(no subject)

[2much-estrogen.livejournal.com]

there's this poem floating around somewhere. it talks about men on a boat and how they catch this scary-ass fish. it flops on the boat but they're afraid to approach it to let it go. they watch it die and the last line talks about the fish's golden iris growing murky and descending into death. anyone have any idea? thanks.

Automne Malade

[soufpawed.livejournal.com]

Automne malade et adoré
Tu mourras quand l'ouragan soufflera dans les roseraies
Quand il aura neigé
Dans les vergers
Pauvre automne
Meurs en blancheur et en richesse
De neige et de fruits mûrs
Au fond du ciel
Des éperviers planent
Sur les nixes nicettes aux cheveux verts et naines
Qui n'ont jamais aimé
Aux lisières lointaines
Les cerfs ont bramé
Et que j'aime ô saison que j'aime tes rumeurs
Les fruits tombant sans qu'on les cueille
Le vent et la forêt qui pleurent
Toutes leurs larmes en automne feuille à feuille
Les feuilles
Qu'on foule
Un train
Qui roule
La vie
S'écoule
(Guillaume Apollinaire)

Two Fragments | Sappho, trans. Cicely Herbert

[etelleadit.livejournal.com]

Love holds me captive again
and I tremble with bittersweet longing

As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree
I am rocked by my love

---

Request: I vaguely remember a poem from a poster at school a few years ago, I think it was one of several foreign poems that were displayed on the London Underground. I've tried googling but have come up with nothing; it's about (and might be called, I can't recall) "Collecting Things", and I have a feeling it's original language is German. I can picture the form in my head as being quite neat - verses of either two, three or four lines, but fairly short overall. Any help in rediscovering it would be immensely appreciated.

Rabia al Basri

[greentwig.livejournal.com]

My greatest Need is You
~

Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You --
O Allah, I can't live in this world
Without remembering You--
How can I endure the next world
Without seeing Your face?
I am a stranger in Your country
And lonely among Your worshippers:
This is the substance of my complaint.


a very difficult night. I am lost and afraid. I've learned from my mistakes. I just wanted to thank others that post here because if I don't vent here, I don't know what I would do.

robert frost, ghost house

[hvala.livejournal.com]

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotted road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about;
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star,
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.