Poems that drop you in your tracks

[flyguy69]

You've read them. Those poems that are not simply great: they blow you away. Poems that strike like ball lightning and leave you sizzling in the chair.

I was reading a collection of poetry this weekend and came across this elegy by Paul Monette about his lover, Roger, dead from AIDS. The searing grief of the poem forced me to put the book down and walk around the room until my breathing returned to normal and I could go back to study it to better understand my response.

Look at the brilliant use of enjambment here, the way the breaks and lack of punctuation create a dizzying whirl of emotion. The way the crowded structure evokes a mind spilling with grief. The way the fragmented phrases feel like you are stumbling to your knees on that hill.

This... is poetry.


here

everything extraneous has burned away
this is how burning feels in the fall
of the final year, not like leaves in a blue
October but as if the skin were a paper lantern
full of trapped moths beating their fired wings
and yet I can lie on this hill just above you
a foot beside where I will lie myself
soon soon and for the wrack and blubber
feel still how we were warriors when the
merest morning sun in the garden was a
kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all
death it turns out war is what little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home
oh sweetie will you please forgive me this
that every time I opened a box of anything
Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was
the worst I'd think will you still be here
when the box is empty, Rog, Rog, who will
play boy with me now that I bucket with tears
through it all when I'd cling beside you sobbing,
you'd shrug it off with the quietest I'm still
here I have your watch in the top drawer
which I don't dare wear yet help me please
the boxes grocery home day after day
the junk that keeps men spotless, but it doesn't
matter now how long they last or I
the day has taken you with it and all
there is now is burning dark the only green
is up by the grave and this little thing
of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here



...

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

This is just part of a journey nothing more and nothing less
He sits fingering the empty collar,

And looks over the meagre contents of a toy box..

He knows that there many items which,

He must procure to add to the collection.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Some he must make to satisfy pride

And the desire to be making,

Does he still have the skill? This he is wondering.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Riffling amongst papers filled with sketches,

Of toys he perhaps could have made in times past,

Other plans are of equipment, multipurpose and designed with cunning.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Chuckles, thinking how easier it would have been

Yet his tools, like his body, time has reduced.

Muttering to himself as old men are wont to do,



He sits fingering the empty collar,

He reviews the plans in the light of what he can and cant do.

Making notes he makes allowance

For his Free Companion to be able to set up and use them.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

When she has another slave in collar and living close.

He’ll not see her wanting, a filled toy box she shall have.

And dungeon equipment a plenty.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Smiling gently he makes plans to have her introduced about the scene denied him.
Feeling no sorrow, he places everything in its place

And commences work on a draft for her profile to replace his.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

So that she is known by those in the communities…

And take her place with them

To just be in her own right without his influences.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Lessons learned in the past decades where

The upcoming youth have not wanted aging Masters in other lifestyles,

But wanted the glitter and energy of youth.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Remembers times when he has stepped back into

Shadows and guided the new Masters to take his place

As he slipped into a faded memory easily forgotten.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Long ago he learned the benefits of isolation

And the joys which only a recluse can enjoy….

Memories of a slave murmuring “Yes My Master”



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Time to build a new life for them both,

One where she becomes the new Master

And he the builder of a business to sustain all that he wants for her.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Chuckling, he remembers a conversation with another who suggested

The hiring of models to use for Shibari and other areas which still interest him

Laughing at his own folly in still wanting to Master Arts which he will never use



He sits fingering the empty collar,

He still the Master, Master of his Home

And of more arcane mysteries,

Those which only age and life long practices teach.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

That is enough, all things which are now in the past

For if nothing the old man is a realist

And knows when to quit fighting opinion.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

This is not the first time he has been defeated

But this time he cannot battle age and illness….

The time is past battling something which can not be changed.



He sits fingering the empty collar,

Contented he plans his retirement activities

Until it is time for the Golden Eyed Bear to come

And lead him away to where the pain will cease and he will no longer be…



He sits fingering the empty collar,

A happy time with all new experiences to learn and debts to pay.

Smiling gently now and at peace with himself,

He locks the old collar away, discards the plans for new ones



He places the key in a hidden place..

And in doing so discards the unfulfilled dreams to the place

Where all lost dreams go and lighting a cigarette closes his eyes

And sees the bears in far off mountains moving to where the sky touched the earth.…..



Iron Bear ~ September 2005


I 'found' this and 'borrowed' it because it touched me.

 

[WickedEve]

Fly, it's an excellent poem, but I don't get that drop-me-in-my-tracks feel from it. Though, I know what you're talking about. I've read poems that have just blown me away. I'll post one if I can find where I saved them.

 

[My Erotic Tale]

Shaking my fist at the Heavens...
by My Erotic Tail ©

...kicking dirt into Hell~
by Art

My heart thundered and cracked
like the seals of armagedon
I went off half cocked and storming
after laying the telephone down

I was Paramount at Mt. Olympia
throwing stones at Zeus
taunting him to throw his thunder bolts
for life had already given me a jolt.

In the valley of the shadow of death
I rang the bell to Hell
come out you devil if you dare
I'll put your fire out...
with my cold heart's blank stare

I marched up the steps of the stairway to heaven
beat my fist bloody at the pearly gates
challenged Michael, God's warrior Angel
to do battle with me today
for I'm frustrated in the worst way

I have a few stripes on a belt of black
but today I lost my passive way
looking for vengence not justice
my mind was a swirling bliss

I pulled the tail of the tiger
and at the dragon I hissed
for I've never been a man of fear
but today, they lost someone
that I will never hear

I tossed a bible at Budda
with his one finger raised up high
I gave him the finger in return
as I started to cry

Ala and I
don't see eye to eye
in fact he needs to clean up his act
or on his back he needs to strap
some bombs and be blown away

Shaking my fist at the Heavens
while kicking dirt into hell
I challenged who ever
rules this worldly sphere
as down my cheek ran a tear

my anger raged and emotions high
for my heart was heavy and torn
wanting to know who gave the order
for the Grim Reaper...to take a New Born

 

[Angeline]

Sorry to drone on about Yeats

and sorry Bogusbrig to offend your poetic sensibilities , but this poem is so moving and beautiful to me. I can feel it, feel as though I'm there every time I read it, which I've easily done enough times to commit it to memory. I'm sure I'll read it thousands of times more while I still have breath in me.

The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

 

[bluerains]

Several years ago

a good friend gave me the book "Markings"
and this poem just amazed me..

markings....

YOU ARE NOT THE OIL,
YOU ARE NOT THE AIR-
MERELY THE POINT
OF
COMBUSTION,
THE FLASH-POINT
WHERE THE LIGHT IS
BORN.
YOU ARE MERELY THE LENS
IN THE BEAM.
YOU CAN ONLY
RECEIVE,
GIVE, AND POSSESS
THE LIGHT AS
A LENS DOES.
IF YOU SEEK YOURSELF,
'YOUR RIGHTS,' YOU
PREVENT THE OIL
AND THE AIR
FROM MEETING IN THE
FLAME,
YOU ROB THE LENS
OF ITS TRANSPARENCY.
SANCTITY-EITHER TO
BE THE LIGHT, OR TO BE
SELF-EFFACED IN
THE LIGHT,
SO THAT IT MAY BE
BORN,
SELF-EFFACED SO
THAT IT MAY BE FOCUSED
OR SPREAD
WIDER.
YOU WILL KNOW LIFE
AND BE ACKNOWLEDGED
BY IT ACCORDING
TO YOUR DEGREE OF
TRANSPARENCY,
YOUR CAPACITY, THAT IS,
TO VANISH AS AN END,
AND REMAIN
PURELY
AS
A
MEANS.......


MARKINGS [7.28.57] DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

 

[Curiouswife]

You've read them. Those poems that are not simply great: they blow you away. Poems that strike like ball lightning and leave you sizzling in the chair.

I was reading a collection of poetry this weekend and came across this elegy by Paul Monette about his lover, Roger, dead from AIDS. The searing grief of the poem forced me to put the book down and walk around the room until my breathing returned to normal and I could go back to study it to better understand my response.

Look at the brilliant use of enjambment here, the way the breaks and lack of punctuation create a dizzying whirl of emotion. The way the crowded structure evokes a mind spilling with grief. The way the fragmented phrases feel like you are stumbling to your knees on that hill.

This... is poetry.


here

everything extraneous has burned away
this is how burning feels in the fall
of the final year, not like leaves in a blue
October but as if the skin were a paper lantern
full of trapped moths beating their fired wings
and yet I can lie on this hill just above you
a foot beside where I will lie myself
soon soon and for the wrack and blubber
feel still how we were warriors when the
merest morning sun in the garden was a
kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all
death it turns out war is what little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home
oh sweetie will you please forgive me this
that every time I opened a box of anything
Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was
the worst I'd think will you still be here
when the box is empty, Rog, Rog, who will
play boy with me now that I bucket with tears
through it all when I'd cling beside you sobbing,
you'd shrug it off with the quietest I'm still
here I have your watch in the top drawer
which I don't dare wear yet help me please
the boxes grocery home day after day
the junk that keeps men spotless, but it doesn't
matter now how long they last or I
the day has taken you with it and all
there is now is burning dark the only green
is up by the grave and this little thing
of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here



...

It doesn't blow me away, but I do like it. I really liked Paul Monette's book, "Becoming a Man." Highly recommended, if you haven't read it already. I have yet to read the AIDS Memoir one, but I am going to get to that one too.

Julia

 

[bogusbrig]

and sorry Bogusbrig to offend your poetic sensibilities , but this poem is so moving and beautiful to me. I can feel it, feel as though I'm there every time I read it, which I've easily done enough times to commit it to memory. I'm sure I'll read it thousands of times more while I still have breath in me.

Since it means so much to such a pretty woman I won't throw a tantrum.

*Bogus bites his tongue with jaws firmly clenched*

 

[Vampiric_Mirage]

I was listening to a song
when I realized
tears were pouring out my eyes
and down my cheeks
leaving salty trails
I could barely speak
I was so choked
instead whimpers and
strangled sobs were evoked
along with a sadness
long ago buried
varied times we shared
which led to a madness
that I can't seem to shake
and sits waiting for a chance
to help my heart break
funny thing is
I seem to enjoy it
as the tears stream forth
and breath becomes haggard
I'm staggered I can still feel
anything

Just found this on the passion thread and thought it deserved to be here. I have been trying to write almost exactly this, but was never able to. For me this is that moment when you just don't want to stop crying, because it lets you know that even though the love you had may have gone horribly awry, at least some pieces of your heart are still left to mourn its loss, and you haven't completely turned to stone.

Beautifully done Tungtied!

 

[Angeline]

Since it means so much to such a pretty woman I won't throw a tantrum.

*Bogus bites his tongue with jaws firmly clenched*

I'm outing you as a kindhearted person. I have magical powers in that regard, you see.

Don't you hate it?

 

[Angeline]

Just found this on the passion thread and thought it deserved to be here. I have been trying to write almost exactly this, but was never able to. For me this is that moment when you just don't want to stop crying, because it lets you know that even though the love you had may have gone horribly awry, at least some pieces of your heart are still left to mourn its loss, and you haven't completely turned to stone.

Beautifully done Tungtied!

Thank you for posting tt's poem here. I hadn't seen it and it's lovely.

Hi tungtied. You owe me a pm, dood.

 

[Maria2394]

You've read them. Those poems that are not simply great: they blow you away. Poems that strike like ball lightning and leave you sizzling in the chair.

I was reading a collection of poetry this weekend and came across this elegy by Paul Monette about his lover, Roger, dead from AIDS. The searing grief of the poem forced me to put the book down and walk around the room until my breathing returned to normal and I could go back to study it to better understand my response.

Look at the brilliant use of enjambment here, the way the breaks and lack of punctuation create a dizzying whirl of emotion. The way the crowded structure evokes a mind spilling with grief. The way the fragmented phrases feel like you are stumbling to your knees on that hill.

This... is poetry.


here

everything extraneous has burned away
this is how burning feels in the fall
of the final year, not like leaves in a blue
October but as if the skin were a paper lantern
full of trapped moths beating their fired wings
and yet I can lie on this hill just above you
a foot beside where I will lie myself
soon soon and for the wrack and blubber
feel still how we were warriors when the
merest morning sun in the garden was a
kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all
death it turns out war is what little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home
oh sweetie will you please forgive me this
that every time I opened a box of anything
Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was
the worst I'd think will you still be here
when the box is empty, Rog, Rog, who will
play boy with me now that I bucket with tears
through it all when I'd cling beside you sobbing,
you'd shrug it off with the quietest I'm still
here I have your watch in the top drawer
which I don't dare wear yet help me please
the boxes grocery home day after day
the junk that keeps men spotless, but it doesn't
matter now how long they last or I
the day has taken you with it and all
there is now is burning dark the only green
is up by the grave and this little thing
of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here



...

You are definitely right about this one flyguy, it gave me chills and teared me eyes up...it is a wonderfully emotional poem. The kind I love. Thanks for posting this one.

 

[Maria2394]

Fly, it's an excellent poem, but I don't get that drop-me-in-my-tracks feel from it. Though, I know what you're talking about. I've read poems that have just blown me away. I'll post one if I can find where I saved them.

Eve, YOU have had many that made me feel llike that. and Tammy Cant, well, I wrote like 5 poems off one of hers IT was, oh hell, cant remember the title, but fingers like trees, raised up through the dead ground, did that to me.Do you remember which one it was?

 

[WickedEve]

Eve, YOU have had many that made me feel llike that. and Tammy Cant, well, I wrote like 5 poems off one of hers IT was, oh hell, cant remember the title, but fingers like trees, raised up through the dead ground, did that to me.Do you remember which one it was?

I know the poem and it's under the WE name. Was it a Tammy poem at first? I'll see if I can find it. I've read poems by other lit poets that have really amazed me and left me wondering, "Why is that poem here on lit?" I think the last poem I really loved was one by darkmaas and now I can't remember the title of that one either.

 

[flyguy69]

I'm interested in knowing why a poem blows you away. Obviously, Maria and I were the only ones immediately struck by this one, but all of us have had that experience. When you went back and reread the one that did it for you, what did you discover? What had the author done that made the experience so powerful?

The actual experience is probably a confluence of immediate mood, personal experience and language.

 

[flyguy69]

Look how differently Hammarskjold uses enjambment than Monette. Obviously they have different intents and backgrounds, but feel how the breaking in this one creates control, while Monette's creates havoc. Two very different, very beautiful poems. Thanks for posting this, Blue.

a good friend gave me the book "Markings"
and this poem just amazed me..

markings....

YOU ARE NOT THE OIL,
YOU ARE NOT THE AIR-
MERELY THE POINT
OF
COMBUSTION,
THE FLASH-POINT
WHERE THE LIGHT IS
BORN.
YOU ARE MERELY THE LENS
IN THE BEAM.
YOU CAN ONLY
RECEIVE,
GIVE, AND POSSESS
THE LIGHT AS
A LENS DOES.
IF YOU SEEK YOURSELF,
'YOUR RIGHTS,' YOU
PREVENT THE OIL
AND THE AIR
FROM MEETING IN THE
FLAME,
YOU ROB THE LENS
OF ITS TRANSPARENCY.
SANCTITY-EITHER TO
BE THE LIGHT, OR TO BE
SELF-EFFACED IN
THE LIGHT,
SO THAT IT MAY BE
BORN,
SELF-EFFACED SO
THAT IT MAY BE FOCUSED
OR SPREAD
WIDER.
YOU WILL KNOW LIFE
AND BE ACKNOWLEDGED
BY IT ACCORDING
TO YOUR DEGREE OF
TRANSPARENCY,
YOUR CAPACITY, THAT IS,
TO VANISH AS AN END,
AND REMAIN
PURELY
AS
A
MEANS.......


MARKINGS [7.28.57] DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

 

[WickedEve]

I'm interested in knowing why a poem blows you away. Obviously, Maria and I were the only ones immediately struck by this one,

you two are just easy to blow?

I really do know those kind of poems. You know immediately that you've been poetry bitch slapped in the face and you love it! LOVE IT!

I know another poem that I love. It's by that Angeline person. You know who. Ange, you know the poem. No, I'm not going on about your dust poem. The one about someone walking by or something and even rocks tumble down the hill. Help me here.

 

[flyguy69]

It doesn't blow me away, but I do like it. I really liked Paul Monette's book, "Becoming a Man." Highly recommended, if you haven't read it already. I have yet to read the AIDS Memoir one, but I am going to get to that one too.

Julia

Is that "Love Alone," Julia? This author is new to me, and I want to read more.

 

[flyguy69]

you two are just easy to blow?

I really do know those kind of poems. You know immediately that you've been poetry bitch slapped in the face and you love it! LOVE IT!

I know another poem that I love. It's by that Angeline person. You know who. Ange, you know the poem. No, I'm not going on about your dust poem. The one about someone walking by or something and even rocks tumble down the hill. Help me here.

Again, it is a confluence of circumstances: one must be willing to be blown. Always.

And don't get me started on Angeline, or I'll post Billy and we'll all be blubbery.

 

[Maria2394]

I'm interested in knowing why a poem blows you away. Obviously, Maria and I were the only ones immediately struck by this one, but all of us have had that experience. When you went back and reread the one that did it for you, what did you discover? What had the author done that made the experience so powerful?

The actual experience is probably a confluence of immediate mood, personal experience and language.

okay, Flyguy, you hit it!! on the head, no, not yours, neither of them...

PLath's poetry is like that for me, dead, no feeling, like the difference between the Scream and a three year olds coloring book, just blah... that poem, I FELT it, lke anguish, like it was raw, unedited he just let it flow. I think I am sort of sensitive to how people feel, even though I am so mouthy ( love you BOO!!) and say things that are not just right sometimes, anyway, its just got to be something that pulls at the inner pain, the recognition of that pain, or joy, in others, but Im more sensitive to pain, oh whaaa, I want some joy!!

its just diffrent strokes fer diffrent fokes, I reckon

 

[Du Lac]

a new discovering on my poets list....

A Winter Without Snow
by J. D. McClatchy


Even the sky here in Connecticut has it,
That wry look of accomplished conspiracy,
The look of those who've gotten away

With a petty but regular white collar crime.
When I pick up my shirts at the laundry,
A black woman, putting down her Daily News,

Wonders why and how much longer out luck
Will hold. "Months now and no kiss of the witch."
The whole state overcast with such particulars.

For Emerson, a century ago and farther north,
Where the country has an ode's jagged edges,
It was "frolic architecture." Frozen blue-

Print of extravagance, shapes of a shared life
Left knee-deep in transcendental drifts:
The isolate forms of snow are its hardest fact.

Down here, the plain tercets of provision do,
Their picket snow-fence peeling, gritty,
Holding nothing back, nothing in, nothing at all.

Down here, we've come to prefer the raw material
Of everyday and this year have kept an eye
On it, shriveling but still recognizable--

A sight that disappoints even as it adds
A clearing second guess to winter. It's
As if, in the third year of a "relocation"

To a promising notch way out on the Sunbelt,
You've grown used to the prefab housing,
The quick turnover in neighbors, the constant

Smell of factory smoke--like Plato's cave,
You sometimes think--and the stumpy trees
That summer slighted and winter just ignores,

And all the snow that never falls is now
Back home and mixed up with other piercing
Memories of childhood days you were kept in

With a Negro schoolmate, of later storms
Through which you drove and drove for hours
Without ever seeing where you were going.

Or as if you've cheated on a cold sickly wife.
Not in some overheated turnpike motel room
With an old flame, herself the mother of two,

Who looks steamy in summer-weight slacks
And a parrot-green pullover. Not her.
Not anyone. But every day after lunch

You go off by yourself, deep in a brown study,
Not doing much of anything for an hour or two,
Just staring out the window, or at a patch

On the wall where a picture had hung for ages,
A woman with planets in her hair, the gravity
Of perfection in her features--oh! her hair

The lengthening shadow of the galaxy's sweep.
As a young man you used to stand outside
On warm nights and watch her through the trees.

You remember how she disappeared in winter,
Obscured by snow that fell blindly on the heart,
On the house, on a world of possibilities.

 

[flyguy69]

okay, Flyguy, you hit it!! on the head, no, not yours, neither of them...

PLath's poetry is like that for me, dead, no feeling, like the difference between the Scream and a three year olds coloring book, just blah... that poem, I FELT it, lke anguish, like it was raw, unedited he just let it flow. I think I am sort of sensitive to how people feel, even though I am so mouthy ( love you BOO!!) and say things that are not just right sometimes, anyway, its just got to be something that pulls at the inner pain, the recognition of that pain, or joy, in others, but Im more sensitive to pain, oh whaaa, I want some joy!!

its just diffrent strokes fer diffrent fokes, I reckon

It has a definite stream-of-consiousness feel to it, yet, when I found a website that showed a copy of the paper on which he wrote it, it is clear that he edited carefully to create that feeling in readers.

And all this talk about blowing and stroking has gotten me strangely excited!

 

[wildsweetone]

I'm interested in knowing why a poem blows you away. Obviously, Maria and I were the only ones immediately struck by this one, but all of us have had that experience. When you went back and reread the one that did it for you, what did you discover? What had the author done that made the experience so powerful?

The actual experience is probably a confluence of immediate mood, personal experience and language.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20


THIS is the poem that blew me to pieces. at first it was because parts of the poem mirrored my thoughts. looking at it again now (i tend to re-read it every so often) from a mechanical point of view, i love the simplicity of the language and the complexity of meaning. i like the rhythm, the beat, the sound as i read it out loud; i also like the rhyme scheme. i guess those things all enhance the poem for me but it's the story Frost tells that grips my soul. *smile*

thanks for making me sit and think about this Fly

 

[Maria2394]

It has a definite stream-of-consiousness feel to it, yet, when I found a website that showed a copy of the paper on which he wrote it, it is clear that he edited carefully to create that feeling in readers.

And all this talk about blowing and stroking has gotten me strangely excited!

well, of course it was edited!! thats not what I meant. It felt like it had NOT been, to me, anyway. Thats what I like, . and as for Frost, ohhh, that man just gets me somewhere. and I read that in real life, he was nothing like you would imagine after reading his poetry. So people friendly, aware of everything nature, he was not. I love his Birches poem and Out, Out and Death of the HIred Hand just makes me cry for what feels like forever... and so on and so on... love that man

Over editing kills whatever poetry is in a "poem", in my opinion and some very descriptive poetry is very good and some of it feels like over-edited words, placed oh so carefully to become a poem.

I love seeing "different" styles of layout, Alice Walker, she experiments, some of the people on here, 1201, woudl be one of my favorites when it comes to innovative works and Rybka, and Eve. I wouldnt be surprised to see some big world poetry awards coming someday to some ofthe people on here, and let us hope is is NOT post-life

 

[Maria2394]

MY all time favorite poem

Burnt Norton, by TS Eliot


Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.


II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.


III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.


IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.


V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

***********

I talk about it all the time, and realize it may be somewhat obscure or maybe I am just crazy, who knows. Anyway, here it is...sigh I still cant point out exactly what it is that gets me about this work..someone analyze me?