Posts labeled Poetry
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The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present, Constantine, et al, eds. (Norton, 2010)
excerpt:
When I heard you were dead, Heraclitus,
tears came, and I remembered how often
you and I had talked the sun to bed.
Long ago you turned to ashes, my Halicarnassian friend,
but your poems, your Nightingales, still live.
Hades clutches all things yet can't touch these.
--Callimachus
(third century BCE;
translated by Edmund Keeley)
Lucille Clifton died February 13, 2010, at 73 years old. She was an amazing poet. If you haven't checked her out, you might enjoy doing so. Below is a poem from Ms. Clifton. Blessings for her journey and gratitude for her truth-telling voice.
the earth is a living thing
is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea
is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded
is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal
is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean
--Lucille Clifton
"Through the wild cathedral evening, the rain unraveled tales."
--Bob Dylan, "Chimes of Freedom"
February 2, 1968
In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
--Wendell Berry
I Walk Out Into the Country at Night
The moon is so high it is
Almost in the Great Bear.
I walk out of the city
Along the road to the West.
The damp wind ruffles my coat.
Dewy grass soaks my sandals.
Fishermen are singing
On the distant river.
Fox fires dance on the ruined tombs.
A chill rises and fills
Me with melancholy. I
Try to think of words that will
Capture the uncanny solitude.
I come home late. The night
Is half spent. I stand for a
Long while in the doorway.
My young son is still up, reading.
Suddenly he bursts out laughing,
And all the sadness of the
Twilight of my life is gone.
--Lu Yu
(From One Hundred Poems From the Chinese, Trans., Kenneth Rexroth. New Directions, 1971.)
Ancient Remnants
A shattered stone statue
Some old copper coins
Strange ornaments of blackened silver
Several broken bronze vessels
Were unearthed
In a desert
And people say that centuries ago
Here where there is only a desert
A city was once settled
And a thought strikes me:
Even today, at a party
A gathering
When I come face to face with you
For one second
Just for one moment
The warmth of your body
The fleeting chance of meeting our eyes
The shine of your red bindiya
The rustle of your clothes
The fragrance of your hair
And sometimes, unintentionally
A tiny flower of touch
And then again, that unending desert
That desert where once
A city had flourished.
--Javed Akhtar
(From Anthems of Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu Poetry, by Ali Husain Mir & Raza Mir. IndiaInk, 2006.)
The heart is a begging bowl. The world is a luminous coyote. The heart: a mad genius. The world: a standing wave. The world is a goddess of energy. The heart is a monolith on the moon. Earth: dream-blossom of the cosmos--silent universe, speaking in species. The heart is aquatic. The world is promiscuous. The heart is a problematic documentarian. The world is a god-drunk flood of physics.
.jpg "Drew at the Whidbey Institute, delivering the Thomas Berry Legacy lecture, October 2008")
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