short but classic :-)

[ex-mahuika7289.livejournal.com]

Comment by Dorothy Parker


Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

(The Stephen Mitchell translation)

[jane-klimt.livejournal.com]

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propogate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Fall in the Literary Review - Linda Pastan

[terabithiabeth.livejournal.com]

Though we're pages apart this time,
just being in the same issue
is like being at a party together,
you in your semi-formal attire,
me with my ragged lines,
somber again, but willing
to share a drink or two,
even to exchange a literary joke.
And because we won't ever meet,

because the only sheets we'll share
are pages in a magazine,
you don't mind how old I am,
and I don't care what you look like
or if you're married,
as your poem this time implies.
I don't even care who the lucky "you" is
you keep addressing. I like
to think it's me.

~ Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968 - 1998

(no subject)

[iamkatia.livejournal.com]

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Sad Steps


Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.


Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems: Philip Larkin.
(Noonday Press - 1993).

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was a highly-regarded English poet and novelist known for his anti-romantic sensibility and terse style. Educated at Oxford University, Larkin published his first two volumes of poems - The North Ship and XX Poems - at his own expense in 1945 and 1951, respectively. His third volume, The Less Deceived, was published by more conventional means in 1955 to critical acclaim. In addition to writing numerous novels and volumes of verse, Larkin was jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph and librarian at the University of Hull, Yorkshire. He also edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973).

nothing like an original

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Soneto XVII
de Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

"Moji," by Lance Larsen

[elsabeta.livejournal.com]

I like it, this moji, this pen name, this crayon
signifier coined by my three-year-old,
who signs his scribbles like a dyslexic angel.
I like it for its mojo, which voodoo scribes
breathe in and cranky blues divas
belt out. For the way it marries Mo and Genji,
as if the Three Stooges had fallen
from another weekend pie fight into the plush
ritual of a tenth-century Japanese court.
For the way it burns like mojave when I say it,
but ends with a three-story i, a Giacometti
stick figure posing as guardian
or lighthouse. For the way its four letters,
sometimes transposed as jimo or ojim,
float from one crayon hex to the next,
anchoring only where my son wants them to,
to his name, to Happy Halloween, to alien
cats with beards diving into a sleeping green sun.


Lance Larsen
New England Review
(Volume 20, Number 4, Fall 1999)

My poem of the moment

[asthenos.livejournal.com]

Midnight
Louise Glück

Speak to me, aching heart: what
Ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
Weeping in the dark garage
With your sack of garbage: it is not your job
To take out the garbage, it is your job
To empty the dishwasher. You are showing off
Again,
Exactly as you did in childhood--where
Is your sporting side, your famous
Ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits
The broken window, a little summer moonlight,
Tender
Murmurs from the earth with its ready
Sweetnesses--
Is this the way you communicate
With your husband, not answering
When he calls, or is this the way the heart
Behaves when it grieves: it wants to be
Alone with the garbage? If I were you,
I'd think ahead. After fifteen years,
His voice could be getting tired; some night
If you don't answer, someone else will answer.