[lit-ideas] Re: Poetry x 2 = Sabbatical
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:05:43 EDT
Oops, sorry about that. It's 3:50 in the a.m. and I couldn't sleep --
whaddya expect?
I'll contribute a couple (ok, 3) of my fav Cummings poems -- The first is
timely and the first poem of his I loved. My Mother had it done in
calligraphy
w/ a water-paint background for me for a gift once. It will always hang on
my wall.
Julie Krueger
" i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened.)"
~~~~~~~~~~~
"since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other:then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
--but beauty is more each than living's all
multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
canceled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)
or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete;pasts are unborn
(here less than nothing's more than everything)
death,as man call him,ends what they call men
--but beauty is more now than dying's when."
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Poetry x 2 =
Sabbatical Date: 10/13/2006 11:46:24 P.M. Central Standard Time From:
_eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
>>I was never very fond of Merwin, and this poem doesn't
cause me to change my mind.
Merwin's early stuff, from _The Lice_ is splendid, a sort of
surrealist aphorism. Maybe you'd like this one:
The River of Bees
by WS Merwin
In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years
He was old he will have fallen into his eyes
I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live
One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Images of hope
It was offered to me by name
Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say
He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass
I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay
He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water
We are the echo of the future
On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live
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