a season in hell: hunger / Arthur Rimbaud

[lonely-hour.livejournal.com]

It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.

My soul eternal,
Redeem your promise,
In spite of the night alone
And the day on fire.

Of human suffrage,
of common aspirings,
You free yourself then!
You fly according to…

Hope never more,
No orietur
Science and patience,
Retribution is sure.

No tomorrows,
Embers of satin
Your ardor is now
Your duty only.

It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.

The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

[brttvns.livejournal.com]

The Thought-Fox
by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

The Soldier Addresses his Body - Edgell Rickword

[corinthian-wolf.livejournal.com]

I shall be mad if you get smashed about,
we've had good times together, you and I;
although you groused a bit when luck was out,
say a girl turned us down, or we went dry.

But there's a world of things we haven't done,
countries not seen, where people do strange things;
eat fish alive, and mimic in the sun
the solemn gestures of their stone-grey kings.

I've heard of forests that are dim at noon
where snakes and creepers wrestle all day long;
where vivid beasts grow pale with the full moon,
gibber and cry, and wail a mad old song,

because at the full moon the Hippogriff
with wrinkled ivory snout and agate feet,
with his green eye will glare them cold and stiff 
for the coward Wyvern to come down and eat.

Vodka, kvass or bitter mountain wines
we've never drunk; nor snatched the bursting grapes
to pelt slim girls among Sicilian vines, 
who'd flicker through the leaves, faint frolic shapes.

Yes, there's a world of things we've never done, 
but it's a sweat to knock them into rhyme, 
let's have a drink, and give them the cards a run
and leave dull verse to the dull peaceful time.

When You Find A Man by Kabbani

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

When You Find A Man
by Kabbani

When you find a man
Who transforms
Every part of you
Into poetry,
Who makes each one of your hairs
Into a poem,
When you find a man,
Capable,
As I am
Of bathing and adorning you
With poetry,
I will beg you
To follow him without hesitation,
It is not important
That you belong to me or him
But that you belong to poetry.

Translation by Bassam K. Frangieh
and Clementina R. Brown