Share poetry here. Stuff you wrote or like. Preferably don’t share poetry you don’t like.
5 Likes
First Poem for a New Year
This is the year I stop dying
No more swearing/No more lying
Church every Sunday and Mosque every Friday
Any religious observance to halt bodily decay
Need to cut out the edibles and drinking
No more negative overanalyzed thinking
Time to adjust my mentality
To an enlightened immortality
I’ll only eat iceberg or romaine or chard
That’s been ethically sourced from my backyard
My bread will be made with ancient grains
I’ve heard that’s good for never-dying brains
I’ll workout each morning/sleep eight hours each night
I’ll never expose my eyes to artificial blue light
No social media, heck, no phone at all
This is how you cause death to stall
In the future where I’m still alive
In year three-thousand-thirty-five
I’ll read my very old diary
To remember what life was like in twenty-twenty-three
I’ll laugh over my written fear of death
Giggle at the anxiety caused by my last breath
But for now, I admit, it remains a fear
Good thing I stop dying this year
5 Likes
One of my favorites.
From Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Goethe)
Kennst du das Land? wo die Citronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht,
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.
Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach,
Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach,
Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an:
Was hat man Dir, du armes Kind, gethan?
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Beschützer, ziehn.
Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg?
Das Maulthier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg;
In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut;
Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut.
Kennst du ihn wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Geht unser Weg! o Vater, laß uns ziehn!
There are also many, many settings of this poem in music, but I think my favorite is from Mark Adamo’s Little Women opera.
A cleaner recording, but just with piano:
6 Likes
(Untitled) - Alex Aubrey
i am slowly learning
how to just be in this moment
how to exist
how to understand that
i cannot control everything
i can only experience
all the good and all the good
some i will laugh at
some i will cry through
some i will be confused
some i will adore
i am slowly learning
to welcome it all
and to accept
myself
6 Likes
I have so many favorite poems…
Let’s start with the one that started my love for poetry, when we had to memorize a poem of our choosing in school:
Rainer Maria Rilke
Der Panther
Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.
Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
English translations: The Panther (poem) - Wikipedia
I like the one of Stanley Appelbaum best, because for me it keeps the flow of the words very close to the original and that smooth flow mimics the movement of the panther.
And the one that opened up the world of English poetry for me, when I read it on the first page of a cozy detective story (I have forgotten which book it was) I tried to read for school to get a better grade in English, because I completely failed a grammar test.
Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And the one that will never not make me smile and so on:
Christian Morgenstern
5 Likes
A Haiku for January 2nd
Resolutions broke
Champagne stains on the carpet
Better luck next year
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Nothing has solidified my belief in the final lines of this poem than America’s inability to prosecute Trump
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War War Never Changes
Bugs Bugs Never Changes
Fallout 5 will come out some time
Elder Scrolls 6 will come out some time
Bugs Bugs Never Changes
Half Life 3 will come out
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Because I just came back from voting in the General Election in Gemany. Hard to keep hope up.
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This Whole Place Was Built on a Floodplain
Street comes to a half-assed
Standstill as the sirens
Whistle through the right-hand lane
The jingle of the door her father opens
For me to the pharmacy,
Alerts the crouching toddler
Examining the white face of a baby
On a bag of nappies
Faded into ghost-like blue with age
And toddles off. The costs are too high
For delivery, they take me off the rota
And I raise the mental counter for the
Friendly faces I see in a week
Now, if I disappear
At least five people will be worried
5 Likes
Night of the Scorpion
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother’s blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
4 Likes
Aubade by Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
3 Likes
