The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin

[moireach.livejournal.com]

The Old Liberators
Robert Hedin

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,
It's the old liberators I like best,
Those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino
I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,
Bored among the paints and power tools.
Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,
Who keep dozing off in the little orchards
Of shade under the distant skylights.
All around, from one bright rack to another,
Their wives stride big as generals,
Their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.
They are almost all gone now,
And with them they are taking the flak
And fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.
Each day a little more of their memory goes out,
Darkens the way a house darkens,
Its rooms quietly filling with evening,
Until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,
The wind bearing through the empty rooms
The rich far off scent of gardens
Where just now, this morning,
Light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

Loveliest of trees

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

- A.E. Housman


California thinks it's spring. :)

My Comrades

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

My Comrades

They were burnt in tanks, my comrades,
burnt to embers, cinders, reduced to ash.
Grass grew out of them, of course,
grass that spreads over half the world.
My comrades
               were blown up
on mines,
            pitched high in the air,
and many stars, remote and peaceful,
were kindled
            from them,
                      from my friends.
There's talk of them on holidays,
they're shown on films,
and those who were my schoolmates and fellow students
have long since become lines in poems.

~Boris Slutsky, tranlated by George Reavey

Fifteen Boys

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

Fifteen Boys

Fifteen boys and, maybe, more,
or fewer than fifteen, maybe,
said to me
in frightened voices:
"Let's go to a movie or the Museum of Fine Arts."
I answered them more or less like this:
"I haven't time."
Fifteen boys presented me with snowdrops.
Fifteen boys in broken voices
said to me:
"I'll never stop loving you."
I answered them more or less like this:
"We'll see."

Fifteen boys are now living a quiet life.
They have done their heavy chores
of snowdrops, despair and writing letters.
Girls love them--
some more beautiful than me,

( others less beautiful )

~Bella Akhmadulina, trans. George Reavey

(no subject)

[marzipaneh.livejournal.com]

Saul William from his book of poetry, SHE

i presented
my feminine side
with flowers

She cut the stems
and placed them gently
down my throat

and these tu lips
might soon eclipse
your brightest hopes


and another one I read earlier today


you are drawing me to you
that is your art

i am drawn





I absolutely adore Saul Williams, I was introduced to his work by a friend and I am eternally greatful. These are two that i read earlier today and thought I'd post. His manipulation of words and syntax is absolutely beautiful. The simplicity of pieces such as these make my heart sigh.

Gerard Manley Hopkins - Binsey Poplars

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

Binsey Poplars
by Gerard Manley Hopkins


My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

charles baudelaire - danse macabre

[vorgefuhl.livejournal.com]

translated by norman r. shapiro


THE DANCE OF DEATH

To Ernest Christophe


Proud as a living person of her noble stature,
With her big bouquet, her handkerchief and gloves,
She has the nonchalance and easy manner
Of a slender coquette with bizarre ways.

Did one ever see a slimmer waist at a ball?
Her ostentatious dress in its queenly fullness
Falls in ample folds over thin feet, tightly pressed
Into slippers with pompons pretty as flowers.

The swarm of bees that plays along her collar-bones
Like a lecherous brook that rubs against the rocks
Modestly protects from cat-calls and jeers
The funereal charms that she's anxious to hide.


( read on.. )

Poem

[princebuster.livejournal.com]

( Read more... )