Favorite Poetry
Page 1
Suddenly, fall chill...
Why should that
ragged fortune teller
look so surprised?
****Buson
e.e. cummings
in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)
in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me
Hilda K. Britt
Seven Short Love Poems
Plane Love
Put together by circumstance
he window, she aisle
not a word is exchanged
carefully avoiding each other's eyes
he studies her profile
the shape of her fingernails
her thrice-pierced ears
the curve of her breast
The plane jostles---her arm touches his for an instant
a moment of connection---he exists!
He picks up his bag from the carousel
turns sees her looking at him smiling
she reaches for hers
he gently takes it from her hand
they walk together like lovers
absorbed into the crowd... [April 1993]
Courtship
As a winter bird surrounded by the sheer
whiteness and brightness of the snow,
your presence filled me with warmth and coolness
in one.
As a winter bird's song
that charges the wintry air
your words inspire to motion and change.
Brief Separation
Though I want to see your face,
and ache for the touch of you
I won't be blue.
Being satisfied but not complete
with words that are fleet;
They flow, they glide, they fade away.
Yet the linger to spur me on
to heights of emotions;
awakenings;
stirrings...
I am missing you!
Weaning Interest and Lies
Though I see you as you are,
I close my eyes to reality.
Though I see you as you are,
My dreams are of love's ecstasy;
Though I see you as you are,
I envision needs fulfilled, hopes realized.
Though I see you as you are
Pretense abounds.
Query
What does it mean to love?
Does love have meaning?
What does it mean to love?
Is it when your heart
is heavy with sadness?
Is it when you are lonely
and exhausted from tears?
OR
Is it when your heart breaks
with the realization
that you love in vain?
Dis-connection
I am NOT going to call him!!
I am not going to call him
my phone is silent
it does not ring
You have not called
what does this mean
you have no need for me
you've had you fill of me
I will not call!
The closer I get to you
the more it makes me see
how dispassionate you are
how separate we are
We are worlds apart
we have come together
briefly [September 1993]
ENTANGLEMENT
an EPIGRAM
The web he weaved was strong and sure
his eyes were like an hypnotic lure
his winsome ways and beguiling charms
pulled me into his waiting arms
he loved me long
he loved me strong
and then
he said
"Get out'a my bed!!" [1994]
V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years ...
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres...
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotions. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men one canot hope
To emulate...but there is no competition...
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that ncannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the darkcold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
East Coker
by T.S.Eliot
from Four Quartets