ladylinda
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July
Jul 18, 2014 14:32:15 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 18, 2014 14:32:15 GMT -5
Yes, I thought it was an unusual and very enjoyable poem, Beth. Thanks for your kind words!
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 18, 2014 14:32:28 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 18, 2014 14:32:28 GMT -5
Again And Again, However We Know The Landscape Of Love
Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 18, 2014 14:33:15 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 18, 2014 14:33:15 GMT -5
Verses upon the Burning of our House July 18th
Anne Bradstreet
In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I waken'd was with thund'ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of 'fire' and 'fire,' Let no man know is my Desire. I starting up, the light did spy, And to my God my heart did cry To straighten me in my Distress And not to leave me succourless. Then coming out, behold a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest his grace that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just. It was his own; it was not mine. Far be it that I should repine, He might of all justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the Ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best, My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under the roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee. In silence ever shalt thou lie. Adieu, Adieu, All's Vanity. Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide: And did thy wealth on earth abide, Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust, The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may fly. Thou hast a house on high erect Fram'd by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished Stands permanent, though this be fled. It's purchased and paid for too By him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown, Yet by his gift is made thine own. There's wealth enough; I need no more. Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love; My hope and Treasure lies above.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 18, 2014 14:33:50 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 18, 2014 14:33:50 GMT -5
The Summer I Was Sixteen
Geraldine Connolly
The turquoise pool rose up to meet us, its slide a silver afterthought down which we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles. We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.
Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated, we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,
danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl". Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles, we came to the counter where bees staggered into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled
cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses, shared on benches beneath summer shadows. Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,
mouthing the old words, then loosened thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance through the chain link at an improbable world.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 19, 2014 17:03:23 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 17:03:23 GMT -5
California Plush
Frank Bidart
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and radio blaring bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack out of the city to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep
and you on top; the air now clean, for a moment weightless
without memories, or need for a past.
The need for the past
is so much at the center of my life I write this poem to record my discovery of it, my reconciliation.
It was in Bishop, the room was done in California plush: we had gone into the coffee shop, were told you could only get a steak in the bar: I hesitated, not wanting to be an occasion of temptation for my father
but he wanted to, so we entered
a dark room, with amber water glasses, walnut tables, captain's chairs, plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas, German memorial plates "bought on a trip to Europe," Puritan crosshatch green-yellow wallpaper, frilly shades, cowhide booths--
I thought of Cambridge:
the lovely congruent elegance of Revolutionary architecture, even of
ersatz thirties Georgian
seemed alien, a threat, sign of all I was not--
to bode order and lucidity
as an ideal, if not reality--
not this California plush, which
also
I was not.
And so I made myself an Easterner, finding it, after all, more like me than I had let myself hope.
And now, staring into the embittered face of my father,
again, for two weeks, as twice a year, I was back.
The waitress asked us if we wanted a drink. Grimly, I waited until he said no...
Before the tribunal of the world I submit the following document:
Nancy showed it to us, in her apartment at the model, as she waited month by month for the property settlement, her children grown and working for their father, at fifty-three now alone, a drink in her hand:
as my father said, "They keep a drink in her hand":
Name Wallace du Bois Box No 128 Chino, Calif. Date July 25 ,19 54
Mr Howard Arturian I am writing a letter to you this afternoon while I'm in the mood of writing. How is everything getting along with you these fine days, as for me everything is just fine and I feel great except for the heat I think its lot warmer then it is up there but I don't mind it so much. I work at the dairy half day and I go to trade school the other half day Body & Fender, now I am learning how to spray paint cars I've already painted one and now I got another car to paint. So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this. I know how to straighten metals and all that. I forgot to say "Hello" to you. The reason why I am writing to you is about a job, my Parole Officer told me that he got letter from and that you want me to go to work for you. So I wanted to know if its truth. When I go to the Board in Feb. I'll tell them what I want to do and where I would like to go, so if you want me to work for you I'd rather have you sent me to your brother John in Tonapah and place to stay for my family. The Old Lady says the same thing in her last letter that she would be some place else then in Bishop, thats the way I feel too.and another thing is my drinking problem. I made up my mind to quit my drinking, after all what it did to me and what happen. This is one thing I'll never forget as longs as I live I never want to go through all this mess again. This sure did teach me lot of things that I never knew before. So Howard you can let me know soon as possible. I sure would appreciate it.
P.S From Your Friend I hope you can read my Wally Du Bois writing. I am a little nervous yet
--He and his wife had given a party, and one of the guests was walking away just as Wallace started backing up his car. He hit him, so put the body in the back seat and drove to a deserted road. There he put it before the tires, and ran back and forth over it several times.
When he got out of Chino, he did, indeed, never do that again: but one child was dead, his only son, found with the rest of the family immobile in their beds with typhoid, next to the mother, the child having been dead two days:
he continued to drink, and as if it were the Old West shot up the town a couple of Saturday nights.
"So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things that I never knew before. I am a little nervous yet."
It seems to me an emblem of Bishop--
For watching the room, as the waitresses in their back-combed, Parisian, peroxided, bouffant hairdos, and plastic belts, moved back and forth
I thought of Wallace, and the room suddenly seemed to me not uninteresting at all:
they were the same. Every plate and chair
had its congruence with
all the choices creating
these people, created
by them--by me,
for this is my father's chosen country, my origin.
Before, I had merely been anxious, bored; now, I began to ask a thousand questions...
He was, of course, mistrustful, knowing I was bored, knowing he had dragged me up here from Bakersfield
after five years
of almost managing to forget Bishop existed.
But he soon became loquacious, ordered a drink, and settled down for an afternoon of talk...
He liked Bishop: somehow, it was to his taste, this hard-drinking, loud, visited-by-movie-stars town. "Better to be a big fish in a little pond."
And he was: when they came to shoot a film, he entertained them; Miss A--, who wore nothing at all under her mink coat; Mr. M--, good horseman, good shot.
"But when your mother let me down" (for alcoholism and infidelity, she divorced him) "and Los Angeles wouldn't give us water any more, I had to leave.
We were the first people to grow potatoes in this valley."
When he began to tell me that he lost control of the business because of the settlement he gave my mother,
because I had heard it many times,
in revenge, I asked why people up here drank so much.
He hesitated. "Bored, I guess. --Not much to do."
And why had Nancy's husband left her?
In bitterness, all he said was: "People up here drink too damn much."
And that was how experience had informed his life.
"So now I think I've learned all I want after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things that I never knew before. I am a little nervous yet."
Yet, as my mother said, returning, as always, to the past,
"I wouldn't change any of it. It taught me so much. Gladys is such an innocent creature: you look into her face and somehow it's empty, all she worries about are sales and the baby. her husband's too good!"
It's quite pointless to call this rationalization: my mother, for uncertain reasons, has had her bout with insanity, but she's right:
the past in maiming us, makes us, fruition is also destruction:
I think of Proust, dying in a cork-linked room, because he refuses to eat because he thinks that he cannot write if he eats because he wills to write, to finish his novel
--his novel which recaptures the past, and with a kind of joy, because in the debris of the past, he has found the sources of the necessities
which have led him to this room, writing
--in this strange harmony, does he will for it to have been different?
And I can't not think of the remorse of Oedipus,
who tries to escape, to expiate the past by blinding himself, and then, when he is dying, sees that he has become a Daimon
--does he, discovering, at last, this cruel coherence created by "the order of the universe"
--does he will anything reversed?
I look at my father: as he drinks his way into garrulous, shaky defensiveness, the debris of the past is just debris--; whatever I reason, it is a desolation to watch...
must I watch? He will not change; he does not want to change;
every defeated gesture implies the past is useless, irretrievable... --I want to change: I want to stop fear's subtle
guidance of my life--; but, how can I do that if I am still afraid of its source?
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 19, 2014 17:05:13 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 17:05:13 GMT -5
The Summer Sun Shone Round Me
Robert Louis Stevenson
THE summer sun shone round me, The folded valley lay In a stream of sun and odour, That sultry summer day.
The tall trees stood in the sunlight As still as still could be, But the deep grass sighed and rustled And bowed and beckoned me.
The deep grass moved and whispered And bowed and brushed my face. It whispered in the sunshine: "The winter comes apace."
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 19, 2014 17:06:34 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 17:06:34 GMT -5
Love's Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle - Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high Heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea - What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 20, 2014 10:05:10 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 20, 2014 10:05:10 GMT -5
THE SUCCESSION OF THE FOUR SWEET MONTHS
Robert Herrick
First, April, she with mellow showers Opens the way for early flowers; Then after her comes smiling May, In a more rich and sweet array; Next enters June, and brings us more Gems than those two that went before; Then, lastly, July comes, and she More wealth brings in than all those three.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 20, 2014 10:06:53 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 20, 2014 10:06:53 GMT -5
Praise In Summer
Richard Wilbur
Obscurely yet most surely called to praise, As sometimes summer calls us all, I said The hills are heavens full of branching ways Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead; I said the trees are mines in air, I said See how the sparrow burrows in the sky! And then I wondered why this mad instead Perverts our praise to uncreation, why Such savour's in this wrenching things awry. Does sense so stale that it must needs derange The world to know it? To a praiseful eye Should it not be enough of fresh and strange That trees grow green, and moles can course in clay, And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day?
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 20, 2014 10:07:54 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 20, 2014 10:07:54 GMT -5
Love and a Question
Robert Frost
A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with the eyes more than the lips For a shelter for the night, And he turned and looked at the road afar Without a window light.
The bridegroom came forth into the porch With, 'Let us look at the sky, And question what of the night to be, Stranger, you and I.' The woodbine leaves littered the yard, The woodbine berries were blue, Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind; 'Stranger, I wish I knew.'
Within, the bride in the dusk alone Bent over the open fire, Her face rose-red with the glowing coal And the thought of the heart's desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road, Yet saw but her within, And wished her heart in a case of gold And pinned with a silver pin.
The bridegroom thought it little to give A dole of bread, a purse, A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God, Or for the rich a curse;
But whether or not a man was asked To mar the love of two By harboring woe in the bridal house, The bridegroom wished he knew.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 21, 2014 14:39:20 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 21, 2014 14:39:20 GMT -5
Indian Summer
Henry Van Dyke
A soft veil dims the tender skies, And half conceals from pensive eyes The bronzing tokens of the fall; A calmness broods upon the hills, And summer's parting dream distills A charm of silence over all.
The stacks of corn, in brown array, Stand waiting through the placid day, Like tattered wigwams on the plain; The tribes that find a shelter there Are phantom peoples, forms of air, And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.
At evening when the crimson crest Of sunset passes down the West, I hear the whispering host returning; On far-off fields, by elm and oak, I see the lights, I smell the smoke,-- The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 21, 2014 14:41:59 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 21, 2014 14:41:59 GMT -5
The Bonfire
Robert Frost
“OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let’s not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile The way we piled it. And let’s be the talk Of people brought to windows by a light Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper. Rouse them all, both the free and not so free With saying what they’d like to do to us For what they’d better wait till we have done. Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano, If that is what the mountain ever was— And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will….”
“And scare you too?” the children said together.
“Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars, And sweeping round it with a flaming sword, Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle— Done so much and I know not how much more I mean it shall not do if I can bind it. Well if it doesn’t with its draft bring on A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, As once it did with me upon an April. The breezes were so spent with winter blowing They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven As I walked once round it in possession. But the wind out of doors—you know the saying. There came a gust. You used to think the trees Made wind by fanning since you never knew It blow but that you saw the trees in motion. Something or someone watching made that gust. It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass Of over-winter with the least tip-touch Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand. The place it reached to blackened instantly. The black was all there was by day-light, That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke— And a flame slender as the hepaticas, Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. But the black spread like black death on the ground, And I think the sky darkened with a cloud Like winter and evening coming on together. There were enough things to be thought of then. Where the field stretches toward the north And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it To flames without twice thinking, where it verges Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear They might find fuel there, in withered brake, Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod, And alder and grape vine entanglement, To leap the dusty deadline. For my own I took what front there was beside. I knelt And thrust hands in and held my face away. Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. A board is the best weapon if you have it. I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn’t bide the smother And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood— Of something more than tinder-grass and weed— That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I’m sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors coming home from town Couldn’t believe that so much black had come there While they had backs turned, that it hadn’t been there When they had passed an hour or so before Going the other way and they not seen it. They looked about for someone to have done it. But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering Where all my weariness had gone and why I walked so light on air in heavy shoes In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling. Why wouldn’t I be scared remembering that?”
“If it scares you, what will it do to us?”
“Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, What would you say to war if it should come? That’s what for reasons I should like to know— If you can comfort me by any answer.”
“Oh, but war’s not for children—it’s for men.”
“Now we are digging almost down to China. My dears, my dears, you thought that—we all thought it. So your mistake was ours. Haven’t you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels,— And children in the ships and in the towns? Haven’t you heard what we have lived to learn? Nothing so new—something we had forgotten: War is for everyone, for children too. I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t. The best way is to come up hill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.”
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 21, 2014 14:42:41 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 21, 2014 14:42:41 GMT -5
Delight in Disorder
Robert Herrick
A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction-- An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher-- A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly-- A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat-- A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility-- Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 22, 2014 16:02:05 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 22, 2014 16:02:05 GMT -5
When We Two Parted
Lord Byron
When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted, To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning Sank chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.
They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well:— Long, long shall I rue thee Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met— In silence I grieve That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee?— With silence and tears.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 22, 2014 16:02:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 22, 2014 16:02:37 GMT -5
St. Martin's Summer
Robert Louis Stevenson
AS swallows turning backward When half-way o'er the sea, At one word's trumpet summons They came again to me - The hopes I had forgotten Came back again to me.
I know not which to credit, O lady of my heart! Your eyes that bade me linger, Your words that bade us part - I know not which to credit, My reason or my heart.
But be my hopes rewarded, Or be they but in vain, I have dreamed a golden vision, I have gathered in the grain - I have dreamed a golden vision, I have not lived in vain.
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