Favourite Poems

I'm reading the poems of C.P. Cavafy this week in the marvelous new translation by Aliki Barnstone. This is a particularly nice one:

Sensual Pleasure

Joy and perfume of my life--the memory of the hours
when I found and held sensual pleasure as I wanted it.
Joy and perfume of my own life--because I turned away revolted
from enjoying any routine erotic love.

Today is Frost day:

They say the truth will make you free.
My truth will bind you slave to me --
Which may be what you want to be.

There was a young man from Hyde
who fell down a sewer and died.
The next day his brother
fell down another.
So now they're interred side by side.

Lisel Mueller is my newest fave . . .

Monet refuses the operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften an blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burnn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor, if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Thanks MB.

I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed

by Emily Dickinson.


I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When the landlord turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

It's going to be another Frost day:

The Objection to Being Stepped On

At the end of the row
I stepped on the toe
Of an unemployed hoe.
It rose in offence
and struck me a blow
In the seat of my sense.
It wasn't to blame
But I called it a name.
And I must say it dealt
Me a blow that I felt
Like malice prepense.
You may call me a fool,
But was there a rule
The weapon should be
Turned into a tool?
And what do we see?
The first tool I step on
Turned into a weapon.

Mary had a little Lamb
It was tethered to a pylon
Twenty Thousand volts went up it's arse
and turned it's fleece to nylon

This has got in my head. Unknown author, amazing, I think that it would grace the pages of any erotic poetry book.

On a more serious note some first world war poetry is very affecting and with Iran, Iraq, etc still viable.
Suicide In the Trenches is curiously touching in terms of the futility of war and wasted lives.,

These two are from my childhood:

Mary Had a Little Sheep

Mary had a little sheep.
The sheep and Mary went to sleep.
The sheep turned out to be a ram,
And Mary had a little lamb.

Keep a Poem In Your Pocket By: Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
Keep a poem in your pocket
and a picture in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.
The little poem will sing to you
the little picture bring to you
a dozen dreams to dance to you
at night when you're in bed.
So---
Keep a picture in your pocket
and poem in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.

Communion by Viggo Mortensen



1. We've left shore somehow
become the friends
of early theory
Close enough to speak
desire and pain of absence
of mistakes we'd make
given the chance.

Each smile returned
makes harder avoiding
dreams that see us
lying in early evening
curtain shadows, skin
safe against skin.
Bloom of compassion
Respect for moments
eyes lock turns
forever into one more
veil that falls away

2. This after seeing you
last night, first time
smelling you with
permission: shoulders to
wonder openly at
as carefully kissed
as those arms
waited impossibly on.

They've held me now
and your breath
down my back
sent away night air
that had me shaking
in the unlit anglican
doorway.

3. Are we ruined for
finding our faces fit
and want to know more
about morning? Is
friendship cancelled
if we can't call
each other anymore
in amnesia, invite
ourselves to last glances
under suspicious clocks
telling us when we've
had enough?

4. Your steady hands
cradling my grateful
skull; were you taking
in my face to
save an image
you've rarely allowed
yourself after leaving
that cold alcove?
Am I a photograph
you gaze at in
moments of weakness?

You ordered me
off my knees
into your arms.
Wasn't to beg
that I knelt; only
to see you once
from below.

Tried to say something
that filled my mouth
and longed to rest
in your ear.
Don't dare write
it down for fear it'll
become words, just
words.

The first poem I truly enjoyed was Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening". I had a great English teacher my sophomore year in high school, and she was the first to teach me HOW to read and appreciate poetry. I won't quote the whole poem here, it's easily available online.

I have written some poetry, but it is usually in response to a very specific event - missing my partner when he is away on a business trip, losing someone I love, those sorts of things. I wrote one for a dear friend when she turned 60, and she has it framed on a wall in her house....

"...And miles to go before I sleep." Thanks for reminding us of that moving work, DC.

I'm glad it's Frost day in my house:

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

"...And miles to go before I sleep." Thanks for reminding us of that moving work, DC.

It's Frost day in my house:

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.