT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART ONE IT IS an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye-- The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.
'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.
The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon--' The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.
And now the Storm-blast came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariners' hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'
'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- Why look'st thou so?'--'With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross.'
PART TWO
THE Sun now rose upon the right: Out of the sea came he, Still hid in mist, and on the left Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariners' hollo!
And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue and white.
And some in dreams assur'ed were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.
PART THREE
THERE passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye, When looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky.
At first it seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and tacked and veered.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood! I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call: Gramercy! they for joy did grin And all at once their breath drew in, As they were drinking all.
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! Hither to work us weal; Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all a-flame. The day was well nigh done! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright Sun; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peered With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears! Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres?
Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a DEATH? and are there two? Is DEATH that woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.
The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listened and looked sideways up! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip-- Till clomb above the eastern bar The horn'ed Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip.
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly,-- They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow!
PART FOUR
'I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown.'-- Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.
I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay
I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust.
I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they: The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away.
An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights saw that curse, And yet I could not die.
The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside--
Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charm'ed water burnt alway A still and awful red.
Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, Then coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.
PART FIVE
OH sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul.
The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remained, I dreamt that they were filled with dew; And when I awoke, it rained.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light--almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a bless'ed ghost.
And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! Beneath the lightning and the Moon The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up-blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-- We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me.
'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!' Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned--they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning!
And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly sailed on, Yet never a breeze did breathe: Slowly and smoothly went the Ship, Moved onward from beneath.
Under the keel nine fathom deep, From the land of mist and snow, The spirit slid: and it was he That made the ship to go. The sails at noon left off their tune, And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast, Had fixed her to the ocean: But in a minute she 'gan stir, With a short uneasy motion-- Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go, She made a sudden bound: It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound.
How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two voices in the air.
'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low The harmless Albatross.
The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow.'
The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.'
PART SIX
First Voice
'BUT tell me, tell me! speak again, They soft response renewing-- What makes that ship drive on so fast? What is the ocean doing?'
Second Voice
'Still as a slave before his lord, The ocean hath no blast; His great bright eye most silently Up to the Moon is cast--
If he may know which way to go; For she guides him smooth or grim. See, brother, see! how graciously She looketh down on him.'
First Voice
'But why drives on that ship so fast, Without or wave or wind?'
Second Voice 'The air is cut away before, And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! Or we shall be belated: For slow and slow that ship will go, When the Mariner's trance is abated.'
I woke, and we were sailing on As in a gentle weather: 'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck, For a charnel-dungeon fitter: All fixed on me their stony eyes, That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died, Had never passed away: I could not draw my eyes from theirs, Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more I viewed the ocean green, And looked far forth, yet little saw Of what had else been seen--
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring-- It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-- On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The light-house top I see? Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?
We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, And I with sobs did pray-- O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass, So smoothly it was strewn! And on the bay, the moonlight lay, And the shadow of the Moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, That stands above the rock: The moonlight steeped in silentness The steady, weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came.
A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were: I turned my eyes upon the deck-- Oh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand: It was a heavenly, sight! They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light;
This seraph-band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart-- No voice; but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars, I heard the Pilot's cheer; My head was turned perforce away And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, I heard them coming fast: Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third-I heard his voice: It is the Hermit good! He singeth loud his godly hymns That he makes in the wood. He'll shrieve my soul he'll wash away The Albatross's blood.
PART SEVEN
THIS Hermit good lives in that wood Which slopes down to the sea. How loudly his sweet voice he rears! He loves to talk with marineres That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-- He hath a cushion plump: It is the moss that wholly hides The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, 'Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, That signal made but now?'
'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said-- 'And they answered not our cheer! The planks looked warped! and see those sails, How thin they are and sere! I never saw aught like to them, Unless perchance it were
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag My forest-brook along; When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, That eats the she-wolf's young.'
'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-- (The Pilot made reply) I am a-feared'--'Push on, push on!' Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship, But I nor spake nor stirred; The boat came close beneath the ship, And straight a sound was heard.
Under the water it rumbled on, Still louder and more dead: It reached the ship, it split the bay; The ship went down like lead.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote, Like one that hath been seven days drowned My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the Pilot's boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round; And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound.
I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.'
And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land! The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, And scarcely he could stand.
'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' The Hermit crossed his brow. 'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say-- What manner of man art thou?
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there: But in the garden-bower the bride And bride-maids singing are: And hark the little vesper bell, Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seem'ed there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!--
To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.
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Post by Al Truest on Jul 2, 2010 0:44:15 GMT
XVII (I do not love you...)
by Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
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Post by Al Truest on Jul 3, 2010 20:15:41 GMT
Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine
Tie your heart at night to mine, love, and both will defeat the darkness like twin drums beating in the forest against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream that cuts the thread of earthly orbs with the punctuality of a headlong train that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement, to the grip on life that beats in your breast, with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply to the sky's questioning stars with one key, one door closed to shadow.
By: Pablo Neruda
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Post by orgone on Mar 17, 2011 17:51:51 GMT
Rhyme LII. The dark-winged swallows will return...
The dark-winged swallows will return to hang their nests beneath your eaves, and before your windows once again beckon with their wings;
but those whose flight restrained your beauty and my joy to learn, those who came to know our names... those...will not return!
The twining honeysuckles will return your garden walls to climb and on another afternoon, more lovely still, again their flowers will bloom;
but those with sparkling drops of dew, which we'd watch trembling, yearn and fall, like teardrops of the day... those...will not return!
From love will come once more the sound of burning words to ring; your heart from within its soundest sleep perhaps will rise again;
but mute, entranced and kneeling down as adoring God before His throne, as I have loved you...accept the truth! they will not love you so!
By Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 4, 2012 8:50:25 GMT
45 Mercy Street
In my dream, drilling into the marrow of my entire bone, my real dream, I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill searching for a street sign - namely MERCY STREET. Not there.
I try the Back Bay. Not there. Not there. And yet I know the number. 45 Mercy Street. I know the stained-glass window of the foyer, the three flights of the house with its parquet floors. I know the furniture and mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, the servants. I know the cupboard of Spode the boat of ice, solid silver, where the butter sits in neat squares like strange giant's teeth on the big mahogany table. I know it well. Not there.
Where did you go? 45 Mercy Street, with great-grandmother kneeling in her whale-bone corset and praying gently but fiercely to the wash basin, at five A.M. at noon dozing in her wiggy rocker, grandfather taking a nap in the pantry, grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid, and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower on her forehead to cover the curl of when she was good and when she was... And where she was begat and in a generation the third she will beget, me, with the stranger's seed blooming into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes, enough pills, my wallet, my keys, and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five? I walk. I walk. I hold matches at street signs for it is dark, as dark as the leathery dead and I have lost my green Ford, my house in the suburbs, two little kids sucked up like pollen by the bee in me and a husband who has wiped off his eyes in order not to see my inside out and I am walking and looking and this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down - I don't care! Bolt the door, mercy, erase the number, rip down the street sign, what can it matter, what can it matter to this cheapskate who wants to own the past that went out on a dead ship and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook, as women do, and fish swim back and forth between the dollars and the lipstick. I pick them out, one by one and throw them at the street signs, and shoot my pocketbook into the Charles River. Next I pull the dream off and slam into the cement wall of the clumsy calendar I live in, my life, and its hauled up notebooks.
Anne Sexton
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