ladylinda
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May
May 18, 2014 9:58:58 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 18, 2014 9:58:58 GMT -5
The Turtle Dove
Geoffrey Hill
Love that drained her drained him she lov’d, though each For the other’s sake forged passions upon speech, Bore their close dayd through sufferance towards night Where she at length grasped sleep and he lay quiet
As though needing no questions, now, to guess What her secreting heart could not well hide, Her caught face flinched in half-asleep at his side, Yet she, by day, modelled her real distress,
Poised, turned her cheek to the attending world Of children and intriguers and the old, Conversed freely, exercised, was admired, Being strong to dazzle. All this she endured
To affront him. He watched her rough grief work Under the formed surface of habit. She spoke, Like one long undeceived but she was hurt, She denied more love, yet her starved eyes caught
His, devouring, at times. Then, as one self-dared, She went to him, plied there; like a furious dove Bore down with visitations of such love As his lithe, fathoming heart absorbed and buried
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ladylinda
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May 18, 2014 9:59:26 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 18, 2014 9:59:26 GMT -5
The Stockdoves
Andrew Young
They rose up in a twinkling cloud And wheeled about and bowed To settle on the trees Perching like small clay images.
Then with a noise of sudden rain They clattered off again And over Ballard Down They circled like a flying town.
Though one could sooner blast a rock Than scatter that dense flock That through the winter weather Some iron rule has held together,
Yet in another month from now Love like a spark will blow Those birds the country over To drop in trees, lover by lover.
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ladylinda
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May 19, 2014 9:16:54 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 19, 2014 9:16:54 GMT -5
Today it's fishes and I'm posting four fine poems about them.
Fish
Gwen Clear
Fish dally under reeds in quiet pools, Pools that are brown and deep where willows blow; Fish slip between green weeds and lily stems, Stems that are crowned with unseen buds of snow.
Fish pry around the stones that sink like lead Beneath deep water when the rains are on; Churning the mud as low winds turn the dust – A subtle movement, curled, and swiftly gone.
Fish gather all the colours of the pool Unto their bodies. They are set like gems Within the limpid water, rich with sun, And the straight-moulded work of lily stems.
Fish sleep in streams as old men sleep in chairs; With heavy fins they meet the windless hours, With the slow jolt of tramps in country lanes They idly flick the mud as tramps do flowers.
Fish are most old and wise, They stare from flat black eyes Out to an older age, Swimming through history, Man’s small epitome, They have watched tragedy, Idyll and comedy, Glory and shame. Wisdom is part of them Like as the root to stem, Warmth to the flame. Jews they have looked upon Weeping in Babylon, Egypt and running Nile, Lotus and camomile, Beauty that’s old; They have crept under The low ships of plunder And Syrian gold.
Thus through deep rivers The fish swim for ever, Till the high mountains Shall crumble and fall And the low waters rise On forest and wall; Till the low waters swell Over meadows and field And man, the false builder, Must waver and yield; Till the deep waters triumph, And waiting fish triumph, To swim over all things, And pry into all things, And over and under The flooded earth’s plunder Of human creating; Patiently, Silently, Surely, The fish are still waiting.
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ladylinda
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May 19, 2014 9:17:26 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 19, 2014 9:17:26 GMT -5
Trout leaping in the river where a juggler was drowned
Charles Dalmon
His flesh and bones have long since gone, But still the stream runs gaily on, And still his merry ghost contrives To juggle with his silver knives
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ladylinda
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May 19, 2014 9:18:06 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 19, 2014 9:18:06 GMT -5
Sonnet of fishes
George Barker
Bright drips the morning from its trophied nets Lodged along a sky flickering fish and wing, Cobbles like salmon crowd up waterfalling Streets where life dies thrashing as the sea forgets, True widow, what she has lost; and, ravished, lets The knuckledustered sun shake bullying A fist of glory over her. Every thing, Even the sly night, gives up its lunar secrets.
And I with pilchards cold in my pocket make Red-eyed a way to bed. But in my blood Crying I hear, still, the leap of the silver diver Caught in four cords after his fatal strake: And then, the immense imminence not understood, Death, in a dark, in a deep, in a dream, for ever.
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ladylinda
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May 19, 2014 9:18:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 19, 2014 9:18:37 GMT -5
Pike
Ted Hughes
Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. They dance on the surface among the flies. Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, Over a bed of emerald, silhouette Of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world. In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads- Gloom of their stillness: Logged on last year’s black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date: A life subdued to its instrument; The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals. Three we kept behind glass, Jungled in weed: three inches, four, And four and a half: fed fry to them- Suddenly there were two. Finally one With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each, over two feet long High and dry and dead in the willow-herb- One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet: The outside eye stared: as a vice locks- The same iron in this eye Though its film shrank in death. A pond I fished, fifty yards across, Whose lilies and muscular tench Had outlasted every visible stone Of the monastery that planted them- Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast But silently cast and fished With the hair frozen on my head For what might move, for what eye might move. The still splashes on the dark pond, Owls hushing the floating woods Frail on my ear against the dream Darkness beneath night’s darkness had freed, That rose slowly toward me, watching.
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ladylinda
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May 20, 2014 8:35:48 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 20, 2014 8:35:48 GMT -5
Today it's the turn of snakes.
Snake
D H Lawrence
A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second comer, waiting. He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking. The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured. And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth. He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face. And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned. I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste. Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination. And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross And I wished he would come back, my snake. For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness.
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ladylinda
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May 20, 2014 8:36:19 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 20, 2014 8:36:19 GMT -5
To the Snake
Denise Levertov
Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck and stroked your cold, pulsing throat as you hissed to me, glinting arrowy gold scales, and I felt the weight of you on my shoulders, and the whispering silver of your dryness sounded close at my ears –
Green Snake – I swore to my companions that certainly you were harmless! But truly I had no certainty, and no hope, only desiring to hold you, for that joy, which left a long wake of pleasure, as the leaves moved and you faded into the pattern of grass and shadows, and I returned smiling and haunted, to a dark morning.
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ladylinda
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May 20, 2014 8:36:50 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 20, 2014 8:36:50 GMT -5
Snakeskin and Stone
Keith Douglas
I praise a snakeskin or a stone: a bald head or a public speech I hate: the serpent’s lozenges are a calligraphy, and it is truth these cryptograms teach, the pebble is truth alone. Complications belonging to the snake who is as subtle as his gold, black, green – it is right the stone is old and smooth, utterly cruel and old. These two are two pillars. Between stand all the buildings truth can make, a whole city, inhabited by lovers, murderers, workmen and artists not much recognized: all who have no memorial but are mere men. Even the lowest never made himself a mask of words or figures. The bald head is a desert between country of life and country of death; between the desolate projecting ears move the wicked explorers, the flies who know the dead bone is beneath and from the skin the life half out and dead words tumbled in heaps in the papers lie in rows awaiting burial. The speakers mouth like a cold sea that sucks and spews them out with insult to their bodies. Tangled they cruise like mariners’ bodies in the grave of ships. Borrow hair for the bald crown, borrow applause for the dead words; for you who think the desert hidden or the words, like the dry bones, living are fit to profit from the world. And God help the lover of snakeskin and stone.
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ladylinda
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May 21, 2014 9:59:43 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 21, 2014 9:59:43 GMT -5
Today it's poems about wolves.
I'll begin with a real classic:
The Law of the Jungle
Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back -- For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a Hunter -- go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle -- the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear. And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken -- it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away. Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man! If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will; But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father -- to hunt by himself for his own: He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is -- Obey!
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ladylinda
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May 21, 2014 10:00:23 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 21, 2014 10:00:23 GMT -5
Wolf Knife
Donald Hall
In the mid August, in the second year of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter almost upon us, Kantiuk and I attempted to dash the sledge along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics of the Franklin Expedition. Now a storm blew, and we turned back, and we struggled slowly in snow, lest we depart land and venture onto ice from which a sudden fog and thaw would abandon us to the Providence of the sea.
Near nightfall I thought I heard snarling behind us. Kantiuk told me that two wolves, lean as the bones of a wrecked ship, had followed us the last hour, and snapped their teeth as if already feasting. I carried the one cartridge only in my rifle, since, approaching the second winter, we rationed stores.
As it turned dark, we could push no further, and made camp in a corner of ice hummocks, and the wolves stopped also, growling just past the limits of vision, coming closer, until I could hear the click of their feet on ice. Kantiuk laughed and remarked that the wolves appeared to be most hungry. I raised my rifle, prepared to shoot the first that ventured close, hoping to frighten the other.
Kantiuk struck my rifle down and said again that the wolves were hungry, and laughed. I feared that my old companion was mad, here in the storm, among ice-hummocks, stalked by wolves. Now Kantiuk searched in his pack, and extracted two knives--turnoks, the Innuits called them-- which by great labor were sharpened, on both sides, to the sharpness like the edge of a barber's razor, and approached our dogs and plunged both knives into the body of our youngest dog who had limped all day.
I remember that I consider turning my rifle on Kantiuk as he approached, then passed me, carrying knives red with the gore of our dog-- who had yowled, moaned, and now lay expired, surrounded by curious cousins and uncles, possibly hungry--and he trusted the knives handle-down in the snow.
Immediately after he left the knives, the vague, gray shape of wolves turned solid, out of the darkness and the snow, and set ravenously to licking blood from the honed steel. the double-edge of the knives so lacerated the tongues of the starved beasts that their own blood poured copiously forth to replenish the dog's blood, and they ate more furiously than before, while Knatiuk laughed, and held his sides laughing.
And I laughed also, perhaps in relief that Providence had delivered us yet again, or perhaps--under conditions of extremity-- far from Connecticut--finding there creatures acutely ridiculous, so avid to swallow their own blood. First one, and then the other collapsed, dying, bloodless in the snow black with their own blood, and Kantiuk retrieved his turnoks, and hacked lean meat from the thigh of the larger wolf, which we ate grateful, blessing the Creator, for we were hungry.
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ladylinda
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May 21, 2014 10:01:00 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 21, 2014 10:01:00 GMT -5
Wilderness
Carl Sandburg
THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
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ladylinda
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May 21, 2014 10:01:27 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 21, 2014 10:01:27 GMT -5
The Howling of Wolves
Ted Hughes
Is without world.
What are they dragging up and out on their long leashes of sound
That dissolve in the mid-air silence?
Then crying of a baby, in this forest of starving silences, Brings the wolves running. Tuning of a violin, in this forest delicate as an owl’s ear, Brings the wolves running—brings the steel traps clashing and slavering, The steel furred to keep it from cracking in the cold, The eyes that never learn how it has come about That they must live like this,
That they must live
Innocence crept into minerals.
The wind sweeps through and the hunched wolf shivers. It howls you cannot say whether out of agony or joy.
The earth is under its tongue, A dead weight of darkness, trying to see through its eyes. The wolf is living for the earth. But the wolf is small, it comprehends little.
It goes to and fro, trailing its haunches and whimpering horribly.
It must feed its fur.
The night snows stars and the earth creaks.
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ladylinda
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May 22, 2014 6:48:36 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 22, 2014 6:48:36 GMT -5
Today it's the turn of owls.
Owl
X.J. Kennedy
The diet of the owl is not For delicate digestions. He goes out on a limb to hoot Unanswerable questions
And just because he winks like men Who utter sage advice, We think him full of wisdom when He's only full of mice.
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ladylinda
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May 22, 2014 6:48:58 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on May 22, 2014 6:48:58 GMT -5
"A Wise Old Owl"
"A wise old Owl Sat on a oak. The more he saw, The less he spoke. The less he spoke, The more he heard. Why can't we be Like that wise old bird?"
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