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Post by dutyofpoets on Apr 4, 2008 9:32:29 GMT
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
e.e.cummings
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 4, 2008 12:37:37 GMT
^ Thanks for joining in. D.O.P. Your first entry was a nice one. Please make yourself at home - you are among friends.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 4, 2008 15:23:07 GMT
Welcome, dutyofpoets. Very interesting username, BTW. The poem is beautiful. I hope you'll keep posting...
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Post by tannis on Apr 13, 2008 0:59:37 GMT
The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it's for you to bring them to life. Kate's KBC article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980), "Them Bats and Doves"gaffa.org/garden/kate8.htmlIthacaAs you set out for Ithaca hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind - as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaca always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaca to make you rich. Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. K.Kavafis
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 13, 2008 22:53:09 GMT
Lovely poem, Tannis. Thank you for posting it. I can certainly identify with the sentiment that in the end, sometimes the journey is as important as the destination. And in the end it often seems to me that the revelation is that the desired goal, the destination, was always present- in the wisdom and 'rare excitement' of the journey. And that the "Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon" are only set up by the mind.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 17, 2008 0:58:20 GMT
Love
Like a tiny snake coiled in a grove It will charm you and frighten and thrill, Then for days it will coo like a dove On your little white windowsill.
It will drowse like a gillyflower, Then flash like a brilliant hoar-frost... But soon, before you're aware, To joy and to peace you'll be lost.
It knows how to make you tearful With a yearningly-sweet violin, And a strangers smile - how fearful As you guess that again it begins...
(Anna Akhmatova)I just came across this today, and liked it quite a bit...
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Post by tannis on Apr 17, 2008 1:44:30 GMT
^ Poignant and keenly observed... Kate Bush wrote Breathing in response to The Cold War. Prayer Before Birth is a poem written by Anglo-Irish poet Louis McNeice (1907-1963) at the height of the Second World War. I post Prayer Before Birth in response to comments Adena posted on The Breathing Thread. Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice.I am not yet born; O hear me. Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me. I am not yet born, console me. I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me. I am not yet born; provide me With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me. I am not yet born; forgive me For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me. I am not yet born; rehearse me In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me. I am not yet born; O hear me, Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me. I am not yet born; O fill me With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me. Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. Otherwise kill me.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 17, 2008 2:14:29 GMT
Very good poem, which I had never read before. Thank you for posting it.
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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 17, 2008 5:59:12 GMT
I have to say, that's a pretty powerful poem. Much from the same view as Breathing too.
My favourite poems are a pair called To a Fish and A Fish Replies by Leigh Hunt.
To a Fish
You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced, And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste; And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,- Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry, Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:- O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights, What is't ye do? What life lead? Eh, dull goggles? How do ye vary your vile days and nights? How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites, And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?
A Fish Answers
Amazing monster! that, for aught I know, With the first sight of thee didst make our race For ever stare! O flat and shocking face, Grimly divided from the breast below! Thou that on dry land horribly dost go With a split body and most ridiculous pace, Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace, Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow! O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air, How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry And dreary sloth? What particle canst share Of the only blessed life, the watery? I sometimes see of ye an actual pair Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 17, 2008 12:57:57 GMT
I enjoyed the poems, Adena. They demonstrate very well how incredibly and strangely different the the same thing can look fro two different vantage points.
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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 17, 2008 14:12:23 GMT
Views of the inside from the outside and the outside from the inside make for an interesting comparison. I did something similar once, with one of my friends.
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 17, 2008 14:18:38 GMT
Views of the inside from the outside and the outside from the inside make for an interesting comparison. I did something similar once, with one of my friends. ' seefood anyone?' ...nevermind - too hard to explain.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 20, 2008 0:52:09 GMT
Rain
As the rain falls so does your love
bathe every open object of the world--
In houses the priceless dry rooms
of illicit love where we live hear the wash of the rain--
There paintings and fine metalware woven stuffs-- all the whorishness of our delight sees from its window
the spring wash of your love the falling rain--
The trees are become beasts fresh-risen from the sea-- water
trickles from the crevices of their hides--
So my life is spent to keep out love with which she rains upon
the world
of spring
drips
so spreads
the words
far apart to let in
her love
And running in between
the drops
the rain
is a kind physician
the rain of her thoughts over
the ocean every
where
walking with invisible swift feet over
the helpless waves--
Unworldly love that has no hope of the world
and that cannot change the world to its delight--
The rain falls upon the earth and grass and flowers
come perfectly
into form from its liquid
clearness
But love is unworldly
and nothing comes of it but love
following and falling endlessly from her thoughts
(William Carlos Williams)
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 20, 2008 23:55:57 GMT
from The Book of Questions III.
Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress?
Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots?
Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile?
Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?
(Pablo Neruda)
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Post by Al Truest on Apr 21, 2008 21:27:53 GMT
Rain
As the rain falls so does your love
bathe every open object of the world--
In houses the priceless dry rooms
of illicit love where we live hear the wash of the rain--
There paintings and fine metalware woven stuffs-- all the whorishness of our delight sees from its window
the spring wash of your love the falling rain--
The trees are become beasts fresh-risen from the sea-- water
trickles from the crevices of their hides--
So my life is spent to keep out love with which she rains upon
the world
of spring
drips
so spreads
the words
far apart to let in
her love
And running in between
the drops
the rain
is a kind physician
the rain of her thoughts over
the ocean every
where
walking with invisible swift feet over
the helpless waves--
Unworldly love that has no hope of the world
and that cannot change the world to its delight--
The rain falls upon the earth and grass and flowers
come perfectly
into form from its liquid
clearness
But love is unworldly
and nothing comes of it but love
following and falling endlessly from her thoughts
(William Carlos Williams) This ^ was the poem I thought you had deleted. I lost track of it. I really like this.
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