Poetry
Look. Let's just get one thing straight. I never did like poems. I had a horrible time trying to learn them back in elemntary, high school and college. I don't go around reading poetry. I'm just not that kind of person. However, I did put up a poetry section because along my life, I have read some that have entertained me or have moved me in a very profound manner. Thus, I do want to share them with you. Bottom line: I don't like poetry. I just like good poems. =)
Dulce et
Decorum Est
A Martian Sends
A Postcard Home
Cinderella
Siren Song
Footprints in the Sand
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest beagn to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstrippped Five-Nines that dropped behind them.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ectasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone was still yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, throught the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me guttering, chocking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innoncent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desparate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
- five-nines: German howitzers often used to shoot poisin gas
shells
- "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori": "It is
sweet and fitting to die for one's country."
Wilfred Owen was only twenty years old when World War I broke out in 1914. Twice wounded in battle, Owen was rapidly promoted and eventually became a company commander. The shocking violence of modern war summoned Owen's poetic geninus, and in a two-year period he grew from a negligible minor poet into the most important English-language poet of World War I. Owen, however, did not live to see his talent recognized. He was killed one week before the end of the war; he was twenty-five years old. Owen published only four poems during his lifetime. Shortly before his death he drafted out a few lines of prose for the preface of a book of poems.
"This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthfaul." - Wilfred Owen (1917)
A Martian Sends A Postcard Home (1979)
Craig Raine (1944 - )
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings-
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
along. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
- Caxtons: books; Willaim Caxton (1422 - 1491) was the first person to print books in England
Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974)
You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
Some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
From diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Orr the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything that dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the big event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little gold slippers.
Rather a large a package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They don't just heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into it's envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothereed by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
Margaret Atwood (1939 - )
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistable:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
- in Greek mythology sirens were half-woman, half-bird nymphs who lured sailors to their deaths by singing hypnotically beautiful songs.
Margaret Fishback Powers (1964)
One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD.
Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand;
one belonged to him and the other to the LORD.
When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked
back at the footprints in the sand.
He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was
only one set of footprints.
He also noticed that it happened at the vey lowest and saddest
times in his life.
This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it.
"LORD, you said that once I decided to follow you, you'd
walk with me all the way,
But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my
life there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed you most, you would leave
me."
The LORD replied, "My precious, precious child, I love you
and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering, when you saw only one
set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."
One of the greatest follies of humanity is to think we are all-knowing. We assume too much; think in an all too small context and not to take into consideration the big picture. We do not understand that sometimes we are weak, that sometimes we need help from others and that we may already have been helped without our knowledge. - Me
"You are erratic, conflicted, disorganized. Every decision is debated, every action questioned. Every individual entitled to their own small opinion. You lack harmony, cohesion, greatness. It will be your undoing." - Seven of Nine
"You are an individual. You are small. You can not understand what it is to be Borg." - Seven of Nine