What Poetry Moved You?

[elbaron1914]

i find this beautiful...

IF

--Rudyard Kipling

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

same poem for me...

[shadowspy]

right now, in one of my low moments, desiderata and if seems appropriate!

[KristinLavransdatr]

Release

 

I grant that of a very few things you spoke truly:

for one, my worrying makes the thing more fearful than it is.

I have survived days of hearts and sentiment

when conventions and commercials conspired

to cast me as victim without valentines.

But there are rooms and spaces your eyes have not seen,

and in a few years nothing of my body will remember you

even now, the blurring --

I remember what I loved in you, not why.

 

You gave me Mozart, but have no part in

the humming rhapsodies I enjoy.

Since you have forgotten and I am forgetting

will something wondrous have passed away?

 

Yet this release - freed from the suffocating

silence of telephones when they don't ring,

time not crammed full with tedious togetherness,

the frightening possibility that post boxes

may not be full.

Never to bend my will to secretly bending yours.

Never to avert my eyes from other pleasures

nor hurt, when yours fail to do the same.

 

There are skies and songs and books

you have not sullied,

and a strength we never saw because

it was sleeping.

 

- bliss cua lim

[gat3keeper]

check this out

 

http://decembernights.tripod.com

 

nice prose/poems

[testosterone_blue]

long before the literary hit "Men are from Mars and Women are from venus", there is one guy who wrote the cacophony of man and a woman and their relenting euphony in the end:

 

Man and Woman

by Victor Hugo

 

Man is the most elevated of creatures,

Woman the most sublime of ideals.

God made for man a throne; for woman an altar.

The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.

Man is the brain,

Woman, the heart.

The brain creates light, the heart, love.

Light engenders, love resurrects.

 

Because of reason Man is strong.

Because of tears Woman is invincible.

Reason is convincing, tears, moving.

Man is capable of all heroism,

Woman of all martyrdom.

Heroism ennobles, martyrdom sublimates.

Man has supremacy,

Woman, preference.

Supremacy is strength, preference is the right.

Man is a genius,

Woman, an angel.

Genius is immeasurable, the angel indefinable.

The aspiration of man is supreme glory,

The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.

Glory creates all that is great; virtue, all that is divine.

Man is a code,

Woman a gospel.

A code corrects; the gospel perfects.

Man thinks, Woman dreams.

To think is to have a worm in the brain, to dream is to have a halo on the brow.

Man is an ocean, Woman a lake.

The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.

Man is the flying eagle, Woman, the singing nightingale.

To fly is to conquer space. To sing is to conquer the soul.

Man is a temple, Woman a shrine.

Before the temple we discover ourselves, before the shrine we kneel.

In short, man is found where earth finishes, woman where heaven begins.

[revi]

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe:

 

Just some lines:

 

Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore ---

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamer door ---

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door ---

Only this and nothing more."

 

.. But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word,* as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther he uttered -- not a feather he fluttered --

Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before --

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."

The the bird said, "Nevermore."

 

*This word is Nevermore

[floatingchords]

:cool: this one.... the previously posted Tonight I can write the saddest lines by Pablo Neruda

[alex_the_great]

POETRY

-PABLO NERUDA

 

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

 

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating planations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

 

And I, infinitesmal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

[charlize]

pablo neruda's poetry is pure music... there seems to be an orchestra playing in the background when you read his poems

[Apollo]

LIVING GRAVES

by George Bernard Shaw

 

We are the living graves of murdered beasts

Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites

We never pause to wonder at our feasts

If animals, like men, can possibly

have rights

We pray on Sundays that we may have light

To guide our footsteps on the path we

tread

We're sick of war We do not want to

fight

The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread

And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead

Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat

Regardless of the suffering and pain

We cause by doing so. If thus we treat

Defenseless animals for sport or gain

How can we hope in this world to attain

the PEACE we say we are so anxious for

We pray for it o'er hecatombs of slain

To God, while outraging the moral law

Thus cruelty begets its offspring: war.

George Bernard Shaw

[peacemaker8]

this poem is meant to make you smile/laugh but all that it says is true, specially when we gorw old:

 

"I used to be embarrased to make the thing behave,

For every single morning it would stand and watch me shave.

 

But now I'm growing older and it sure gives me the blues,

To have the thing hang sadly down and watch me shine my shoes."

[Apollo]

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

"The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the Ocean.

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle,

Why not I with thine?-

 

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea;

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?"

 

[Apollo]

Another verse from my most favorite bard & my most favorite play! I hope you feel the intense love respect in this moment as much as I do...

@}@}~~~~

 

ROME & JULIET, excerpt III/V

~ William Shakespeare

 

"Juliet: Then, window, let day in, and let life out.

 

Romeo: Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I'll descend. (He goes down.)

 

Juliet: Art thou gone so, love-lord, ay husband-friend? I must hear from thee ever day in the hour, for in a minute there are many days. O, by this count I shall be much in years ere I again behold my Romeo!

 

Romeo: Farewell! I will omit no opportunity that may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

 

Juliet: O, think'st thou we shall ever meet again?

 

Romeo: I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our times to come."

[Hottie_Babe]

Takln from the poem LIFE of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

May this (I cried) my course through Life portray!

New scenes of Wisdom may each step display,

And Knowledge open as my days advance!

Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray,

My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse,

And thought suspended lie in Rapture's blissful trance.

 

Pareho kaming pasaway ni Coleridge so relate ako sa kaniya. Hehehe

[Karma Policeman]

Subterranean

Eric Gamalinda

 

Let me be the first to say

that I know the name for everything

and if I don't I'll make it up:

dukkha, naufragio, talinghaga.

Just like the young

whose hearts give no shame,

I love the excesses of beauty,

there is never enough sunlight

in the world I will live in,

never enough room for love.

 

I fear none of us will last long enough

to prove what I've always suspected,

that the sky is a membrane

in an angel's skull,

trees talk to each other at night,

ice is water in a state of silence,

the embryo listens to everything we say.

 

I am afraid for the child skipping rope

on the corner of my street,

the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,

the man whose memory is entirely

in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness

when I go to sleep, and that in my sleep

I will grow old and forget how desire

once drove me mad with wakefulness.

 

Just like the perfect seasons

they will die

and I will die

and you will die also;

no one knows who will go first,

and this is the source

of all my grief.

 

Lyrics From a Dead Language

Eric Gamalinda

 

This one’s for the rose of Asia gliding down the avenidas:

that she may be young forever, and in her blood hold

suzerains and kings, be witness to the passage

of prophets, great upheavals and religions.

 

I give her my treasons and typhoons.

 

This one’s for all the thorns in the estero de la reina

and all the women combing its banks for seeds and pearls

and for the rainbows they keep on their fingertips.

 

Let all the warheads in the Pacific

be quiet for once. Christ, let no one move.

 

I, too, believe in heaven.

Not strong enough to disbelieve,

I decree myself redeemed.

 

****

 

I saw him in China,

reeling from eclipses and revolutions,

I saw him in Europe, sipping tea

with heads of state.

 

I don’t believe in salvation,

I believe only in the steel flash that shoots through my ribs

each time I walk home;

 

and always there is someone in Burkina Faso

who cannot sleep,

and the sun breaks over Manhattan,

 

and the flowers pop, pink and chalcedony,

in Japan, where they count

the fortunes and ravages of spring.

 

****

 

Twilight is an unbearable hour,

vapor and umber collude

 

and in its sticky light strange creatures

breed and spawn:

 

and the air is filled with their industrious music.

And so much of this I can give

 

only as seasons and vicissitudes!

Always I am given to some secret contraband hope

 

howling among the shipwrecked,

and you are there,

 

lost at sea, listening to the empty surf.

And so much of this is real.

 

****

 

Magpatalim ka na

Ng pangil,

Ginoong Anino!

 

Lumalapot na naman

ang liwanag ng buwan

 

at bumubukad

ang mga uyaying madidilim:

 

Ganito na lang ba

 

ang buhay: sa isang café,

sa kanto ng x at x

 

lumitaw ang mahalay

na anghel,

 

at muli, bilango ka

ng rosas,

 

ng alat,

at ng matamlay na halik.

 

Ito po

ang inyong lingkod,

____________________

{Ilagay ang lagda dito}

 

Sumusunod ka lang

sa lukso ng pulso mo,

 

Ginoong Bampira,

Ginoong Tikbalang.

 

All the Christs of the revolution

will burn tonight,

and when they do this will be my permanent address:

in one corner of the wind,

holding the world’s last rose.

 

Todos los Cristos de la revolucion!

And through the smoke, stumbling past the avenidas de amor

I want to lead you, swift as logic,

into the canyons of the moon.

 

Sweet music. And as we slither into the darkness

I will fill your mouth

with hunger and lyrics. This is no love song;

let the arrow that wounds you

be the music you remember.

 

Afterlives of the Saints

Eric Gamalinda

 

]Suppose the laws of warfare were based on miracles,

and they chained and locked the bodies of saints

so the Etruscans could not use them. Suppose

 

the best weapons did not function from belief

but custody, and those who possessed them

had, like Saint Francis, the potential of stigmata,

 

the gift of tongues. For even he was a self-promoter,

boasting to birds of the ever-after in which

he was talisman and trophy. And suppose a fair maiden

 

would become the wrath of salvation, her body

perfectly embalmed, but when they opened her grave

her marvelous longevity gave way. The fact is that

 

Saint Clare embodies what has become of Assisi,

where tourists, inevitable as earthquakes, lay siege

and maculate the fortifications of pietra serena.

 

Not too long ago her body lay on a bed of violets,

themselves impervious to decay. Then air

and moisture, the bustle of human ordinariness,

 

intervened, and all that is left is a life-like replica

in which bone fragments quietly work their wonders.

Faith has a way of distorting the senses,

 

making the world more intricate than it already is, more

mirabile dictu. Even now armies still ransack

the catacombs of the elect, and in chapels the healing

 

happens insidiously, perfected by repetition.

Because the most we ask for is that the saints be true:

We are driving away from the scene of the crime;

 

stealing a glimpse in the rearview mirror. Assisi

is an undulation of opal-colored light, no more than

a wavelength, a mirage. This is the way history and memory

 

invade each other, like wars waged after visions.

Look back once, see how the view melts into the crags,

and how time fades like the frescoes of Cimabue.

 

3 poems from my favorite poet. A filipino who got published in the US \m/