Notes:
# /poetry.md
But the sea which no one tends is also a garden
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams
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First, The fish needs to say, “Something ain’t right about this Camel ride – And I’m Feeling so damn Thirsty.”
Hafiz
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And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!
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So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
From: The Four Quartets by TS Eliot
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In the summer I stretch out on the shore And think of you Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.
Nizar Qabbani
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But after a time allowed for it to swim, Instead of proving human when it neared And someone else additional to him, As a great buck it powerfully appeared, Pushing the crumpled water up ahead, And landed pouring like a waterfall, And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread, And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
The Most of It by Robert Frost
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We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
Diving into the wreck by Adrienne Rich
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I prove a theorem and the house expands: the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling, the ceiling floats away with a sigh.
As the walls clear themselves of everything but transparency, the scent of carnations leaves with them. I am out in the open
And above the windows have hinged into butterflies, sunlight glinting where they’ve intersected. They are going to some point true and unproven.
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An airborne instrument I sit, Predestined nightly to fulfill Columbia-Giesen-Management’s Unfathomable will,
By whose election justified, I bring my gospel of the Muse To fundamentalists, to nuns, to Gentiles and to Jews,
And daily, seven days a week, Before a local sense has jelled, From talking-site to talking-site Am jet-or-prop-propelled.
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ECHO: For sure the Rebel is going to Die. Oh, there will be no flags, not even black ones, no gun salutes, no ceremony. It will be very simple, something which in appearance will not change anything, but which will cause coral in the depths of the sea, birds in the depths of the sky, stars in the depths of women’s eyes to crackle for the instant of a tear or the bat of an eyelash.
Aimé Césaire, And the Dogs Were Silent
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VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by WALLACE STEVENS
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The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. (Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”)
Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
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A Winter Night Tomas Transtromer
The storm puts its mouth to the house and blows to get a tone. I toss and turn, my closed eyes reading the storm’s text.
The child’s eyes grow wide in the dark and the storm howls for him. Both love the swinging lamps; both are halfway towards speech.
The storm has the hands and wings of a child. Far away, travellers run for cover. The house feels its own constellation of nails holding the walls together.
The night is calm in our rooms, where the echoes of all footsteps rest like sunken leaves in a pond, but the night outside is wild.
A darker storm stands over the world. It puts its mouth to our soul and blows to get a tone. We are afraid the storm will blow us empty.