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Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales
Translation: Professor Nevill Coghill
‽: 311016
To Read Derek Walcott is to Hear Eternity Speak in a Voice That is Purely
Human and Truly Universal
 
Gros Piton, St. Lucia, seen from the Ladera Hotel
restaurant: September 2007: Photographer Jayen466: Public Domain |
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October The Poetry Month: National Poetry Day 2016:
Poetry is the Voice of Me in You and You in Me
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Pablo Neruda:
Sonnet LXXXI
‽: 301016
John Keats: To Autumn
‽: 301016 |
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Readmore
Poetry in Poets' Letter
And in The
Humanion Bank of Copyrightfree
Works |
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Readmore
Poetry in The Candle Won't Blow
Out
Celebration of William
Shakespeare 2016 |
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VII London Poetry Festival 2019: October 14-15
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Enuma Elish: Translation: Leonard King
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Treasure:
Claire Askew
Tonight, as I drive along a purple lane
under the swallow-tail of the evening,
I will think of you. I can picture you -
your delicate skirts like the petals of a poppy,
stalk legs, black, with heels clicking -
your quick-step, on cobbles in a lamp-lit square.
In the cavernous chapel of my mind's eye,
I will watch you emerge, moth-like
in soft reams of white - watch as you waltz
between pews, take the arm of a man
I recognise. I will think of your smile
behind a newspaper counter, the sound of silver
against the rings on your hand - I will think
of your pearls, like a cold, smoothed spine
across your neck, of your thumbs, turned black
with newsprint. I am reminded
of your best teaset, the tall, slim coffeepot;
the Welsh dresser, full of porcelain horses
and silver spoons. In my mind I will pass
the lake you loved, glimpse its shimmer between trees,
then speed away. I will wander through
the rooms of your house, still heavy
with flower-scent and the breath of your cigarette -
finding your knitting and handkerchiefs,
the secret bottle of whisky, your stockings
and letters in the coffin of a drawer.
I will fold you away in crackling tissue,
carefully, with the yellow photographs
of soldiers you knew. I will fold up your image,
to carry with me - white, brittle and dry,
like a word, a whisper, always on my tongue.
Claire Askew: Poet
in Residence at 4th London Poetry Festival 2008
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Rabindranath
Tagore: Translation by the Poet
Himself
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Alexander Pope
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Windsor Forest: Alexander Pope
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Windsor Forest: Alexander Pope
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Dorothy Wordsworth
Peaceful
our valley, fair and green,
And beautiful her cottages,
Each in its nook, its sheltered hold,
Or underneath its tuft of trees.
Many and beautiful they are;
But there is one that I love best,
A lowly shed, in truth, it is,
A brother of the rest.
Yet when I sit on rock or hill,
Down looking on the valley fair,
That Cottage with its clustering trees
Summons my heart; it settles there.
..................................................
--I love that house because it is
The very Mountains' child.
Fields hath it of its own, green fields,
But they are rocky steep and bare;
Their fence is of the mountain stone,
And moss and lichen flourish there.
And when the storm comes from the North
It lingers near that pastoral spot,
And, piping through the mossy walls,
It seems delighted with its lot.
...............................................
A green unfading grove it is,
Skirted with many a lesser tree,
Hazel and holly, beech and oak,
A bright and flourishing company.
Precious the shelter of those trees;
They screen the cottage that I love;
The sunshine pierces to the roof,
And the tall pine-trees tower above.
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Christina Rossetti She came among us from the South
And made the North her home awhile;
Our dimness brightened in her smile,
Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.
We chilled beside her liberal glow,
She dwarfed us by her ampler scale,
Her full-blown blossom made us pale,
She summer-like and we like snow. |
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From Sir Gawain And The Green Knight : Translation: Simon Armitage
So summer comes in season with its subtle airs,
when the west wind sighs among shoots and seeds,
and those plants which flower and flourish are a pleasure
as their leaves let drip their drink of dew
and they sparkle and glitter when glanced by sunlight.
The autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns wither and gray.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns, as is the way of the world
through time.
At Michaelmas the moon
stands like that season's sign,
a warning to Gawain
to rouse himself and ride. |
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Propertius
terra prius falso partu deludet arantis,
et citius nigros Sol agitabi equos,
fluminaque ad caput incipient reuocare liquores,
aridus et sicco gurgite piscis erit,
quam possim nostros alio transferre dolores:
huius ero uiuus, mortuus huius ero. |
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The Cloud Messenger: Kalidasa:
Translation
My king, I pray of thee to speak,
Remembering kindness is its own reward;
"Thy lover lives, and from the holy peak
Asks if these absent days good health afford--
Those born to pain must ever use this opening word.
With body worn as thine, with pain as deep,
With tears and ceaseless longings answering thine,
With sighs more burning than the sighs that keep
Thy lips ascorch--doomed far from thee to pine,
He too doth weave the fancies that thy soul entwine.
He used to love, when women friends were near,
To whisper things he might have said aloud
That he might touch thy face and kiss thine ear;
Unheard and even unseen, no longer proud,
He now must send this yearning message by a cloud.
'I see thy limbs in graceful-creeping vines,
Thy glances in the eyes of gentle deer,
Thine eyebrows in the ripple's dancing lines,
Thy locks in plumes, thy face in moonlight clear--
Ah, jealous! But the whole sweet image is not here. |
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Readmore
Poetry in Poetre
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That
Good Night: Dylan Thomas
Do not go
gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. |
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Sonnet XVII:
Pablo Neruda
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Robert Burns
..............................................................
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;
Or like the Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like Rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm-----
Nae man can tether Time nor Tide,
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, O’ night’s black arch the key-stane
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in,
And sic a night he take the road in
As ne’er poor sinner was aboard in.
The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, and land the thunder bellow’d:
That night, a child might understand,
The deil had business on his hand.
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Readmore
Poetry in The Humanion Poetry |
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Beowulf: Translation: Seamus Heaney
Broken and bowed,
outcast from all sweetness, the enemy of mankind
made for his death-den. But now his mother
had sallied forth on a savage journey,
grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge.
She came to Heorot. There, inside the hall,
Danes lay asleep, earls who would soon endure
a great reversal, once Grendel's mother
attacked and entered. Her onslaught was less
only by as much as an amazon warrior's
strength is less than an armed man's
when the hefted sword, its hammered edge
and gleaming blade slathered in blood,
razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet.
Then in the hall, hard-honed swords
were grabbed from the bench, many a broad shield
lifted and braced; there was little thought of helmets
or woven mail when they woke in terror.
The hell-dam was in panic, desperate to get out,
in mortal terror the moment she was found.
She had pounced and taken one of the retainers
in a tight hold, then headed for the fend.
To Hrothgar, this man was the most beloved
of the friends he trusted between the two seas.
She had done away with a great warrior,
ambushed him at rest
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Emily Dickinson
The Brain- is wider than the Sky-
For--- put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease---- and You---- beside---
The Brain is deeper than the Sea----
For---hold them---Blue to Blue---
The one the other will absorb----
As Sponges----Buckets---- do---
The Brain is just the weight of God---
For-Heft them---Pound for Pound---
And they will differ---if they do----
As Syllable from Sound----
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Jalaluddin Rumi
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Readmore Poetry in
Poetrimore |
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The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: Thomas Stern Eliot
S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria senza piu scoss.
Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo
non torno vivo alcun, s'i odo il vero
senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question.....
Oh, do not asks, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
O quam te memorem virgo......
Stand on a garden urn---
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair---
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise---
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
....................................................
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
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Hafiz: Translation: Coleman Barks
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Readmore Poetry in Poets' Letter
Magazine Archives Poetry Pearl
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Kalevala: Translation: Keith Bosley
Readmore Poetry in
Poetry Arkive |
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She Comes Swimming :
Isobel Dixon
She comes swimming to you, following
da Gama’s wake. The twisting Nile
won’t take her halfway far enough.
Don’t try to imagine sirens-mermaid
beauty is too delicate and quick.
nor does she have that radiance.
Botticelli’s Venus glow. No golden
goddess, she’s a southern
selkie-sister, dusky otter-girl
--------------------------------------
But now what she must do is swim,
stay focused on each stroke,
until she feels the landslide
far beneath her rise, a gentle slope
up to the rock, the Cape,
the Fairest Cape. Her Mother City
and its mountain, waiting, wrapped
in veils of cloud and smoke.
Then she must concentrate, dodge
---------------------------------------------
down on the seabed, stumble
to the beach-the glistening sand
as great a treasure as her Milky Way-
fall on her knees and plant a kiss
and her old string of beads,
her own explorer’s cross
into the cruel, fruitful earth at last.
She’s at your feet. Her heart
is beating fast. Her limbs are weak.
Make her look up. Tell her she’s home.
Don’t send her on her way again.
Weather Eye:Carapace Poets
Readmore
Poetry in Poetry |
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October The
Poetry Month: National Poetry Day 2016 October 06:
Poetry is the Voice of Me in You and You in Me
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October The Poetry Month 2016: This Year The National Poetry Day is on
October 06
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Lord Alfred Tennyson
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‽:
031016 |
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October The Poetry Month 2015
It is Poetry Day today:
October 8, 2015. In celebration of the Poetry Day, though we celebrate
October as Poetry Month, we present a selection of offerings on the
Poetry Day for the Poetry Month October. Poetry is not for a day the way
breathing is not for a particular moment. It is a necessity for the soul
that stays hungry unless it is given food in the forms of poetry, music and
that what is the outcomes of all human imagination: art or beauty, that is
truth if you take John Keats' words for it; we do.
And here, on Poetry Day, I
shall tell you about the most beautiful thing I have ever found on a walk:
on a summer's day this year, I found a white envelope on which was printed a
poem by Maya Angelou, Touched by an Angel. I print the photo here of the
envelope with the beautiful poem so that you may read and enjoy its
profound joys and celebration of life.
And here is Natalia
Carbajosa, on Poetry Day, sending us her craft, from Spain in the original
Spanish and in English translation. Happy Poetry Day.
And, it is for us, Poetry
Month, so, please, send in your works if you would like us to publish it
here.
Touched by an
Angel : Maya Angelou
And here is another one
from the old age
'And I will arise and
go now, and go to Innisfree............
Portsmouth of Heaven On Poetry Day
''And I will arise and go
now, and go to Innisfree, ............. ''
And I will go now now now
And climb up the hill the hill the hill
To build a castle upon the green green green
Of stones of highest highs highs highs
I will go now now now
And call out the name the name the name
Of the Portsmouth of Heavens to open her doors
And pour pour pour
Only lights of soft and subtle photons dancing
And calling onto spectrum of colours mad mad mad
And I will go now now now
And call up and climb the hill the hill the hill
And call the name the name the name to rise reach and seize
Munayem Mayenin
The Editor
Poetry Day 2015
Sonnet : Christina
Rossetti
Up
AVISTAMIENTO DE CETÁCEOS :
WHALE SPOTTING
Natalia Carbajosa
on Poetry Day, Spain
Porque así
son, me parecen,
las palabras: monstruos ágiles
y antiguos
que resbalan por el agua
densa, oscura,
del significado.
Y como ya
van enseñando los años
a mirar
y nada más que mirar
lo que no es nuestro y solo
es,
aquí estamos,
en silencio,
entregados al oficio: mirar
y dejar ir,
que tiene su propia ley
el horizonte,
que no es propio del tamaño de un poeta
--de su orgullo varado en la orilla--
contravenir…
WHALE SPOTTING
As that is the way
words are: old and agile
monsters
slipping down the dark,
dense water
of meaning.
And as years
have taught us
to stare
and nothing else than stare
at what is not ours and simply
is,
here we are,
silently,
devoted to our task: to stare
and let go,
for horizon has
its own rules,
which does not befit a poet’s size
--his shore-stranded pride—
to contravene…
( Translation by the poet herself.)
More Poetry of Natalia Carbajosa
The Captive Ladie
: Michael Madhusudan Dutta
Canto First
The star of Eve is in the sky,
But pale it shines and tremblingly,
As if the solitude around,
So vast, so wild, without a bound.
Hath in its softly throbbing breast
Awak'd some maiden fear — unrest :
Tis eve — the
dew's on leaf and flower.
The soft breeze in the moon-lit bower,
And fire-flies with pale gleaming gems
Upon their fairy diadems,
Like winged stars now walk the deep
Of space soft-hushed in dewy ^leep.
And people every leaf and tree
With beauty and with radiancy.
There's light upon the heaving stream,
And music sweet as heard in dream,
And many a star upon its breast
Is calmly pillow'd unto rest.
While there, as on a silver throne,
All melancholy, veil'd, alone.
Beneath the pale Moon's colder ray,
The Bride of him — the Lord of Day,
In silence droops, as in lone bower
The love-lorn maid at twilight hour.
She looks not on the smiling sky.
The wide expanse blue, far and high.
She looks not on the stars above
Throbbing like bosoms breathing love ;
Nor lists she to the breeze so gay,
Which whispers round in wanton play,
And stirs soft waves of starry gleam
To wake her from that moody dream.
The moon-light's on yon frowning pile,
But oh I how faint and pale its smile I
Methinks yon high and gloomy tow'r
And battlement and faded bow'r,
With awful hush and solitude
Have chird its soft and joyous mood
This fortress is the prison of the captive princess whose
guards deplore the duty that keeps them from the more
active service of their time : —
You tell me that yon captive lone
Would grace the proudest monarch's throne,
And that from regal bowers she came,
And halls whose splendour has no name,
Because she lov'd some chief whose pride
Would stoop not, e'en to win his bride.
To her proud father ; for his hand
Could wield as well the warrior brand,
And his the race who ne'er hath shown
Submission to a stranger's throne ;
And ne'er hath lowly bent the knee
To Powers of this wide earth that be !
I grieve to hear her piteous tale ;
And must such cruel fate bewail ;
I grieve to hear that maiden fair
Should shed the tear of dark Despair,
Up
Omar Khaiyyam :
Edward Fitzgerald
Up
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning : Aurora Leigh
Up
Edmund Spenser :
The Faerie Queene
Up
Bonolota Shen : Jibonananda Das:Jeebonaanondo
Daash
Thousands of years I have been walking on this earth’s paths
Edging deeper from the Ocean of Shinghal in the darkness I
Roamed over around circling away. From the grey worlds of
Vimbeesha and Aushok further in the depth-dark Veedhorbo
City a tired soul I was; everywhere life’s raging ocean foaming
Away. Natore’s Bonolota Shen had given me a moment’s peace
Her hair was the distant night of Vidhisha her face was the lost
Shrabostir’s artworks. I have seen her the way the shipwrecked
Lost sailor far out at sea sees the green-grass country- the
cinna-
Mon Island in dark. Raising her bird-nest-eyes Natore’s Bonolota
Shen has spoken out: “Where have you been all these times?”
At day’s end the dusk dawns like the sounds of dew falling over
The falcon wipes over the fragrance of the sunlights off its
wings
The fireflies arrange over the manuscript for story telling in
their
Colours in shimmering fire-blooms to compensate the loss of all
The colours of the earth that are wiped over out by the darkness
All all birds come home-all rivers close off all transactions of
life
Remains only the darkness, to sit face to face with Bonolota
Shen
Translation : Munayem Mayenin
Poets'
Letter Magazine Archives Poetry Pearl : Katherine Michaud
Poetry Page
Emma Lazarus : The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Up
Love After Love: Derek
Walcott
The Indian Serenade : P.
B. Shelley
I
I arise from
dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me-who knows how?-
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
II
The wondering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;-
As I must on thine,
Beloved as thou art!
III
O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale,
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;-
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.
Up
Sonnet : Pablo
Neruda
Up
William
Shakespeare : From Romeo and Juliet
W. B. Yeats : The
Lake Isle of Innisfree
Up
Where the Mind is
Without Fear :
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Up
I Stood Tip-toe
Upon a Little Hill : John Keats
Up
Up
In Your Shadow :
Victoria Valentine
Across the bluff you danced
While I tiptoed in your shadow
Wavering as a flame in March eagerness
Hastening toward a fertile spring
Read on
Homecoming
: Claire Askew
We came in the cold afternoon, having driven
miles; late - the fire lit for us since lunchtime -
and lost beneath the shuddering tent of sky.
We are strangers in the land that birthed us,
long ago; though our speech coats quickly
with the curve of its tongue, its Nordic towns
familiar - Broxa. Hackness. Helmsley. Thirsk
Read on
The Address : Sharon Harriott
Tree green, dotted with tiny white flowers,
The large roomed imitated a forest glade.
So different to outside, the grey, and the red.
The cars, the shops and the school run.
Read on
I AM ME : Katherine Michaud
Of everything, a little stayed.
The world, vast and unexplored by my eyes,
never called my name.
The office, seemingly always open.
The groceries, seemingly always gone.
I am here.
Read on
Paradox : Isobel Dixon
There’s no telling what
will make the heart leap, frog-
like, landing with a soggy plop.
Read on
The Goddess of Spring :
Sara L. Russell
When next the moon, in soft pearlescent mist,
Ascends over these Sussex hills of green,
In dreaming skies of smoky amethyst,
The goddess of the Spring will soon be seen.
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The Candle Won't Blow Out Celebration of William
Shakespeare 2016
There is no better way to celebrate
William Shakespeare than reading his life's works
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Hamlet
What a piece of work
is a ''man''! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and
admirable! in action, how like an angel! in
apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals!
Sonnet
Let me not to the marriage of
true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
400 years since the passing of
William Shakespeare this year, yet he seems as young by
as many years................... |
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The Candle Won't Blow Out Celebration of William
Shakespeare 2016
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Up |
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