[Water Lily]

The Bearer By Hayden Carruth


Like all his people he felt at home in the forest.   

The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there,   

The distant high rustling of foliage, the clumps

Of fern like little green fountains, patches of sunlight,   

Patches of moss and lichen, the occasional   

Undergrowth of hazel and holly, was he aware   

Of all this? On the contrary his unawareness   

Was a kind of gratification, a sense of comfort   

And repose even in the strain of running day   

After day. He had been aware of the prairies.   

He had known he hated the sky so vast, the wind   

Roaring in the grasses, and the brightness that   

Hurt his eyes. Now he hated nothing; nor could he   

Feel anything but the urgency that compelled him   

Onward continually. "May I not forget, may I   

Not forget," he said to himself over and over.   

When he saw three ravens rise on their awkward   

Wings from the forest floor perhaps seventy-five   

Ells ahead of him, he said, "Three ravens,"   

And immediately forgot them. "May I not forget,"   

He said, and repeated again in his mind the exact   

Words he had memorized, the message that was   

Important and depressing, which made him feel   

Worry and happiness at the same time, a peculiar   

Elation. At last he came to his people far   

In the darkness. He smiled and spoke his words,   

And he looked intently into their eyes gleaming

In firelight. He cried when they cried. No rest

For his lungs. He flinched and lay down while they   

Began to kill him with clubs and heavy stones.


( I Am Free)

[Sven2]

Hi, Mz.Lily, you OK? How's your summer, hot?

Good poem!

[Water Lily]

Doing just fine, Sven thank you. Not to hot having a break with the heat here. I'm in line at school more poetry later.

[Water Lily]

Solitude


Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.


Ella Wheeler Wilcox

[Water Lily]

So if you'll permit, a little advice from two who have felt passion's sting:
if you invite art into the garden, be prepared for a lesson on love.  It
seems only right that we learn love's lessons here; relationship is so
evident in a garden.  Above the hum of ecosystems, life webs and
companion plantings, the gods whisper: true love, whether romantic
or platonic, brotherly, sisterly, for friend or humanity, transcends the
physical.  It seeks a higher image of the human being.  It is not a
feeling.  It is an infinite, unifying force that speaks of the unity of life
and the interconnectedness of all things.  So go ahead, invite art into
the garden, but go thoughtfully, prayerfully even, and stay firmly
rooted in the divine, for you are treading on passionate ground.
-  Spring Gillard

[Water Lily]

Hope
may be described as the flower of desire. It expects that the object shall be attained. It bars despondance and anticipates good. It shakes the mind from stagnations, and animates to encounter danger, and is the balm of life.  Though at times it may be associated with doubt and solitude, yet when hesitance is displaced, it swells into joy and Ecstasy.  Hope may be held to be universal and permanent.  It is entwined with every other affection and passion.  It always originates beneficial effects.  It animates desire, and is a secret source of pleasure in the transports of joy..  Joy triumphs in the success which hope presages will be permanent.  It administers consolation in distress~quickens all our pursuits, and communicates to the mind the pleasure of anticipation.  This influence, though mild, is neverless exhilarating and salutary .  There is no happiness which hope cannot promise, no difficulty which it cannot surmount, no grief it cannot mitigate.  It is the wealth of the indigent, the health of the sick, the freedom of the captive, the rest of the toiler

[Water Lily]

The Proximate Shore
The Proximate Shore
By John Koethe b. 1945 John Koethe
It starts in sadness and bewilderment,   
The self-reflexive iconography   
Of late adolescence, and a moment


When the world dissolves into a fable   
Of an alternative geography   
Beyond the threshold of the visible.


And the heart is a kind of mute witness,   
Abandoning everything for the sake   
Of an unimaginable goodness


Making its way across the crowded stage
Of what might have been, leaving in its wake   
The anxiety of an empty page.


Thought abhors a vacuum. Out of it came   
A partially recognizable shape
Stumbling across a wilderness, whose name,


Obscure at first, was sooner or later   
Sure to be revealed, and a landscape   
Of imaginary rocks and water


And the dull pastels of the dimly lit   
Interior of a gymnasium.   
Is art the mirror of its opposite,


Or is the world itself a mimesis?   
This afternoon at the symposium   
Someone tried to resurrect the thesis


That a poem is a deflected sigh.   
And I remembered a day on a beach   
Thirty-five years ago, in mid-July,


The summer before I left for college,   
With the future hanging just out of reach   
And constantly receding, like the edge


Of the water floating across the sand.   
Poems are the fruit of the evasions   
Of a life spent trying to understand


The vacuum at the center of the heart,   
And for all the intricate persuasions   
They enlist in the service of their art,


Are finally small, disappointing things.   
Yet from them there materializes   
A way of life, a way of life that brings


The fleeting pleasures of a vocation   
Made up of these constant exercises   
In what still passes for celebration,


That began in a mood of hopelessness   
On an evening in a dormitory
Years and years ago, and seemed to promise


A respite from disquietude and care,   
But that left only the lovely story
Of a bright presence hanging in the air.


John Koethe, "The Proximate Shore" from North Point North: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2002 by John Koethe. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

[Water Lily]

The Threshold

The sea's are quiet when the winds give o'er.
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
clouds of affection from our younger eyes
conceal that emptiness which age decries.

The souls dark cottage, battered, and decayed,
lets in new light through chinks that time hath made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become.
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Loving the old, both worlds at once they view,
that stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller

[skordamou]

What a good thing, to stop in here and read such excellent poetry. Flush the taint of politics from from withering brain. Thank you, Sven and Water Lily.

[Water Lily]

Hi Skorda, long time... Don't let your brain wither...come by sometime, and post some poetry...

[Water Lily]

Back


















THE SEEKER

To that place
where white roses dip their toe-tips in thorns
and stay up all night,

to  that place
where the ruthless gaze of November,
tears through the lonely pathways,

where the forlorn sky whispers,
and the earth` s ear tingles,

to that place
where my longings are my guardians,
and my tears ,....my legend;

i go in search of one
whom my eyes seek,
who lives in my dreams,
....who whispers in my dreams.

[Water Lily]

Dream Variations



To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.


Langston Hughes

[Water Lily]

Democracy



Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.


Langston Hughes

[Water Lily]

A Process in the Weather of the Heart



A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.


Dylan Thomas

[Water Lily]

As I Walked Out One Evening   
by W. H. Auden 


As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.