# Please post your favorite-est-est-est poems :) Poetry-we-love thread.



## bowieownsmysoul (Feb 26, 2012)

i'm realizing now that you already posted if. I always answer before I read the others. That's a great poem though.


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## Sina (Oct 27, 2010)

*let's live suddenly without thinking*

let’s live suddenly without thinking

under honest trees,
a stream
does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling
-water pursues the angry dream
of the shore. By midnight,
a moon
scratches the skin of the organised hills

an edged nothing begins to prune

let’s live like the light that kills
and let’s as silence,
because Whirl’s after all:
(after me)love,and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague idon’t know tenuous Now-
spears and The Then-arrows making do
our mouths something red,something tall

e.e cummings


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## owlet (May 7, 2010)

*Maude Clare by Christina Rossetti*​  Out of the church she followed them
With a lofty step and mien: 
His bride was like a village maid, 
Maude Clare was like a queen.

“Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said, 
With smiles, almost with tears: 
“May Nell and you but live as true
As we have done for years; 

“Your father thirty years ago
Had just your tale to tell; 
But he was not so pale as you, 
Nor I so pale as Nell.”

My lord was pale with inward strife, 
And Nell was pale with pride; 
My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare
Or ever he kissed the bride.

“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord, 
Have brought my gift, ” she said: 
To bless the hearth, to bless the board, 
To bless the marriage-bed.

“Here’s my half of the golden chain
You wore about your neck, 
That day we waded ankle-deep
For lilies in the beck: 

“Here’s my half of the faded leaves
We plucked from the budding bough, 
With feet amongst the lily leaves, -
The lilies are budding now.”

He strove to match her scorn with scorn, 
He faltered in his place: 
“Lady, ” he said, - “Maude Clare, ” he said, -
“Maude Clare, ” – and hid his face.

She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell, 
I have a gift for you; 
Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone, 
Or, were it flowers, the dew.

“Take my share of a fickle heart, 
Mine of a paltry love: 
Take it or leave it as you will, 
I wash my hands thereof.”

“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take, 
And what you spurn, I’ll wear; 
For he’s my lord for better and worse, 
And him I love Maude Clare.

“Yea, though you’re taller by the head, 
More wise and much more fair: 
I’ll love him till he loves me best, 
Me best of all Maude Clare.


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## julia_irrlicht (Nov 12, 2011)

Russian classics

_Marina Tsvetaeva__

***
I like that you are not obsessed with me,
I like that I have no obsession either,	
And not for once in the eternity	
The heavy earth beneath our feet will wither	
I like I can be funny and be free,	
Be careless with words and never bother	
To be betrayed by tide of blush when we 
Brush with our sleeves when passing one another. 

I also like that in my company	
You’re confident enough to hug the other,	
You don’t foretell infernal suffering 
To me for being kissed by other lovers.	
I also like you never call in vain 
The sweet inflection of my name, my sweetie
And that we’ll never live to see the day	
When wedding bells hail us with nuptial greetings.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart
For loving me so much quite unawares:
For nightly peace that you will never thwart,
For twilight dates that can not be more scarce,
For moonlight walks that we will never start,
And for the sun above that'll never wear us,
For you, alas, who’re not obsessed with me,
For me, alas, with no obsession either.
_

_Alexander Blok

***

A night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore
A meaningless and dismal light 
A quarter century outpours – 
It’s all the same. No chance to flight.

You’d die and rise anew, begotten.
All would repeat as ever might:
The street, the icy rippled water,
The store, the lamp, the lonely night._

Polish classics 

Wislawa Szymborska

_A Funeral

"so suddenly, who would've expected this"
"stress and cigarettes, I was warning him"
"fair to middling, thanks"
"unwrap these flowers"
"his brother snuffed because of his ticker too, must be running in the family"
"I'd never recognise you with your beard"
"it's all his fault, he was always up to some funny business"
"the new one was to give a speech, can't see him, though"
"Kazek's in Warsaw and Tadek abroad"
"you're the only wise one here, having an umbrella"
"it won't help him now that he was the most talented of them all"
"that's a connecting room. Baśka won't like it"
"he was right, true, but that's not the reason for"
"with door varnishing, guess how much"
"two eggs and a spoonful of sugar"
"none of his business, what was the point then"
"blue and small sizes only"
"five times and never a single answer"
"I'll give your that, I could've, but so could you"
"so good at least she had that job"
"I've no idea, must be relatives"
"the priest, very much like Belmondo"
"I've never been to this part of the cemetery"
"I saw him in my dream last week, must've been a premonition"
"pretty, that little daughter"
"we're all going to end up this way"
"give mine to the widow, I've got to hurry to"
"but still it sounded more solemn in Latin"
"you can't turn back the clock"
"goodbye"
"how about a beer"
"give me a ring, we'll have a chat"
"number four or number twelve"
"me, this way"
"we, that way"_


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## knittigan (Sep 2, 2011)

*Richard Siken -- Saying Your Names*

Chemical names, bird names, names of fire
and flight and snow, baby names, paint names,
delicate names like bones in the body,
Rumplestiltskin names that are always changing,
names that no one's ever able to figure out.
Names of spells and names of hexes, names
cursed quietly under the breath, or called out
loudly to fill the yard, calling you inside again,
calling you home. Nicknames and pet names
and Baroque French monikers, written in
shorthand, written in longhand, scrawled
illegibly in brown ink on the backs of yellowing
photographs, or embossed on envelopes lined
with gold. Names called out across the water, 
names I called you behind your back,
sour and delicious, secret and unrepeatable,
the names of flowers that open only once,
shouted from balconies, shouted from rooftops,
or muffled by pillows, or whispered in sleep,
or caught in the throat like a lump of meat.
I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending?
Sure enough - Hello darling, welcome home.
I'll call you darling, hold you tight. We are
not traitors but the lights go out. It's dark.
Sweetheart, is that you? There are no tears,
no pictures of him squarely. A seaside framed
in glass, and boats, those little boats with
sails aflutter, shining lights upon the water,
lights that splinter when they hit the pier.
His voice on tape, his name on the envelope,
the soft sound of a body falling off a bridge
behind you, the body hardly even makes
a sound. The waters of the dead, a clear road,
every lover in the form of stars, the road
blocked. All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe.
let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me
like stars. Names of heat and names of light,
names of collision in the dark, on the side of the 
bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen
on jeans and hands and backs of matchbooks
that then got lost. Names like pain cries, names
like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented, 
names forbidden or overused. Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the 
sea of love - O now we're in the sea of love!
Your name like detergent in the washing machine.
Your name like two X's like punched-in eyes,
like a drunk cartoon passed out in the gutter,
your name with two X's to mark the spots,
to hold the place, to keep the treasure from
becoming ever lost. I'm saying your name
in the grocery store, I'm saying your name on
the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal
covered with frost, your name like a music that's
been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud,
a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails
in wind and the slap of waves on the hull
of a boat that's sinking to the sounds of mermaids
singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple
profound sadness when it sounds so far away.
Here is a map with your name for a capital,
here is an arrow to prove a point: we laugh
and it pits the world against us, we laugh,
and we've got nothing left to lose, and our hearts
turn red, and the river rises like a barn on fire.
I came to tell you, we'll swim in the water, we'll
swim like something sparkling underneath
the waves. Our bodies shivering, and the sound
of our breathing, and the shore so far away.
I'll use my body like a ladder, climbing
to the thing behind it, saying farewell to flesh,
farewell to everything caught underfoot
and flattened. Names of poison, names of
handguns, names of places we've been
together, names of people we'd be together.
Names of endurance, names of devotion,
street names and place names and all the names
of our dark heaven crackling in their pan.
It's a bed of straw, darling. It sure as shit is.
If there was one thing I could save from the fire,
he said, the broken arms of the sycamore,
the eucalyptus still trying to climb out of the yard -
your breath on my neck like a music that holds
my hands down, kisses as they burn their way
along my spine -or rain, our bodies wet,
clothes clinging arm to elbow, clothes clinging
nipple to groin - I'll be right here. I'm waiting.
Say hallelujah, say goodnight, say it over
the canned music and your feet won't stumble,
his face getting larger, the rest blurring
on every side. And angels, about twelve angels,
angels knocking on your head right now, hello
hello, a flash in the sky, would you like to
meet him here, in Heaven? Imagine a room,
a sudden glow. Here is my hand, my heart,
my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can't go through with it. 
I just don't want to die anymore.


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## Owog (Mar 7, 2012)

To all Parents
Edgar Guest


"I'll lend you for a while a child of mine," He said.

"For you to love the while he lives and mourn for when he's dead.

It may be six or seven years, or twenty-two or three,

But will you, till I call him back, take care of him for me?

He'll bring his charms to gladden you, and should his stay be brief,

You'll have his lovely memories as solace for your grief."
"I cannot promise he will stay; since all from earth return,

But there are lessons taught down there I want this child to learn.

I've looked the wide world over in My search for teachers true

And from the throngs that crowd life's lanes I have chosen you.

Now will you give him all your love, not think the labor vain,

Nor hate Me when I come to call to take him back again?"
"I fancied that I heard them say, "Dear Lord, Thy will be done!

For all the joy Thy child shall bring, the risk of grief we run.

We'll shelter him with tenderness, we'll love him while we may,

And for the happiness we've known, forever grateful stay;

But should the angels call for him much sooner than we've planned,

We'll brave the bitter grief that comes and try to understand!"


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## The Purple Theory (Apr 4, 2012)

*Keeping Quiet*
_Pablo Neruda_

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still. 

This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language, 
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much. 

It would be a delicious moment, 
without hurry, without locomotives, 
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness 

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt 
would look at his torn hands. 

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers 
in the shade, without doing a thing. 

What I want shouldn't be confused 
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters, 
I want nothing to do with death. 

If were weren't so unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness, 
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.


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## druthers (Oct 19, 2011)

Silence
and a deeper silence
when the crickets
hesitate

- L. Cohen


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## Who (Jan 2, 2010)

I've been getting into John Cooper Clarke's poetry recently and here is my favorite of his that I've read:

* Beasley Street *

Far from crazy pavements - 
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
- a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A riff joint shuts - opens up
Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There's a dead canary on a swivel seat
There's a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing La-di-dah
OAP, mother to be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
A one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin,
Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday's cabbage
And the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison 
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss.
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
Beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street


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## basementbugs (Apr 5, 2012)

Here's a new favourite that I just came across for the first time yesterday. I'm surprised I hadn't read it before, as Bukowski is pretty much one of my favourite writers ever.


more wasted days,
gored days,
evaporated days.

more squandered days,
days pissed away,
days slapped around,
mutilated.

the problem is
that the days add up
to a life,
my life

-Charles Bukowski​

It probably spoke to me so strongly because that's pretty much what my life feels like right now... and has done for well over a decade, to be honest.


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## 172harmonic (Jan 19, 2012)

Roses are red, 
bacon is also red,
poems are hard,
bacon.


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## ImminentThunder (May 15, 2011)

Nobody Comes

Tree-leaves labour up and down,
And through them the fainting light
Succumbs to the crawl of night.
Outside in the road the telegraph wire
To the town from the darkening land
Intones to travelers like a spectral lyre
Swept by a spectral hand.

A car comes up, with lamps full-glare,
That flash upon a tree:
It has nothing to do with me,
And whangs along in a world of its own,
Leaving a blacker air;
And mute by the gate I stand again alone,
And nobody pulls up there.

~ Thomas Hardy

I love Hardy's poetry. I've also read Tess of the D'Urbervilles and it's one of my favorite books.


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## sparklepop (Mar 10, 2012)

*In the Desert*
By Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”


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## Brian1 (May 7, 2011)




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## Soleil (Jan 15, 2011)

This poem sums me up completely:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

*A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.*

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl S. Buck

Pretty much anything by Rumi (I have two apps on my phone dedicated to his poems)

“All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
-Rumi


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## SophiaScorpia (Apr 15, 2012)

*Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning*

*Sonnet 43*

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

--->>Ultimately, my favorite poem. It had me going for writing poetry for a couple of weeks!! :kitteh: :kitteh:​


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## Tig (Mar 28, 2012)

I'm such a latecomer to poetry, I'm appreciating it more and more as time goes on and I read more poems. I don't have a favourite right now but I love these poems by Pablo Neruda

*‘Carnal Apple, Woman Filled, Burning Moon,’*

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark. 



*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

I've never reacted to the written word like this before, so beautiful!


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## Tig (Mar 28, 2012)

How to Be a Surrealist

Sleep well. A gland in the command 
center releases its yellow hornet 
to tell you you're missing the point, 
the point being that getting smacked 
by a board, gored by umbrellas, tongue-
lashed by cardiologists, bush-wacked 
by push-up bras is a learning experience. 
Sure, you're about learned up. Weren't 
we promised the thieves would be punished? 
Promised jet-packs and fleshy gardenias 
and wine to get the dust out of our mouths? 
And endless forgiveness? A floral rot 
comes out of the closet, the old teacher's 
voice comes out of the ravine, red-wings 
in rushes never forget their rusty-hinged 
song. Moon-song, dread-song, hardly-a-song 
at all song. Let's ignore that call, 
let someone else stop Mary from herself 
for the 80th time. It's never really dark 
anyway, not even inside the skull. Take 
my hand, fellow figment. Every spring 
we'll meet, definite as swarms of stars, 
insects over glazed puddles, your eyes 
green even though your driver's license 
says otherwise. And yes, mortal knells 
in sleepless hours, hollow knocks of empty 
boats against a dock but still the mind 
is a meadow, the heart an ocean even though 
it burns. As long as there's a sky, someone 
will be falling from it. After molting, 
eat your own shucked skin for strength, 
keep changing the subject in hopes 
that the subject will change you. 

Dean Young


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## Redline (Feb 17, 2012)

Forgot one of the best:

_*Invictus - William Ernest Henley*_

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.


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## Devin87 (May 15, 2011)

This poem is so much fun to read aloud. The whole thing is onomatopoeia. It's fun to change your reading style with each seperate section so that it's short like silver bells and then long and open like golden bells and then reading with a type of panic in your voice for the brazen bells and finally just trying to be big and grand for the iron bells. And at the same time you've got to keep your voice in a certain cadence (also changing with each section) to have each phrase sound like the tolling of bells. I love it.


The Bells
Edgar Allen Poe

I 

Hear the sledges with the bells - 
Silver bells! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
In the icy air of night! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells - 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 


II 

Hear the mellow wedding bells - 
Golden bells! 
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight! - 
From the molten - golden notes, 
And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 
How it swells! 
How it dwells 
On the Future! - how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells - 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells - 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 


III 

Hear the loud alarum bells - 
Brazen bells! 
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! 
In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright! 
Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now - now to sit, or never, 
By the side of the pale - faced moon. 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells! 
What a tale their terror tells 
Of Despair! 
How they clang, and clash and roar! 
What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air! 
Yet the ear, it fully knows, 
By the twanging, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows; 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - 
Of the bells - 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells - 
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! 


IV 

Hear the tolling of the bells - 
Iron bells! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 
Is a groan. 
And the people - ah, the people - 
They that dwell up in the steeple, 
All alone, 
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, 
In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 
On the human heart a stone - 
They are neither man nor woman - 
They are neither brute nor human - 
They are Ghouls: - 
And their king it is who tolls: - 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
Rolls 
A paean from the bells! 
And his merry bosom swells 
With the paean of the bells! 
And he dances, and he yells; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the paean of the bells: - 
Of the bells: 
Keeping time, time, time 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the throbbing of the bells - 
Of the bells, bells, bells: - 
To the sobbing of the bells: - 
Keeping time, time, time, 
As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 
To the rolling of the bells - 
Of the bells, bells, bells - 
To the tolling of the bells - 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells, - 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.


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## Wonszu (Sep 25, 2013)

Interesting Polish - Japanese collaboration*.

Haiku Fristail - Sarenka* 

Sarenka na mrozie nie może
Czeka na ciepły oddech
Leśniczy ją głaszcze po udzie
Niech się naje do syta

Hijeta kanokoga
tamaranai
Atatakaj iki o
Matteiru aida
shin-rin kantokukan-no tega
futumomoni fureta
Esaoo ippai tabete-ne 

----
Loose translation of the haiku from Polish by me:

"Deer"

The deer in the cold cannot (stand)
Waiting for warm breath
Forester stroking her thigh
Let her eat fully

Sadly I don't know if the text in Japanese is the same.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

*The Spell of the Yukon*


BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
 I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
 I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it— 
 Came out with a fortune last fall,— 
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
 And somehow the gold isn’t all.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
 It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
 So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
 It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
 It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

*Don Juan*By Lord Byron

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
 In that slight startle from his contemplation — 
'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground
 For any sage's creed or calculation) — 
A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round
 In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;'
And this is the sole mortal who could grapple,
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.

Man fell with apples, and with apples rose,
 If this be true; for we must deem the mode
In which Sir Isaac Newton could disclose
 Through the then unpaved stars the turnpike road,
A thing to counterbalance human woes:
 For ever since immortal man hath glow'd
With all kinds of mechanics, and full soon
Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon.


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## Who (Jan 2, 2010)

"Haiku" by John Cooper Clarke:

To convey one's mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

bowieownsmysoul said:


> *If*
> 
> If you can keep your head when all about you
> Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
> ...


I love this one too.

Not a poem but a literature quote that I love:

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.” - Tennessee Williams, _ The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore _


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## bleghc (Jan 2, 2015)

*since feeling is first
*E. E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
– the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis


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## bleghc (Jan 2, 2015)

*loving like an existentialist 
*savannah brown 

there are many theories as to how we came to be
(i’m not sure which one i believe).

did we appear as dually flickering lights
above a hazy skyline?
fluttering, distant,
choking on stifling fog:
first solitary decades of life
as a lukewarm utterance into the vacuum, 
whispering, “oh, what is this emptiness?”
haggard gesturing suggesting
half is not missing, but whole

and someday, when beacons collide,
not coincidence, but prophecy,
wrenching claims of meant-to-be
the sparks erupt in ultraviolet chaos,
volcanic, raging,
a mighty wallop of colour and sound,
a shattering cry of belonging
splitting time itself.

i don’t think so.
i don’t think i was born to love anyone
except myself, and even that,
some days, i’m not sure is true.

i don’t think our initials are carved
into anything immortal,
let alone battered into the very cosmos;
the air didn't lock into place upon our arrival,
awaiting the moment our silhouettes
would one day fill the empty space.

i could fall in love with a melody,
let crawl through my body
(or a train ride, or alabaster sheets;
there are chemicals that do these things to me),
i could grow fond of many things
but how particular my fondness of you

how fervent, how violent, how gentle

i think we're just moths
riding on the backs of giants
and i wasn't drawn to you
because our wings are both blue
but because they're the same colour
as everyone else’s
and you were willing to listen to
why that scared me

we’re not star-crossed 
but we can still wrap ourselves in the seams
of a quilted universe that we did not stitch;
bathe in the glow of a sun
that does not shine for us;
run atop an earth that
does not feel our hurried footsteps
as they thump,
thump
thump

how lucky we are
to have nothing expected of us.
quickly—all the time we will ever know
is tapping her toes on the doorstep
and i do not want to keep her waiting


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