flying_kangaroo

Clenched Soul: Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

Current Mood: awed

Alec Speaking

He is putting it lithely when he says
Quobble in the Grass,
Strab he down the soddieflays
Amo amat amass,
Amonk amink a minibus
Amarmylaidie Moon,
Amikky mendip multiplus
A mighty midgey spoon.
And so I traddled onward
Caring not a care
Onward, Onward, Onward.
Onward, my friends to victory and glory for the thirtyninth.

In His Own Write dropped through the letterbox this morning. :D

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

- Anne Sexton

Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering on the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queueing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

- Brendan Kennelly
(b. 1936, Irish poet)

Amor, che nel penser mio vive et regna
e'l suo seggio maggior nel mio cor tene,
talor armato ne la fronte vene;
ivi si loca et ivi pon sua insegna.

Quella ch'amare et sofferir ne 'nsegna
e vol che'l gran desio, l'accesa spene
ragion, vergogna, et reverenza affrene,
di nostro ardir fra se stessa si sdegna.

Onde Amor paventoso fugge al core,
lasciando ogni sua impresa, et piange et trema;
ivi s'asconde et non appar piu fore.

Che poss'lo far, temendo il mio signore,
se non star seco infin a l'ora estrema?
che bel fin fa chi ben amando more.

Petrarch (1305-75)

Love, who lives and reigns in my thought and keeps his principal
seat in my heart, sometimes comes forth in all armor into my
forehead, there camps, and there sets up his banner.

She who teaches us to love and to be patient, and wishes my
great desire, my unkindled hope, to be reined in by reason, shame,
and reverence, at our boldness is angry within herself.

Wherefore Love flees terrified to my heart, abandoning his every
enterprise, and weeps and trembles; there he hides and no more
appears outside.

What can I do, when my lord is afraid, except stay with him
until the last hour? For he makes a good end who dies loving well.

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

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

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,

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.

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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Current Mood: tired. constantlyalwaystired.

Hippety hoppity
Hoppity hoo
Goes the bounding
Kangaroo.
You can't lock him
In a pen
He would just
Leap out again.
It's hard to keep
Him in at all
For he can jump
A six-foot wall.
His leap is really
So immense
He can clear
A ten-foot fence.
You'd never keep him
In a zoo -
He'd just leap out
And over you.
No one so far
Has ever found a
Way to catch
The little bounder.
So, oh dear,
What can we do
To catch the bounding
Kangaroo?

Moral:
Never shoot a Kangaroo!
It's a nasty thing to do.
He won't harm me.
He won't harm you.
Hippety hoppety Kangaroo!

Bermudas - Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that row'd along
The listening woods received this song:

'What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs,
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms' and prelates' rage:
He gave us this eternal Spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care
On daily visits through the air:
He hangs in shades the orange bright
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows:
He makes the figs our mouths to meet
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by His hand
From Lebanon He stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
O, let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at Heaven's vault,
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay!'

Thus sung they in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note:
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

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Entries tagged with poetry

Pablo Neruda

Alec Speaking - Lennon

Her Kind - Sexton

Begin

Amor, che nel penser mio vive et regna.... - Petrarch

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Hippety Hoppity - Spike Milligan

Bermudas - Andrew Marvell

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November 2014

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