Favorite Poems

I'll save you from the whole poem, but Wildes' line in The Ballad of Reading Gaol always makes me think.

"For he that lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die."

Hettie Jones, from "in the Eye of the Beholder"

I give you my word
You pocket it
and keep the change

Here is a word on
the tip of my tongue: love

I hold it close
though it dreams of leaving

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

pelegrino said:

Aeolian dialect is more difficult to understand and translate than Ionian or Dorian even for people who study classical Greek for years, simply because less has been written in it and scholars are not equally familiar with it as they are with the other dialects. Here I translate a short surviving fragment of a poem in Aeolian Greek by a poetess who has been called the "Tenth Muse". It is a simple panhuman and beautiful expression of loneliness.

ΨΑΠΦΩ (600 π.Χ.)

ΜΟΝΑ ΚΑΘΕΥΔΩ

ΔΕΔΥΚΕ ΜΕΝ Α ΣΕΛΑΝΑ
ΚΑΙ ΠΛΕΙΑΔΕΣ,
ΜΕΣΑΙ ΔΕ ΝΥΚΤΑΙ,
ΠΑΡΑ Δ' ΕΡΧΕΤ' ΩΡΑ,
ΕΓΩ ΔΕ,
ΜΟΝΑ ΚΑΘΕΥΔΩ.

By SAPPHO (c. 600 BC)

I SLEEP ALONE

The moon has set
and the Pleiades,
it is the middle of the night,
the hours pass by
and I sleep alone.

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I was thinking of how much more difficult / costly the process of writing in itself must have been all those years ago. Even a simple / short poem like this is given additional weight. It's fascinating to see what people chose to write down (essentially the same things as us, today).

pelegrino said:

Thanks, Tsotha, I enjoyed it very much. Is this your translation? Well done!

Click to expand...

I looked online for a translation, but the first one I came across (from allpoetry) had some very bad word choices and lines. So I kept looking and found another one. Same thing. So I found a third... In the end, I assembled a frankenstein, a couple lines from one, a couple lines from another. And then some from my mind.

Some choices were baffling across all versions; they translated "teogonia" to anything but theogony. I'm not sure why.

pelegrino said:

I strangled through it in Portuguese so that I can enjoy the rhyming which obviously could not be in English. I think, I got a lot out of it.

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You are brave to try to read it in the original. I salute you.

As you know, things don't always translate 1:1 from one language to another. A choice must be made between keeping the rhythm or the meaning, it's like having a budget.

"Você que é sem nome"

translates best to:

"You who are without a name"

however, the rhythm of this is closer:

"You who are nameless"

pelegrino said:

Some brave decisions like translating "duro" to "stubborn" have to be and I like them as they stand, as I cannot think of anything better giving the essence of Jose's… stubbornness.

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That translation can be argued (as can any other, really). "Duro" translates in literal to "hard", but as an adjective for a person it could either be translated to "tough" or "harsh", depending on context. In this case, however, I assume that there is a word being omitted in the original: "Você é duro (demais), José!". Which means: "You are (too) tough, José!". Thus, stubborn.

pelegrino said:

Much more musical in the original, but People that cannot get to the sonics of it at least they can get to the meaning, thanks to your effort.

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Definitely much more musical on the original. Drummond uses artifices to keep the poem from becoming repetitive, with things that exist in Portuguese but not in English. An example from the second stanza:

"já não pode fumar,
cuspir já não pode,"

Which I translated to:

"can't smoke,
can't even spit,"

Not only does it not translate 1:1, the Portuguese version has an inversion. Notice how it is written: "cuspir já não pode" when it could have been written as "já não pode cuspir", following the pattern from the lines above it. So the English version is unfortunately a lot more boring. I tried using "spit you cannot", but then it just gets silly with the Yoda-like talk.

pelegrino said:

There are, I think, oceans of poetry that I don’t know.
Give us some more of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, or whatever. I don’t read often this thread, but 90% of it I like so far.
E agora, Tsotha?

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E agora, I need to find something to post here. There are other good poems from Drummond, and others. I'll see what I can find. Thank you for your message.

greenmountaineer said:

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Click to expand...

What perfect capture of atmosphere! We cannot know the ins and outs of it but...
It gives me a full picture of, let's say, a miner's house somewhere in Wales on a winter Sunday morning.
unhappy man, (perhaps unhappy wife, or other children), unhappy child (narrator) that after many years can at least understand something of (paternal)"love’s austere and lonely offices?"
This is a perfect working class song to me! Almost too beautiful for words.
Thanks, GM, for making me aware of it and of the poet too.

pelegrino said:

What perfect capture of atmosphere! We cannot know the ins and outs of it but...
It gives me a full picture of, let's say, a miner's house somewhere in Wales on a winter Sunday morning.
unhappy man, (perhaps unhappy wife, or other children), unhappy child (narrator) that after many years can at least understand something of (paternal)"love’s austere and lonely offices?"
This is a perfect working class song to me! Almost too beautiful for words.
Thanks, GM, for making me aware of it and of the poet too.

Click to expand...

greenmountaineer said:

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Click to expand...

That interpretation works well, pelegrino, not inconsistent at all. Here's the background if you're interested:

Hayden, an African American, grew up in Detroit during the Depression. As a teenager, he had a bad relationship with his father. Later, as an accomplished poet and, I believe, a professor at the University of Iowa, he came to see his father in a different light. I too had somewhat of a similar relationship with mine, and today I remember things he did for me that I took for granted for which he never asked that I show gratitude. The last line may be one of the most powerful lines in a poem I have ever read, at least in my view of the world.

greenmountaineer said:

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early...

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Excellent poem, gm. Very moving close, as you indicate.

According to Wikipedia, Hayden was raised at least in part by a foster family, so I'm guessing the father/son relationship was extremely complex in his life.

Medusa
Louise Bogan

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.


Source: Body of this Death: Poems (1923)

Tzara said:

Medusa
Louise Bogan

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.


Source: Body of this Death: Poems (1923)

Click to expand...

If you don't mind, I'll append yours with another post, so perhaps readers may note both of them. It's also from the same book.

Women
By Louise Bogan

Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.

They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear.

They wait, when they should turn to journeys,
They stiffen, when they should bend.
They use against themselves that benevolence
To which no man is friend.

They cannot think of so many crops to a field
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Their love is an eager meaninglessness
Too tense, or too lax.

They hear in every whisper that speaks to them
A shout and a cry.
As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills
They should let it go by.

Source: Body of this Death: Poems (1923)

greenmountaineer said:

If you don't mind, I'll append yours with another post, so perhaps readers may note both of them. It's also from the same book.

Women
By Louise Bogan

Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead...

Click to expand...

Of course I don't mind.

I think what I particularly like about Ms. Bogan's verse is how the rhyme sneaks in on those short lines. The abrupt rhythm break seems to emphasize the rhyme, if anything. Ms. Bogan's verse seems to me to be transitional between the formal verse of someone like Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Pound/Eliot "chaos" that followed.

That she was the poetry editor for The New Yorker for forty years gave her some influence as well.

I read "Medusa" as a class assignment. Really liked the poem.

Like Lilly Like Wilson
by Taylor Mali

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly Wilson, the recovering "like" addict,
the worst I've ever seen.
So "like" bad the whole eighth grade
started calling her Like Lilly Like Wilson
'Til I declared my classroom a Like-Free Zone
and she could not speak for days.

Bit when she finally did, it was to say,
Mr. Mali, this is . . . So hard.
Now I have to . . . think before I . . . say anything.

Imagine that, Lilly.
It's for your own good.
Even if you don't like . . .
it.

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly is writing a research paper for me about how gays
like shouldn't be allowed to adopt children.
I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Like Lilly Like Wilson at my office door.

Lilly's having trouble finding sources,
which is to say, ones that back her up:
They all argue in favor of what I thought I was against.

And it took all four years of college,
three years of graduate school,
and every incidental teaching experience I have ever had
to let out only,

Well that's a real interesting problem, Lilly.
But what do you propose to do about it?
That's what I want to know.

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a newborn baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether you still have one.
One even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn't matter what you pack them with
So long as they open
At the right time.

I want to say all this but manage only,
Lilly, I am like so impressed with you.

So I finally taught someone something,
Namely, how to change your mind.
And learned in the process that if I ever change the world
it's going to be one eighth grader at a time.

Song Of Songs


Since this place is called "Literotica" let's have some good erotic poetry.
Been brought up in a Christian Orthodox tradition, I was lead to believe that the "Song of Songs" was really a symbolic poem of the Christ's (future) love for the church. By the time I was 15 I had already realized that the priests talk a lot of bullshit and I started enjoying the poem for what it is: One of the most perfect erotic songs of all times.

The original Jewish poem was translated into classical Greek in Alexandria by the commitee of the 70 (Septuagint) by order of Ptolemy II in the 2nd century BC, together with the rest of the Bible for the benefit of Jews who had forgotten their own language.
Here are a few excerpts (perhaps not the most erotic) from it in Greek and in English translation, which, in my opinion, reads pretty pathetic as it has been done by Christians but not by poets, but still the eroticism comes through for all the paraphrase that it contains.
If you are interested you can read the rest of the poem here

SONG OF SONGS

1 Into his garden, then, let my true love come, and taste his fruit.[1] The garden gained, my bride, my heart’s love; myrrh and spices of mine all reaped; the honey eaten in its comb, the wine drunk and the milk, that were kept for me! Eat your fill, lovers; drink, sweethearts, and drink deep!

1 εἰσῆλθον εἰς κῆπόν μου ἀδελφή μου νύμφη ἐτρύγησα σμύρναν μου μετὰ ἀρωμάτων μου ἔφαγον ἄρτον μου μετὰ μέλιτός μου ἔπιον οἶνόν μου μετὰ γάλακτός μου φάγετε πλησίοι καὶ πίετε καὶ μεθύσθητε ἀδελφοί

2 I lie asleep; but oh, my heart is wakeful! A knock on the door, and then my true love’s voice: Let me in, my true love, so gentle, my bride, so pure! See, how bedewed is this head of mine, how the night rains have drenched my hair! 3 Ah, but my shift, I have laid it by: how can I put it on again? My feet I washed but now; shall I soil them with the dust? 4 Then my true love thrust his hand through the lattice, and I trembled inwardly at his touch. 5 I rose up to let him in; but my hands dripped ever with myrrh; still with the choicest myrrh my fingers were slippery, 6 as I caught the latch. When I opened, my true love was gone; he had passed me by. How my heart had melted at the sound of his voice! And now I searched for him in vain; there was no answer when I called out to him. 7 As they went the city rounds, the watchmen fell in with me, that guard the walls; beat me, and left me wounded, and took away my cloak. 8 I charge you, maidens of Jerusalem, fall you in with the man I long for, give him this news of me, that I pine away with love.[2]

2 ἐγὼ καθεύδω καὶ ἡ καρδία μου ἀγρυπνεῖ φωνὴ ἀδελφιδοῦ μου κρούει ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν ἄνοιξόν μοι ἀδελφή μου ἡ πλησίον μου περιστερά μου τελεία μου ὅτι ἡ κεφαλή μου ἐπλήσθη δρόσου καὶ οἱ βόστρυχοί μου ψεκάδων νυκτός 3 ἐξεδυσάμην τὸν χιτῶνά μου πῶς ἐνδύσωμαι αὐτόν ἐνιψάμην τοὺς πόδας μου πῶς μολυνῶ αὐτούς 4 ἀδελφιδός μου ἀπέστειλεν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀπῆς καὶ ἡ κοιλία μου ἐθροήθη ἐ{P'} αὐτόν 5 ἀνέστην ἐγὼ ἀνοῖξαι τῷ ἀδελφιδῷ μου χεῖρές μου ἔσταξαν σμύρναν δάκτυλοί μου σμύρναν πλήρη ἐπὶ χεῖρας τοῦ κλείθρου 6 ἤνοιξα ἐγὼ τῷ ἀδελφιδῷ μου ἀδελφιδός μου παρῆλθεν ψυχή μου ἐξῆλθεν ἐν λόγῳ αὐτοῦ ἐζήτησα αὐτὸν καὶ οὐχ εὗρον αὐτόν ἐκάλεσα αὐτόν καὶ οὐχ ὑπήκουσέν μου 7 εὕροσάν με οἱ φύλακες οἱ κυκλοῦντες ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐπάταξάν με ἐτραυμάτισάν με ἦραν τὸ θέριστρόν μου ἀ{P'} ἐμοῦ φύλακες τῶν τειχέων 8 ὥρκισα ὑμᾶς θυγατέρες Ιερουσαλημ ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσιν καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἰσχύσεσιν τοῦ ἀγροῦ ἐὰν εὕρητε τὸν ἀδελφιδόν μου τί ἀπαγγείλητε αὐτῷ ὅτι τετρωμένη ἀγάπης εἰμὶ ἐγώ

9 Nay, but tell us, fairest of women, how shall we know this sweetheart of thine from another’s? Why is he loved beyond all else, that thou art so urgent with us?

9 τί ἀδελφιδός σου ἀπὸ ἀδελφιδοῦ ἡ καλὴ ἐν γυναιξίν τί ἀδελφιδός σου ἀπὸ ἀδελφιδοῦ ὅτι οὕτως ὥρκισας ἡμᾶς

10 My sweetheart? Among ten thousand you shall know him; so white is the colour of his fashioning, and so red. 11 His head dazzles like the purest gold; the hair on it lies close as the high palm-branches, raven hair. 12 His eyes are gentle as doves by the brook-side, only these are bathed in milk, eyes full of repose.[3] 13 Cheeks trim as a spice-bed of the perfumer’s own tending; drench lilies in the finest myrrh, and you shall know the fragrance of his lips. 14 Hands well rounded; gold set with jacynth is not workmanship so delicate; body of ivory, and veins of sapphire blue; 15 legs straight as marble columns, that stand in sockets of gold. Erect his stature as Lebanon itself, noble as Lebanon cedar. 16 Oh, that sweet utterance! Nothing of him but awakes desire. Such is my true love, maidens of Jerusalem; such is the companion I have lost.

10 ἀδελφιδός μου λευκὸς καὶ πυρρός ἐκλελοχισμένος ἀπὸ μυριάδων 11 κεφαλὴ αὐτοῦ χρυσίον καὶ φαζ βόστρυχοι αὐτοῦ ἐλάται μέλανες ὡς κόραξ 12 ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτοῦ ὡς περιστεραὶ ἐπὶ πληρώματα ὑδάτων λελουσμέναι ἐν γάλακτι καθήμεναι ἐπὶ πληρώματα ὑδάτων 13 σιαγόνες αὐτοῦ ὡς φιάλαι τοῦ ἀρώματος φύουσαι μυρεψικά χείλη αὐτοῦ κρίνα στάζοντα σμύρναν πλήρη 14 χεῖρες αὐτοῦ τορευταὶ χρυσαῖ πεπληρωμέναι θαρσις κοιλία αὐτοῦ πυξίον ἐλεφάντινον ἐπὶ λίθου σαπφείρου 15 κνῆμαι αὐτοῦ στῦλοι μαρμάρινοι τεθεμελιωμένοι ἐπὶ βάσεις χρυσᾶς εἶδος αὐτοῦ ὡς Λίβανος ἐκλεκτὸς ὡς κέδροι 16 φάρυγξ αὐτοῦ γλυκασμοὶ καὶ ὅλος ἐπιθυμία οὗτος ἀδελφιδός μου καὶ οὗτος πλησίον μου θυγατέρες Ιερουσαλημ

17 But where went he, fairest of women, this true love of thine? Tell us what haunts he loves, and we will come with thee to search for him.

17 ποῦ ἀπῆλθεν ὁ ἀδελφιδός σου ἡ καλὴ ἐν γυναιξίν ποῦ ἀπέβλεψεν ὁ ἀδελφιδός σου καὶ ζητήσομεν αὐτὸν μετὰ σοῦ

Poetry, to me, is like ice cream.
My fave is whatever i'm tasting when you ask me.
Today, i'm tasting william stafford.
Here's a cpl short ones.
Learning~
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come-a part
of the music. Here came a horse,
clippet clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run-
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood in the square. He told us who to hate.
I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.

Putting the Sonnet to Work~
Pack your heavy suitcase
when it is time to travel,
No use making the trip
just to spin the wheels.
Load that box you always
intended to deliver;
crowd in all the knickknacks
nobody ever uses.
This train carries freight.
It's on time if it gets there.
Crossroads don't count, or bells.
There's a map and a dot
and an engine.
It's cargo we want-cargo:
just words won't get you there.

Flora Shakespeare

Acting out the place where the flowers die
circling their graves with themselves,
your costume is perfect, you're on stage.

Richard Brautigan

re: Bogan
seems dead scenes where all the rage in '23

My life closes twice before its close-
Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close-
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

Notes from the Delivery Room
Linda Pastan

Strapped down,
victim in an old comic book,
I have been here before,
this place where pain winces
off the walls
like too bright lights.
Bear down a doctor says,
foreman to swearing laborer,
but this work, this forcing
of one life from another
is something I signed for
at a moment when I would have signed for anything.
Babies should be grown in fields;
common as beets or turnips
they should be picked up and held
root end up, soil spilling
from between their toes--
and how much easier it would be later,
returning them to earth.
Bear up . . . bear down . . . the audience
grows restive, and I'm a new magician
who can't produce the rabbit
from my swollen hat.
She's crowning someone says,
but there is no one royal here,
just me, quite barefoot,
greeting my barefoot child.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
(Christopher Walken reads.)

What She Was Wearing
Denver Butson

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it

you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don't set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door

I didn't have time to read through the whole thread. I hope this isn't a repeat?

I love the short and sweet.


I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold



William Carlos Williams

Trixareforkids said:

What She Was Wearing
Denver Butson

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it

you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don't set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door

Click to expand...

Similar? Maybe.

What Do Women Want

One Mighty Fine Piece of Strange

For lovesticks like Louise it’s all
thin edges. Staying as sleek

as her heels. Body a blade, attitude
a razor. It’s the way she walks

the wire, quivering on stilettos
with hints of rum and ruin

like balance is a yardstick of courage,
like freezing traffic stiff as a man

reminds her how much woman
she is. And it’s the way she talks

without words, her open invitation
to look, follow. Good god, how sharp

she shines with a twist and blink,
cutting her own slice of hot sky,

yellow hair swinging its sunfingers
as she turns, eyes living lightning

and nylon flashing electric, thunder
hips rumbling, blowing your mind

like the big bang. It’s the damned
way she stops and dares you

to dream, then damns the dream
that dares to stop. You just know

she’s been to culinary school
but won’t cook you by the book,

that she’ll chew you raw then pick
her teeth with your bones. You’ll

run home ragged, that fuckdoll
branded on in scars and pictures

you hide under the mattress.
As you sleep she’ll slip through

sheets like a scalpel, slide inside.
But what really makes her special

is knowing that stealing your dreams
is only petty larceny.

Patrick Carrington

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
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brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
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to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

An Arundel Tomb

I am not a fan of Philip Larkin because he so consistently goes beyond melancholy to downright miserable. However, in the last verse of this poem he redeems his reputation to some extent.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth.The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

I like Larkins precision; note his very careful punctuation and the hyphen, it has a purpose.

I would have posted the whole poem but I am having trouble with links.

The actual tomb is in Chichester Cathedral. Google the poem and you will see it.

Incidentally in real life the Earl was a real swine especially to his first wife.

ishtat said:

I am not a fan of Philip Larkin because he so consistently goes beyond melancholy to downright miserable. However, in the last verse of this poem he redeems his reputation to some extent.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth.The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

I like Larkins precision; note his very careful punctuation and the hyphen, it has a purpose.

I would have posted the whole poem but I am having trouble with links.

The actual tomb is in Chichester Cathedral. Google the poem and you will see it.

Incidentally in real life the Earl was a real swine especially to his first wife.

Click to expand...

I agree. He apparently had a sordid mind that he kept well hidden until they started to go through his papers after he died. I do, however, admire his skill in how he writes, if not what he writes about.