What are your favourite poems?

[LZA]

I'm scared of all those voices
inside my head.
They scream to hell
they could bring me to death.
I can't let them win,
but i'm just so tired
so tired of this life.
So tired to fight
I just want to let go
Close my eyes
take a deep breath
and sink into unconsciousness
after all,
Wasn't I born to die?

M.K.

[Arzoo]

Well - usually I have vivid dreams (by which I mean I can reconstruct most of them on waking) but I don't think I can recall a single one of them the past two months. So, it was pleasant surprise to have this poem, recently uploaded by workerbee -

The Triple Dream - Mikhail Lermontov

In noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan,
With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
The deep wound still smoked on; my blood
Kept trickling drop by drop away.

On the dale’s sand alone I lay. The cliffs
Crowded around in ledges steep,
And the sun scorched their tawny tops
And scorched me—but I slept death’s sleep.

And in a dream I saw an evening feast
That in my native land with bright lights shone;
Among young women crowned with flowers,
A merry talk concerning me went on.

But in the merry talk not joining,
One of them sat there lost in thought,
And in a melancholy dream
Her young soul was immersed - God knows what.

And of a dale in Dagestan she dreamt;
In that dale lay the corpse of one she knew;
Within his breast a smoking wound showed black,
And blood ran in a stream that colder grew.


(trans. Vladimir Nabokov)


Note - There are two versions of the poem by Nabokov - in Three Russian Poets and A Hero of Our Time. Both are good since the 1st version emphasizes he wave-like nature of thoughts (ebbed drop by drop) while the 2nd one is more graphic (smoking!, dale!)..

It's also interesting to compare this with Borges' essay on Kubla Khan....

[RobertX]

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Code:

1
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

[Arzoo]

The following is an extract - from a much longer poem, namely Pale Fire. I quote it because I've been trying for more than 2-3 years to duplicate the feat mentioned in it :

"I am puzzled by the difference between
Two methods of composing: A, the kind
Which goes on solely in the poet's mind,
A testing of performing words, while he
Is soaping a third time one leg, and B,
The other kind, much more decorous, when 
He's in his study writing with a pen.

In method B the hand supports the thought
The abstract battle is concretely fought.
The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
A canceled sunset or restore a star
And thus it physically guides the phrase
Toward faint daylight through the inky maze.

But method A is agony! The brain
Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.
A muse in overalls directs the drill
Which grinds and which no effort of the will
Can interrupt, while the automaton
Is taking off what he has just put on
Or walking briskly to the corner store
To buy the paper he has read before.

Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because
In penless work there is no pen-poised pause
And one must use three hands at the same time,
Having to choose the necessary rhyme,
Hold the completed line before one's eyes,
And keep in mind all the preceding tries?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

I think Nabokov mentions the same process in his autobiography, Speak Memory. It can be done but for now - only in certain, conducive frames of mind.

[workerbee]

The time has come to close like the Bible,
the canonical books of my life.
Chapters and books will be finally excluded,
will remain apocryphal, their days will
not be counted, they will be flourishes and marginalia
and addenda and glosses,
but not essential, and not sacred.

-- from Yehuda Amichai, "The Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela" (trans. Ruth Nevo)

[Arzoo]

WB quotes in the above post a good piece by Amichai (I wasn't familiar with it). But let me just add, (with all modesty) I read Amichai in 2014s and I really think his love-lyrics are the best by any contemporary poet. Thanks to WB's upload - I always keep his stuff at a finger's reach and here's one from his many love poems,

A Majestic Love Song (from Amen)

You are beautiful, like prophecies,
And sad, like those which come true,
Calm, with the calmness afterward.
Black in the white loneliness of jasmine,
With sharpened fangs: she-wolf and queen.

With a very short dress, in fashion,
But weeping and laughter from ancient times,
Perhaps from some book of other kings.
I've never seen foam at the mouth of a war horse,
But when you lathered your body with soap
I saw.

You are beautiful, like prophecies
That never come true.
And this is the royal scar;
I pass over it with my tongue
And with pointed fingers over that sweet
roughness.

With hard shoes you knock
Prison bars to and fro around me.

Your wild rings
Are the sacred leprosy of your fingers.

Out of the earth emerge
All I wished never to see again:
Pillar and window sill, cornice and jug, broken pieces
of wine.

There is so much face hiding here
(Whose from whose?)
And at night, to stir with that
Blind golden scepter
In pleasures.
With the weight of kingdom and tiredness.


It was awesome really (easily at par with Baudelaire), and there are many, many more from his collection "Amen" (like the one on "I see at sea level/ your face at "face level").

[IFwanderer]

Can I comment with poems in Spanish?, if so I like this one:

AMA TU RITMO...

Ama tu ritmo y ritma tus acciones
bajo su ley, así como tus versos;
eres un universo de universos
y tu alma una fuente de canciones.

La celeste unidad que presupones
hará brotar en ti mundos diversos,
y al resonar tus números dispersos
pitagoriza en tus constelaciones.

Escucha la retórica divina
del pájaro del aire y la nocturna
irradiación geométrica adivina;

mata la indiferencia taciturna
y engarza perla y perla cristalina
en donde la verdad vuelca su urna.

-Ruben Darío

[Arzoo]

I would just like to put forward one of the poems from the huge oeuvre of a great French Poet, Victor Hugo. His poetic oeuvre is largely overlooked in the English speaking countries - but in French - he's legendary and has a reputation comparable to Pushkin in Russia. At least, Flaubert thought him among Shakespeare, Rabelais and  - a titan. Here's one of his more intimate poems :

Paroles dans l'ombre (Uttered in Shadows)

She said: "I shouldn’t long for more, I know;
Time passes very pleasantly just so;
You’re there; I never turn my eyes from yours,
Where I can watch your thoughts flit to and fro.
To see you is a blessing; it’s still more
Delightful when it’s incomplete, I’m sure.
I know what bothers you, so I keep guard
And never let a nuisance through the door.
I stay near, in my corner, very small;
Your papers murmur their calm gentle call;
You are my lion, I’m your turtledove;
I pick your pen up if you let it fall.
No doubt I have you, and I see you, too.
The wine of thought makes dreamers drunk, it’s true;
All the same, I do want to be remembered.
When you keep to your books the whole night through,
And never lift your head or speak to me,
A shadow falls across my constancy;
For me to see you fully, you do need
To look at me sometimes, if only fleetingly."

(trans. E.H. Blackmore and A.M. Blackmore)

I've no idea about the quality of the translation as I always thought the approach adopted by Carol Clark - in her Baudelaire: Selected Penguins (Penguin) was a promising one - French text with rough prose translations in the same page. After all, French is one of the basic things for a student in Literature to learn. Nevertheless, the Blackmores are among the few modern translators.

[joew771]

This poem is amazing and inspired me to write what I write, pie glue! I wish I was as good as this. Cat shovel.

Marriage
by Gregory Corso, 1958

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where’s the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we’re losing a daughter
but we’re gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where’s the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She’s all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I’d almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I’d live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I’d sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-
But I should get married I should be good
How nice it’d be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I’d make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones’ house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it’s Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I’d give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I’d be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It’s just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there’s maybe a girl now but she’s already married
And I don’t like men and-
But there’s got to be somebody!
Because what if I’m 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

[workerbee]

I'm going to circle back to near the beginning of this thread.  Like Arzoo, one of my favorite all-time poets is Wallace Stevens, whose "On the Road Home" formed my introduction to his work and has always remained with me.  The last stanza continues to floor me with its beauty.


On the Road Home

It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";

It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/10425490/