Category: Not My Poetry

An Allegory

I.

A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages on unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

II.

And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy …
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,
Pause to examine; — these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where'er they go.

– Percy Bysshe Shelley (English poet, 1792-1822)

I'm going to confess I don't quite know what this Allegory is an allegory of. Death?

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

To A Mouse

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion,
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
What makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell –
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me;
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects dreaer!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

– Robert Burns (Scottish poet, 1759-1796)

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Science

Man, introverted man, having crossed
In passage and but a little with the nature of things this latter
century
Has begot giants; but being taken up
Like a maniac with self-love and inward conflicts cannot manage
his hybrids.
Being used to deal with edgeless dreams,
Now he's bred knives on nature turns them also inward: they
have thirsty points though.
His mind forebodes his own destruction;
Actaeon who saw the goddess naked among leaves and his hounds
tore him.
A little knowledge, a pebble from the shingle,
A drop from the oceans: who would have dreamed this infinitely
little too much?
- Robinson Jeffers (American poet, 1887-1962)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

  ME ESTOY RIENDO
Un guijarro, uno solo, el más bajo de todos,
controla
a todo el médano aciago y faraónico.
El aire adquiere tensión de recuerdo y de anhelo,
y bajo el sol se calla
hasta exigir el cuello a las pirámides.
Sed. Hidratada melancolía de la tribu errabunda,
gota
a
gota,
del siglo al minuto.
Son tres Treses paralelos,
barbados de barba inmemorial,
en marcha    3    3    3
Es el tiempo este anuncio de gran zapatería,
es el tiempo, que marcha descalzo
de la muerte             hacia           la muerte.
- César Vallejo (poeta peruano, 1892-1938)

Confieso que no entiendo muy bien este poema. Probablemente me atrajó sólo por su clara temática de muerte.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

DESPAIR IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

Despair is not the end of the world
We go on in all our hopelessness
and all our frustration and all our pain
We go on-
Because what alternative
Do we have really?
Death is not a happy option
And loneliness at this stage
Even worse pain-
Tolerance is now the holy word
Forbearance Patience
Stoic quiet –
Despair is not the end of the world
But it’s not lovely either
We go on thinking maybe some day some how
It will be better
It will-
But not that much.

– Shalom Freedman (American-Israeli poet, b 1942)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
– Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)

[daily log: falling down, .001 km]

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

- Les Murray (Australian poet, b 1938)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

"O but," quoth she, "great griefe will not be tould,
And can more easily be thought, then said."
"Right so"; quoth he, "but he, that never would,
Could never: will to might gives greatest aid."
"But grief," quoth she, "does great grow displaid,
If then it find not helpe, and breedes despaire."
"Despaire breedes not," quoth he, "where faith is staid."
"No faith so fast," quoth she, "but flesh does paire."
"Flesh may empaire," quoth he, "but reason can repaire."

– from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599)

[daily log: walking, 1.5 km]

YO SE QUE MI PERFIL SERA TRANQUILO

Yo sé que mi perfil será tranquilo
en el musgo de un norte sin reflejo.
Mercurio de vigilia, casto espejo
donde se quiebra el pulso de mi estilo.

Que si la yedra y el frescor del hilo
fue la norma del cuerpo que yo dejo,
mi perfil en la arena será un viejo
silencio sin rubor de cocodrilo.

Y aunque nunca tendrá sabor de llama
mi lengua de palomas ateridas
sino desierto gusto de retama,

libre signo de normas oprimidas
seré en el cuerpo de la yerta rama
y en el sinfín de dalias doloridas.

– Federico García Lorca (poeta español 1898-1936)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Está bien lo que está

Está bien lo que está:
Sé que todo está bien.
Sé el nexo.
Y la razón.
Y hasta el designio.
Yo lo sé todo,
Lo aprendí en un libro sin páginas,
Sin letras y sin nombre.
Y no soy como el loco
Que se quema los dedos trémulos
Por separar la llama rosa de la mecha negra.
Pasó volando y me rozó la frente.
Era buena la vida:
Había rosas.
Unos minutos antes me había sonreído un niño.
Pasó volando y me rozó la frente.
No sé por dónde vino
Ni por dónde se perdió luego pálida y ligera.
No recuerdo la fecha.
No sabría decir de qué color era ni de qué forma;
No sabría, de veras, decir nada.
Pasó volando -había muchas rosas-
Y era buena la vida todavía.

– Dulce María Loynaz (poeta cubana, 1902-1997)

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

The Place For No Story

The coast hills at Sovranes Creek:
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Over rock shaped like flame;
The old ocean at the land's foot, the vast
Gray extension beyond the long white violence;
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks:
This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen.
No imaginable
Human presence here could do anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion.

– Robinson Jeffers (greatest American poet, 1887-1962)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Happy the man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

– John Dryden (English poet, 1631-1700)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

SÍNTOMAS DE VEJEZ

Ya el poeta no hace como antes
boceto de sus lágrimas
ni refunde su canto hasta el poema

Ahora directamente como el liquen
sobre la piedra inerme
dispone las palabras a sabiendas
de que el tiempo ha dispuesto el cañamazo
de lo que va a escribir para el olvido.

– Aníbal Núñez (poeta español 1944-1987)

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

RESURRECCIONES

Si alguna vez vivo otra vez
será de la misma manera
porque se puede repetir
mi nacimiento equivocado
y salir con otra corteza
cantando la misma tonada.

Y por eso, por si sucede,
si por un destino hindostánico
me veo obligado a nacer,
no quiero ser un elefante,
ni un camello desvencijado,
sino un modesto langostino,
una gota roja del mar.

Quiero hacer en el agua amarga
las mismas equivocaciones:
ser sacudido por la ola
como ya lo fui por el tiempo
y ser devorado por fin
por dentaduras del abismo,
así como fue mi experiencia
de negros dientes literarios.

Pasear con antenas de cobre
en las antárticas arenas
del litoral que amé y viví,
deslizar un escalofrío
entre las algas asustadas,
sobrevivir bajo los peces
escondiendo el caparazón
de mi complicada estructura,
así es como sobreviví
a las tristezas de la tierra.

– Pablo Neruda

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Character

The sun set, but set not his hope:
Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye;
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the Age of Gold again:
His action won such reverence sweet
As hid all measure of the feat.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (American philosopher and poet, 1803-1882)

[daily log (1130 pm): walking, 2 km]

A list of some observation…

A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe,
mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge.
– Joseph Brodsky (Russian-American poet, 1940-1996)

[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]

Dear Moon

We blame you for floods
for the flush of blood
for men who are also wolves
and even though you could pull
the tide in by its hair
we tell people that we walked all
over you
we blame you for the night
for the dark
for the ghosts
you cold unimaginable thing
following us home,
we use you
to see each others frail
naked bodies beneath your blue light,
we let you watch; you
swollen against the glass
breath a halo of steam
as we move against one another
wet and desperate
like fish under
a waterlogged sky.

– Warsan Shire (Somali-British poet)

[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]