The Dream

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.

Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.

Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.

But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

– The Dream, Louise Bogan

The Ballad of Slowness

The Ballad of Slowness by Herman De Coninck

First the original poem in Dutch. Next a translation in English by David Colmer (link anyone ?).

Ballade van de traagheid

Ik hou van de traagheid van liggen in het gras, als een vorst:
ik, uitkijkend over mijn aanhangers,
mijn ledematen, zeggend tot mijn linkerarm:
jij daar, breng mijn hand eens voor
mijn mond, dat ik geeuw, in orde,
ga maar weer liggen, goed zo,
tucht moet ik hier hebben.

Ik hou van de traagheid van zijn,
zen, zegt men in het oosten, ik geloof dat het
hetzelfde is.
Ik hou van de traagheid van liggen in bed,
Jij naast mij, je knie in mijn knie-
holtes, als twee s’en, de traagheid waarmee je me
niet gezegd hebt dat je al wakker was,
je uit lippen bestaande ontvankelijkheid,
de traagheid waarmee ik sneller en sneller kom,
de kalmte waarmee ik wilder en wilder word,
de traagheid van jouw diplomatisch lichaam
dat geeft en neemt, jouw corps diplomatique,

en de traagheid van een sigaar nadien,
de traagheid van grandeur, de traagheid van wie
zich te pletter rijdt tegen een boom in vertraagde
film, het majestuose van een ontploffing, plechtig,
plechtig eindigt dit leven.

The Ballad of Slowness

I love the slowness of lying on grass, like a king:
me, looking out and surveying my adherents,
my extremities, telling my left arm:
you there, convey my hand to my mouth
that I might yawn, that’s right,
and now lie down again, excellent,
I must have discipline.

I love the slowness of being,
Zen, they say in the East, I believe
it’s the same thing.
I love the slowness of lying in bed,
you next to me, with your knees behind
my knees, like a double S, the slowness with which
you haven’t told me yet that you’re awake,
your responsiveness consisting of lips,
the slowness with which I come faster and faster,
the calmness with which I grow wilder and wilder,
the slowness of your diplomatic body
that gives and takes, your corps diplomatique,

and the slowness of a cigar afterwards,
the slowness of grandeur, the slowness of someone
smashing his car into a tree in slow
motion, the majesty of explosion, solemn,
solemnly ends this life.

He Is Calm, and I Am Too

He Is Calm, and I Am Too
He is calm,
And I am too.
He drinks lemon tea,
And I drink coffee.
(this is the only thing different about us)
He, like me, wears a loose striped shirt,
And I stare, like him, in a monthly magazine.
He does not see me as I eye him discreetly;
I do not see him as he eyes me discreetly.
He is calm,
And I am too.
He asks the waiter for something;
I ask the waiter for something.
A black cat passes between us,
And I touch its night of fur;
He touches its night of fur.
I do not tell him: The sky is clear today,
More blue;
He does not tell me: the sky is clear today.
He is the seen and the one who sees;
I am the seen and the one ho sees.
I move my left leg;
He moves his right leg.
I hum the melody of a song;
He hums the melody of a song.
I wonder: Is he the mirror wherein I see myself?
Then I look towards his eyes, and I do not see him.
I leave the coffee shop in a hurry,
I think: Maybe he is a killer,
Or maybe he is only a man passing through
And thought I am a killer.

– Mahmoud Darwish (15 March 1941 – 9 August 2008 )

Der Erlkönig

Volume 12, one of the few Dutch blogs I read, posted Der Erlkönig, a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Although Goethe is probably one of the most important writers and thinkers in Western history, I must confess I’m not all that familiar with his work. When I have (make) time…

Volume 12 posted the original German text, but here is an English translation by Edgar Alfred Bowring (1853). Enjoy.

THE ERL-KING.

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp’d in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

“My son, wherefore seek’st thou thy face thus to hide?”
“Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?”
“My son, ’tis the mist rising over the plain.”

“Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.”

“My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?”
“Be calm, dearest child, ’tis thy fancy deceives;
‘Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves.”

“Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They’ll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep.”

“My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?”
“My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
‘Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight.”

“I love thee, I’m charm’d by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou’rt unwilling, then force I’ll employ.”
“My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last.”

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,–
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

Les Pas

Tes pas, enfants de mon silence,
Saintement, lentement placés
Vers le lit de ma vigilance
Procèdent muets et glacés.

Personne pure, ombre divine,
Qu’ils sont doux, tes pas retenus!
Dieux! . . . tous les dons que je devine
Viennent à moi sur ces pieds nus!

Si, de tes lèvres avancées,
Tu prépares pour l’apaiser,
A l’habitant de mes pensées
La nourriture d’un baiser,

Ne hâte pas cet acte tendre,
Douceur d’être et de n’être pas,
Car j’ai vécu de vous attendre,
Et mon coeur n’était que vos pas.

–Paul Valéry

Translation by Maureen Holm :

The Footsteps

Your footsteps, issue of my silence,
slowly make their hallowed way
chill and soundless to the bed
where I’ve kept constant vigil.

Oh, Pure One, Shadow Divine,
how soft Your tread in memory!
Lord! Every blessing I’ve surmised
has come to me on these bare feet.

If with lips inclined,
You mean to satisfy
the tenant of my mind
by feeding it a kiss,

don’t rush this gentle grace imbued,
sweet state of being and not being.
For I have lived awaiting all of you,
my heart but imprint of your many feet.

Return to Paradise: the enduring relevance of John Milton

Jonathan Rosen writes in the New Yorker about John Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Update: can someone tell me who Jonathan Rosen is in this case ? I think it’s the author of The Life of the Skies, or is it the illustrator J.Rosen, or still another guy ?? He’s also not listed with the contributors of the New Yorker. Strange.

Although the wind

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

–Izumi Shikibu (translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, from The Ink Dark Moon)

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

–by Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Biographer

Authorized, booked
By my steadfast prose
The dead I ghost write
Shed shadows that shine
With hindsight, hearsay—
The last word is mine

–Samuel Menashe

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is the poem that marked the start of T. S. Eliot’s career as one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“, also referred to as Prufrock, is one of the most anthologized 20th century poems in English. The poem is a dramatic monologue, a form that had been much favored by Robert Browning, and uses the “stream of consciousness” literary technique.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Questions of travel

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
–For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren’t waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
–Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
–A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
–Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr’dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
–Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds’ cages.
–And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians’ speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one’s room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?”

By Elizabeth Bishop

Love For This Book

In these lonely regions I have been powerful

in the same way as a cheerful tool

or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed

or like a dog rolling around in the dew.

Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning

another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then

the algae that lashed our wild rocks,

the waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,

all will be firm without us,

all will be ready for the new days,

which will not know our destiny.

What do we leave here but the lost cry

of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind

that cut our faces and kept us

erect in the light of purity,

as in the heart of an illustrious star?

What do we leave, living like a nest

of surly birds, alive, among the thickets

or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?

So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating

the earth, this soil and its harshness,

deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me

return to my place beneath the hungry earth.

We asked the ocean for its rose,

its open star, its bitter contact,

and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded

we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.

It’s late now. Perhaps

it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,

perhaps only a night, like the eyelid

of a grave look that encompassed

the measure of the sea that surrounded us,

and in this territory we found only a kiss,

only ungraspable love that will remain here

wandering among the sea foam and roots.

From The House in the Sand by Pablo Neruda. Copyright © 1966, 2004 by Fundacion Pablo Neruda. Translation copyright © 1990, 2004 by Dennis Maloney and Clark Zlotchew.

A Night-mooring on the Jiande River

While my little boat moves on its mooring of mist,
And daylight wanes, old memories begin….
How wide the world was, how close the trees to heaven,
And how clear in the water the nearness of the moon!

Poem by Meng Haoran (孟 浩 然)

Poets Resort to Guerilla Marketing

The Guerilla Poetics Project (GPP), a loose alliance of poets and independent publishers, is in the business of giving away poetry for free. Nothing new about that, of course—online literary magazines and some chapbook publishers have been giving it away for years—but the GPP’s mission and the methods by which they achieve it represent a radical shift away from the traditional modes of small press marketing and distribution. “We are putting the world on notice,” reads the GPP’s manifesto, published on the group’s Web site. “We are here; we are writing; and we want your attention. If you’re not willing to give us your attention, then we will take it from you. We will be heard. Are you listening?”

Read the full article by Ellen Moynihan

RK sez: interesting idea

(own links)

Federico García Lorca

The Gypsy and the Wind, poem by Federico Garcia Lorca

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

The Raven

“The Raven” is a narrative poem by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. It was published for the first time on January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror. Noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere, it tells of the mysterious visit of a talking raven to a distraught lover, tracing the lover’s slow descent into madness.

See also The Raven illustrated by Gustave Doré (including an analysis of the poem), and another version illustrated by Édouard Manet (including a French translation), both available at Project Gutenberg.

The full text:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘T is some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow:—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“‘T is some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is, and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
‘T is the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore,—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above, us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Example of a Doré illustration which I mentioned before here and here (yes, I’m a fan of his work !):

New category

Administrative note : I added Ars Poetica to my tags/categories. Ars Poetica is a term meaning “The Art of Poetry” or “On the Nature of Poetry”. It originated with a work by Horace and has since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. It seems like a fitting name for posts about poets and poems. (text in Latin – text in English)

Evening in Dún Laoghaire

The Flemish Miriam Van hee has recently been awarded the European poetry award ‘Poesias’. Evening in Dún Laoghaire is one of her poems.

1.
the lady from latvia recounted
how the people ended up where they did:
the finns steadily pushed the lapps
northwards

and the prussians were so belligerent,
do you hear, that they all
perished on their campaigns
of conquest

why are there so few
funny poems, sighed
the lady from latvia, she called the waiter
and asked him for more whisky, then
she looked outside and said
there was no one any more
who spoke prussian

2.
the sea and the air
had merged, only the lighthouses
still marked the horizon
they beckoned, not as a father or
a friend, they beckoned from
eternity, the freedom
of coming and going

finally only the palms
remained visible in the light
that came from the hotel rooms
and beyond that you could hear
the lashing of ropes against the masts

for everything there is a setting
for reunions, farewells
and for waiting

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

Do not stand at my grave and weep is a popular poem, largely considered to be written by Mary Elizabeth Frye (1904-2004 / obituary), but of disputed origin. “Words,words, words” said Shakespeare, but when they are put in the right order, they are so beautiful.

Chamber Music

Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees:
The leaves lie thick upon the way
Of memories.

Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart.

James Joyce, 1907

Poem XXXII of Chamber Music, a collection of poems by James Joyce, published by Elkin Matthews in May, 1907.