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Author Topic:   Poetry
zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 19, 2007 02:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Meeting the British


We met the British in the dead of winter.
The sky was lavender

and the snow lavender-blue.
I could hear, far below,

the sound of two streams coming together
(both were frozen over)

and no less strange,
myself calling out in French

across that forest-
clearing. Neither General Jeffrey Amherst

nor Colonel Henry Bouquet
could stomach our willow-tobacco.

As for the unusual
scent when the Colonel shook out his hand-

kerchief: C'est la lavende,
une fleur mauve comme le ciel.*

They gave us six fishhooks
and two blankets embroidered with smallpox.


--Paul Muldoon


*"It is lavender, a flower as mauve as the sky."

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 19, 2007 02:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 19, 2007 02:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Peaches

A mouthful of language to swallow:
stretches of beach, sweet clinches,
breaches in walls, pleached branches;
britches hauled over haunches;
hunched leeches, wrenched teachers.
What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
richness, plashy juices.
I beseech you, peach,
clench me into the sweetness
of your reaches.


--Peter Davison

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 19, 2007 11:29 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Losing a Language


A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back
yet the old still remember something that they could say

but they know now that such things are no longer believed
and the young have fewer words

many of the things the words were about
no longer exist

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I

the children will not repeat
the phrases their parents speak

somebody has persuaded them
that it is better to say everything differently

so that they can be admired somewhere
farther and farther away

where nothing that is here is known
we have little to say to each other

we are wrong and dark
in the eyes of the new owners

the radio is incomprehensible
the day is glass

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

nobody has seen it happening
nobody remembers

this is what the words were made
to prophesy

here are the extinct feathers
here is the rain we saw


--W.S. Merwin

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 19, 2007 11:45 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
The Dead Butterfly


1

Now I see its whiteness
is not white but green, traced with green
and resembles the stones
of which the city is built,
quarried high in the mountains.

2

Everywhere among the marigolds
the rainblown roses and the hedges
of tamarisk are white
butterflies this morning, in constant
tremulous movement, only those
that lie dead revealing
their rockgreen color and the bold
cut of the wings


--Denise Levertov

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 20, 2007 07:08 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Tide Pools


Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive
to action and inaction.
Remain in stasis, blown sand
stings your face, anemones
shrivel in rock pools no wave renews.
Clear the littered beach, clear
the lines of a forming poem,
the waters flood inward.
Dull stones again fulfill
their glowing destinies, and emptiness
is a cup, and holds
the ocean.


--Denise Levertov

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 20, 2007 07:11 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Wish for a Young Wife


My lizard, my lively writher,
May your limbs never wither,
May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy's mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun,
When I am undone,
When I am no one.


--Theodore Roethke

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 20, 2007 11:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 20, 2007 11:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
You Were Wearing


You were wearing your Edgar Allan Poe printed cotton blouse.
In each divided up square of the blouse was a picture of Edgar Allan
Poe.
Your hair was blonde and you were cute. You asked me, "Do most boys
think that most girls are bad?"
I smelled the mould of your seaside resort hotel bedroom on your hair
held in place by a John Greenleaf Whittier clip.
"No," I said, "it's girls who think that boys are bad." Then we read Snow-
bound
together.
And ran around in an attic, so that a little of the blue enamel was
scraped off my George Washington, Father of His Country, shoes.

Mother was walking in the living room, her Strauss Waltzes comb in her
hair.
We waited for a time and then joined her, only to be served tea in cups
painted with pictures of Herman Melville
As well as with illustrations from his book Moby-Dick and from his
novella, Benito Cereno.
Father came in wearing his Dick Tracy necktie: "How about a drink,
everyone?"
I said, "Let's go outside a while." Then we went onto the porch and sat
on the Abraham Lincoln swing.
You sat on the eyes, mouth, and beard part, and I sat on the knees.
In the yard across the street we saw a snowman holding a garbage can
lid smashed into a likeness of the mad English king, George the
Third.

--Kenneth Koch

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zanya
Knowflake

Posts: 196
From:
Registered: Oct 2007

posted November 22, 2007 02:03 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for zanya     Edit/Delete Message
Self-Protection


When science starts to be interpretive
It is even more unscientific than mysticism.

To make self-preservation and self-protection the first law of existence
Is about as scientific as making suicide the first law of existence,
And amounts to very much the same thing.

A nightingale singing at the top of his voice
Is neither hiding himself nor preserving himself nor propagating his species;
He is giving himself away in every sense of the word;
And obviously, it is the culminating point of his existence.

A tiger is striped and golden for his own glory.
He would certainly be much more invisible if he were grey-green.
And I don't suppose the ichthyosaurus sparkled like the humming-bird,
No doubt he was khaki-coloured with muddy protective colouration,
So why didn't he survive?

As a matter of fact, the only creatures that seem to survive
Are those that give themselves away in flash and sparkle
And gay flicker of joyful life;
Those that go glittering abroad
With a bit of splendour.

Even mice play quite beautifully at shadows,
And some of them are brilliantly piebald.

I expect the dodo looked like a clod,
A drab and dingy bird.


--D.H. Lawrence

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NosiS
Moderator

Posts: 335
From: FL USA
Registered: Apr 2004

posted November 22, 2007 12:21 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NosiS     Edit/Delete Message
I meant to thank you for these earlier, zanya!

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NosiS
Moderator

Posts: 335
From: FL USA
Registered: Apr 2004

posted November 22, 2007 12:22 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for NosiS     Edit/Delete Message
BTW, my fav. so far is "Peaches", but (in fairness) I haven't read all of them. Keep 'em coming!

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