Verse after Listening to Bartok Play Bartok a Second Time, or Different Ways of Tingling All Over
June Jordan
now
and then
unexpectedly
unexpectedly
unexpectedly
or Different Ways of Tingling All Over
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Tag Archives: Great Poems or Pieces Thereof
Nobody disses like a poet disses
Whitman, Song of Myself [41]
I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes….but is that all?
and broke in days and years
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
from Yeats “Adam’s Curse”
yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
from Yeats, “Adam’s Curse”
Bees
Bees
Jane Hirshfield
In every instant, two gates.
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.
Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.
But the faint cries–ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?
“Bees” by Jane Hirshfield from The Lives of the Heart. © Harper Perennial, 1997.
They say that “Time assuages”
Emily Dickinson
They say that “Time assuages”-
Time never did assuage-
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age-
Time is a Test of Trouble-
But not a Remedy-
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady
wow, found this poem this evening. Didn’t know this one, and it really speaks to me right now. Time is a test of trouble….
Of Those Unwilling to Take the Bitter with the Sweet
from Sappho fragment 146, translated by Willis Barnstone
I care for neither honey
nor the honeybee
translated by Mary Barnard
It is clear now:
Neither honey nor
the honey bee is
to be mine again
not the fundamental I but the deep you
from “Proverbs and Songs”
Dedicated to Jose Ortega y Gasset
Antonio Machado
IV
But look in your mirror for the other one,
the other one who walks by your side.
V
Between living and dreaming
there is a third thing.
Guess it.
XV
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be what you aren’t.
XVII
In my solitude
I have seen things very clearly
that were not true.
XVIII
Water is good, so is thirst;
shadow is good, so is sun;
the honey from the rosemarys
and the honey of the bare fields.
XXI
Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them.
XXIV
Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin.
XXV
But don’t hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance.
XXVI
What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you.
XXVIII
Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up.
XXXIV
If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it’s OK:
gold is chosen for coins.
XL
But art?
It is pure and intense play,
so it is like pure and intense life,
so it is like pure and intense fire.
You’ll see the coal burning.
I taste a liquor never brewed
I taste a liquor never brewed —
Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed —
From Tankards scooped in Pearl —
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air — am I —
And Debauchee of Dew —
Reeling — thro endless summer days —
From inns of Molten Blue —
When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door —
When Butterflies — renounce their “drams” —
I shall but drink more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats —
And Saints — to windows run —
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the — Sun —
I always wanted more
from “Adah Isaacs Menken” by Enid Dame in Confessions
You see, most people
stun themselves through life
convinced a half-dead state
is all that they can bear.
I always wanted more:
to mount the world and ride it
through the farthest galaxies,
to feel that power flow
between my legs.
This Frenzy 