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bleodswean

At the end

things pass away

into a hard won perspective.

The sepia photographs

of childhood

like twilight encounters

with eternity

and the youthful

laughter peeling

across a mountainside.

Standing close together

we make our vows

in front of others

knowing

with a backward

kind of courage

that everything

passes

away no matter

how precious

the memory

and that

even in this

we recognize

the flourish

and the firm

signature of love.

Everything we ever

held in our hands

is given to another

or slips like sand

through the gate

of our fingers

into something

which to begin with

we cannot recognize.

Everything we ever

held in our hands

is given away

in marriage to another

person or another world.

How could we know

the blessings

which illuminated our days?

The joy too strong to feel

until it was

no longer there to disturb us.

We find ourselves

always at last

ennobled by the encounter

the wedding vows

remembered at the end

and cherished now

like a live hand

holding a dead hand

loving everything it must let go.

med_cat

Wishing you and/or your family members greater success in the academic efforts than this hapless student had ;)

The illustrations in the video are by the famous and talented Kukryniksy.

(cross-posting from my DW )

Watch on YouTube

Samuil Marshak
About one schoolboy and six poor marks

A schoolboy came from school one day
And hid his record-book away.

“Where is your record-book?” asked Mum,
So out again it had to come.

A "Very Poor" caught Mother’s eye;

She shook her head and heaved a sigh.

On hearing of his son’s disgrace
His Dad went scarlet in the face.

“What was it for, upon my word?”
“I called a baobab a bird.( Read more... )

angabel.livejournal.com

Going through a midlife crisis. Send help. Poems help. Thank you.

Disappointment

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That's what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn't get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don't have to pursue anything ever again
It's over
You're free
You're unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

-- Tony Hoagland

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Imbolc

I am the dream of awakening.

I am the returning of the night.

I am the tough green shoot pushing up through the paper stones.

I am the first case of sunlight on the unfurling petals of the snowdrop.

I am the wind which whispers the gentle pull of home to the migratory bird.

I am the drop of ice melting on the mountainside with its great dream of the ocean.

I am the sap rising in the blossom tree just before it reveals its sticky buns to the sky; I am the riotous celebration humming away beneath the earths mantle of frozen sleep.

I am the rousing of the beer from its winter slumber, and the soft pad of the mother wolf's paw on the snow as she prepares to both her pups.

I am hope, potential, rebirth and promise. I am the kindling beneath which transforms the flicker of inspiration in your creative core into a blazing torch.

Give me the silent crescent moon rising over the sea and I will build you a bridge of silver light so you can walk up and lie in it.

Give me the frost-hardened wilderness and I will breathe radiant green life over it.

Give me the healer, the writer, the crafts person in the storyteller and I will replenish her essence and make her new again.

I am Brigid, Bast, Inanna and Hestia. I am the fierce protectress in the sacred fire.

Tonight I bestow my gifts of power encourage at the hearth of your soul: power to step out of the shadows of self-doubt and negativity which I've held you in darkness for too long, power to shed all that would no longer serves you, and crude to clear your heart in mind for the dawn of that awaits you.

I am the time to honor your unique gifts for their true worth it to protect and nurture your true self as you would a child. I am the deep longing of the spirit which refuses to be deemed by narrative of fear and choose instead to place itself vivaciously on the side of love.

I am stirring in your belly which knows exactly what you are capable - and that it's time the world found out.

I am the fire within which will not be contained any longer.

I am the quickening, I am the serpent uncoiling, I am Imbolc.

I am the dream of awakening.

~by Caroline Mellor
(This poem as first published on Rebelle Society.)

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

The Earth Is Closing In On Us

The Earth is closing on us
pushing us through the last passage
and we tear off our limbs to pass through.
The Earth is squeezing us.
I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again.
I wish the Earth was our mother
so she'd be kind to us.
I wish we were pictures on the rocks
for our dreams to carry as mirrors.
We saw the faces of those who will throw
our children out of the window of this last space.
Our star will hang up mirrors.
Where should we go after the last frontiers ?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky ?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air ?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.

By Mahmoud Darwish

med_cat

Хочу розповісти вам історію
про велетенського кота
рудого
як висохлі серпневі покоси
він має лиш білий нагрудник
сумні зелені
наче зелене масло
очі( Read more... )

I want to tell you a story
about a giant cat
Ginger
Like dry mowed-down August grass
only his bib is white
he has sad green
like green butter
eyes( Read more... )

(Maxim Krivtsov, killed in action January 7, 2024, with his cat)

Photo from author's FB; www.facebook.com/profile.php

(cross-posting to

greatpoetry )

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

Child in Gaza
Gaza, 2008-9

I was a little child
born in the Gaza ruins.
My name was Palestinian
and my heart was strong.

On the Israeli green
the little children played,
I asked to share the play
and they sent back fire.

Why did they send white fire
that melted away my flesh?
They said it was the gift
my jealousy required.

Why did they burn me so?
In white bandages I die
in a hospital like a ruin.
Remember, what I know.

by Judith Kazantzis

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

The Coffin Maker Speaks

At first it was shocking--orders flooding in
faster than I could meet. I worked
through the nights, tried to ignore
the sound of planes overhead,
reverberations shaking my bones,
acid fear, the jagged weeping
of those who came to plead my services.
I focused on the saw in my hand,
burn of blisters, sweet smell of sawdust;
hoped that fatigue would push aside
my labour's purpose.

Wood fell scarce as the pile of coffins grew.
I sent my oldest son to scavenge more
but there was scant passage on the bombed out roads
And those who could make it through
brought food for the living, not planks for the dead.
So I economized, cut more carefully than ever,
reworked the extra scraps.
It helped that so many coffins were child-sized.

I built the boxes well, nailed them strong,
loaded them on the waiting trucks,
did my job but could do no more.
When they urged me to the gravesite--
that long grieving gash in earth
echoing the sky's torn warplane wound--
I turned away, busied myself with my tools.
Let others lay the shrouded forms in new-cut wood,
lower the lidded boxes one by one:
stilled row of toppled dominoes,
long line of broken teeth.
Let those who can bear it read the Fatiha
over the crushed and broken dead.
If I am to go on making coffins,
Let me sleep without knowledge.

( But what sleep have we in this flattened city? )

By Lisa Suhair Majaj

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

This was posted a few hours ago to Reddit's r/Poetry by u/Summertimings ... Bringing it to LJ:

New Year

lucy
by sam
out of thelma
limps down a ramp
toward the rest of her life.
with too many candles
in her hair
she is a princess of
burning buildings
leaving the year that
tried to consume her.
her hands are bright
as they witch for water
and even her tears cry
fire fire
but she opens herself
to the risk of flame and
walks toward an ocean
of days.

by Lucille Clifton

Current Mood: full

med_cat

Пожелание друзьям
A Wish for Friends

Желаю вам расти, цвести,
Копить, крепить здоровье.
Оно для дальнего пути--
Важнейшее условье.

I wish for you to grow and flourish,
To maintain and improve your health.
It is one of the main things needed
For the long road.

Пусть каждый день и каждый час
Вам новое добудет.
Пусть добрым будет ум у вас,
А сердце--умным будет.

Let every day and every hour
Bring you something new.
May your mind be kind,
And your heart intelligent.

Вам от души желаю я, друзья,
Всего хорошего,
А всё хорошее, друзья,
Даётся нам недёшево.

With all my heart I wish you, my friends,
All the best,
And all the best things, my friends,
Do not come easily.

(С.Я. Маршак/S.Y. Marshak)

(from my archives)

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Bagpipe Music

It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whisky,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.

It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o’Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife ‘Take it away; I’m through with over-production’.

It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

By Louis Macneice

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

Poem Without a Hero
(excerpt)

I have lit my treasured candles,
one by one, to hallow this night.
With you, who do not come,
I wait the birth of the year.
Dear God!
the flame has drowned in crystal,
and the wine, like poison, burns
Old malice bites the air,
old ravings rave again,
though the hour has not yet struck.

Dread. Bottomless dread…
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.

Let the gossip roll!
What to me are Hamlet’s garters,
or the whirlwind of Salome’s dance,
or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask?
I am more iron than they.

Prince Charming, prince of the mockers —
compared with him the foulest of sinners
is grace incarnate…

That woman I once was,
in a black agate necklace,
I do not wish to meet again
till the Day of Judgement.

Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven’t forgotten me.
As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future —
a terrible festival of dead leaves.

( All the mirrors on the wall )

By Anna Akhmatova

med_cat

Пока сирень в глазах не отцвела

Г. Гельштейну

Спешите делать добрые дела,
пока еще не склевана рябина,
пока еще не ломана калина,
пока береста совести бела.

( Read more... )

While lilacs haven't yet faded from your eyes

To G. Gelshtein

Hasten to do good deeds,
While birds haven't yet pecked at all the rowanberries,
While the branches of the gatten-tree berries haven't been broken off yet,
While the birch-bark of your conscience is still white.

( Read more... )

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

A Bomber’s Jeremiad
In memory of the slaughter of the innocents, Gaza, Dec. 28, 2008

"I haven’t changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and make use of others.
Only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to
taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming repentance."
– 'The Fall', Albert Camus

When we bomb we do so with regret.
Not for us the intent to maim;
it is with pure heart we send our wrath.
When we speak and aim
we do so with precision, concision.
We have surveyed the battlefield:
the houses, mosques and universities,
along with barracks and infirmaries.

We know all the trajectories
of rhetoric and falling bricks,
of cleansing words and shredding steel.
We feel, for those peripherals;
those to the side, so to speak
when we wreak our replies
into an infinity of eyes for eyes.

We wish, no, we lament
that our enemies found themselves
in the wrong place: a schoolyard,
a hospital, a friend’s basement.
They put themselves in the midst
of all our accidental excesses.
Though, we planned very well;
hell, we know Picasso’s knell.
We know Ruben’s too;
and now, how to keep babies out of view.
We are, after all, and after The Fall,
well educated.

You must understand our dilemma:
we wish no harm to innocents.
We care for the children,
the mothers, sisters, yeah,
even brothers and their lovers.
We also care for those without clothes,
and walkers, talkers, pranksters, petty thieves;
even these and even those
who sit on couches: heaven knows.

But all this is out of our hands.
I’m afraid our ordinances
are preordained.
You see, our apologies
and staged, pro forma colloquies
are prepared in advance.
For, we know the limbless,
those with and without faces;
we know the charred remains.
We know all those children and their games
torn asunder for eternity;
just not the names, not the names.

Surely, you understand the precedent?
We are all vile and innocent it seems,
by necessity and accident,
we can no longer tell
the dreamer from the dreams..

By Simon Carroll

[Gaza War began December 27, 2008]

duathir.livejournal.com

The Fear of Man

As a girl no one gallantly attends
Sets forth for home at midnIght from a friend's
She tries to make it in one catch of breath,
And this is not because she thinks of death.
The city seems in-toppling from a height,
But she can trust it not to fall tonight.
(It will be taken down before it falls.)
There scarcely is a light in all its walls
Except beside a safe inside a bank
(For which assurance Mammon is to thank).
But there are little street lights she should trust
So jewel-steady in the wind and dust.
Her fear is being spoken by the rude,
And having her exposure misconstrued.
May I in my brief bolt across the scene
Not be misunderstood in what I mean.

By Robert Frost

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

The Children of Gaza, Lying in Pools of Their Own Blood
(Footnote To The Gaza Bombings II)

They never heard
the soothing sound of music
In the Palestine air
Their days and nights were filled
With rattling guns
And muffled weeping of parents
They saw the shape of freedom
In the occasional flight
Of birds in their skies cast
In the gloom of violence

As other children waited
for Santa Claus’s gifts
The specter of their dreams
Levitated from their bodies
As they fell to the bullets
Of power that knows not
A terrorist wielding a gun
From a child playing
With a doll or a toy car

Their bodies have gone
To cemeteries
Or in rubbles
Beyond
The reach of shovels and hands
But their dream for freedom
Did not join them in the graves
It clings thick to the air of doom

Their last cries
Not comprehending the bloodbath
Their desire to soar free
Like eagles
Found their way into our pens
From ashes of carnage,
The dream will surge
Like time-worn slavery
Cutting loose from its chains
One day,
The world will know
Who The Chosen are among us
The lie we cradled
In ignorance
Will be clear as day
The graveyard full of infants
Shouts the truth

God would not arm His
people with bombs and guns
To slaughter the innocent

By Cheryl Daytec

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

Unto US this child is born

Last night I had this visionary dream;
I stood then trod on lonely, broken land -
I mean heart-broken. Something made it seem
This land was human. Lonely, frightened and
Abandoned. Just like me? No. By my feet
A naked baby lay, pale as a sheet
Of phosphor. Not the grandson that's now mine -
He's safe. He wasn't born in Palestine.

A voice inside said:"Jesus and . . . each child
Who's born for Zion's torture." Loud and wild
The land was now. The air now full of stones
Cast from the sky by unmanned, brutal drones.
I woke up sweating, knowing I must tell
The truth: of genocide by Israel.

By Felicity Currie

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

Lumen

A lumen is a measure of light over time,
a unit of luminous flux, weighted
for the vagaries of the human eye.
This means: no humans, no lumens—
though still there could be light.

Poor lumens. We are reckoning
a wreck, and taking them with us,
who never did anything but radiate
in all directions from a source of light.

We are taking with us mile markers,
marzipan and every canvas
that has ever been stretched over a frame.
We are taking with us commas, and blueprints,
and prayer. We are taking
Venn diagrams, and suicide, and suede.

Sea shanties, pixels, and regret:
when I was eleven, sitting in the back
of my parents’ van, hot wind on my face
as I watched the wheat fields go by,
I sometimes saw the farmer, his face
embroidered with what I now know
was drink. We are taking with us
that memory, and the revision

of that memory. Equations, weathervanes,
and puns. Symphonies, all of them.
We are taking with us yoga, and genocide,
the alphabet and shame. We are taking irony
and velvet and taxes. We are taking with us
haiku, and treaties, and the breaking of treaties.
Graph paper, sonnets, and dread: tuck them in
our pockets—here we go—human,
a unit of evolutionary flux. And when we are
gone, still there will be light.

by Jessica Goodfellow

bleodswean

This is the solstice, the still point

of the sun, its cusp and midnight,

the year’s threshold

and unlocking, where the past

lets go of and becomes the future;

the place of caught breath, the door

of a vanished house left ajar.

hhimring

We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.

Emily Dickinson