Robert Wrigley

[ian-gazarek.livejournal.com]

"Progress"

Web by web the ruined work of spiders
  marked his progress up the trail.
Some made clear by the right haft of light
  he waved away with his stick,
others clinging full across the face
  or making of his dark shirt
and jeans an odd diaphanous
  tweed not found in any store.
He never once broke stride or slowed,

though coming back he saw,
  by the tatters of the webs,
wind-swung, tangled and combined,
  two red-brown, heavy-bottomed spiders,
each devouring the other. Mandible to abdomen,
  they gnawed, and a pair of pale egg swags
swung under them, pendulous, albuminate,
  by gravity drawn down,
each one adorned by a single shimmering blue fly.

(no subject)

[gornishka.livejournal.com]

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Lord Byron, When We Two Parted

Love Poem by Pushkin

[bluerosesgirl.livejournal.com]

I loved you well. Affection’s fire unfading
Still glows, perhaps, in secret in my heart.
But let it pass. No more your peace invading
To grieve you now could never be my part.

I loved you well. In hopelessness unspoken,
Now faint with joy, now filled with jealous pain.
Such love sincere, such tenderness unbroken,
God grant that you may meet its like again.

— Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)

In honor of my imminent trip to South Padre Island...

[joseishijin.livejournal.com]

Sea Longing

A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
With the old murmur, long and musical;
The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow -
Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
I would that I were there and over me
The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,
Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
Less than the seagulls calling to the sea.

- Sara Teasdale

First post

[highlighted.livejournal.com]

All the time I pray to Buddha
Kobayashi Issa

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.

Translated by Robert Hass

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

Childhood

It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely --and why?

We're still reminded--: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Edward Snow