Be Nice ...

[Widget Whiteberry]

Very nice. Thank you, Pip.

[Pip Torok]

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THE SEARCH
---------------
[For my wife, Eithne]
Gabriel Rosenstock
1949-
(From his own Irish poem)

I
Where are the poems I promised
I would write for you?
They are not in ink --

You will find them in the foam of rivers
In the seas
In the vapour above clifftops
In the swirling breeze
In eagles' eyes
In the clouds
In the skies
Even in the stars.
They're on their eternal journey
From void to void.
They are not in print --
The flowers' sweetness snatched them
While you hunkered in the garden.
Nettles burned them
Dock soothed them
Ladybirds landed on them
And walked like critics
Seeking rhyme and metre.
They even failed to find a title. For who
Could put a name on you!
And yet each day I name you
With every breath.
Where are all the verbs?
You have gathered them to yourself.
The adjectives?
Nestling in your breast.
Punctuation?
It adorns you.
Nouns, vowels, consonants,
The Irish language, its sound and sense,
I dedicate to you, Eithne.

II
From age to age I seek your shape
Like a winglet
Like a leaf.
When we are children,
Heroes,
and elders,
On death's cold stone
And in the womb,
Every moment
shapes my poem --
It ever welcomes you.
Can you hear the gale?
The world turns
And all is turning,
The hills and the peaks above them.
We closed our eyes, and opened them,
Then closed them again in wonder.

III
Do not greet me
Do not look at me
Do not seek me
I escape
I seek you
We do not exist
In any time
In any place
We are not in the realm of words
Or love
(Although our love is strong).
Take my hand,
Love; hear the heart's tympany
That beat long ago for you and me,
That we still don't understand.

--oOo--

Gabriel Rosenstock (born 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is a poet, haikuist and translator. Born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, he currently resides in Dublin.

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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THE SWEET SEASON
------------------------
Richard Edwards
1523-1566

When May is in his prime, then may each heart rejoice.
When May bedecks each branch with green, each bird strains forth his voice
The lively sap creeps up into the blooming thorn.
The flowers, which cold in prison kept, now laugh the frost to scorn.
All nature's imps triumph while joyful May doth last;
When May is gone, of all the year the pleasant time is past.

May makes the cheerful hue, May breeds and brings new blood.
May marcheth throughout every limb, May makes the merry mood.
May pricketh tender hearts their warbling notes to tune.
Full strange it is, yet some we see do make their May in June.
Thus things are strangely wrought while joyful May doth last;
Take May in time, when May is gone the pleasant time is past.

All ye that live on earth, and have your May at will
Rejoice in May, as I do now, and use your May with skill.
Use May while that you may, for May hath but his time
When all the fruit is gone, it is too late the tree to climb.
Your liking and your lust is fresh while May doth last;
When May is gone, of all the year the pleasant time is past.

--oOo--

Pip Torok

[cleopatraxigalia]

LET ALL THE POISONS THAT LURK IN THE MUD HATCH OUT .

[Rosie Gray]

Still I Rise
Maya Angelou, American Poet - 1978 - 2014

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air,

I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

[Pip Torok]

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Thank you for Maya, Rosie ...

I only heard a day or two ago.

Whenever I think of big-hearted, tolerant people whose outlook was ever-inclusive, I think of Maya Angelou.

Pip Torok

[Widget Whiteberry]

Poems to sip coffee by. What a lovely thread, Pip, thank you for beginning it and to everyone who contributes .

[Timo Gufler]

I agree with Widget, that Pip's idea about the poem thread is great, although English poetry is bit "out of my reach"...

[Pip Torok]

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ONE-TRACK MIND
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Sophie Hannah
1971-
('Hero and the Girl Next Door')

Why does she take unnecessary trips?
She lives just opposite a row of shops.
She went to Crewe to buy a bag of chips.
She went to Birmingham to buy lamb chops.

She has no time for aeroplanes or boats.
She cannot get enough of British Rail.
She went to Liverpool for Quaker Oats
Then Halifax to buy the Daily Mail.

She went to Chester for a pair of tights.
Every weekend she's up and down some track.
She went to York for twenty Marlboro Lights.
She went to Stalybridge and came straight back.

Once, on her way to Hull for cottage cheese,
She saw him. All he said was Tickets, please.

--oOo--

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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A MEMORY OF JUNE
------------------------
Claude McKay
1889-1948
('Harlem Shadows')

When June comes dancing o'er the death of May,
..With scarlet roses tinting her green breast,
And mating thrushes ushering in her day,
..And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest,

I always see the evening when we met--
..The first of June baptized in tender rain--
And walked home through the wide streets, gleaming wet,
..Arms locked, our warm flesh pulsing with love's pain.

I always see the cheerful little room,
..And in the corner, fresh and white, the bed,
Sweet scented with a delicate perfume,
..Wherein for one night only we were wed;

Where in the starlit stillness we lay mute,
..And heard the whispering showers all night long,
And your brown burning body was a lute
..Whereon my passion played his fevered song.

When June comes dancing o'er the death of May,
..With scarlet roses staining her fair feet,
My soul takes leave of me to sing all day
..A love so fugitive and so complete.

--oOo--

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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HEAVEN
----------
A.J.S.Tessimond
1902-1962

In the heaven of the god I hope for (call him X )
There is marriage and giving in marriage and transient sex
For those who will cast the body’s vest aside_
Soon, but are not yet rarified_
And still embrace. For X is never annoyed_
Or shocked; has read his Jung and knows his Freud,
He gives you time in heaven to do as you please,
To climb love’s ladder by slow degrees,
Gently to rise from sense to soul, to ascend_
To a world of timeless joy, world without end.

Here on the gates of pearl there hangs no sign_
Limiting cakes and ale, forbidding wine.
No weakness here is hidden, no vice unknown.
Sin is a sickness to be cured, outgrown_

With the help of a god who can laugh, an unsolemn god_
Who smiles at old wives’ tales of iron rod_
And fiery hell, a God who’s more at ease_
With bawds and Falstaffs than with Pharisees.

Here the lame learn to leap, the blind to see,
Tyrants are taught to be humble, slaves to be free.
Fools become wise and wise men cease to be bores,
Here bishops learn from lips of back-street whores,
And white men follow black-faced angels’ feet
Through fields of orient and immortal wheat.

And X , of whom no mortal is afraid,
Who’s friend consulted, not fierce king obeyed;
Who hears the unspoken thought, the prayer unprayed;
Who expects not even the learned to understand_
His universe, extends a prodigal hand,
Full of forgiveness, over his promised land.

--oOo--

There are bars at the end of some lines. They indicate that
eliding that line with the following-line will carry the sense
better than simply hesitating at the end of that line ...

so enjoy!

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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WRITTEN ON THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR WHICH WAS GIVEN TO CHERRY-PICKING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anonymous

The moon high and dry
In the five o'clock sky
Shows a feather-pale face
As the sun joins the chase
Rising hot from his bed --
Though broad shade is spread
Of trees on the grass
The dews are soon fled
From the sky's burning glass.

Now silent for long
Is birds' early song:
But rooks in a ring
And clacking starling
With sparrows and thrushes
From field and from bushes
Now flock to the cherries
To bill the rich berries
Before the bright sun
Wakes the man with the gun.

--oOo--

SUMMER STORM
-------------------
Sara Teasdale
1884-1933
"Flame and Shadow" #11

The panther wind
....Leaps out of the night,
The snake of lightning
....Is twisting and white.
The lion of thunder
....Roars -- and we
Sit still and content
....Under a tree --
We have met fate together
....And love and pain,
Why should we fear
....The wrath of the rain?

--oOo--

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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A LITTLE INNOCENCE ...
-----------------------------
e.e.cummings
1894-1962
("selected poems 1923-1958")

who were so dark of heart they might not speak,
a little innocence will make them sing;
teach them to see who could not learn to look
--from the reality of all nothing

will actually lift a luminous whole;
turn sheer despairing to most perfect gay,
nowhere to here,never to beautiful:
a little innocence creates a day.

And something thought or done or wished without
a little innocence,although it were
as red as terror and as green as fate,
greyly shall fail and dully disappear--

but the proud power of himself death immense
is not so as a little innocence

--oOo--
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A LOVELY SONG FOR JACKSON
------------------------------------
V.R.Lang
1924-1956

If I were a seaweed at the bottom of the sea,
I'd find you, you'd find me.
Fishes would see us and shake their heads
Approvingly from their submarine beds.
Crabs and sea horses would bid us glad cry,
And sea anemone smile us by.
Sea gulls alone would wing and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone.

If I were an angel and lost in the sun,
You would be there, and you would be one.
Birds that flew high enough would find us and sing
Gladder to find us than for anything,
And clouds would be proud of us, light everywhere
Would clothe us gold gaily, for dear and for fair.
Trees stretching skyward would see us and smile,
And all over heaven we'd laugh for a while.
Only the fishes would search and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone.

--oOo--

Pip Torok

[Pip Torok]

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." That Was Then ... This Is Now ..."
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AT LAST! (TANDEM VENIT AMOR)
---------------------------------------
Sulpicia (circa 20 BC)
(tr. from Latin: unknown)

At last
It has come.
Love!
There -- my secret
In all its nakedness.
Covering it up -- now that would have made me ashamed.
The Goddess of Love read my poems
and made it happen.
She despatched him
Straight to my aching breast.
She keeps her promises!
Everybody's talking about it -- my happiness --
That is, those who've got none of their own.

Perhaps I shouldn't have written this,
In case someone reads it before my love.
But I'm so glad I've been bad!
So bored with seeming nice!
Let them shout it out:
I've got what I deserve
And so has he.

--oOo--

SULPICIAE EPISTULA I
---------------------
Sulpicia

Tandem venit amor: qualem texisse pudori
.Quam nudasse alicui sit mihi fama magis.
Exorata meis illum Cytherea Camenis
.Adtulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum.
Exsolvit promissa Venus: mea gaudia narret,
.Dicetur siquis non habuisse sua.
Non ego signatis quicquam mandare tabellis
.Ne legat id nemo quam meus ante, velim,
Sed peccasse iuvat, voltus componere famae
.Taedet: cum digno digna fuisse ferar.

--oOo--
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. and now .....
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THREE WEEKS
-----------------
Anne Michaels

Three weeks longing, water burning
stone. Three weeks leopard blood
pacing under the loud insomnia of stars.
Three weeks voltaic. Weeks of winter
afternoons, darkness half descended.
Howling at distance, ocean
pulling between us, bending time.
Three weeks finding you in me in new places,
luminescent as a tetra in depths,
its neon trail.
Three weeks shipwrecked on this mad island;
twisting aurora of perfumes. Every boundary of body
electrified, every thought hunted down
by memory of touch. Three weeks of open eyes
when you call, your first question,
"Did I wake you"...

--oOo--

(Some things never change ....)

Pip Torok

[Widget Whiteberry]

He Tells Her

He tells her that the Earth is flat,
He knows the facts, and that is that.

In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.

But he has learned to argue well,
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

- Wendy Cope