Man -- > Poem

[Man]

Poem



You


By Melissa S. Broadhead

baby you’re the best,
you’re nothing from the rest,
you fill my heart with lots of joy,
you let me know I’m not a toy,
you respect me in every way,
you bring out the best in my day,
so glad to be with you,
nothing else I’d rather do,
spending all of my free time,
baby its showing all the right signs,
letting me know you are here for me,
lets me know were meant to be


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Rosse In The Snow

By Casey L. Logsdon

The snow thickens as each step I take,
but to where I take these steps I know not.
All that is known is that I must keep walking,
walking in the cold desolate land of ice.
The silence slowly taking what little wits I have left,
for it feels like many eons ago that I set out on this 'stroll'
if that is what this could be called.
I' am growing colder now as the snow whips across my face
with the howling of the wind roaring like some beast enraged
that I have yet to give in and simply lay down upon the ice and drift into a silent death, but I know that with every step I take I grow closer to this place,
this heaven on earth.
Even though I know not where I go or even why,
the very thought of this place makes me’ happy even joyful
I don't care about the cold bearing down upon me, why,
because there is a burning inferno in my very soul
burning its way into my heart, leaving a mark that will last a life time.
Wait’ light, what is this light. In this light is a goddess beyond all reasoning.
With her golden-hair flowing, her eyes so filled with passion and love
they burned a blue so magnificent it was as if a river so peaceful and deep
flowed with her very soul,
and with skin more soft then the finest rose petal that sets its self in the Garden of Eden.
This, my lonely journey has come to an end.
I have found heaven on earth within this woman's arms.
As I hold her in my arms I see this desolate Ice world melt before my eyes to show this, my Amazon of passion and happiness
and the only thing in my mind other then the woman I hold is this prayer:

Thank God for this lady,
Who's slipped into my heart;
Earnestly, I ask of Thee,
That we two shall never be apart.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



thinking of you


By LeTasha D. Hale

I thought that you would like to know that someone's thoughts go wherever you go.
That someone will never forget the hours spent since we first meet.

That life is richer and sweeter by far for such a sweetheart as you are.
Know my constant prayer will be that God will keep you safe for me.


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Kindred Souls

By Shelly A. Trukowski

I have become incapable of
forgetting that I was blessed
to be in the presence of a goddess

A compassionate touch from her hand
will incapacitate you to where you are
unable to think with clarity

Receiving a warm soothing look
from her crystal like eyes will overwhelm
one with the desire for just another glance

Being in her arms feels like
the wings of an angel embracing
you as the electricity from her
spirit consumes your soul

Her mere being can uplift the weakest
spirit to feel majestic and her beauty
is as breathtaking as rays of sunlight
gently dancing across a sea of tranquility

The joy and strength she gives
to all that enter her life is a
blessing and a honor to witness





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Traveling Nowhere Blues


By Joseph O. McGowan

Walked downtown, today, baby
The sun was warm and bright
Walked downtown, today, baby
Shops were looking bright
Missing you all the time, baby
Morning, noon, and night

Used to be I wandered, honey
Out here on my own
Used to be I rambled, honey
Out here on my own
Just can't stand it, honey
Feeling so alone

Sure, I know it's me, momma
It really isn't you,
I confess it's me, momma
It really isn't you
But I feel so lost, momma
I don't know what to do

My heart is heavy, honey
Just can't take the strain
My heart is breaking, honey,
I'm feeling too much pain
Got some running money, honey
I guess I'll hop a train

I know I shouldn't leave you, baby,
You never did me wrong
I'm wrong to up and leave you, baby,
I'm just not very strong
Got to find a new place, baby
Somewhere I belong....





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Cat's Meow


By Nhea R. Duncan

With this man I fell in love,
When last night I thought we made love.
He kissed my lips,
Moist and tender;
Massaged my back,
Umm, I remember.
We laughed, talked, enjoyed
Others company.
He found a new spirit;
A new love inside of me.
An attraction so sweet,
One so rare;
Doors were opened to a life,
A life for us to share.
From the body to the mind,
This man is something else.
His eyes exude a passion,
One I've never felt.
Did we make love?
Yes, indeed.
Inside my soul he planted a seed
For our fate to grow
As long as time allows.
Loving this man has been
The Cat's Meow.






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Sweet Emotion


By Stephanie T. Stickel

i'm missing you already
you're simply a memory

silence in a crowded room
that's calling out to me

a distant cry inside of my heart
always tracks me down

it will never want to part
it will never let me down

thorns of emotion
sting me everyday

they remind me of you
and tell me to stay

tears of sweet hope
run down my young face

they sing to me softly
and show me your face

sorrow fills my empty soul
and tuck me in at night

it fills my room with silent screams
and holds on to me tight

my heart has only one love
one love to give

pure as the feathers of a dove
pure as the way we all shall live






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Movie of Our Life


by Darien

The Movie of Our Life

In the movie of our life,
starring you and me.
Hollywood is in for a treat,
wait until they see.

The stage is all ours,
so let's put on a good show.
We act these roles so well,
but they will never know.

Shakespeare seems out of date,
Romeo and Juliet got old.
Baby they have nothing on us,
so let our story be told.

We write romance scenes,
like forever had no end.
It all comes so natural,
with an amazing girlfriend.

We've only gotten started,
the end is far from now.
Nothing can break us up,
not even a broken vow.

People watch the notebook,
is that all Hollywood's got?
Girl, you and me alone,
make those scenes look hot.

They'll write a story one day,
and a movie to go with it.
Just get us to act it out,
It would be the greatest hit.

We may never be Hollywood's hottest,
Brad and Angelina will be in the past.
It will last as long as their careers,
but baby you and I will forever last.





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Morning Poem

By Danielle D. Curtis

Woke early one morning,
the earth lay cool and still,
when suddenly a tiny bird,
perched on my window sill,
it sang a song so lovely,
so carefree and so gay,
that slowly all my troubles,
began to slip away,
it sang of far off places,
of laughter and of fun,
it seemed his very song,
brought out the morning sun,
I pulled back the covers,
and crept slowly out of bed,
and gently shut the window,
and crushed his freaking head,
I'm not a morning person


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Car's Wish


By Jeremy J. Lile

I wish my driver would take care of me,
there's crack in the windshield I know he must see.
He drives me fast and hard,
not to the mention the paint is marred.
The rear tire has been low for a week,
he should worry about all the oil I leak.
All he cares is whether the radio will work,
forget how my front end tends to jerk.
The windshield wipers are broke,
not to mention all the black smoke.
A tune-up how great that would be,
I just wish my driver would take care of me




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The word


By Elena Juarez

I'm packing my jeans and my underwear too;
I've found a ship bound for the sea
For if my mom and dad read what I wrote on the wall
It's going to be curtains for me
It is a word
It seemed harmless at first
It has only four letters in all, I did it in pencil
It's not very dark; it's so nice and neat
And really quite small
But best to be safe,
I'd better be off to sail to those far distant lands
For my one little word
It's the kind of word that will grow hair in the palms of your hands
So it's me to the window and down to the yard
And away I go over the hill
Of course I could just turn my pencil around and erase it
All right then I Will!!




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Sex is a Sin



By Allison A. Porter

sex is a sin
kissing is a shame
boys have all the fun
while girls get the blame

one night of pleasure
9 months of pain
3 days in the hospital
with a baby to name

boys say you cute
boys say you fine
but when they have your baby’s
they say it ‘aint mine

you might think I’m crazy
but take my advice
don’t be a mother
before you be a wife






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



www.Where's Santa?.com

By Jannette M. Pritchett

www.Where's Santa?.com

It's Christmas Eve already
and I'm watching that Christmas tree!
Looking for Santa's presents
But there are NONE for me.
I know..I'll send him an e-mail
For I will proudly say
Been searching for Santa,
Have you lost the way?
Do you think he's trying to ignore me?
I was ver-ry good , you see
It really was NOT my fault
I drove Dad's car into that tree.









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Making Memories


By Krystal J. Ogans

I've been around the world.
I've observed the expansive Grand Canyon,
the towering Pyramids,
the lonely Eiffel Tower,
the exotic Rainforest,
and my own backyard.

I comfort and encourage you,
as I travel with you,
like a sole passenger,
that can not be forgotten.
I capture great, fantastic, magical, things,
and stockpile them deep within me.

I produce memories,
and hoard them,
just so you can hunt them out later.

I've been dropped,
sat on,
and stroked with small, sticky, children's fingers,
and nevertheless I do everything you ask.

And even if you misplace me on occasion,
when you unearth me,
you spend time with me.

I can erase your old memories,
even as you create new ones.
I am worn around your neck like the finest luxury jewels.

I am a
Camera
.









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



One minute poem


By Julia Pham

I've been in a mood
To write a poem or two
I don't know why
I do what I do
I guess it's just a natural thing
Like cutting a ham or sucking a string
All of these rhymes are in my head
Though they aren't good
Still give me some cred
Some people are weird
Some people are schmoes
Some people are just big stinking chodes
I choose not to be
A mean mean person
To be mean is to be scared
And I do declare
That I enjoy my decadent poems
For they foreshadow
What I can not see
And what I can not taste
Like gloopy glue paste
Or plastic veneers
Did anyone notice how much Mrs. Scoggin sneers?
The hallways are packed
With stupid dumb sheep
When I complain. I must be bleeped.
No school. No more.
I hateth thee!
You farce! You arse!
I can not be free!
Of all the idiotic idioms
And all the practical practices
Forget the idioms! Forget the sheep!
Practice not but snooze you fool!
Snooze I say! Snooze !








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Kiss


By Earl Graham

I am sending you a kiss
That will land on your knee,
Climb up your leg,
Scramble over you back,
And hide in your hair.
Then, when you are about to fall asleep,
It will bite you gently on your neck
And whisper in your ear,
"I love you."








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Slowpitch

By Amber M. Rainwater

You took me out of your glove and held me tightly in your hand.
Nervous as can be, you slowly let me go, not knowing what would happen.
You saw the target right over home plate, were I was supposed to go.
It was the perfect pitch made by the 'perfect pitcher.'

As I as flying through the air, it felt like nothing could happen to me
since I had been pitched by the 'perfect pitcher.'
A silver flash struck me in the eye.
It was like a warning in the distance.
I had the feeling something bad would happen,
but nothing could since I had the 'perfect pitcher.'

Soon as I knew it, it hit me. The silver thing from the distance hit me.
Like a slap in the face, it hurt. My pitcher wasn't so perfect after all.
I was hit hard. Out of the field I went, never to see my pitcher again.
Now I'm in the hands of someone else, but it's just not right.
My only wish is that maybe one day I can be back where I began,
in your hands being held tightly.








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



True Fear


By Kelley E. Rachels

Crying of fear
In the dark
Hurry and run
Says my heart.
But I lie there
Too scared to scream
Praying so hard
That it's just a dream.
Then I see the shadow
Slowly moving outside
I want to get up
And find a place to hide.
I gather up the courage
And yell, Please help me!
They quickly run away
As I can plainly see.
A bunch of questions
Everyone did ask
I don't know the answers
It happened so fast.
Feeling a little more brave
Not wanting to show fear
I act big and bad
Saying, They better not come back here!
The next night at supper
After I took my last bite
I got up from the table and said,
Who's sleeping with me tonight?








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



LIFE IN A FISH BOWL


By Andrea L. Shandley

I'm living in a fish bowl,
and I think I'm growing gills.
I'm getting all misshapen,
and I still can't pay my bill.
Like a germ under a microscope,
they watch me every day.
They want to know what I'll do next,
and what I have to say.
I'm really not that special,
just an aging flower child.
I no longer have a green thumb,
and I'm really not that wild.
But I still hold tight to my beliefs,
as all good hippies do.
Of Freedom, love, equality,
Peace, goodwill, and communes too.
But which of these are so darn odd,
that they must study me?
For I'm merely a reflection,
of what I'll someday be.
To my personal piper, I dance down life's path.
His music's so soothing and fine.
And the more they complain about all my bright colors,
the more rainbows I'll leave behind!









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Clear As Mud


By Yesenia A. Trelles

I go to bed each morning
I wake up every night
I spill my milk at breakfast
and then turn on the light

Each day I miss the school bus
I never have been late
I don't turn in my homework
My teacher thinks I'm great

My favorite game is basketball
I can't sink a shot
We haven't won a single game
Our team is getting hot

Last year I was in high school
Now I'm in second grade
Next year I'll be in daycare
I'll really have it made!

When I grow up, I'm hoping a baby
I can be, a pacifier in my mouth
my craddle in a tree

This poem is so confusing
It's all crystal clear
Perhaps I'll understand
it when I am born next year!









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Making Matches


By William R. Jackson

Matchmaker, matchmaker, what do I seek?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, get me a Greek.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, I'd hope he be wealthy.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, what have you done?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, who is this man I seemed to have won?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, he's a man short of purse.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, could you have done worse?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, why this man as my mate?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, I'm not happy my fate.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, oh will he please me?
Matchmaker, matchmaker, I'm oh so uneasy.
But matchmaker, matchmaker, his name is Gus.
And matchmaker, matchmaker, he is one of us.
Oh matchmaker, matchmaker, he's not who I seek.
But matchmaker, matchmaker, I'll take him he's Greek.










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Ode to a Dark Kitty Ninja

By Shawn C. Strong

Every night when darkness falls
an innocent kitten breaks cat law.
Balancing like an acrobat,
walks along an oak tree branch.
Hurry's over the roof with speed.
Then begins his robbing scheme.
Jumps from the roof with a silent fall,
hits the ground and jumps a wall.
Through the neighbor's fence and gate,
to their cats water and takes a drink.
Then another-then another-then,
SLURP!!!!!!
Finally the last bit is gone.
It is now time for the foods downfall.
Smells good to a cat. Like fish.
The cat dives for the food like a fruit bat that has just spotted an orchard.
CRUNCH!!!!!
The last survivors are destroyed.
Then as silently as he had come,
the thief is gone.
In the morning when I open the door.
The innocent kitten sits there like before.
Until the next night, my little friend.
Until the next night,
when the dark kitty ninja strikes again.











--> Man

[Man]

Poem



THOUGHT OF THE DAY


By Tamara Thompson

WHY WORRY AND HAVE
WRINKLES.
WHEN YOU CAN SMILE
AN HAVE DIMPLES.
IT'S HARD TO BE MAD.
IT'S EASY TO BE GLAD.










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



DateLife NYC


By Liza J. Kaplan

Warning: May be inappropriate for anyone in earshot
Dating is tough for a gal in the city
Cuz brains aren't enough and most guys just ain't pretty.
So let's get down to details both nitty and gritty,
And you'll see that it needn't always seem so shitty.

Though most guys aren't cute,
The numbers are ample
And it's less overwhelming to start with a sample.
So let's check out some options on becoming a twosome,
(And if that doesn't work you can always just screw some.)

With a click and a drag of your mouse you'll find guys,
Though some things are better off left to surprise.

As he sheds off his screenname of BigJew4You,
You choke back the tears as you try not to spew.
He's a bit of a freak, it is sad but it's true,
But the real horror is that you know you're one too.
So to see if your true personalities mesh,
It's safer to meet face to face, in the flesh.

When you discover there're choices there's always speed-dating,
Some guys are exciting, while some leave you hating.
But it's all in good fun with the prospect of mating,
It can be quite interesting. Translation: degrading.

Though there are many men on the streets of New York,
He might not keep kosher, aka-he eats pork,
But unless you are ready for a wedding and a stork,
You'll be lucky to find one who knows how to fork.

Though it sometimes feels hopeless, that just isn't so,
Remember that each trial helps you to grow,
So until your Prince Charming rides in on that horse,
Enjoy the adventure though it may seem off course.

Still it's true that dating is often quite scary,
Some young guys are bald, while others are hairy.
Neither of which you are dying to marry,
'Specially if he's 'friends' with a Tom, Dick or Larry.

So beware of speed dating and the internet site,
And believe me dear ladies, I too take this plight,
So until you should stumble upon Mr. Right,
Happy Dating to all, and to all a good fright!









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Bathroom Break--Oops to Late!

By Lynn M. Gillette

I sit here in my chair
Wriggling like a worm
I hope my teacher doesn't see me
Jiggle, wiggle, squirm.

I shift to the left
I scoot to the right
I cross my legs over
and I squeeze them awfully tight.

Perhaps I should have gone
To the bathroom when she said
Oh, no I feel a tinkle
Now my face is turning red!










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



James


By Robert Billingsley

There once was a young man named JamesWho loved to swim in the River Thames
Or was it the ThamesThat was a favorite of Jim's?
I don't know, I'm told they're the sames!!










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My Table Manners


By Desire N. Sayles

I bang my fists on the table
when I want my food.
I often hear my mom say
that it's very rude.
I slurp I gag I burp I crunch,
my lips make smacking sounds at lunch.
I wipe my hands on the couch,
my mom is such a neat, clean grouch!
I always seem to spill my drink
I even spit sometimes (I think)
My table manner's aren't that great,
They're actually pretty bad.
I hate when mom invites people over!
My manners are quite sad.










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My Dinner Loves Dancing

By L. John Riley jr.

My food loves to prance, to jump, to dance;
I wait for the time, I wait for the chance!
As mommy goes in and out of the room;
tables and chairs become their ballroom!
I flick my fingers; swing my wrist.
Beans and turkey are doing the twist!
Peas, plumbs, apples or mangos;
on to the walls, they're doing the tango!

With grace, with taste, they drip from the ceiling;
squash on my head is such a great feeling!
Talented textures cover my feet.
Sensations in rhythm; squished in my seat!
They run down my leg; slide down in rows;
a flavored performance of mashed potatoes!
My kitties are tickling, licking my feet;
purring an encore; a wonderful treat!

Even my puppies stand in display;
showing their talents; food for ballet!
With me as the maestro, directing the show;
waving my hands, perfection I throw!
Symphonic expressions fly through the air;
musical remnants of fruit in my hair! Just as
great things must come to an end; with wipes
in her hand, my mommy steps in!

She starts with the wiping, my ears and my toes.
She searches for dancers, stuck in my nose!
I know that she cares; doesn't she know?
She's ruining perfection; she's ruining my show!

Away with my spoons and off with my bib!
Off to my bath and into my crib!
Where now I can dream and think of my chance;
a time soon to come when my dinner will dance!









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



MARTY'S ADVENTURE


By Jason E. Eagle

An Irish pub, the place to be,
For a couple drinks just you and me,

Oh please! One more round oh kind sir,
A little more I'll be drunk for sure,

Later my head begins to spin,
With thoughts of puking, where's the trash bin,

I remain to gander a line,
At that fine honey, man she is fine,

She wasn't refusing my charm,
I told her that I meant her no harm,

Looking so good I couldn't preach,
I bought her a drink, sex on the beach,

One drink brought two, two became three,
Hormones were flying high, we were free,

Left the bar in quite a hurry,
Got in the car no need to worry,

Took her back to my pimpin pad,
Woke up late, believe me it was bad,

Don't go out to drink and party,
You may wake up with a guy named Marty!










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Claxton Chronicle


By John Price

Steve's a first-class driver
And he ain't no nine-to-fiver,
Going here and there and back unflaggingly.
Fog and rain's no never mind,
Never gripes about the grind,
And his sweet, angelic smile sets you free.

But he ain't no navigator!
Oh, he'll get there soon or later--
Later is the term that best defines his style.
Though his attitude's sublime,
He makes wrong turns all the time;
Takes him hours to traverse merely a mile!

One example will suffice,
Yet I could go twice or thrice
In recounting Stephen's syndrome, I declare.
Though it's perplexing to conceive,
And I know you won't believe,
It's the truth, the whole truth--nothing but, I swear!

Now, it's but three-hundred feet
To the shops across the street
From the motel where we passed the Cary night.
When we started there one evening
To have dinner, we left leaving
With the thought that we'd arrive ere morning's light.

Well, to make this story shorter,
We took longer than we orter--
Nigh on longer than this verse before I cease.
When we passed through Oklahoma,
Kingman, Barstow, and Pomona,
I suspicioned Steve had turned west 'stead of east!

We were finally restored
To the Fairfield Inn once more;
As it turned out, little worse for the event.
But traveling with Steve in Cary
Is like going on safari:
Better take along a porter and a tent.

Do we love him? That's for sure.
But should he offer to chauffeur,
Make excuses--anything and all you can.
Take a train, a plane, a bus--
Even walk there if you must--
But, for God's sake, don't--PLEASE don't!--get in the van.










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



10- reasons I love basketball


By Candace Holtketter

10.The fresh smell of my shoes after 4 quarters.
9.Juking defenders out of their shorts.
8.Better than doing chores at home.
7.The wonderful squeak of the shoes on a wood court.
6.The need to take out all my wrath on the defenders.
5.I make high socks look good.
4.It's either this or play soccer (no contest there).
3.Nothing feels better than having parents yelling that I'm just to good.
2.Nothin' but net!
1.Making passes has nothing to do with dating










--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Ode to a Fisherperson

By Mavis L. Eldridge

Fishin' in the ocean
Fishin' in a stream
All the same to me
I'm Fishin' with a dream

Dream of Fishin' early
Dream of Fishin' late
Dream of some so big
They fill my dinner plate

Fishin' with a fly
Fishin' with a worm
It just makes sense to me
My loyalty is firm

Standin' in the river
Waders to my hip
Fish swim all around me
Try to hook a lip

Fishin' through the ice
Lookin' down the holes
Settin' all my tip-ups
Jiggin' with my poles

Fishin' off the dock
Sunlight in my eye
Castin' long and deep
Good as any guide

Fishin' for my lunch
Fishin' for my fun
Fry me up a piece
And slap it on a bun!!!











--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Junior High


By Anne Altman

In Junior High, you will get high, if, you eat the cafeteria fries. I don't. Do you know why? It's the cafeteria fries. They have these greasy little things, that are like wings, and they move around in your mouth. So if you want to get high, eat the cafeteria fries.








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Little Sable Brown Eyes


By Amber I. Curry

little sable brown eyes
may be young but mighty wise.

pattycake and backyard games
help to grow a sassy dame.

stepping live to ragtime beats
bring brown boy for her to meet.

She no longer cares to play
for now love has come her way.
afternoon tea loves last proclaim
his lion heart she soon did tame.

just as turtledoves are pure
she now shy, sweet, and demure.
knowing that those games when young
help to catch brown boy she won.

for on that same childhood swing
did he give to her a ring.

pattycake and backyard games
help to grow a sassy dame.

little sable brown eyes
may be young but mighty wise.







--> Man

[Man]

Poem



learning algebra

By Keri A. Hanson

Algebra begins with an unknown.
To solve the problem,work must be shown.Parentheses are added to make problems look harder,but you can still do it, because you are much smarter!

The next day you learn coefficients and terms.You get confused,and say you'll have to adjourn. When you get back, you have a new mission,properties of numbers, using addition!

Exponents and factors are the new step,
but all of a sudden,you came down with strep! The day you return, you feel like trying,properties of something called multiplying!

Dispersing of candy is done very proud,
little do they know,one was missed in the crowd.The distributive property was explained very well,by the blank looks on faces, you could certainly tell!

Equations of numbers were taught left and right,finding the unknown,which was clean out of sight!Adding the opposite, or something diverse,every second that passed, the problem got worse!

Much anguish we just could not avoid,
because the amount of homework really got us annoyed!Solving more equations, ended the frivolity.No matter what, there was inequality!

Combining like terms, and variables on each side, searching absolute values, we looked far and wide.Simplifying numbers, where does it end? Positive, negative, then drawing a graph! By the end of the year, I'll have had enough Math!





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



My Happy Poem

By Amanda R. Quigley

So here it is,
The happy one.
Today I'll have a bit of fun.

A rhapsody.
A melody.
My opus and my symphony.

A delectable, delightful treat.
A candy, oh, a wicked sweet.

My soul.
A stroll.
Completely droll.
Delightfully out of control.

So here you go.
My vertigo.
My trip through miles and miles of snow.

Hold on tight.
Don't try to fight.
My happy poem,
Just drips delight

Like honey from a child's tongue,
Or whispers of the aging young.

A lullaby that makes you cry,
The tears of happy years gone by.

Watch your step,
The path is steep,
So take a breath before you leap

Into a world of endless bliss,
As charming as a baby's kiss.

And right when you arrive right there,
You'll never leave.
It's true.
I swear.

My world,
My truth.
My universe.
My haven in my merry verse.

It welcomes you,
With open arms.
You're flattered by its mirthful charms.

So stay awhile.
Right in the shade
Of the happiest poem
I've ever made.



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Senioritis

By Emily A. Von Dollen

As the snow begins to melt, and grass beings to grow
The time has come again for every senior to know
Graduation is approaching, school will soon end.
No more boring homework, no drama among friends.
Summer will be excellent, relaxing in the sun.
We won't look back on what we've done
Because high school is soon over and young children must move on
After lugging around heavy backpacks, we are all very brawn.
Laughing, smiling, secrets and surprises
Are almost forgotten about when graduation arises.
So here's to the glory years, all the fun times we shared.
Get ready for the college years, is anyone prepared?




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



ME

By Amanda Garrison




See I'm going to sit back, relax, and just be me
But it's not as easy as it seems.
We have so many imitators lost up in worldly things
That our motivators are hidden behind the scenes.
They try to make us all the same, but can't see outside the box
Nobody's exactly the same from body shape to the color of
one's skin
So why does it matter if your out or in?
In my eyes, I came from kings and queens
Brought here from the mother land mixed up with chocolate
and some milk
But some say I'm butter pecan.
See I'm one of a kind cause I stand out from the crowd
I'm not as loud and flashy as some, but I carry myself in a way
to be called classy
So ladies and gents, boys and girls today who do want to be
Cause I'm going to sit back, relax, and just be me


--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Things I Love About You


By Nicole M. Goretzke

Your eyes,
they were the first thing
I noticed about you.
They captured my soul.
In the first second you looked at
Me as a woman I was yours.

Your smile,
It lights up my life,
Brings me more peace than the rain.
I could melt in that smile.
I fall in love with you all over again
Every time I see it.

Your fingertips,
The way they linger on my skin,
So gently I can barely feel them
Sometimes.
Other times smoothing over
My body like a sheath.

Your hands,
That show me your love
In a way that words
Never could.
They bring me safety and steadiness.
Thank you for that.

Your body,
The way it holds my attention,
The way your every nuance
Makes me want you even more than
The last time I saw you.

Your feet,
How could I not love them?
They are the part of you
That allows me to show you how much
I love you.
I can spoil you to death
And there's nothing you can do about it.

I love all these things about you,
But what I love the most,
Is the You I fell in love with.
The You that makes me feel like
I can do and be anything I want to.
The You that lets me know
That I will always have someone Standing beside me, helping me
To be strong and catching me when
I can no longer steady myself.
Thank you.

I Love You.



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Winter


By Jared R. Harmon

The days grow darker as the nights grow chill.
The wind blows shrill as darkest nights grow chill.
The wolves howl, the moon rises, as nights grow chill.
Darkness dances as snowy winter falls.
The swirling snow caught by the breeze slowly
Falls, making snowy mounds over dark halls.
Death comes touching all, taking lives in icy
Halls. Fires glow, torches sputter, as the snow falls.
The days grow darker as the nights grow chill.
The wind blows shrill as darkest nights grow chill.
The wolves howl, the moon rises, as nights grow chill.
Darkness dances as snowy winter falls.
Brittle shields shatter, swords stuck by frost.
The wind dies, the silence sweeps through dark halls.
Snow keeps falling, men stop dying, as Life
Breathes back that which was taken as the snow falls.
The days grow darker as the nights grow chill.
The wind blows shrill as darkest nights grow chill.
The wolves howl, the moon rises, as nights grow chill.
Darkness dances as snowy winter falls.
All things stop, for the snowy winter falls.



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Sea

By Kathryn E. Wood

Early in the morning,
On a lonely summer's day,
I walked along the beach
While the children were at play.

It was a calm, gray morning;
Warm, but not too hot,
And as I searched the Ocean's face,
I found something I thought I would not.

I stepped into the shallow Sea,
Curling my toes against the cold.
Feeling the water hug my legs,
My heart grew bright and bold.

The tide pulled in and out,
Bringing my soul along:
And as the sun shone on the waves,
I heard the endless song.

It started as a gentle rumble,
Rising up from the Ocean bed:
But before the music ended,
It was a roaring in my head.

She sang of sorrow, pain, and hate,
Of joy and heart-felt glee,
Of love that was betrayed and lost,
She bared her soul to me.

The centuries of her life
Swam swiftly through my mind.
I touched my cheeks to find them wet,
I found I had been blind.

I dried my eyes, washed my face,
And stepped slowly to the shore;
I took my children in my arms,
And began to weep once more.

They quickly asked me what was wrong,
I said, 'Nothing, Mommy's fine.'
I went back home and lived my life,
But remembering that day on the shoreline.

I'm an old woman now:
My children all are grown.
I feel heavy and much too cold,
And weary to the bone.

I have a cottage by the Sea,
And though my body's worn:
I walk her shores every day,
For this is where my soul was born



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Lies


By Donald Ray Cason

Out of your mouth;
they some spontaneously.
Through your mind;
they live uneasily.

To your eyes;
they show you deciet.
In your world;
they distinguish all peace.

During elections;
they are used for deception.
In court;
they cause many questions.

In life;
people rely on them.
Come death;
they cause people to burn.

All my life;
they have caused me much pain.
Every day and night;
they pry at my mind.

So from here on out;
they shall try even harder.
For now I have built;
a defense against Lies.




--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Take Me


By Valerie V. Strasburger

Take me away to the wilds of the woods
Make me free to love the soft green hills
Mosey me down a stringy rocky stream
Carry me to the end of this impossible dream

Send my tears dripping to the heart of the storm
Rend my ache from a soul trodden and worn
Lift my press crushing each breath
Pick my sorrow out from my breast

Kiss the sunbeams before they rise each morn
Bless each ship as it sails from it's mooring
Consent each trial as you test our faith
Lament each sinner as his testimony is stayed

Help me home in my hours of despair
Delve me into kind and comforting care
Soothe me softly to silent sleep
Remove me to paradise where my laughter will keep



--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Limericks


What is a Limerick? How do you write a Limerick?
A limerick is a short form of poetry known for its wit.
To write a limerick follow these simple steps.

First, read the example limericks below by Edward Lear (1812-1888)

There was a Young Lady of Portugal,
Whose ideas were excessively nautical
She climbed up a tree,
To examine the sea,
But declared she would never leave Portugal

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said 'It is just as I feared! -
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'

A limerick is a verse of five lines, usually humorous The last word of lines one, two, and five must rhyme with each other, and the last word of lines three and four must rhyme with each other. (And not with lines 1,2 and 3).





--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Always You

Before I dream may I hope for You.
Before I long may I reach for You.
Before I judge may I listen to You.
Before I rush may I rest with You.

Before I shout may I call on You.
Before I doubt may I hear from You.
Before I brag may I point to You.
Before I fear may I trust in You.

Before I act may I remember You . . .
So that in these things, in all I do,
It is not I that am first, but always You.


Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Path Home

To know,
To will...
To dare to see.

To strive,
To live...
To die to Be.



Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



If you know the content of your own heart ...

If you know the content of your own heart ...
If you can be consciously aware of this condition ...
Then you not only know the secret contents
Of the heart of everyone else you meet,
But you also know that there is no difference
Between you and all of these "others"

In the realization of this undivided life
You are given the Grace of knowing
That God is one ... And that each one of us
Is a secret measure of His divine life.





Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Remember to Remember


When your senses reel,
And all you can feel
Is the pull of the world on you ...

... Cling fast to your Aim,
Remember His name
And strive in your Work to be True.







Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Merciful

But How ...
In that moment of Sweetness
When you're relieved of all debt,
Can you turn right 'round in yourself
And in an instant forget ...

How hard ...
And unbearably heavy
It has been just to be you,
And yet still be so demanding
Others must pay you your due?









Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



And as to Life's Course...


And as to Life's Course,
Do hold this one thought:
We are made,
Each of us,
As much by what we will,
As by what we will not.





Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Secret of Perfect Relationships

The less we learn to long for -- or depend upon --
Special understanding from others,

The less we will suffer for not receiving this.


The less we suffer over what others

Seem incapable of giving to us,

The less unhappy will we find ourselves

In these unanswered moments of our lives

Spent in the company of friends and foes alike.



The less pain we have over what life appears to deny us,

The more at peace we naturally become with ourselves.



The more of this serenity we grow to know within ourselves,

The easier it becomes for us to give to others

This harmony founded in our New Understanding.



Whenever we give others this new order of Understanding

Without asking for anything in return,

Those we greet with this Gift are silently touched; they are moved

By this willingness to put their concerns before our own.

And it is this one action that awakens in them . . .

Their sleeping need to respond in kind.



Happiness is the wholeness found in conscious kindness.

This is the secret of perfect relationships.







Guy Finley






--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Prayer in Spring


Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.



~Robert Frost








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



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.

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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.





~Robert Frost








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.





~Robert Frost








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Silken Tent...


She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.






~Robert Frost








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Two Look at Two



Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.







~Robert Frost








--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Original Oak



Strike not the least cleft into the original wood
lest your head should split from sheer fright
and joy should fade as thoughts rise
like vapor in the porous mind.

Happily, the timeless, selfsame wood
ever remains uncleaved in flawless mystery,
even as the mind proudly swings its ax,
creating a ceaseless cascade of evanescent sparks.

'Ihe old oak stands firm.
It is the mind that bends and groans
in the wind-swept space of its own design.










~Georg Feuerstein









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Body


I call this body my own.
Yet, how human can it be
when trillions of microbes
make it their home?
It is better to view it
as a meeting ground
for diverse forms of life
wanting to survive.
Why then all these proprietary feelings?
Who owns the Moon, the Sun, this Earth?












~Georg Feuerstein









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Inside / Outside


Most people prettily color the outside
and leave the inside in shambles.
Some busily paint the inside
unconcerned about the outside.
A few, only a few renovate the inside
and the outside
for all-round joy.














~Georg Feuerstein









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Wounded Mother EarthMother!




Nursing on your broad body,
I have grown strong in limb and thought.
Never have I lacked the necessities of life,
and I have even taken more
than needed and, sometimes,
more than what was good for me.
Mother!
Not once did you hesitate to succor me;
not once did your generosity falter.
However far afield I wander,
every molecule of air exudes your kindness;
every droplet of water is a tear of love;
every ounce of soil your fond offering.
Mother!
Forgive your child all his foolish excesses
and reckless exploitations.
Over and over have I plundered and wounded you
like a nocturnal thief,
thinking you would not notice or mind,
or not thinking anything at all.
Mother!
You lie before me bleeding,
and I am the callous cause of your plight.
Unable to hide my guilt or shame,
I stand trembling at your righteous wrath,
which is as certain as your love.




~Georg Feuerstein









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Tara




Seeing all,
she crosses over
and never rests.
Ever giving,
she crosses over
and heals heart's wounds.
Moving swiftly,
she crosses over
and unfetters the shackled mind.
Embracing everyone,
she crosses over
and darkness retreats.






~Georg Feuerstein









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The Hymn of Man




I was,
And I am.
So shall I be to the end of time,
For I am without end.

I have cleft the vast spaces of the infinite, and
taken flight in the world of fantasy, and drawn nigh
to the circle of light on high.
Yet behold me a captive of matter.
I have hearkened to the teachings of Confucius,
and listened to the wisdom of Brahma, and sat
beside the Buddha beneath the tree of knowledge.
Behold me now contending with ignorance and
unbelieving.

I was upon Sinai when the Lord showed Himself
to Moses. By the Jordan I beheld the Nazarene's
miracles. In Medina I heard the words of the
Apostle of Arabia.

Behold me now a prisoner of doubt.
I have seen Babylon's strength and Egypt's glory
and the greatness of Greece. My eyes cease not
upon the smallness and poverty of their works.
I have sat with the witch of Endor and the priests
of Assyria and the prophets of Palestine, and I cease
not to chant the truth.

I have learned the wisdom that descended on
India, and gained mastery over poetry that welled
from the Arabian's heart, and hearkened to the
music of people from the West.
Yet am I blind and see not; my ears are stopped
and I do not hear.

I have borne the harshness of unsatiable
conquerors, and felt the oppression of tyrants and the
bondage of the powerful.
Yet am I strong to do battle with the days.
All this have I heard and seen, and I am yet a
child. In truth shall I hear and see the deeds of
youth, and grow old and attain perfection and
return to God.

I was,
And I am.
So shall I be to the end of time,
For I am without end.





~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Visit From Wisdom



In the stillness of night Wisdom came and stood
by my bed. She gazed upon me like a tender mother
and wiped away my tears, and said : "I have heard
the cry of your spirit and I am come to comfort it.
Open your heart to me and I shall fill it with light.
Ask of me and I shall show you the way of truth."

And I said : "Who am I, Wisdom, and how came
I to this frightening place? What manner of things
are these mighty hopes and these many books and
strange patterns ? What are these thoughts that pass
as doves in flight? And these words composed by
desire and sung by delight, what are they? What are
these conclusions, grievous and joyous, that embrace
my spirit and envelop my heart? And those
eyes which look at me seeing into my depths and
fleeing from my sorrows ? And those voices mourning
my days and chanting my littleness, what are they ?

"What is this youth that plays with my desires
and mocks at my longings, forgetful of yesterday's
deeds, rejoicing in paltry things of the moment,
scornful of the morrow's coming?

"What is this world that leads me whither I know
not, standing with me in despising? And this earth
that opens wide its mouth to swallow bodies and
lets evil things to dwell on its breast? What is this
creature that is satisfied with the love of fortune,
whilst beyond its union is the pit? Who seeks Life's
kiss whilst Death does smite him, and brings the
pleasure of a minute with a year of repentance, and
gives himself to slumber the while dreams call him?
What is he who flows with the rivers of folly to the
sea of darkness? O Wisdom, what manner of things
are these?"

And she answered, saying :
"You would see, human creature, this world
through the eyes of a god. And you would seek to
know the secrets of the hereafter with the thinking
of men. Yet in truth is this the height of folly.
"Go you to the wild places and you shall find
there the bee above the flowers and behold the eagle
swooping down on his prey. Go you into your neighbor's
house and see then the child blinking at the
firelight and his mother busied at her household
tasks. Be you like the bee and spend not the days of
spring looking on the eagle's doing. Be as the child
and rejoice in the firelight and heed not your mother's
affairs. All that you see with your eyes was and
is for your sake.

"The many books and the strange patterns and
beautiful thoughts are the shades of those spirits
that came ere you were come. The words that you
do weave are a bond between you and your brothers.
The conclusions, grievous and joyous, are the
seeds that the past did scatter in the field of the
spirit to be reaped by the future. That youth who
plays with your desires is he who will open the door
of your heart to let enter the light. This earth with
the ever open mouth is the savior of your spirit from
the body's slavery. This world which walks with
you is your heart; and your heart is all that you
think that world. This creature whom you see as
ignorant and small is the same who has come from
God's side to learn pity through sadness, and knowledge
by way of darkness."

Then Wisdom put her hand on my burning brow
and said :
"Go then forward and do not tarry, for before
walks perfection. Go, and have not fear of thorns
on the path, for they deem naught lawful save corrupted blood."






~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Tear And A Smile


I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
for the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
to flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
to be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
a smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than
that I live weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and longing,
and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
and sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
the sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
together and area cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
to the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to return
to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
the greater spirit to move in the world of matter
and pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
and the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
and return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.






~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Joy and Sorrow


THEN a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter
rises was oftentimes filled with yourtears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your
being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very
cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes yourspirit,
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart
and you shall find it is only thatwhich has given
you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping

for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow,"
and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with
you at your board, remember that the other is
asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales
between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at
standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh
his gold and his silver, needs mustyour joy
or your sorrow rise or fall.





~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Pain


AND a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break,that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears.







~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Religion



AND an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion.

And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor
reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever
springing in the soul, even while the hands
hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions,
or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying,
"This for God and this for myself;
This for my soul, and this other for mybody?"

All your hours are wings that beat through
space from self to self.

He who wears his morality but as his best
garment were better naked.

The wind and the sun will tear no holes
in his skin.

And he who defines his conduct by ethics
imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

The freest song comes not through bars
and wires.

And he to whom worshiping is a window, to open
but also to shut, has not yet visited the house
of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.

Your daily life is your temple and your
religion.

Whenever you enter into it take with
you your all.

Take the plough and the forge and
the mallet and the lute, The things
you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.

For in revery you cannot rise above your
achievements nor fall lower than your failures.

And take with you all men:

For in adoration you cannot fly higher
than their hopes nor humble yourself lower
than their despair.

And if you would know God be not
therefore a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see
Him playing with your children.

And look into space; you shall see Him
walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms
in the lightning and descending in rain.

You shall see Him smiling in flowers,
then rising and waving His hands in trees.






~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Teaching


THEN said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching.

And he said:

No man can reveal to you aught but that which
already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the
temple, among his followers, gives not of his
wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter
the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to
the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding
of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which
is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which
arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers
can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but
he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to
another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in
God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone
in his knowledge of God and his understanding of the earth.







~Kahlil Gibran









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




That sounds wonderful...


Good poetry
Makes a beautiful naked woman
Materialize from
Words,

Who then says,
With a sword precariously waving
In her hands,

"If you look at my loins
I will cut off your head,

And reach down and grab your spirit
By its private parts,

And carry you off to heaven
Squealing in joy."

Hafiz says,
"That sounds wonderful, just
Wonderful.

Someone please - start writing
Some great
Lines."









~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Don't Despair...


Joseph to his father in Canaan shall return, don't despair walk on;
and Jacob's hut will brighten with flowers, don't despair walk on.

Aching hearts heal in time, vanished hopes reappear,
the disparate mind will be pacified, don't despair walk on.

As the spring of life grows the newly green meadow,
roses will crown the sweet nightingale's song, don't despair walk on

If the world does not turn to your whims these few days,
cosmic cycles are preparing to change, don't despair walk on.

If desperation whispers you'll never know God,
it's the talk of hidden games in the veil, don't despair walk on.

O heart, when the vast flood slashes life to its roots,
Captain Noah waits to steer you ashore, don't despair walk on.

If you trek as a pilgrim through sands to Kaabeh
with thorns lodged deep in your soul shouting why, don't despair walk on

Though oases hide dangers and your destiny's far,
there's no pathway that goes on forever, don't despair walk on.

My trials and enemies face me on their own,
but mystery always backs up my stand, don't despair walk on.

Hafez, weakened by poverty, alone in the dark,
this night is your pathway into the light, don't despair walk on.






~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Suspended Blue Ocean


The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

Into my heart and upon
My skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful Game."








~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Laughing at the word two


Only

That Illumined
One

Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form

Had the charm to win my
Heart.

Only a Perfect One

Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two

Can make you know

Of

Love.






~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Would you think it odd...


Would you think it odd if Hafiz said,

"I am in love with every church
And mosque
And temple
And any kind of shrine

Because I know it is there
That people say the different names
Of the One God."

Would you tell your friends
I was a bit strange if I admitted

I am indeed in love with every mind
And heart and body.

O I am sincerely
Plumb crazy
About your every thought and yearning
And limb

Because, my dear,
I know
That it is through these

That you search for Him






~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Now is the Time



Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.









~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Last Night's Storm


Last night's storm was a journey to the Beloved.
I surrender to that, the wind that
is my Friend, and my work.

Each night, the lightning flashes.
Every morning, a breeze.

Not in some protected place, but in the flood
of the heart's pumping, in the wind
of a rosebud's opening out,
that puts a small crown on each narcissus.

A tired hand collapses, exhausted,
that in the morning holds your hair again.

Peace comes when we are friends together,
remembering. Hafiz! Your honest desire
and your benevolence free the soul
to emerge as what it is.










~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




You Don't Have to Act Crazy Anymore


You Don't Have to Act Crazy Anymore -
We all know you were good at that.

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror -
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this Universe with sacred Life
So long ago

And join you Eternally
With all Existence - with God!










~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The Happy Virus


I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious -
So kiss me.







~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




What Should We Do about that Moon ?


A wine bottle fell from a wagon
And broke open in a field.


That night hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

And did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
And began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the 'night candle' rose into the sky
And one drunk creature, laying down his instrument
Said to his friend - for no apparent
Reason,

"What should we do about that moon?"

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.









~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The Danger



Love seems easy in a circle of friends,
But it's difficult, difficult.

Morning air through the window, the taste of it,
with every moment camel bells leaving the caravanserai.

This is how we wake, with winespills
On the prayer rug, and even the tavernmaster
is loading up. My life has gone
From willfullness to disrepute,
And I won't conceal, either, the joy
That led me out toward laughter.

Mountainous ocean, a moon hidden behind clouds,
The terror of being drawn under.

How can someone with a light shoulder-pack
Walking the beach know how a night sea-journey is?

Hafiz! Stay in the dangerous life that's yours.
THERE you'll meet the face
That dissolves fear.










~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem




I know the Way You Can Get



I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.

For I am a Sweet Old Vagabond
With an Infinite Leaking Barrel
Of Light and Laughter and Truth
That the Beloved has tied to my back.

Dear one,
Indeed, please bring your heart near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!





~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem


The Secret


I need a drink, wine maiden, that cup with grape stain lined,
for love that once seemed pleasing has burdened down my mind.

Ah smell how West Wind wafts her musk through the tavern door;
now feel our pumping hearts beat fast, watch our fears unwind.

Why do we who visit love think we'd stay forever?
We know the yearn to wander will always lovers find.

So we asked the Elder: What law makes love bring pain?
Sobriety, he laughed, you'll feel better when you're wined.

Your plight cannot be aided by that dull fear to risk
the toss and turn of love's dark storm upon the ocean blind.

See clear in all these gathered friends who still hold you dear
love's secret is that you must love without desires that bind.

Hafez, enjoy the one you love, drink deep and embrace;
seek not with her to please your world, just give love and be kind.







~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



I Will Hire You as a Minstrel



Take one of my tears,
Throw it into the ocean

And watch the salt in the wounds
Of this earth and men begin to disappear.

Take one of my tears
And cradle it in your palm.
Mount a great white camel
And carry my love into every desert,
Paying homage to every Prophet
Who has ever walked in our world.

O take one of my tears
And stop weeping only for sadness,

For there is so much More to this life
Than you now understand.

Take one of my tears
And become like the Happy One,
O like the Happy One --
Who now lives Forever
Within me.

When a drop from my Emerald Sea
Touches your soul's mouth,
It will dissolve everything but your Joy
And an Eternal Wonder.

Then,
The Beloved will gladly hire you
As His minstrel

To go traveling about this world,
Letting everyone upon this earth

Hear
The Beautiful Names of God
Resound in a thousand chords!

Hafiz himself is singing tonight
In Resplendent Glory,

For the cup in my heart
Has revealed the Beloved's Face,
And I have His oath in writing

That He will never again depart.

0 Hafiz, take one of your tears,
For you are weeping like a golden candle-

Throw one tear into the Ocean of your own verse

And let the wounds
Of every lover of God who kneels in prayer
And comes close to your words
Begin, right now,
To disappear.









~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



What Happens?


What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafiz.









~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



A Brimming Cup of Wine


A FLOWER-TINTED cheek, the flowery close
Of the fair earth, these are enough for me
Enough that in the meadow wanes and grows
The shadow of a graceful cypress-tree.
I am no lover of hypocrisy;
Of all the treasures that the earth can boast,
A brimming cup of wine I prize the most--
This is enough for me!

To them that here renowned for virtue live,
A heavenly palace is the meet reward;
To me, the drunkard and the beggar, give
The temple of the grape with red wine stored!
Beside a river seat thee on the sward;
It floweth past-so flows thy life away,
So sweetly, swiftly, fleets our little day--
Swift, but enough for me!

Look upon all the gold in the world's mart,
On all the tears the world hath shed in vain
Shall they not satisfy thy craving heart?
I have enough of loss, enough of gain;
I have my Love, what more can I obtain?
Mine is the joy of her companionship
Whose healing lip is laid upon my lip--
This is enough for me!

I pray thee send not forth my naked soul
From its poor house to seek for Paradise
Though heaven and earth before me God unroll,
Back to thy village still my spirit flies.
And, Hafiz, at the door of Kismet lies
No just complaint-a mind like water clear,
A song that swells and dies upon the ear,
These are enough for thee!







~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Fair Wind, Be Kind


Fair wind, be kind -
Tell that lovely gazelle who it was
That made me wander distraught
Across desert sands and mountain cliffs.

The seller of sweets,
May she have long life -
Why is she not generous
To this parrot longing for honey?

Oh flower,
Is it your proud nature
That keeps you aloof
From the bird dancing around you?

It is the beauty of one's nature
That nets the seekers.
Ropes and cages never trap
The wary bird.

How is it that those tall beauties,
With black eyes shining
From faces of moonlike radiance -
Pass me by?

How can your face show such beauty,
While here in Earth
You are the image
Of inconstancy and faithlessness?

Hafiz -
Your sayings draw melodies
From the stars
And set even the son of Mary to dance.

While you keep the company of the enlightened
And quaff the mystic wine,
Forget not those, who sail upon the heavens
As birds glide upon the wind.







~Hafiz









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Interrelationship


You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy


1989. Written during a retreat for psychotherapists held in Colorado
in response to Fritz Perls' statement, "You are you, and I am me, and
if by chance we meet, that's wonderful. If not, it couldn't be helped."








~~Thich Nhat Hanh









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Non-Duality


The bell tolls at four in the morning.
I stand by the window,
barefoot on the cool floor.
The garden is still dark.
I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes.
There is no light in the deepest hours of the night.
Yet, I know you are there
in the depth of the night,
the immeasurable world of the mind.
You, the known, have been there
ever since the knower has been.

The dawn will come soon,
and you will see
that you and the rosy horizon
are within my two eyes.
It is for me that the horizon is rosy
and the sky blue.
Looking at your image in the clear stream,
you answer the question by your very presence.
Life is humming the song of the non-dual marvel.
I suddenly find myself smiling
in the presence of this immaculate night.
I know because I am here that you are there,
and your being has returned to show itself
in the wonder of tonight's smile.
In the quiet stream,
I swim gently.
The murmur of the water lulls my heart.
A wave serves as a pillow
I look up and see
a white cloud against the blue sky,
the sound of Autumn leaves,
the fragrance of hay-
each one a sign of eternity.
A bright star helps me find my way back to myself.

I know because you are there that I am here.
The stretching arm of cognition
in a lightning flash,
joining together a million eons of distance,
joining together birth and death,
joining together the known and the knower.

In the depth of the night,
as in the immeasurable realm of consciousness,
the garden of life and I
remain each other's objects.
The flower of being is singing the song of emptiness.

The night is still immaculate,
but sounds and images from you
have returned and fill the pure night.
I feel their presence.
By the window, with my bare feet on the cool floor,
I know I am here
for you to be.


This poem is about an insight related to vijnanavada. It is a difficult poem, fit to be explained in a course on vijnanavada. You are there for me, and I am here for you. That is the teaching of interbeing. The term interbeing was not yet used at that time. Although we think of the Avatamsaka when we hear the term interbeing,the teaching of interbeing also has its roots in vijttanavada, because in vijnanavada, cognition always includes subject and object together. Consciousness is always consciousness of something.







~~Thich Nhat Hanh









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Disappearance


The leaf tips bend
under the weight of dew.
Fruits are ripening
in Earth's early morning.
Daffodils light up in the sun.
The curtain of cloud at the gateway
of the garden path begins to shift:
have pity for childhood,
the way of illusion.

Late at night,
the candle gutters.
In some distant desert,
a flower opens.
And somewhere else,
a cold aster
that never knew a cassava patch
or gardens of areca palms,
never knew the joy of life,
at that instant disappears-
man's eternal yearning.




~~Thich Nhat Hanh









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Beauty of Spring Blocks My Way



Spring comes slowly and quietly
to allow Winter to withdraw
slowly and quietly.
The color of the mountain afternoon
is tinged with nostalgia.
The terrible war flower
has left her footprints-
countless petals of separation and death
in white and violet.
Very tenderly, the wound opens itself in the depths of my heart.
Its color is the color of blood,
its nature the nature of separation.

The beauty of Spring blocks my way.
How could I find another path up the mountain?

I suffer so. My soul is frozen.
My heart vibrates like the fragile string of a lute
left out in a stormy night.
Yes, it is really there. Spring has really come.
But the mourning is heard
clearly, unmistakably,
in the wonderful sounds of the birds.
The morning mist is already born.
The breeze of Spring in its song
expresses both my love and my despair.
The cosmos is so indifferent. Why?
To the harbor, I came alone,
and now I leave alone.

There are so many paths leading to the homeland.
They all talk to me in silence. I invoke the Absolute.
Spring has come
to every corner of the ten directions.
Its, alas, is only the song
of departure.

1951. This was written less than twelve hours after I fell in love
with a nun. It happened at the Vien Giac Temple on New Year's
Eve in the beautiful village of Cau Dat in the highlands. She was
twenty. Both of us realized that we wanted to continue being a
monk and a nun. So we decided to depart from each other. This
was not easy. I was lucky to having a loving and understanding
sangha with me at that time that made it possible. Forty-one years
later, I told this story in a twenty-one day retreat at Plum Village
in English, on the theme of Vipassana meditation in the Mahayana
tradition.






~~Thich Nhat Hanh









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Please Call Me by My True Names



I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us.
The first is a twelve-year-old girl, one of the boat
people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a
sea pirate, and after that she threw herself into the
sea. The second person is the sea pirate, who was born
in a remote village in Thailand. And the third person
is me. I was very angry, of course. But I could not take
sides against the sea pirate. If I could have, it would
have been easier, but I couldn't. I realized that if I
had been born in his village and had lived a similar life
- economic, educational, and so on - it is likely that I
would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to take
sides. Out of suffering, I wrote this poem. It is called
"Please Call Me by My True Names," because I have many names,
and when you call me by any of them, I have to say, "Yes."

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.






~~Thich Nhat Hanh









--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The River and the Clouds



Once upon a time there was a beautiful river finding her way among the hills, forests, and meadows. She began by being a joyful stream of water, a spring always dancing and singing as she ran down from the top of the mountain. She was very young at the time, and as she came to the lowland she slowed down. She was thinking about going to the ocean. As she grew up, she learned to look beautiful, winding gracefully among the hills and meadows.

One day she noticed the clouds within herself. Clouds of all sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but chase after clouds. She wanted to possess a cloud, to have one for herself. But clouds float and travel in the sky, and they are always changing their form. Sometimes they look like an overcoat, sometimes like a horse. Because of the nature of impermanence within the clouds, the river suffered very much. Her pleasure, her joy had become just chasing after clouds, one after another, but despair, anger,and hatred became her life.

Then one day a strong wind came and blew away all the clouds in the sky. The sky became completely empty. Our river thought that life was not worth living, for there were no longer any clouds to chase after. She wanted to die. "If there are no clouds, why should I be alive?" But how can a river take her own life?

That night the river had the opportunity to go back to herself for the first time. She had been running for so long after something outside of herself that she had never seen herself. That night was the first opportunity for her to hear her own crying, the sounds of water crashing against the banks of the river. Because she was able to listen to her own voice, she discovered something quite important.

She realized that what she had been looking for was already in herself. She found out that clouds are nothing but water. Clouds are born from water and will return to water. And she found out she herself was also water.

The next morning when the sun was in the sky, she discovered something beautiful. She saw the blue sky for the first time. She had never noticed it before. She had only been interested in clouds, and she had missed seeing the sky, which is the home of all the clouds. Clouds are impermanent, but the sky is stable. She realized that the immense sky had been within her heart since the very beginning. This great insight brought her peace and happiness. As she saw the vast wonderful blue sky, she knew that her peace and stability would never be lost again.

That afternoon the clouds returned, but this time she did not want to possess any of them. She could see the beauty of each cloud, and she was able to welcome all of them. When a cloud came by, she would greet him or her with loving-kindness. When the cloud wanted to go away, she would wave to him or her happily and with loving kindness. She realized that all clouds are her. She didn't have to choose between the clouds and herself. Peace and harmony existed between her and the clouds.

That evening something wonderful happened. When she opened her heart completely to the evening sky she received the image of the full moon - beautiful, round, like a jewel within herself. She had never imagined that she could receive such a beautiful image. There is a very beautiful poem in Chinese: "The fresh and beautiful moon is travelling in the utmost empty sky. When the mind-rivers of living beings are free, that image of the beautiful moon will reflect in each of us."

This was the mind of the river at that moment. She received the image of that beautiful moon within her heart, and water, clouds, and moon took each other's hands and practiced walking meditation slowly, slowly to the ocean.

There is nothing to chase after. We can go back to ourselves, enjoy our breathing, our smiling, ourselves, and our beautiful environment.







~~Thich Nhat Hanh









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I lay me down and slumber -- XIII



I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?

When I was off to dreamland
And left my limbs forgot,
Who stayed at home to mind them,
And breathed when I did not?

. . . . .

-- I waste my time in talking,
No heed at all takes he,
My kind and foolish comrade
That breathes all night for me.








~~A. E. Housman









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A SHROPSHIRE LAD: II

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow







~~A. E. Housman









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A SHROPSHIRE LAD: LIV

With Rue My Heart is Laden

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.










~~A. E. Housman









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A SHROPSHIRE LAD: LXII

Terence, this is stupid stuff...

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.










~~A. E. Housman









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A SHROPSHIRE LAD: XXXVI

White in the Moon

White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.

Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.

The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.

But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.











~~A. E. Housman









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THE Laws of God...

THE laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I , and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.










~~A. E. Housman









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A SHROPSHIRE LAD: XLIX

Think no more, lad...

Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly:
Why should men make haste to die?
Empty heads and tongues a-talking
Make the rough road easy walking,
And the feather pate of folly
Bears the falling sky.

Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking
Spins the heavy world around.
If young hearts were not so clever,
Oh, they would be young for ever:
Think no more; 'tis only thinking
Lays lads underground.










~~A. E. Housman









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It is no gift -- IV




It is no gift I tender,
A loan is all I can;
But do not scorn the lender;
Man gets no more from man.

Oh, mortal man may borrow
What mortal man can lend;
And 'twill not end to-morrow,
Though sure enough 'twill end.

If death and time are stronger,
A love may yet be strong;
The world will last for longer,
But this will last for long.











~~A. E. Housman









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Shake hands -- XXX

Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all's over;
I only vex you the more I try.
All's wrong that ever I've done or said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, here's luck, good-bye.

But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you,
And whistle and I'll be there.












~~A. E. Housman









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Because I liked -- XXXI

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
'Good-bye,' said you, `forget me.'
'I will, no fear', said I.

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.












~~A. E. Housman









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I have been thinking ...



I have been thinking of the difference between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water's still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word
"wave," do I have to distinguish itfrom water?

There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.









~~Kabir









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Are you looking for me?



Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor ineating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.










~~Kabir









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There's a moon in my body...


There's a moon in my body, but I can't see it!
A moon and a sun.
A drum never touched by hands, beating, and I can't hear it!

As long as a human being worries about when he will die,
and what he has that is his,
all of his works are zero.
When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead,
then the work of the Teacher is over.

The purpose of labor is to learn;
when you know it, the labor is over.
The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that
comes, the petal falls.

The musk is inside the deer, but the deer does not
look for it:
it wanders around looking for grass.










~~Kabir









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My body and my mind...

My body and my mind are in depression because
You are not with me.
How much I love you and want you in my house!
When I hear people describe me as your bride I look
sideways ashamed,
because I know that far inside us we have never met.
Then what is this love of mine?
I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about
sleep,
I am restless indoors and outdoors.
The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man
wants water.
And how will I find someone who will take a message
to the Guest from me?
How restless Kabir is all the time!
How much he wants to see the Guest!












~~Kabir









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The bhakti path...


The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.
On this path there is no asking and no not asking.
The ego simply disappears the moment you touch
him.
The joy of looking for him is so immense that you
just dive in,
and coast around like a fish in the water.
If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer
his.
Kabir's poems touch on the secrets of this bhakti.













~~Kabir









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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


1


Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

2

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

3

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted-- "Open then the Door!
"You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."

4

Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

5

Iràm indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And Jamshýd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.

6

And David's Lips are lock't; but in divine
High piping Pehleví, with "Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!''--the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That yellow Cheek of her's to incarnadine.

7

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

8

And look--a thousand Roses with the Day
Woke--and a thousand scatter'd into Clay:
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobàd away.

9

But come with old Khayyàm, and leave the Lot
Of Kaikobàd and Kaikhosrú forgot:
Let Rustum lay about him as he will,
Or Hàtim Tai cry Supper--heed them not.

10

With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultàn is scarce known,
And pity Sultàn Mahmúd on his Throne!

11

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Loaf of Bread,--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
And Wilderness is Paradise enow!

12

"How sweet is mortal Sovranty!"--think some:
Others--"How blest the Paradise to come!"
Ah, take the Cash in hand and wave the Rest;
Oh, the brave music of a distant Drum !

13

Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo,
"Laughing," she says,"into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."

14

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.

15

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

16

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultàn after Sultàn with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.

17

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshýd gloried* and drank deep:
And Bahràm, that great Hunter--the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

18

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

19

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

20

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fear--
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

21

Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.

22

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend, ourselves to make a Couch--for whom?

23

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie;
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!



24

Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! Your Reward is neither Here nor There!"

25

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Works to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

26

Oh, come with old Khayyàm, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

27

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

28

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd--
"I came like Water and like Wind I go."

29

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

30

What, without asking, hither hurried whence?
And, without asking whither hurried hence!
Another and another Cup to drown
The Memory of this Impertinence!

31

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many Knots unravel'd by the Road;
But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.

32

There was the Door to which I found no Key:
There was the Veil through which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed--and then no more of Thee and Me.

33

Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"
And--"A blind Understanding!" Heav'n replied.

34

Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn
My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur'd--"While you live
"Drink!--for once dead you never shall return."

35

I think the Vessel, that with fugitive
Articulation answer'd, once did live,
And merry-make, and the cold Lip I kiss'd,
How many Kisses might it take--and give!

36

For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watch'd the Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd -- "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

37

Ah, fill the Cup:--what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!




Continued Below













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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Continuation


38

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!

39

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit
Of This and That endeavor and dispute?
Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, fruit.

40

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

41

For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line,
And "Up-and-down'' without, I could define,
I yet in all I only cared to know,
Was never deep in anything but--Wine.

42

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

43

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemest that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

44

The mighty Mahmúd, the victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.

45

But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.

46

For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

47

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in--Yes--
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less.

48

While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyàm and ruby vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to Thee--take that, and do not shrink.

49

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

50

The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left, as strikes the Player goes;
And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all--He knows--HE knows!

51

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

52

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help--for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

53

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

54

I tell Thee this--When, starting from the Goal,
Over the shoulders of the flaming Foal
Of Heav'n Parwín and Mushtarí they flung,
In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul.

55

The Vine has struck a Fibre: which about
If clings my Being--let the Súfi flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.

56

And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrath, consume me quite,
One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.

57

Oh Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou will not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

58

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give--and take!

59

Listen again. One Evening at the Close
Of Ramazàn, ere the better Moon arose,
In that old Potter's Shop I stood alone
With the clay Population round in Rows.

60

And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried--
"Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"

61

Then said another--"Surely not in vain
"My Substance from the common Earth was ta'en,
"That He who subtly wrought me into Shape
"Should stamp me back to common Earth again."

62

Another said--"Why, ne'er a peevish Boy,
"Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;
"Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love
"And Fansy, in an after Rage destroy?

63

None answer'd this; but after Silence spake
A Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
"They sneer at me for leaning al! awry;
"What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake!"

64

Said one-"Folks of a surly Tapster tell,
"And daub his Visage with the Smoke of Hell;
"They talk of some strict Testing of us---Pish!
"He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."

65

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
"My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
"But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
"Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!"

66

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,
One spied the little Crescent all were seeking:
And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!
"Hark to the Porter's Shoulder-knot a-creaking!"

67

Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash my Body whence the Life has died,
And in a Windingsheet of Vine-leaf wrapt,
So bury me by some sweet Garden-side.

68

That ev'n my buried Ashes such a Snare
Of Perfume shall fling up into the Air,
As not a True Believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.

69

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong:
Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.

70

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.

71

And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour--well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell.

72

Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

73

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

74

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me---in vain!

75

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one--turn down an empty Glass!


~Translated by Edward FitzGerald

First Edition 1859















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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!





~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Song of the Women

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.
Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing --
"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
That she forget us not in after years;
For we have seen the light, and it were grievous
To dim that dawning if our lady leave us.

By life that ebbed with none to stanch the failing
By Love's sad harvest garnered in the spring,
When Love in ignorance wept unavailing
O'er young buds dead before their blossoming;
By all the grey owl watched, the pale moon viewed,
In past grim years, declare our gratitude!

By hands uplifted to the Gods that heard not,
By fits that found no favor in their sight,
By faces bent above the babe that stirred not,
By nameless horrors of the stifling night;
By ills foredone, by peace her toils discover,
Bid Earth be good beneath and Heaven above her!

If she have sent her servants in our pain
If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword;
If she have given back our sick again.
And to the breast the wakling lips restored,
Is it a little thing that she has wrought?
Then Life and Death and Motherhood be nought.

Go forth, O wind, our message on thy wings,
And they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed,
In reed-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings,
Who have been helpen by ther in their need.
All spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat
Shall be a tasselled floorcloth to thy feet.

Haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest!
Loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea
Proclaim the blessing, mainfold, confessed.
Of those in darkness by her hand set free.
Then very softly to her presence move,
And whisper: "Lady, lo, they know and love!"







~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem



When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted


1892 - L'Envoi To "The Seven Seas"

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it -- lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from -- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
Andd no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!








~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Kim


Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou between -- thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.










~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem



Gunga Din

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippery hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao! [Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!" [Mr. Atkins's equivalent for "O brother."]
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it [Be quick.]
Or I'll marrow you this minute [Hit you.]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick on 'is back, [Water-skin.]
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-files shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I shan't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone --
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!











~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem



The Glory of the Garden



Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of
all ;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the
planks.

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the
birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick.
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further
orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to
harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and
pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!












~~Kipling














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Story of a Million Years


How do you write
The story of a million years?
How do you write
The story of a river of tears?
How do you write
The story of eternity?
How do you write
The mystery of you and me?

The whole world's agroaning and travailing in agony
Aweeping and afearing as it shuffles towards its destiny.
How do you write
The story of this tragic throng?
How do you write?
How do you write?
How can you right what's wrong?













~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Goodbye Old Friend



Goodbye old friend
This is the end
For you and me
The path splits here.
You must know
It's time to go
Old friend, my fiercest foe
Farewell.

It once was fun
To think we'd done
To win and lose
Reject and choose.
But as the youth outgrows the toy
Dearest possession of the boy
We're through.














~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Now


In the beginning is the word
Now
The word is made flesh
Now
You are born
Now
You are
Now
You die
Now
Yesterday was not or it would be
Now
See this and you are immortal
Now.






~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Transcendental Realisation




Nothing.
Nothing but I.
Origin
Black, undistinguished, indistinguishable
Being Outside the world
Static
Forever aware
Forever
Forever present
Forever unformed
Forever unable to tell the secret of My being.
Yet, not from withholding
For I am Origin
Source
Beginning
Everness
Now
It.



Nothing.
I am producing Nothing.
And you, My Love,
Are producing Everything.
As Nothing
I am Supreme Being
Origin indescribable
No-suchness
A mystery
Of non-stirring, knowledge, ceaseless undetectable
presence.



I am Origin of all action and sound
And My agency, the lesser being, the creator
Is Love.



Love is all.
Life is the action of Love
Love's business
The never-ending tireless endeavour to enact My Being
To describe with creation what I am
And lovingly creating what I am not.
Love fails.
Love always fails, yet never tires of failing
(Even now, Love groans at its own inadequacy to
express in words the Truth I am.)



This the impossible, hopeless task of love
The reason why love lives to serve
Yet must forever remain sufficient only to itself, that task.
Love is the only means I have
And the only means to Me
Nothing.



I am producing Nothing.
An unimaginable substantive endingness
More real than even Love.
I am the space, the pause, the perimeter of sound and
form.
I enable Love's beauty to be seen.
Where All and the Nothing meet is Man.





~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Garden



Come
I will show you a garden
Where nothing dies
My respite for you
When day is done.



Come, I will take you with me
Hold my hand
My love.




Precious, faintest, sweetest heart
Love's subtlety
Like purple dust
Afloat in light.




Elusive love lay in my heart
So light I felt it absent
So gentle sweet.




My pen as heavy as my words
Inadequate as my tongue
To name the namelessness of love.



Can I be so loved, so intimately, so divinely loved?
Is it possible for anything to care as much as love?






~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Master's Score



A screech, I am
Out of which
Life makes a melody.




Time-honoured am I
In my moment,
My brief place,
Scored by some Mozart
Somewhere
And played by the pangs and pains
Of the earth.




Screeching again I am
Abominable poetry ...
But dare I,
Can I,
Judge the Master's Score?







~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I



I do not exist
But the existence of I is you
You do not exist
But the existence of you is me.
Without me there is no you
And there is no existence.
Except I.
Who do not exist.








~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Spider




The spider of emotion diligently spins her web
Urgently repairing every tear
That might reveal the truth
Since her life depends upon the web.
The web the mind
The spider the tireless emotion
Keeping mind intact
Against the piercing rips and tears
Of love and truth occasionally perceived
Revealing no thing (not even Spider)
Behind the web.




Web and spider
(horror of the pleasant walk through nature's garden)
Rise into existence
From that potent place of mind and self
Within us pleasant people.




Destroy not nature's spider or her web
They are but symbols
Of one mighty righteous whole
The garden of the earth.
Destroy instead
The spinner of all wickedness within
The spider of my self
That spins the web of anguish
And does not see the whole
The venomous humanised spider
Spinning inner dreams and dialogues
Of how the garden should be
Yet not daring to contemplate the hole
The exit from the web
Rent by love and truth
Lived.










~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Poor Fellow




You will not die when you die, poor fellow.
God, how I wish that you would.
Death is not won so easily.
The greatest good takes the greatest effort
And your clamour is to live in peace.
Die before you die
Or you will be stuck with yourself
Once again.
I have found death
But as the hunter not the hunted.









~~Barry Long














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Loss and Gain



WHEN I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.









~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Endymion



THE RISING moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
Had dropt her silver bow
Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
When, sleeping in the grove,
He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
Nor voice, nor sound betrays
Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes, - the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity, -
In silence and alone
To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him who slumbering lies.

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.

Responds, - as if with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
"Where hast thou stayed so long?"






~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Light of Stars



The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.

There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.

Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
O no ! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armour gleams.

And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.

O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.

Within my breast there is no light
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.

The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.

And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.

O fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.







~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Nature


AS a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.







~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





A Psalm of Life



Tell me not in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.









~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Rainy Day



Written at the old home in Portland

THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.






~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Day is Done


THE DAY is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.









~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Mockingbirds


This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed them--
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down--
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said

I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.








~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Buddha's Last Instruction


"Make of yourself a light "
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal - a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.









~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Summer Day


Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?











~~Mary Oliver












--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Moccasin Flowers

All my life,
so far,
I have loved
more than one thing,

including the mossy hooves
of dreams, including'
the spongy litter
under the tall trees.

In spring
the moccasin flowers
reach for the crackling
lick of the sun

and burn down. Sometimes,
in the shadows,
I see the hazy eyes,
the lamb-lips

of oblivion,
its deep drowse,
and I can imagine a new nothing
in the universe,

the matted leaves splitting
open, revealing
the black planks
of the stairs.

But all my life--sofar--
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fore of the world
and stand there shining
and willing--the one

thing they can do before
they shuffle forward
into the floor of darkness, they
become the trees.











~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Wild Geese



You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.









~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





When Death Comes



When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.










~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Journey



One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.








~~Mary Oliver













--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Magna Est Veritas



HERE, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.










~~Coventry Patmore














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Toys


MY little son, who looked from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quite grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
I struck him and dismissed
With hard words and unkissed,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet.
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his ters, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I prayed
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."











~~Coventry Patmore














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Love's Reality


I WALK, I trust, with open eyes;
I've travelled half my worldly course;
And in the way behind me lies
Much vanity and some remorse;
I've lived to feel how pride may part
Spirits, tho' matched like hand and glove;
I've blushed for love's abode, the heart;
But have not disbelieved in love;
Nor unto love, sole mortal thing
Or worth immortal, done the wrong
To count it, with the rest that sing,
Unworthy of a serious song;
And love is my reward: for now,
When most of dead'ning time complain,
The myrtle blooms upon my brow,
Its odour quickens all my brain.











~~Coventry Patmore














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Revelation


AN idle poet, here and there,
Looks round him, but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling's jest.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.
And give some thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget, but, either way,
That and the child's unheeded dream
Is all the light of all their day.








~~Coventry Patmore














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





A Farewell


WITH all my will, but much against my heart,
We two now part.
My Very Dear,
Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.
It needs no art,
With faint, averted feet
And many a tear,
In our opposéd paths to persevere.
Go thou to East, I West.
We will not say
There's any hope, it is so far away.
But, O my Best!
When the one darling of our widowhead,
The nursling Grief,
Is dead,
And no dews blur our eyes
To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,
Perchance we may,
Where now this night is day,
And even through faith of still averted feet,
Making full circle of our banishment,
Amazéd meet;
The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet
Seasoning the termless feast of our content
With tears of recognition never dry.









~~Coventry Patmore














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





My boyfriend's love


My boyfriend's love

He is there to cheer me up when i need cheering

He is there to hold me when i need comfort

He is there to talk to me when I have a problem

He is there to love me when i need loving

He is there to kiss me when i need compassion

He is there for me through my difficulties and problems

My boyfriend's love is one that i can not change





~~Ericka














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





You Have My Trust


I love you so much,
Like I have from the start,
You are the one with the key to my heart,
And you have promised me you will never tear it apart.

So I believe every word you say,
Because baby only you can make me feel this way,
You are such a great man,
So kind and sweet,
You really know how to knock me off my feet.

And everyday feeling our baby grow inside me,
Makes me smile as I am so lucky you had found me,
Because I am the luckiest girl alive,
To have you the greatest man by my side.

Now were going to have our own family soon,
Our relationship does nothing but bloom,
So I sit back and take it all in,
I open my heart I let you win.

You have earned my complete trust,
Which I must admit was hard to do,
I know these past few years,
You have never let me down,
But I just didn't want to let my guard down.

I hope you understand my reasons for this,
I just didn't want to end up hurt,
And yes we have had our ups and downs,
But the love we have has always stayed around.

So I know with all the things we've been through,
And we still have survived,
That you are the one for me,
And I love you baby with every inch of me,
Together forever we will always be.

*This is for my bf, the past three years have been amazing with you, now we have our lil baby due next month I am so happy. I will love you forever my King, Love your Queen xxx







~~Xo Sweet Romantic BabyGirl oX














--> Man

[Man]

Poem





A Dream Within a Dream


Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?









~~Edgar Allan Poe















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light,
thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?










~~Edgar Allan Poe















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Happiest Day



The happiest day--the happiest hour
My seared and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
But they have vanished long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been--
But let them pass.

And pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may ev'n inherit
The venom thou hast poured on me--
Be still my spirit!

The happiest day--the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power
I feel have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offered with the pain
Ev'n then I felt--that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wings was dark alloy
And as it fluttered--fell
An essence--powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.




~~Edgar Allan Poe















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Alone


From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.





~~Edgar Allan Poe















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





With My Beloved Alone


With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs
Passed, and the Vision blest
Was granted to my prayers,
That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame;
The while amazed between
His Beauty and His Majesty
I stood in silent ecstasy
Revealing that which o'er my spirit went and came.
Lo, in His face commingled
Is every charm and grace;
The whole of Beauty singled
Into a perfect face
Beholding Him would cry,
'There is no God but He, and He is the most High.'






~~Rabi'a















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Love


I have loved Thee with two loves -
a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.
As for the love which is selfish,
Therein I occupy myself with Thee,
to the exclusion of all others.
But in the love which is worthy of Thee,
Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.
Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,
But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.







~~Rabi'a















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I am


i am
we are
we are all
we are all one
we are all in one
we are rays of infinity
we are fractals of eternity
we are facets of the one jewel
we manifest the great intention
we reflect light unto the firmament
we are angles of geometry of divinity
we are torches illuminating all of creation
we kindle sacred fire in the universal heart
we are hands of love raising up the holy sparks
we infuse color and form unto the cosmic mandala
we impart rhythm and definition unto the divine plan
we vitalize myriad worlds evolving in the celestial matrix







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I know the way


i know the way to nirvana,
i follow my black cat, merlin
who trails torpid fire-flies
dancing dreamily through ethers
some call reality.
panther-topaz eyes pierce the veils,
revealing celestial messengers
sliding down crystal moonbeams,
slowly spreading their satin wings
over landscapes of longing.

they pour out starlight from crystal vials
whose sweet fragrance is a benediction
mingling with woodland mists,
wafting through lattice-gauze
of storied tiers and lofty sentinels.

whirlpools of dreams
fade away into nothingness.
fitful slumbers spasm into
a single pulse of remembering,
lifting hearts high upon its crest.

dawn's genesis thaws the night,
expectation quivers the atmosphere,
a pastel chorus touches the horizon,
a star is born, washing the sky,
a world awakens.

solar lions leap down into earth
roaring their joy,
shaking hilltops and valleys,
fluttering eye-lids and hearts,
a sleeper awakens.

oh rampant emissaries of the light!
seize my soul with your talons of fire!
bear me, your prey, back to the hearth!
hail! father helios and mother vesta!
clothe me in your blinding raiment!







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Angel scribe


i look for signs in earth and sky
by ancestors foretold,
their cosmic clock is winding down
as prophecies unfold.
with silver moonlight for a lamp
and mossy rock for perch,
i cast my gaze both far and wide
intent upon my search.

i hear the shamans of the past
play magic flutes and drums,
revealing mysteries at last
of things that are to come.

their song of life is filling me
with hope and love and light,
their living words inspire my soul
like torches in the night.

i pluck a feather from my wing
and stardust ink from purse,
i scribe upon a golden leaf
their sacred song in verse.

so let us gather round about
the council of the wise,
and listen to their tales of
mother earth and father sky.








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Furnace of dreams



in the central fire
the maker labors within the
furnace of dreams
the craftsman's powerful form
ripples with muscle
and gleams with sweat

the maker of eye-magic
chants living words
into the swirling flames

from molds of adamant
he plucks white-hot runes
and flings them into the night

molten charms of gold, chalcedony and opal.
spray into an infinite sea,
sizzling and bubbling

sparks of genesis
broadcast across the reaches
of primeval frontiers

glowing coals smoking as they burn
into the undulating lacquer of midnight's bowl
become an inverted bejeweled chalice

light-year acres of diamonds
and rubies and sapphires
whirling and dancing

japanese lanterns swaying to and fro
festooning the deeps
with love and light!










~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Infinity's hourglass



exotic stars glide majestically
around circles within circles.
galaxies of suns and
worlds and
civilizations
flowing
into
the
nexus
of
cycles
of aeons
of centuries
of days and hours
and minutes and seconds.
they are myriad grains of sand
dropping through infinity's hourglass.





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





River of time


many empires have risen and fallen to dust,
leaving ashes of heroes consumed by their lust.
washed away are the surfeits of merchants and kings,
by the sparkling flood of the translucent stream
of the river of time, oh! the river of time,
we are all walking down to the river of time,
when it's our time to go, let's all shout "hi! and ho!
great adventure awaits on the river of time!"





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Star Spartans



angels herald brahma's inbreath
cosmic clock at last unwinds
riding tamed leviathan's back
brothers hail the end of time!
valkyries rescue fallen heroes
wing them skyward to the stars
savior's sagas written in blood
chains are severed - broken bars

checking compass - making ready
tide is flooding - winds prevail
course is set for high adventure
thrill our souls and fill our sails!








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Cupid's arrow


angel of the sacred fire
beckons you with flute and lyre.
inspiration from above
sent to you on wings of doves.
cupid of the holy flame
targets heart and takes his aim.
drawing back his gleaming bow
bids his fiery missile go.

arrow streaking through the night
piercing heart with love and light.
alchemy's transforming spell
leaden heart to golden bell.

burning in your heart and mind
branded with his valentine.
message burning in your soul
look within and read the scroll:

"wake and rise and be aware,
sleeper in the dragon's lair,
love will guide you through the maze
back into the light of day."









~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Real


if you will rearrange the letters in the word, real,
you will have el ra - that which can be seen as
god ray, and relates to the term real-i-zation,
as god's ray i am.
el ra - hail to thee!

el ra - my love - i welcome you
with open, loving arms,
for ages have i waited
to be ravished by your charms!

my dark and lonely vigil
through the night of time is past,
your radiance reflecting
off horizon's clouds at last!

look! see the rising star of ra
expanding into view?
my heart is risen with the dawn,
from ashes - born renewed!

my phoenix - soul has taken flight
into the heart of ra,
enraptured with his fiery love
i cry - selah! - selah!

i have become the hands of ra
extending from the sun,
i kindle fire within the hearts
of each and every one!

my golden rays are beaming down
caresses from above,
transforming every sacred heart,
renewing vows of love!

now white-hot flames are burning bright
in each and every soul,
the ecstasy of ra's delight
transforming lead to gold!

ra - hail to thee eternally
thou bringer of the dawn!
the treasure lost
regained at last
within the law of one!









~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Robe of glory



you and i are fashioning a
royal universal garment.
first, we comb the fleece of light-essence from gauzy nebulae.
then on the wheel of creative thought
we spin it into codon-threads of genesis.
from this skein of word-made-flesh
we weave the fabric of life on the loom of generations.
then upon the frame of time and space
we embroider living starlight-bangles
of diamonds and rubies and sapphires
with gold and crimson and purple auras
set against black velvet.
our dazzling vestment unfurled
reveals the polychrome swirling of
all beloved's resplendent.
we are the images reflected in
infinity's mirror of
the robe of glory.









~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I Am Youniverse



i am:
creation stirring within the night of time,
awaiting fulfillment-
remembering my creator's kiss,
awaiting fulfillment-
mountains weathered down into grains of sand,
tumbling across oceans of light,
washing upon myriad shores-
sacred vigils enfolded by pregnant shadows-
eternity's insect-cadence heartbeat-
rhythmic interludes of nightingale's serenade . . .
i am:
the voice of silence-
the moon reflected through a thousand-thousand eyes-
green hemoglobin rising through emerald temples into the sky-
swimming through darkling currents-
the dreamer of dreams-
the green man's chlorophyll reverie-
argus slain by hermes,
cast into peacock's tail-
osiris' fragments longing for isis' embrace-
lord sycamore's precious blood oblation . . .
i am:
arthur revivified,
stirring,
awakening-
prometheus unbound-
hercules unchained-
spartacus victorious-
daedalus soaring-
lord sky father of fathers,
nexus portal guardian-
lady gaia mother of mothers,
gatekeeper of souls . . .
i am:
the alchemical marriage consummated,
the hieros gamos-
the unus mundus,
the conjunctio oppositorum-
the great work complete,
the circle squared,
the square circled,
the eucharist offspring-
i am you










~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Miracle Wine



we believe that the candle flames
of our spiritual awareness are
feeding upon the chaff of our
personas and growing into
bonfires illuminating
our vision, even
as our
psyches
burn
away
and are
transformed
into the consciousness of god.
behold the wine of resurrection!








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Prologue To My Phoenix Soul




before the world is scientifically analyzed and
catalogued, it is a primordial unrestrained
azoth in flux. before natural life is bound
up by a net of rules of conduct, there is the
prior mystery of other persons, who outstrip
whatever we think we know of them and so
command our respect. finally, we come up
against mystery itself, the universal depth in
both things large and small and our selves
suspended in the macro-micro nexus. and
then we are brought up short. that is where
the light leads us: not to a conclusion which
gives comfort, but to a thunderstorm; not to
a closure, but to a dis-closure, an openness
toward something greater than we imagined -
our encompassing self, where we lose our
breath and are stopped in our tracks, at least
momentarily, on our ascension journey up the
evolutionary spiral into infinity.







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





My Phoenix Soul




Roiling clouds on dawn's horizon
signal the new aeon's approach
with signs and wonders . . .
muffled rumbling
ominous flashing
earth is shaking
i stand unafraid . . .
i embrace the buffeting
standing firm
'midst the roar
of warring elements . . .

the world has gone mad -
i reach out
and plummet headlong
into a maelstrom of light!

my heart has never thundered like this!

tongues of steel
whipsaw my soul
beating me down
and flinging me skyward
on whirlwinds of fire!

. . . i touch the source . . .

. . . ah! sweet music of life . . .

. . . what sounds and colors . . .

. . . i see - i hear - i feel . . .

. . . mystery of mysteries! . . .

. . . glory and might! . . .

(. . . . . . .)

now
i am
the
center
of
universe
shattering
ecstasy!








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Fractal


I am a fractal shining bright
my flesh and blood, distilled starlight
an angle of geometry
reflecting all infinity.






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Yes !


we are entering a new reality,
and a glorious change is at hand,
we are leaving the land of
what used to be,
strike up the band!





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The maker


I use no blade to shape the wood,
no chisel for cutting the stone,
no brush to daub the cloth with lovely scenes,
i am without, but i have much,
my legacy the poet's touch,
constructing worlds in the workshop of my dreams





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Feeling

today is tomorrow,
all my dreams have come true,
and there's no more to do
except feel . . .
i know it's tomorrow,
i know that it's true,
tomorrow in me
and in you . . .

there's been too many days
of darkness and pain,
too many years
of crying for love . . .

i will lie dreaming
in fields of sweet clover,
of the reunion of
earth and sky-blue . . .






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





I, prometheus


my "crime" was having inhaled fire from heaven,
exhaling inspiration unto man,
and so the jealous zeus removed my titan crown
and cast me down to land.
my golden locks were shorn and now I wander,
a forlorn angel in a strange, strange world,
a son of lord uranus-lady gaia,
stripped of power, earthward hurled.

i swim amidst the stormy ocean chaos,
and stumble through the burning desert sands,
then crawl up to the summit of mt. destiny
where I shall make my stand.

crimson blood flows from my broken body,
a burning testament to endless pain,
and yet I stand defiant as I shout into
the driving wind and rain!

boreas is howling through the cobalt sky,
shaking foundations of time and space,
ignoring brother atlas' pleas, i cry,
"i am a stranger in this place!"

"i am a god imprisoned in this coat of flesh,
prometheus the flame of flames am i,"
and as i reach on high to touch the stars,
i'm almost there . . . until i slip and slide

. . . back down, down, down, down to . . .

earth and blood . . . misunderstood . . .
i can hear the approaching drums of the
crimson king . . .
shouting, "ha!, my don quixote
i will twist your soul into a minor theme!"

... but no, no, no, no . . .

i will run away
up the side
of this hollow world!
i will dive into
the depths
of
nether seas!
my spirit is unquenchable,
invincible,
a flame expanding free . . .
now i am god!








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Star Gods


~brilliant star gods span golden rings~
~arms and legs extend touching the circle~
~standing 'midst mighty rivers of celestial light~
~their hearts channel the rushing white-hot currents~
~deafening niagaras hurtle over the portal lip into time~
~torrential flows plummet ever outward into the infinite ocean~
~from the heights cascade sprays of luminous rainbows~
~dancing rivulets of bubbling life flow and effervesce~
~down, tier upon tier liquid light pools, placid~
~ecstatic dreams fill the mists of creation~
~worlds upon worlds of angels sing~








~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Prologue To Creation Day


we look back through countless millions
of years and see the great will to live
struggling out of the intertidal slime,
struggling from shape to shape and from
power to power, crawling and then walking
confidently upon the land, struggling
generation after generation to master the
air, creeping down into the darkness of the
deep; we see it turn upon itself in rage and
hunger and reshape itself anew, we watch
it draw nearer and more akin to us, expanding,
elaborating itself, pursuing its relentless
inconceivable purpose, until last it reaches
us and its being beats through our brain
and arteries...
it is possible to believe that all the past is
but the beginning of a beginning, and that
all that is and has been is but the twilight
of the dawn. it is possible to believe that
all that the human mind has ever accomplished
is but the dream before the awakening...
h.g. wells - "the discovery of the future" - (1902)







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Brahma


Brahma the father of gods and men, creator
of the universe and first god in the supreme
hindu triad: brahma, vishnu, siva.
the great unknown formed a seed; from this
grew an egg from which emerged brahma.
he was called narayana, "he who dwells in
the waters," for when he was conceived
nothing else existed.

brahma is depicted as having four faces, as
being dressed in white and riding on a swan
or peacock, or seated on a lotus. his consort,
sarasvati, emerged from his side. he saw that
she was beautiful and gazed at her wonderingly.
sarasvati was modest as well as beautiful. she
stepped to one side to avoid his gaze. immediately
a second face appeared on that side of brahma's
head, so that he could continue to look on
her. she stepped away again, another face
grew. and again, producing a fourth face.
sarasvati rose up and yet another, the fifth
face, appeared on top of brahma's head.
this last face was later destroyed by the fierce
heat of the third eye of the god siva.

brahma, though given outward shape,
name, attributes and stories, can best
be regarded as the personification of an
attitude. thus his devotees worship him
in many forms, from pure abstraction
down to primitive animism.







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Creation Day


creation's echoes through infinite time
reverberate through my resonant mind.
i pierce the veil and fall into the past,
guided by memory's tendrils i grasp.
from inkwell's void there emerges a light,
the archetype theater looms in sight.
as swarms of angel-folk fly roundabout,
i'm ushered in as programs they hand out.

i find myself seated in the front row,
the house lights dim for the start of the show.
i anticipate a wonderful play,
trumpets sound fanfare of creation day!

grandfather brahma has just closed his eyes,
central-sun/third-eye big-bangs into life!
projecting signets of the plan divine,
onto the holograph-matrix of mind.

cyclic pulsations of the cosmic clock,
dynamize creation with each tick-tock.
holy spark-prodigals scatter and roam,
searching horizons of worlds for their home.

heavenly torches illumine the way,
ignighting dawn to begin the new day.
volcanic blaze warms the cast into life,
act i. begins: resolution through strife:

grotesque assembly from shadows emerge,
denizen entourage of demiurge.
thrashing and birthing and rending and cries,
ensouled forms procreate, battle and die.

successions, progressions, reversals, halts,
chaos rampaging throughout hade's vaults.
maelstrom of elements out of control,
burning and freezing and shifting of poles.

on age-old anvils with hammers of fire
passions are beaten in forge of desire,
mettle is tempered and cooled by mid-day,
act ii. begins: redemption paves the way:

biology's anthanor simmers calm,
issuing fragrance of soul-soothing balm.
flora and fauna assuming new forms,
evolution's symbiosis adorns.

order and harmony gestate and thrive,
imparting comeliness and graceful lines.
aires of refinement pervading the genes,
stirs awareness of souls elevating.

self-conscious thoughts and a turning within
signal the phase of a progressive trend.
"law of the jungle" renders unity,
act iii. begins: transfiguring decree:

scaling the ladder of nature's design,
anthropoids ponder mysteries sublime.
infants are growing to adolescence,
blind instinct distilled into sentience.

paradox, puzzles, enigmas and rhymes,
who, what, why, where, when, existence and time.
creation's thirst for knowledge it would slake,
it's almost time for grandfather to wake.

the holy sparks that were captured in form,
now seek release into spirit - reborn.
fledgling gods grasp mnemosynes' gold threads,
transcending their genetic heritage.

i am seeing in my big picture view,
i am the question and the answer too.
i am unlocking with my memory's key,
i am consciousness treasure chest in me.

following trails of the cavalcade zoo,
my synapses pass in parade review.
to the cadence of "know thyself" i pace,
evolution's tide sweeps me from this place.

i have awakened within the great dream,
visioning infinite unfolding scenes.
somewhere between slumber and wide awake,
awareness sparkles, eye-magic elates.

i am now brahma, engendering schemes,
reviewing subsequent genesis themes.
fabricating dioramas of lives,
eye-magic choreographing reprise.

devils and angels and sinners and saints,
legions of darkness and angelic ranks.
assembling cast and assigning the parts,
heroes and villains stand fast on their marks.

i am now siva the lord of the dance,
kindling new dramas of love and romance.
i am now kali, the queen of delight,
falling exhausted to sleep through the night.

i am now zeitgeist the spirit of time,
sounding the last trump of the plan divine.
i am now aeon, light of the new age,
sweeping the earth with a whirlwind of change!






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Infinite Saga


father poseidon's eye-magic images the holy sparks
mother matrix breathes the fire-of-life into them
so do they conceive and nurture their children
raising them in their seaside house of proteus
overlooking vistas of the ocean of infinity
instructing their charges in wise dominion
demonstrating the use of the sacred word
sending them into the playground of existence
guiding their voyages across the space-time continuum
observing their mastery of the electromagnetic spectrum
sharing their adventures in multidimensional discovery
celebrating their fledgling-gods ascension
welcoming them home as omniverse co-creators
completing another chapter of the saga of geometry of divinity






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





the saga of krael and mirabel


the city of the sun was an island colony
of the old atlantean empire, and now lies
submerged off the usa eastern seaboard.



long ago in the city of the sun by the sea, there lived a priest named krael.
he performed sacred fire rites in a black marble temple near the seashore.
one fine day he spied a lovely young damsel strolling by the water's edge.
his heart began racing, his head began to swoon, he was smitten with love.
casting caution to the wind, he contrived with his servant to fetch the maid.
that night, under cover of darkness, he beheld his love and kissed her madly.
lovers enflamed, their rising passion was consecrated upon that sacred alter.
two hearts beating as one, lovers oblivious to shadows cloaking jealous eyes.
a raven took flight from the temple scorching the night with her raucous cry.
to the royal castle sped she, poisoned tongue spitting venom in the kings ear.
what say thou talebearer, my virgin princess daughter hath a temple defiled?
a king's angry red mouth shouted justice! transgression decreed, fates sealed.
great clamor ensuing, trumpets blaring, royal guards accosted the two lovers.
the early dawn spectacle of a double-royal execution electrified the populace.
a princess cast from sheer cliffs, a royal priest shredded by a thousand lashes.
the empire was wounded that day as it wounded the two seraphim incognito.
a divine plan for twin flames destined to blaze a pathway to the stars, undone.
twenty eons of the night of time have passed, yet their passion burns brightly.
the empire long since crumbled to dust, yet the twins have returned, renewed.
ever spins the cosmic wheel of destiny, kindling sacred fire in the hearts of all.

krael&mirabel
glowraymiracle
lux! om! pax!






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





twin flames



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~twin flames~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
twin flames united and merged into one,
shining so brightly, burning so strong,
leaping so high, lighting the way,
forming a bridge to the stars
on a pathway of light
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~
~~~~
~~
**





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem



tyreme gaia



hurricane-tempests pummel the straining sails
of our good ship gaia. our intrepid captain logos
navigates perilous seas, avoiding maelstroms
and reefs. his voice is heard booming above the
roaring chaos, calling "all hands man the oars!"
he co-ordinates our efforts by calling cadence to
the drum beat of service-to-others. wielding the
sacred word, he slays all ego-dragons rising up
from the depths. our great white brotherhood
compass guides us safely through the great storm
into the new world.





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





mother gaia


our lady fair, i am aware;
thine scintillating beauty
of auric light
dispelling night,
revealing wisdom godly.
our goddess bright, 'tis your delight
to love children of gaia,
caressing holy-innocents,
rescuing them from maya.







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





this is a paean to the 75 ft. tree growing in my back yard. it's
heart-shaped leaves rustle in the slightest breeze. when i cup
my hands around my ears, i can hear my talking tree speak to
me with the voice of "many waters."


my talking tree


my talking tree is soothing me
with loving songs of god,
the angels' midst it's branches
beckon me to shangri-la.
i love you tree, my sacred tree,
you tell me change is nigh,
god's spirit wafting through your boughs
whispering with a sigh:

"o, all must change! o, you must change!
the sleeper must arise!
the breath of god is calling you
to open wide your eyes!"

i love you tree, my holy tree,
sing songs to me, my love,
of unicorns and love reborn
and cooing mourning doves.

my tree of life, thou voice of god,
beckoning unto me,
ten-thousand love-songs fill my soul,
they lift and set me free!

o sing to me - ten-thousand leaves,
you children of the wind,
your lullabies of god's sweet love
eternal - without end.

god's honeyed kiss and sweet embrace,
are scintillating thrills,
inspiring my enraptured soul
with promises fulfilled.

o serenade me, holy choir,
ten-thousand times and more,
until the songs of god echo
within me ever more.

whisper to me ten-thousand lips
the boundless love of god.
transport me to your paradise
with songs of shangri-la






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





beyond the wall


when i arrived at the far side of mystery mountain,
i walked into the light of day.
there, i beheld an incredible sparkling fountain,
and heard is bubbling waters say:
"you were a droplet swirling round, round, round,
flowing in circles between sky and ground,
come quench your thirst, for your journey is at an end!
come celebrate, join the toast to the
magic land beyond the wall,
come join the angels playing
in the land beyond the wall,
come hear them saying:
"oh child of dust, cry if you must,
for tomorrow you'll sing
of happiness that a perfect life can bring,
beyond the wall."





~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





tanglewood cathedral



my morning walk 'midst nature is my
prayer in the tanglewood cathedral of glory.
i join the reverent congregation of forest folk
gathering beneath columns of trees towering high overhead.
cherubic choirs of songbirds singing love-offerings.
hovering dragonfly-archangels presiding.
squirrel and chipmunk deacons assisting.
cicadas chanting ineffable liturgies from verdant palisades.
acolyte bees performing sacred rites upon wildflower alters.
iridescent beetles reflecting heavenly hues into my soul.
fellow-pilgrim ants leading the way to the promised land.




~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





homeward bound


i travel in "myol the swift," my chariot of fire,
my gilded fowl responds to the reigns of my desire.
i bid my peacock rise and shine - he hums at my command,
i streak into the cobalt sky above receding land.
i pierce the atmospheric veil and break the earthly bind,
and with my wings of daedalus i leave the earth behind.
i gasp and try to catch my breath, as vertigo ensues,
as i behold the spectacle exploding into view.
i am a holy spark of light adrift in cosmic seas,
a scintillating atom pondering infinity.
enchanted by a rainbow realm of marvels without end,
i barely recollect my journey has yet to begin.
i tune the vibratory rate, ascending up the scale,
3d is left behind, into the omniverse i sail!
the instruments attune to the destination i trace,
translating them into co-ordinates in inner-space.
as i increase the amplitude of universal field,
dimensions are transcended as light-years swiftly unreel.
i tack among the space-time currents with desired effect,
i magnetize and radiate as my course i direct.
the navi-simbiot decelerates my golden wings,
i shout for joy as i draw near my starry pleiades!






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





our lord is a tree


our lord is a tree
growing in heaven.
his leaves flutter in the
pneuma of our minds. his
branches reach down to gaia
enfolding, nurturing. divine
sap flows through his
trunk,
bridging
oceans
of time
and space.
his roots drink the waters of life







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





paean to my beloved socrates

(4/10/86 - 5/19/99)



socrates my socrates,
sophisticate cat,
musing upon windowsill,
ponder this 'n that.
protege of mystic lore,
inquirer sublime.
tracing sigils in the air
with his mewing rhyme

socrates my socrates
magus black and white,
eliciting inner-joy
from the tacit light.
synthesizing sacred dreams
from the scattered parts.
catalyzing love divine
with his angel heart.







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





mental lament

before enlightenment


where am i going?
why should i care?
what is my destination?
far or near?
when is my end?
at my beginning?
is life three words?
losing and winning?

wherever i wander
forever i change
living for pleasure,
dying in pain.







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





starry castle

-- after enlightenment

starry castle in the sky
nightly to your halls i fly
fancy quickened lifts me high
leave behind cacophony
escape dungeon of debris
weigh my anchor, set me free

flee their dismal dross and drear
disdain all that they hold dear
troglodytes blinded by fear!

riding on my wing-ed mare
i fly bold without a care
like a comet through the air!

o'er thy parapets of gold
timelessness doth me enfold
celebrating days of old!

laughing ladies, leaping lords
minstrel's tales and play with swords
life's a banquet ever more!

drain the cup of my desire
strum the chords of my heart-lyre
flames of passion lift me higher!

broken are my earthly bonds
from caesar's grasp i abscond
my ascension i have won!

celebrate infinitely
marvels, surprise, mystery
of the star in you and me!







~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





gabriel



from the center sounds the trumpet -
awaken! awaken!
from the stars comes the great wave -
threshing . . .
winnowing . . .
we will never be the same . . .






~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





awaken! awaken!



selah!
hail thou!
lazarus arise!
sleeper awaken!
see the daystar rising!
everything must change!
truly the best is yet to come!
none shall hold back the dawn!
the veil of night is pierced by light!
something wonderful is happening now!
the promise of the ages is being fulfilled!
hands reach out to kindle fire in our hearts!
from alpha and omega thunders the great voice!



~~ Krael















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





~~ Patience ~~


Life is a great quest of seeking and finding,
a riddle to solve and a soul to evolve
the body and heart intertwining
life is a lesson, a revelation,
and rarely, if ever, reward.
and yet the great Pearl
at the end of the
quest is held
in the
highest
regard

Our ancestors knew it, we are not the first,
regard if you will what is true, the
lore is as old, so the stories
have told, as the
day when the
Earth-wind
first
blew

Patience is a virtue, that is what they say,
and more, she's a Lady, who visits
each day, to temper frustration
and limit rash start, a
dear loving goddess
who touches
your
heart

Patience says: delay action, don't too quickly jump,
rethink your reaction, else land with
a bump! yet bide a while, give
nature a helping hand,
let rewards come
to you, don't
snatch
from
God's
Hand




~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Beloved I Am Is Your Name

I.

Tell Me, what do you seek, all my dear little lambs
midst tumultuous life upon Earth?
Tell Me, whence came that nudge, that compelled you to budge
from your lodge since your moment of birth?

Why has all of your striving been tinged with a lack
as an empty spot within the full?
Do you know who you are? - that you came from afar?
have you not felt that other-world pull?

You are angels of Light from a far better place,
now imprisoned within that dross frame.
You are gods coming home with your talents full grown
and Beloved I Am is your name.

Oh yes, it was true, that your flesh was so weak
and emotion-tossed hither and fro,
While dark memories arose to add weight to your goals
as your thinking spun out of control.

There were times, you recall, when not godlike at all,
that you whined and you simpered and choked,
When the Dark was so great, and your load such a weight
that you seemed hardly able to hope.

Through the Voice in your heart, from it's home set apart,
hear the promise of better tomorrows:
"You may shed now your ashes and sackcloth and fears
and your drowning in oceans of sorrows."

"For no more must you cry as you beat on your breast
and no more shall your tears fall as rain.
You are gods, don't you see, oh my dears, you are free!
and Beloved I Am is your name."

II.

Think no more of the pain, oh my dear little lambs,
nor of hurt nor of sorrow and guilt,
'Tis all long past and gone, though it helped you along
on the road home which these heartaches built.

All these lessons were there for a purpose, you know,
for to make you more homesick each day,
For the place in your heart where all pain must depart
as your feet found the steps on the Way.

And for what other reason can you 'ere suppose
that you gods would be fettered and lame?
But to make you undo and start living anew
as Beloved I Am - that's your name.

You are gods, don't you know, can't you feel it is so
in the shimmering flame in your heart?
It will glow, it will grow, just step into the flow
and come home, never more to depart.

So break out of your bonds, they are all self-imposed
and cast off all the veils and the chains!
You may blaze them away and grow brighter each day
by the grace of the pure Violet Flame!

Oh, I know it seems strange as you now see the truth
that life's really no more than a game.
Just a puzzle to solve and your "sin"* to dissolve,
for Beloved I Am is your name.

III.

Tell me why you resist, oh my dear my little lambs
at the pull of this truth on your heart?
You have but to make way for the dawning of day
and take cue from this light-filled new start.

Will you stop where you are now and think it all through
of the wonder, the hope and the awe?
Will you simply let go, will you answer the call
of the glory of God's gentle call?

Now Come Home my Beloved's, come back to the Love
that is more than your wisdom can claim.
We are One, you and I - you'll believe if you try
that Beloved I Am is your name.

Won't you take back with joy that which was always yours
and reclaim now your birthright divine?
Yours, the Kingdom, the Power, the Glory this hour
returned once again to be Thine.

You are gods, my Beloved's, so stand you now tall
it is finished for you upon Earth!
With your Plan so Divine and your balance aligned,
you'll have conquered the Wheel of Rebirth!

Now I welcome you home all my precious dear lambs,
to My Gratitude, Peace and Acclaim!
For at long last you know with a true inner-glow
that Beloved I Am is your name!

*"sin"=submersion in negativity




~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Inner - Voice Call



Rending the sackcloth of Earth-Realm belief,
The Energy Veil falls in rags at your feet.
The woof-and-warp-prison of society
Must first be unraveled before you may see:

What games do you play? What an obstacle course
Have you set up before you've begun?
You look in a daze on life's intricate maze
And then hopefully - take the Big Plunge!

'Midst Gordian tangles, you trace Theseus' cord
Past the dragon's lair through the Gold Door.
The Abyss of Shadows you leave far behind
When you stand upon Heavenly Shores.

All bubbly with joy at the simplicity,
Secure in knowledge of what is and shall be,
Your seeking and searching and reaching afar,
Has brought you full-circle back to your home star.

And oh, it's not easy to follow the clues,
To see God's world clearly and still pay your dues,
For events on Earth with incredible speed
Assume the illusion of "desperate" need.

With merely a glance your attention can rivet
Into dreary depths of a synthetic pivot,
And once there, unless you discern and be still,
Ouroboros' black magic enthralls your free-will.

The sweet voice of Truth speaks to wisest of men
Who can see through the "need" of it all,
That the only way out is to first enter in
And then follow the Inner-Voice Call.






~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Homeland


There is a land you do not see
Except with memory's eye,
A grand and wonderful repose
Where none shall ever die.
A shining realm of truth and joy
Beyond your grandest scheme,
Entombed beneath it as you are
'Tis like a fleeting dream.

Where beings from so many worlds
Continue with their plan.
Forgotten are their sufferings
Once known when they were man.

For brightest light doth there reveal
The grandeur of your fate,
Which bids all sorrow ever known
Diminish from your weight.

Could you but see the glory
Of your destiny to come!
The freedom, truth and levity
Of an immortal one!

Beloveds, just a passing glance
At future so divine,
Would surely make, in patience dear,
Each bide in peaceful time.

The treasures of that paradise
Esteemed beyond compare.
They surpass gaudy trinkets
Made from shards of earthenware.

The streets of gold and hallowed halls,
With untold brilliance gleam.
Why, if you could just catch a glimpse,
You'd think it but a dream.

The grandest earthen pageants
Lose their luster once you see
The smallest hint of your birthright
Of divine legacy.

In your homeland, those gemstones grand
Are waiting there for you.
Search deep within your secret heart
And know that this is true.

A place where doubt cannot exist
And perfection abides.
A blissful state which all enjoy
While working side-by-side.

And work is not a labor there,
Nor time a thing to mark,
But purest heartfelt industry
Untainted by the dark.

How cloistered, yea, enmeshed you are,
Within your fleshy frame
Of shadowed, unlit mystery,
Lethargic and profane.

How sad that vision is so veiled
And few can truly see
Their blazing spirit eclipsed by
Materiality.

Now hold on fast to all you can
That hints of promise true,
And trust that what you cannot see
Shall be revealed to you.

And ever moving forward through
Your turgid sea of tears,
You may at least find soothing balm
To wash upon your fears.

For you are destined for that realm,
The child at last come home,
Receiving your inheritance
When once you cease to roam.

Hold on, hold on, steadfast and true
Until the trumpet sounds!
Your leaden hearts transformed to gold
When you tread homelands grounds!








~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





The Dream



'Twixt fitful slumber and peaceful dream,
The world bears not the truth, it seems,
Of glorious origin and heritage rare;
The mystery of the here and there,
The whirling of an inner-glow
That whispers secrets much too low
To know their source or where they end;
Or if 'tis just a dream again?

A phantom thought, a heartfelt tugging,
Dark miasmic senses drugging,
A coming in and going out,
A dizzy whirling all about.

Awake, Awake! - But is it sleep?
Or cold reality you keep?
Determined that the so-real dream
Is nothing more than what it seems?

Turn inward to that magic sphere,
Let go of all that once seemed dear,
And let that wistful voice be heard,
Oh! listen to each whispered word:

...things really are not what they seem...
...'tis when "awake" that most you dream...
...'tis in your slumber that you see...
...the truth that is reality...

And then at last, when wide awake,
The secret of that dream you break,
No more the "insomniac's sleep"
Will rob you of the hope you keep.

To see once clearly and for all!
To hear the whispers like a call!
To understand with senses clear!
Why, then you'll know the prize is near!

It can't be grasped by senses dull,
Nor while the things about you lull
You into thinking they are real;
The things you touch, and taste, and feel.

Nor while ambition stays your hand,
Nor even love of life and land,
(For all are products of that state,
That spellbind you and fascinate).

Like heavy chains about you bound,
They keep you fettered to the ground,
These things deny that you are free!
But only when you fail to see:

Illusion's games of time and places,
This and that, and people's faces;
All are anchors to your soul
That stay your foot when you would go.

Oh, what an utter travesty
For you who seek your soul to free
That finite thoughts and senses, too,
Refuse to free the soul of you!

These plastic baubles and their pleasures,
Offer you deceptive measures,
Than ever dreams are want to do,
And yet they seem so very true!

Where find the light for which you seek?
Well clearly, first, the realm of sleep
Shows contrast, which should say to you,
There is another truth, or two,

Which synthetic life failed to speak
In her resolve your soul to keep,
And that should serve at least as clue,
A greater truth now speaks to you!

Oh, how deluded you become
When playing maya's fife and drum!
And so again you choose the dream
And find yourself within the stream

Of flavor, savor, joy and peace
Which slumber's balm alone release,
And then your spirit fairly soars
Amidst your real homeland once more!








~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Freedom To Be - Female



I will sing you a song now of freedom,
Of the wonders of just being free,
So at last you may know on which path you should go
As you learn what it is just to be.
For the real you is not just a mother,
Nor a daughter, a sister or wife,
And it isn't a sage or a worker for wage
Nor the labels you wear throughout life.

There are no roles that you must conform to,
No pattern in which you must fit,
No preordained slot, and like it or not,
No reasons in life to submit!

All the words in this life which describe you,
And the titles that identify,
Are simply man-made so that in life's parade
Other people will know who walks by.

All the rules that you have been obeying,
Just unlearn them, and start off anew,
For it isn't your goal to assume any role,
But to find, and become the real you.

Just release all the names that men gave you,
And begin with your basic design.
It's ok just to be, open up and you'll see
That once free, then all else is sublime!








~~Mirabel















--> Man

[Man]

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Freedom To Be - Male


I will sing you a song now of freedom,
Of the wonders of just being free,
So at last you may know on which path you should go
As you learn what it is just to be.
For the real you is not just a husband,
Nor a son, or an uncle or brother,
And it isn't a sage,
Nor a worker for wage,
Nor the titles you give one another.

There are no roles that you must conform to,
No pattern in which you must fit,
No preordained slot, and like it or not,
No reason in life to submit!

All the words in this life which describe you,
And the titles that identify,
Are simply man-made so that in life's parade
Other people will know who walks by.

All the rules that you have been obeying,
Just unlearn them, and start off anew,
For it isn't your goal to assume any role,
But to find, and become the real you.

Just release all the names that men gave you,
And begin with your basic design.
It's ok just to be, open up and you'll see
That once free, then all else is sublime!










~~Mirabel















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Databank Storehouse Playback



Everything you've done and thought of and viewed
Is stored in the DNA record in you.
It will either confuse or further enlight
With great stones of stumble or jewels of delight.
It is not your culture nor status nor class
That soon will distinguish you from the whole mass.
It is not your wealth nor the labels you're showing
But things that you learn and then make them your knowing.

Your self-knowledge unlocks a universe vast
Transcending the future, the present and past.
So reach for the rung of your memory's light
And climb to the stars on your ladder of life!








~~Mirabel















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Wonder


Wonder of wonders!
How great Thou art!
We praise Your light
From the depth of our hearts!
Time, space and measure,
Gravity and weight,
Pop like a bubble,
Revealing our fates.

Many have seen it,
With vision renewed,
The hard path of seeking
Reveals what is true.

New revelations
Rend veil after veil
Reviving our hearts
More than mere words can tell.








~~Mirabel















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Purity


The world awash with purity
as bathed within a glow
of pure perfection constantly,
my dears, this is my goal.
Within perfection's radiation
how quickly would life raise
to bestow benediction
as in the early days.

Purity is attainable
by every one of you,
just make your good sustainable,
and let your Light shine through.

Call love into your consciousness,
your heart it's habitation,
out picture then the happiness
of purity's radiation.

And let that glow out from you go
to north, south, east and west,
and you'll become a wondrous star
of pure perfection's best.










~~Mirabel















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Sieve



How like a sieve you have become,
how open to our pen,
And near again to seize it all
to take it back again.
'Tis true, you see, and none deny
the clock of heaven ticks on by.
The scope is broader, dear, by far
than you can fathom where you are.

And yet, we know, with memory clear
how difficult, as time draws near
To maintain patience, faith and just
how tenuous is that here and now.
But listen, dear and listen true
yea, all, indeed, is well with you.
The hallway narrows at the door,
come hither to return no more!

When thou doth hear this music blest
let heart take flight with all the rest,
And feel the notes that vibrate through
the all and every mote of you.

And thus the color's sharpest hue
with life and richness come to you,
A brilliance which may ebb and flow
and bid you follow where they go.

And doth your essence not then see
the mastery that was meant to be?
As memory feels herself arise
to be at one with God and skies?

And not perverse nor wicked we
who guide you o'er that turgid sea,
But blessed angels of your fate
set here to watch o'er you and wait.

Beloved, watch as eaglets do
the cast of sky, the tone and hue,
Recall to mind, and this you can,
the sound of dawn, the hue of man.

In blessed creation's dawning Light
the word became - again at night
The word returned from whence it came
to wait creation's dawn again.










~~Mirabel















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Duino Elegies - The First Elegy


Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to
endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite
space gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for-that
longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

Yes - the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing
of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)
who could love so much more purely than those who were
gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;
remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was
merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back
into herself, as if there were not enough strength
to create them a second time. Have you imagined
Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl
deserted by her beloved might be inspired
by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love
and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her"?
Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow
more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly
freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension, so that
gathered in the snap of release it can be more than
itself. For there is no place where we can remain.

Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure
God's voice -far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
It is murmuring toward you now from those who died
young.
Didn't their fate, whenever you stepped into a church
in Naples or Rome, quietly come to address you?
Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission,
as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance
of injustice about their death - which at times
slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even one's own first name behind, forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. -Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have
created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.
In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:
they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children
outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often
the source of our spirit's growth-: could we exist without them?
Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus,
the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness;
and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god
had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us.


From 'Ahead of All Parting:

The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke'


Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell










~~ Rainer Maria Rilke








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Duino Elegies - The Second Elegy



Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas,
I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul,
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of you, veiling his radiance, stood at the front
door,
slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the
window).
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart, beating
higher and higher, would beat us to death. Who *are* you?

Early successes, Creation's pampered favorites
mountain-ranges, peaks growing red in the dawn
of all Beginning, pollen of the flowering godhead,
joints of pure light, corridors, stairways, thrones,
space formed from essence, shields made of ecstasy, storms
of emotion whirled into rapture, and suddenly, alone,
*mirrors*: which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from
their face
and gather it back, into themselves, entire.

But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone
may tell us:
"Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole
springtime
is filled with you . . . "-what does it matter? he can't contain
us,
we vanish inside him and around him. And those who are
beautiful,
oh who can retain them? Appearance ceaselessly rises
in their face, and is gone. Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air, like steam from a dish
of hot food. O smile, where are you going? O upturned
glance:
new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart . . .
alas, but that is what we *are*. Does the infinite space
we dissolve into, taste of us then? Do the angels really
reabsorb only the radiance that streamed out from
themselves, or
sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace
of our essence in it as well? Are we mixed in with their
features even as slightly as that vague look
in the faces of pregnant women? They do not notice it
(how could they notice) in their swirling return to
themselves.

Lovers, if they knew how, might utter strange, marvelous
words in the night air. For it seems that everything
hides us. Look: trees do exist; the houses
that we live in still stand. We alone
fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind.
And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half
out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.

Lovers, gratified in each other, I am asking *you*
about us. You hold each other. Where is your proof?
Look, sometimes I find that my hands have become aware
of each other, or that my time-worn face
shelters itself inside them. That gives me a slight
sensation. But who would dare to exist, just for that?
You, though, who in the other's passion
grow until, overwhelmed, he begs you:
"No *more* . . ."; you who beneath his hands
swell with abundance, like autumn grapes;
you who may disappear because the other has wholly
emerged: I am asking you about us. I know,
you touch so blissfully because the caress preserves,
because the place you so tenderly cover
does not vanish; because underneath it
you feel pure duration. So you promise eternity, almost,
from the embrace. And yet, when you have survived
the terror of the first glances, the longing at the window,
and the first walk together, once only, through the garden:
lovers, are you the same? When you lift yourselves up
to each other's mouth and your lips join, drink against drink:
oh how strangely each drinker seeps away from his action.

Weren't you astonished by the caution of human gestures
on Attic gravestones? wasn't love and departure
placed so gently on shoulders that it seemed to be made
of a different substance than in our world? Remember the
hands,
how weightlessly they rest, though there is power in the
torsos.
These self-mastered figures know: "We can go this far,
this is ours, to touch one another this lightly; the gods
can press down harder upon us. But that is the gods' affair."

If only we too could discover a pure, contained,
human place, our own strip of fruit-bearing soil
between river and rock. For our own heart always exceeds
us,
as theirs did. And we can no longer follow it, gazing
into images that soothe it or into the godlike bodies
where, measured more greatly, it achieves a greater repose.











~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell






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Duino Elegies - The Third Elegy




It is one thing to sing the beloved. Another, alas,
to invoke that hidden, guilty river-god of the blood.
Her young lover, whom she knows from far away-what
does he know of
the lord of desire who often, up from the depths of his
solitude,
even before she could soothe him, and as though she didn't
exist,
held up his head, ah, dripping with the unknown,
erect, and summoned the night to an endless uproar.
Oh the Neptune inside our blood, with his appalling trident.
Oh the dark wind from his breast out of that spiraled conch.
Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow. O stars,
isn't it from you that the lover's desire for the face
of his beloved arises? Doesn't his secret insight
into her pure features come from the pure constellations?

Not you, his mother: alas, you were not the one
who bent the arch of his eyebrows into such expectation.
Not for you, girl so aware of him, not for your mouth
did his lips curve themselves into a more fruitful expression.
Do you really think that your gentle steps could have shaken
him
with such violence, you who move like the morning breeze?
Yes, you did frighten his heart; but more ancient terrors
plunged into him at the shock of that feeling. Call him . . .
but you can't quite call him away from those dark
companions.
Of course, he wants to escape, and he does; relieved, he
nestles
into your sheltering heart, takes hold, and begins himself.
But did he ever begin himself, really?
Mother, you made him small, it was you who started him;
in your sight he was new, over his new eyes you arched
the friendly world and warded off the world that was alien.
Ah, where are the years when you shielded him just by
placing
your slender form between him and the surging abyss?
How much you hid from him then. The room that filled
with suspicion
at night: you made it harmless; and out of the refuge of your
heart
you mixed a more human space in with his night-space.
And you set down the lamp, not in that darkness, but in
your own nearer presence, and it glowed at him like a friend.
There wasn't a creak that your smile could not explain,
as though you had long known just when the floor would do
that...
And he listened and was soothed. So powerful was your
presence
as you tenderly stood by the bed; his fate,
tall and cloaked, retreated behind the wardrobe, and his
restless
future, delayed for a while, adapted to the folds of the
curtain.

And he himself, as he lay there, relieved, with the sweetness
of the gentle world you had made for him dissolving beneath
his drowsy eyelids, into the foretaste of sleep-:
he seemed protected . . . But inside: who could ward off,
who could divert, the floods of origin inside him?
Ah, there was no trace of caution in that sleeper; sleeping,
yes but dreaming, but flushed with what fevers: how he
threw himself in.
All at once new, trembling, how he was caught up
and entangled in the spreading tendrils of inner event
already twined into patterns, into strangling undergrowth,
prowling
bestial shapes. How he submitted-. Loved.
Loved his interior world, his interior wilderness,
that primal forest inside him, where among decayed
treetrunks
his heart stood, light-green. Loved. Left it, went through
his own roots and out, into the powerful source
where his little birth had already been outlived. Loving,
he waded down into more ancient blood, to ravines
where Horror lay, still glutted with his fathers. And every
Terror knew him, winked at him like an accomplice.
Yes, Atrocity smiled . . . Seldom
had you smiled so tenderly, mother. How could he help
loving what smiled at him. Even before he knew you,
he had loved it, for already while you carried him inside you,
it
was dissolved in the water that makes the embryo weightless.


No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year
as the flowers do; an immemorial sap
flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl,
this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday
appear, but
seething multitudes; not just a single child,
but also the fathers lying in our depths
like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds
of ancient mothers-; also the whole
soundless landscape under the clouded or clear
sky of its destiny-: all this, my dear, preceded you.
And you yourself, how could you know
what primordial time you stirred in your lover. What
passions
welled up inside him from departed beings. What
women hated you there. How many dark
sinister men you aroused in his young veins. Dead
children reached out to touch you . . . Oh gently, gently,
let him see you performing, with love, some confident daily
task,-
lead him out close to the garden, give him what outweighs
the heaviest night . . . . . .
Restrain him . . . . . .













~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell






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Duino Elegies - The Tenth Elegy




Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face
make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year-, not only a season
in time-, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home.














~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell






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Love Song





How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.













~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





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Fall Day



Lord, it is time. This was a very big summer.
Lay your shadows over the sundial,
and let the winds loose on the fields.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them two more sunny days,
urge them on to fulfillment and throw
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will never build one.
Whoever is alone now, will long remain so,
Will watch, read, write long letters
and will wander in the streets, here and there
restlessly, when the leaves blow.




Translated by Stephen Mitchell






~~ Rainer Maria Rilke








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The Lovers



See how in their veins all becomes spirit:
into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.
Thirsters, and they receive drink,
watchers, and see: they receive sight.
Let them into one another sink
so as to endure each other outright.










~~ Rainer Maria Rilke



Translated by Stephen Mitchell




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You Who Never Arrived



You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...







~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





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Ignorant Before the Heavens of My Life


Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness
of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.
As if I didn't exist. Do I have any
share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with
their pure effect? Does my blood's ebb and flow
change with their changes? Let me put aside
every desire, every relationship
except this one, so that my heart grows used to
its farthest spaces. Better that it live
fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than
as if protected, soothed by what is near.










~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





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Girl in Love


That's my window. This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep--was still floating in it.
Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?

I could fancy all things around me
Were nothing but I as yet;
Like a crystal's depth, profoundly
Mute, translucent, unlit.

I have space to spare inside me
For the stars, too: so full of room
Feels my heart; so lightly
Would it let go of him, whom

For all I know I have started
To love, it may be to hold.
Strange, as if never charted,
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved,

Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I.





~~ Rainer Maria Rilke




Translated by Stephen Mitchell



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Fear of the Inexplicable


But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence ofthe individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeonsand not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.







~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





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Again and again, however we know the landscape of love




Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.








~~ Rainer Maria Rilke








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Exposed on the cliffs of the heart



Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down
there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
-- but how tiny still one last--
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial.- But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart...









~~ Rainer Maria Rilke








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You, you only, exist



You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!











~~ Rainer Maria Rilke








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Archaic Torso of Apollo


We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.












~~ Rainer Maria Rilke



Translated by Stephen Mitchell




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I am, O Anxious One


I am, O Anxious One. Don't you hear my voice
surging forth with all my earthly feelings?
They yearn so high, that they have sprouted wings
and whitely fly in circles round your face.
My soul, dressed in silence, rises up
and stands alone before you: can't you see?
don't you know that my prayer is growing ripe
upon your vision as upon a tree?

If you are the dreamer, I am what you dream.
But when you want to wake, I am your wish,
and I grow strong with all magnificence
and turn myself into a star's vast silence
above the strange and distant city, Time.














~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Put out my eyes


Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,
Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
And without any feet can go to you;
And tongueless, I can conjure you at will.
Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you
And grasp you with my heart as with a hand;
Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true;
And if you set this brain of mine afire,
Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.







~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Buddha In Glory


Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.




~~ Rainer Maria Rilke


Translated by Stephen Mitchell





--> Man

[Man]

Poem




In a Dark Time



In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady stream of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.




~Theodore Roethke






--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Once More, the Round

What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.

Now I adore my life
With the Bird, the abiding Leaf,
With the Fish, the questing Snail,
And the Eye altering All;
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake;

And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.







~Theodore Roethke






--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.







~Theodore Roethke






--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The Waking 1948



I strolled across
An open field;
The sun was out;
Heat was happy.

This way! This way!
The wren's throat shimmered,
Either to other,
The blossoms sang.

The stones sang,
The little ones did,
And flowers jumped
Like small goats.

A ragged fringe
Of daisies waved;
I wasn't alone
In a grove of apples.

Far in the wood
A nestling sighed;
The dew loosened
Its morning smells.

I came where the river
Ran over stones:
My ears knew
An early joy.

And all the waters
Of all the streams
Sang in my veins
That summer day.







~Theodore Roethke






--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.






~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Twice

I took my heart in my hand
(O my love, O my love),
I said: Let me fall or stand,
Let me live or die,
But this once hear me speak
(O my love, O my love)—
Yet a woman's words are weak;
You should speak, not I.

You took my heart in your hand
With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scann'd,
Then set it down,
And said, 'It is still unripe,
Better wait awhile;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
Till the corn grows brown.'
As you set it down it broke—
Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
At your judgement I heard:
But I have not often smiled
Since then, nor question'd since,
Nor cared for cornflowers wild,
Nor sung with the singing bird.

I take my heart in my hand,
O my God, O my God,
My broken heart in my hand:
Thou hast seen, judge Thou.
My hope was written on sand,
O my God, O my God:
Now let thy judgement stand—
Yea, judge me now.

This contemn'd of a man,
This marr'd one heedless day,
This heart take thou to scan
Both within and without:
Refine with fire its gold,
Purge Thou its dross away—
Yea, hold it in Thy hold,
Whence none can pluck it out.

I take my heart in my hand—
I shall not die, but live—
Before Thy face I stand;
I, for Thou callest such:
All that I have I bring,
All that I am I give,
Smile Thou and I shall sing,
But shall not question much.








~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Better Resurrection


I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.








~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




The First Day

I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!








~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




In an Artist's Studio



One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-green,
A saint, an angel --every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.









~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Daughter of Eve

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:--
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.







~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Uphill

Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.








~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




De Profundis

Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.










~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Dreamland

Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.






~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Who Has Seen the Wind?



Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I;
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.







~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Remember



Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.





~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




When I Am Dead, My Dearest


When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.






~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Gone For Ever

O Happy rosebud blooming
Upon thy parent tree,
Nay, thou art too presuming
For soon the earth entombing
Thy faded charms shall be,
And the chill damp consuming.

O happy skylark springing
Up to the broad blue sky,
Too fearless in thy winging,
Too gladsome in thy singing,
Thou also soon shalt lie
Where no sweet notes are ringing.

And through life's shine and shower
We shall have joy and pain;
But in the summer bower,
And at the morning hour,
We still shall look in vain
For the same bird and flower.







~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




A Hope Carol



A Night was near, a day was near,
Between a day and night
I heard sweet voices calling clear,
Calling me:
I heard a whirr of wing on wing,
But could not see the sight;
I long to see my birds that sing,
I long to see.

Below the stars, beyond the moon,
Between the night and day
I heard a rising falling tune
Calling me:
I long to see the pipes and strings
Whereon such minstrels play;
I long to see each face that sings,
I long to see.

To-day or may be not to-day,
To-night or not to-night,
All voices that command or pray
Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire
And in my eyes such light
That I shall see that heart's desire
I long to see.





~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Bird Raptures



The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, everything
That is so silent, sweet, and pale,
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.

Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale.

O herald skylark, stay thy flight
One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.




~Christina Rossetti







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Achilles' Last Stand



Gilbert Fonts strumming,
monotonously thrumming
and vying to cling
to the original
tune.

Desmond Fonts drumming;
Stanley Blade humming
and trying to sing
and the pub's not
immune.

Ernesto Caan numbing
the ears with brass plumbing
and we're dying to wring
his windpipe
real soon.

and intervening Clifford
-the landlord- Gifford
snatching the mic
from Stanley's
hand,
with a vitriol vamp
he booms through the amp
"Disband your band,
you're banned!"





~Ephraim Crud







--> Man

[Man]

Poem




Introduction


Manners do not cost anything at all, so if you just remember some of what I'm going to tell you, then you won't go far wrong in life.



Always Remember

Always eat up all the food on your plate,
Don't let your clock go slow, or you will be late.
Never tell your children french letters are no good,
AND REMEMBER -- Never tell anyone a joke you don't understand
because the punchline could be rude.

Always tell your mother you've put clean undies on,
Don't talk about anyone until you're sure they've gone.
Never sell a friend a car that will not work,
AND REMEMBER -- Never show the film 'Midnight Express' to
anyone who just happens to be a Turk.

Always get up in the morning and go out for a run,
Don't ever use bad language in the company of a nun.
Never offer anyone the use of a dirty hankerchief,
AND REMEMBER -- If you ever meet anyone with mad cow disease
don't ever offer them any beef.

Always put the cap back on the toothpaste tube,
Don't ever in the company of women call their tit a boob.
NEVER tell your father-in-law his daughter's no good in bed,
AND REMEMBER -- If you hate eating the meat of living animals
make sure that the buggers are dead.

Always take you mutt out when he's standing with crossed legs,
don't ever finish a bottle of wine, always leave some dregs.
Never tell a horse NO, always tell it NEIGH,
AND REMEMBER -- A dog is not just for Christmas, you can have
it on sandwiches on boxing day!!



~Jim Topoke







--> Man

[Man]

Poem








Introduction

I would like to dedicate this poem to my aunt Karen, who told me the funniest story about something that happened to her as a child. It was a warm summer day and she was playing on the front porch...

A Tribute To Jimminy Straw-Leg




There once was a grasshopper
nimble and quick,
he had great big eyeballs,
and his legs were like sticks

he spent most days hopping
from hither to yon,
hunting for insects,
to nibble upon

but one day, while snacking,
he made a fatal mistake!
one that would bring forth,
the grasshopper's fate

as he sat on a porch,
munching and chewing,
a little girl spied him
and asked, "WHAT'S that bug DOING?!"

She watched in amazement
as he gobbled his peers,
he felt no remorse,
but the girl was near tears!

He munched and he crunched
first some flies, then some ants,
he crunched and he munched
and this made the girl MAD!

She grew quite annoyed
as the little bug chomped,
"Why that bug is MEAN!"
"Why, he should be STOMPED!"

"He MUST learn a lesson!"
"He MUST understand!"
so she thought for a while,
then came up with a plan...

She said "This'll teach him!"
as the grasshopper fed,
then she took some sharp scissors
and CHOPPED off his leg!

"What's happened here?!"
asked the bug in mid-munch,
"ALL I was DOING,
was having my LUNCH!"

As soon as she'd done it,
the girl felt some relief
that is, 'till she witnessed
the grasshopper's grief

He looked quite annoyed!
and very alarmed!
What HAD he done WRONG?!
Why HAD he been HARMED?!

He was most confused!
heart broken and grim,
as he searched all around
for his missing limb

The poor little hopper,
tried to JUMP! tried to HIDE!
then realized his six legs
were NOW only five

The girl felt quite guilty,
then instantly knew
just what it was,
that she had to do...

So she got an old broom straw
and some Elmer's glue,
glued the straw to his hip,
then said, "Good as new!"

The lame little hopper,
he was NOT amused
about his prosthesis,
still sticky with glue

"I know what I'll do!"
said the girl, with a grin,
"I'll make him my pet!"
"And I'll be his best friend!"

So she put him inside
an old medicine bottle
he couldn't do much,
(except limp and hobble)

The girl named him Jimminy
(though his REAL name was Fred)
and each night she placed him
at the head of her bed

And though he was crippled,
disabled and maimed,
he still kept on hoping,
his faith still remained...

"I SHAN'T give up hope!"
"I SHALL persevere!"
"I have to get out, cause,
my leg's still out there!"

The sad little hopper,
held on for dear life!
he still kept on trying,
through sorrow and strife...

'Till one fateful day
right out of the blue,
the girl and her sister
got in to a feud

The girl's older sister
was meaner than she,
and knew just EXACTLY
what HER plan would be...

She then took the bottle
containing the bug,
and SLAMMED it against
the wall with a THUD!

Poor little Jimminy!
He had not seen it coming!
His eyes, they were crossing!
His brain, it was numbing!

He searched for an answer!
What had caused this attack?!
and then all the sudden,
everything just went black!

Then the little bug smiled,
his pain started to fade,
he saw grasshopper angels
come to take him away

He felt no more sorrow,
he had no regrets,
he'd lived a good life
and he'd paid his debts

He sighed with relief
because he'd done his best
he'd never stopped trying,
and now he could rest

The girl watched in horror,
and then started to cry
her pet had brain-damage,
and right there he died...

Then the girl wiped her tears
she had learned such a lesson!
that little green bug,
had been such a blessin'!

And so here's a tribute,
to that little guy
along with some wisdom,
we ALL should live by...

Life is a gift,
but it's over so fast!
we should live every day
as if it's our last

Live each day to the fullest,
and give it your all!
like the little grasshopper,
with the leg made of straw.....






~Monica Knight







--> Man

[Man]

Poem








Banana Zoo



Should you behold Banana Zoo
you're sure of a big surprise
for there you'll see Ken Kangaroo
with odd-shaped, kaleidoscope eyes
and Terry the Tapir and Gerald Giraffe
showin' off their skills as dowsers
and Sid the Zookeeper with a halibut scarf
and goldfishes pinned to his trousers.

There's Venomous Vince, the variegated viper,
pole vaultin' in one-legged jeans
and Peccary Pete the porcine sniper
with his blowpipe and haricot beans.
there's Gertie the Gibbon and Maureen Macaque
solicitin' in suspenders and bras,
and Lewis the Lion who diets on wrack
and keeps turquoise tadpoles in jars.

And should you get stuck in Banana Zoo,
where the purple striped Aardvark
plays skiffle,
I know a good shrink
who will help pull you through,
for there's no such place
-it's piffle!










~Ephraim Crud








--> Man

[Man]

Poem








Be Seated



When life has dealt you an unfair hand
And you feel like you've really been cheated
Don't get irate, spit teeth and curse fate;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.

When the Devil's shat in your laundry bin
And you feel you've been unfairly treated
Don't warble and bleat, stamping your feet;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.

When you've give it a try, and it's all gone awry
And you feel like you haven't competed
Don't ponder, regret, you'll just get upset;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.

When you've give it your all, and held yourself tall
And still wound up getting defeated
Don't let it show that you've taken a blow;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.

When you've gone in headlong, and done it all wrong
And now know you should have retreated
Don't sit and lament, over time poorly spent;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.

When you've leaped from a diving board into a pool
You mistakenly thought had been heated
Remember your strengths, and do a few lengths;
Stay calm, chill out, and be seated.






~Ben Mousley









--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Cop This



The booze bus was out on a traffic attack.
One driver was clear, till a spirited cop,
having noticed some knives on the seat in the back,
said "These are the weapons we're trying to stop!"

The driver retorted "I juggle those things,
that's why I stay sober. I can't have a drink".
The cop said "You'll need to have hacksaws and wings,
'cause if you can't prove that, you'll be in the clink".

The driver stepped out and went into his act.
Blades flashed in the moonlight. The show was superb.
Although very nervous, he never once cracked,
so none of those knives found a way to the kerb.

As Paddy was passing, with sighs of relief,
he said to his mate "I'm not drinkin' no more".
Young Mick asked him why, and the answer was brief -
"I'd be certain to fail with that test I just saw".





~Brian Bell









--> Man

[Man]

Poem






Biros



Where have all the biros gone?
- Silently, swiftly passing -
Where have all the biros gone?
Designate them, consecrate them,
Tether, tie, glue or screw them
down, and I try, yet they are
Gone to elsewheres everyone,
Gone, going, gone.


Where do all the biros go?
- No cache is waiting -
Where do all the biros go?
Riding, rolling, sliding, snaking,
Flying, fleeing , spirited or stealing
Away; or do fairies take them
To dim and distant destinations in
Other dimensions sneakily?

What do they do, where ever they are?
- So permanent their passing -
What do they do and why have they gone?
While yet still more are being made
Of plastic, metal, and tubes of ink;
All dead and lifeless, or so you would think.
Why have they gone to where ever they are?
For no good reason! To drive me mad!
Gone, going, gone.




~Bridh Hancock









--> Man

[Man]

Poem








Introduction

I like dandelions. They got guts.

Dandelions



Dandelions do not seem aware
That people really do not want them there.
At blossom time, they simply do their best,
With what they have, to venture forth well-dressed.
In sunny yellow frocks, they make the scene,
Convinced that they look great against the green.
And then in snowy tutus they will send
Their children dancing gaily on the wind.
I know some people think that I am nuts,
But I like dandelions; they got guts.

And I like people like the dandelion
Who sometimes fail, but not for lack of tryin',
Who do not question why it is they live,
But give the world the best they have to give.
Not asking praise or even toleration,
They do their thing according to their station.






~Tad Lawson









--> Man

[Man]

Poem








The Sea-Limits

Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible, -
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong farther. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's, - it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again, -
Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.




~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man

[Man]

Poem








Insomnia



Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit's wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.






~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man

[Man]

Poem





A Little While


A LITTLE while a little love
The hour yet bears for thee and me
Who have not drawn the veil to see
If still our heaven be lit above.
Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
And I have heard the night-wind cry
And deemed its speech mine own.

A little while a little love
The scattering autumn hoards for us
Whose bower is not yet ruinous
Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
Only across the shaken boughs
We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
And deep in both our hearts they rouse
One wail for thee and me.

A little while a little love
May yet be ours who have not said
The word it makes our eyes afraid
To know that each is thinking of.
Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
In smiles a little season yet:
I'll tell thee, when the end is come,
How we may best forget.






~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Love-Lily

Between the hands, between the brows,
Between the lips of Love-Lily,
A spirit is born whose birth endows
My blood with fire to burn through me;
Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
At whose least touch my colour flies,
And whom my life grows faint to hear.

Within the voice, within the heart,
Within the mind of Love-Lily,
A spirit is born who lifts apart
His tremulous wings and looks at me;
Who on my mouth his finger lays,
And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
That Eden of Love's watered ways
Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
Kisses and words of Love-Lily,--
Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
Till riotous longing rest in me!
Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
But find in her its gracious goal,
Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
Nor Love her body from her soul.





~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Sudden Light


I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?






~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man

[Man]

Poem





Lovesight

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?




~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti









--> Man