straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2014-03-19 10:08 am
straightforwardly) wrote2014-03-19 10:08 am
Entry tags:
0020 | poetry linkdump number two
Another post where I dump some links to poems I've run across, enjoyed, and bookmarked. Fair warning: Most of the poems near the end of this post are about grief.
"The Threatened One" by Jorge Luis Borges
It is love. I will have to hide or flee.
"Love’s Not the Way to Treat a Friend" by Richard Brautigan
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
"Ionic" by Constantine P. Cavafy
That we've broken their statues,
that we've driven them out of their temples,
doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead.
"Shapechangers in Winter" by Margaret Atwood
and yes, I know it’s you;
and that is what we will come to, sooner
or later, when it’s even darker
than It is now, when the snow is colder,
when it’s darkest and coldest
and candles are no longer any use to us
and the visibility is zero: Yes.
It’s still you. It’s still you.
(Will she ever stop slaying me?)
"A Code Poem For The French Resistance" by Leo Marks
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
"Residue" by Warsan Shire
I glow the way unwanted things do,
a neon sign that reads:
Come, I still taste like someone else’s mouth.
"Love Song" by Rainer Maria Rilke
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
"The Sciences Sing a Lullaby" by Albert Goldbarth
Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
"How It Will Happen, When" by Dorianne Laux
...You'll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word
you don't understand, a simple word like now or what or is
and you'll ponder over it like a child discovering language.
Is you'll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that's
when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead. He's not
coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.
"Long Distance II" by Tony Harrison
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
"Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
"The Threatened One" by Jorge Luis Borges
It is love. I will have to hide or flee.
"Love’s Not the Way to Treat a Friend" by Richard Brautigan
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
"Ionic" by Constantine P. Cavafy
That we've broken their statues,
that we've driven them out of their temples,
doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead.
"Shapechangers in Winter" by Margaret Atwood
and yes, I know it’s you;
and that is what we will come to, sooner
or later, when it’s even darker
than It is now, when the snow is colder,
when it’s darkest and coldest
and candles are no longer any use to us
and the visibility is zero: Yes.
It’s still you. It’s still you.
(Will she ever stop slaying me?)
"A Code Poem For The French Resistance" by Leo Marks
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
"Residue" by Warsan Shire
I glow the way unwanted things do,
a neon sign that reads:
Come, I still taste like someone else’s mouth.
"Love Song" by Rainer Maria Rilke
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
"The Sciences Sing a Lullaby" by Albert Goldbarth
Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
"How It Will Happen, When" by Dorianne Laux
...You'll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word
you don't understand, a simple word like now or what or is
and you'll ponder over it like a child discovering language.
Is you'll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that's
when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead. He's not
coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.
"Long Distance II" by Tony Harrison
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
"Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain