The poetry thread

[Héctor]

Daemon

As stood the sun to the salute of planets
Upon the day that gave you to the earth,
You grew forthwith, and prospered, in your growing
Heeded the law presiding at your birth.
Sibyls and prophets told it: You must be
None but yourself, from self you cannot flee.
No time there is, no power, can decompose
The minted form that lives and living grows.


Goethe (1817-18)

[Sonatina]

At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode;
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode,
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Wandering I found, in my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
A rose of the wilderness, left on its stalk
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of his race
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew
from each wandering sunbeam a lonely embrace
For the night-shade and thorn had overshadowed the place
Where the flowers of my forefathers grew.

Jane Montgomery Campbell (1817-1878)

[Héctor]

Sensation

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud
March 1870.

[The Sparrow]

Wonderfully "pastoral"!

Originally Posted by Héctor

Sensation

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud
March 1870.

[Felix]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

Edge


The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.



I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.


Other ones I like are too long to quote.


I've recently started a sestina.

A great poem by Sylvia Plath; I prefer her to Hughes. But the poem underneath, also fabulous, sounds more like G.M-Hopkins.
I often wonder whether Plath knew German and didn't take over the couplet form from my favourite Jewish-German poet(ess), Else Lasker-Schüler:

TO GISELHEER THE TIGER

Jungles creep across your face.
How strange you are!

Your tiger’s eyes have sweetened
In the sun.

I always carry you around
Between my teeth.

You book of Indian tales
Wild West
Chieftain of the Sioux tribe!

In the twilight I languish
Bound to the box-tree-trunk.

I can no longer live
Without the scalping game.

Your knife paints red kisses
On my breast - (Benn was a surgeon!

Until my hair flutters on your belt.

Lasker-Schüler/Felix

[stephen w]

Dusk, and the boathouse keeper

calls the late, scattered boats

from beyond the curve

in the lake; calls them by name,

Hirondelle! Angelique! George Sand!



Are they real or imagined,

those smudges of black

in the shade of the far bank?

Again his call, carrying, returning.



What’s in a name? You are –

in the name I called you by;

its weight and shape hard to convey

except – it lent itself to tenderness,

teasing and respect; closeness

and a certain distance.

Now it’s a vessel

for the far-flung

only sure reality of you.



Love draws you back.

In saying your name, I see it

boat-shaped and luminous

stitching the dark,

returned from formless drift

about the world. Let me

recall you. I’ve words enough –

a sheaf of versions. My pen

engraves you differently each time.



Nothing can be held, or hurried.

Wind casts a shiver on the water;

shallows uncertain in withdrawing light.

A phalarope races its image

and is gone; reflected, relinquished,

discarnate as the distant boats

the boathouse keeper calls and calls,

only a name to summon each of them.



Yet, here they come.