Truly chilling - reminds me of The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar WildeJesska6029 wrote:"The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden. This poem gives me chills every time.
Last poem you read that meant something to you?
- Fran
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Re: Last poem you read that meant something to you?
A world is born again that never dies.
- My Home by Clive James
- Circling Turtle
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- deftlyspeaking
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- StevenLW
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She looks back and sees the past still, quiet in her mind's eye ... "like an afternoon in Pompeii." That's the line/metaphor that drove it all home for me.
Glück is an American treasure.
- LuciaBall
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I bought a little volume of "Twenty Love Poems And A Song of Despair", which is a small compilation of some of Neruda's poems, during my sailing travels on the East Coast. My then-fiance and I would read them to each other during our off-watches, and we felt that one in particular spoke to us. We even had the aunt that introduced Neruda to me read the original Spanish version at our wedding, with my cousin reading it in English right after her. I've pasted it below, and I hope you enjoy it.
Here I Love You
by Pablo Neruda
Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.
The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.
The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.
- DATo
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― Steven Wright
- LuciaBall
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That's my favorite Shakespearean sonnet as well! I committed it to memory, and even had one of my theater friends from high school recite it at my wedding. So many of his sonnets are exquisite, but that one does seem to have something special.DATo wrote:Sonnet 116
- Circling Turtle
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I've been reading some of Helen Moffett's poetry lately, she is one of the best contemporary South African poets I've come across. 'Mined' is a favourite of mine ("Loving me must be like visting the Balkans...").
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- kitsune1997
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Jorge Luis Borges
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What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude...What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy...What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow...
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I recognized myself a bit...
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He says:
Why struggle to open the door between us,
when the whole wall is an illusion.....
just a simple line but sooo much of depth behind those.....
- DennisK
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Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.