Notes on the Sea’s Existence - Agha Shahid Ali + request

[kairia.livejournal.com]

Request: I'm looking for poems that dwell on the aftermath of your first sexual experience. The tenderness, the laughter, the ecstasy - all of it.

Notes on the Sea's Existence
It pulls me to itself,
the reflection, no, not mine:
I know the water’s fidelity,

its utter transparence. The sea
becomes me like nothing
else: I wear it like skin.

Who pulls me with such
ease? A dead ancestor,
a lost friend, or

the shell’s hollow cry?
The weeds wrap me, like arms.
I’m pulled down, down, to the tip of the sky.

I hold the world as I drown.
Agha Shahid Ali

Comments

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I Like My Body When It Is With Your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

By E.E. Cummings

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

he wears her like the sea..

i vaguely remember a poem about feeling our consciousness in this animal skin, maybe by sylvia plath or someone like that. this reminds me of that..

; )

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was this one:

The Wild Geese

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.

by Mary Oliver

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

how do you do that?

maybe you should work for csi

yep that's the one..

; )

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Your description was enough to bring the relevant line to mind.

I would not think CSI has much call for poem identification.

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

in the case of a riddler they might

; )

oops!

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

no, it was sylvia plath...

“I felt limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal. It was a relief to be free of the animal, but it seemed to have taken my spirit with it, and everything else it could lay its paws on.” ― Sylvia Plath

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Come into Animal Presence

Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.

By Denise Levertov

simile

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

What is
is, like, is exactly

the dalai lama)))

[kairia.livejournal.com]

this is perfect! thank you.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

You are most welcome. Here is another on the theme:

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

By John Donne

; )

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

nicely expressed -translated from hindi? he's from kashmir..

or did he write in english?

"i hold the world as i drown"

how poignant!

Re: ; )

[kairia.livejournal.com]

No, Agha Shahid Ali wrote in English. Yes, his imagery is generally stunning.

Re: ; )

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

interesting. thanks!

i checked him out and found this.. looks interesting

A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987) that he received widespread recognition. King characterized that book as “a surreal world of nightmare, fantasy, incongruity, wild humor, and the grotesque. Although the existential anxieties have their source in problems of growing up, leaving home, being a migrant, and the meeting of cultures, the idiom is American and contemporary.”

$50+

shite : why are good books so expensive and hard to find? https://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/0933313071/