ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 14, 2014 15:29:29 GMT -5
Sorry about the delay; still recovering from our much-needed but quite tiring holiday!
Here's the thread for this month - poems about September and about autumn (fall).
Septembers Baccalaureate
Emily Dickinson
September's Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets -- Crows -- and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming -- An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 14, 2014 15:30:00 GMT -5
Autumn Perspective
Erica Jong
Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where paintings were, and something reminding us this is like all other moving days; finding the dirty ends of someone else's life, hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, and burned-out matches in the corner; things not preserved, yet never swept away like fragments of disturbing dreams we stumble on all day. . . in ordering our lives, we will discard them, scrub clean the floorboards of this our home lest refuse from the lives we did not lead become, in some strange, frightening way, our own. And we have plans that will not tolerate our fears-- a year laid out like rooms in a new house--the dusty wine glasses rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves sagging with heavy winter books. Seeing the room always as it will be, we are content to dust and wait. We will return here from the dark and silent streets, arms full of books and food, anxious as we always are in winter, and looking for the Good Life we have made.
I see myself then: tense, solemn, in high-heeled shoes that pinch, not basking in the light of goals fulfilled, but looking back to now and seeing a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl in a bare room, full of promise and feeling envious.
Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward into the future--as if, when the room contains us and all our treasured junk we will have filled whatever gap it is that makes us wander, discontented from ourselves.
The room will not change: a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint won't make much difference; our eyes are fickle but we remain the same beneath our suntans, pale, frightened, dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time, dreaming our dreaming selves.
I look forward and see myself looking back.
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Post by beth on Sept 14, 2014 16:17:53 GMT -5
Thanks, Linda. I used to love Erica Jongs's writing (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Fear of Flying, etc.). Haven't thought about her for a long time. Gave me a kind of deja vu..
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 15, 2014 16:28:09 GMT -5
Thanks, Beth. I think Erica Jong is a far better poet than she is a novelist. Some of her poems strike me as genuinely great.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 15, 2014 16:33:20 GMT -5
September
Hilaire Belloc
Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days Gleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways, With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, Some crimson poppy of a late delight Atoning in its splendour for the flight Of summer blooms and joys This is September.
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 15, 2014 16:33:41 GMT -5
Autumn Birds
John Clare
The wild duck startles like a sudden thought, And heron slow as if it might be caught. The flopping crows on weary wings go by And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly. The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by, And darken like a clod the evening sky. The larks like thunder rise and suthy round, Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground. The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud With white neck peering to the evening clowd. The weary rooks to distant woods are gone. With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow While small birds nestle in the edge below.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 17, 2014 17:06:53 GMT -5
Sorry about yesterday - it was a frantic day with all kinds of unexpected calls on our time.
September 1, 1939
W H Auden
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 17, 2014 17:07:22 GMT -5
Ode To Autumn
John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 23, 2014 16:01:49 GMT -5
The September Gale
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I'M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing!
It came as quarrels sometimes do, When married folks get clashing; There was a heavy sigh or two, Before the fire was flashing, A little stir among the clouds, Before they rent asunder,-- A little rocking of the trees, And then came on the thunder.
Lord! how the ponds and rivers boiled! They seemed like bursting craters! And oaks lay scattered on the ground As if they were p'taters And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter, The earth was like a frying-pan, Or some such hissing matter.
It chanced to be our washing-day, And all our things were drying; The storm came roaring through the lines, And set them all a flying; I saw the shirts and petticoats Go riding off like witches; I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,-- I lost my Sunday breeches!
I saw them straddling through the air, Alas! too late to win them; I saw them chase the clouds, as if The devil had been in them; They were my darlings and my pride, My boyhood's only riches,-- "Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried,-- "My breeches! O my breeches!"
That night I saw them in my dreams, How changed from what I knew them! The dews had steeped their faded threads, The winds had whistled through them! I saw the wide and ghastly rents Where demon claws had torn them; A hole was in their amplest part, As if an imp had worn them.
I have had many happy years, And tailors kind and clever, But those young pantaloons have gone Forever and forever! And not till fate has cut the last Of all my earthly stitches, This aching heart shall cease to mourn My loved, my long-lost breeches!
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 23, 2014 16:02:19 GMT -5
By an Autumn Fire
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Now at our casement the wind is shrilling, Poignant and keen And all the great boughs of the pines between It is harping a lone and hungering strain To the eldritch weeping of the rain; And then to the wild, wet valley flying It is seeking, sighing, Something lost in the summer olden. When night was silver and day was golden; But out on the shore the waves are moaning With ancient and never fulfilled desire, And the spirits of all the empty spaces, Of all the dark and haunted places, With the rain and the wind on their death-white faces, Come to the lure of our leaping fire.
But we bar them out with this rose-red splendor From our blithe domain, And drown the whimper of wind and rain With undaunted laughter, echoing long, Cheery old tale and gay old song; Ours is the joyance of ripe fruition, Attained ambition. Ours is the treasure of tested loving, Friendship that needs no further proving;
No more of springtime hopes, sweet and uncertain, Here we have largess of summer in fee Pile high the logs till the flame be leaping, At bay the chill of the autumn keeping, While pilgrim-wise, we may go a-reaping In the fairest meadow of memory!
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 24, 2014 16:13:10 GMT -5
September On Jessore Road
Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies Bellies swollen, with big round eyes On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
Millions of fathers in rain Millions of mothers in pain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of sisters nowhere to go
One Million aunts are dying for bread One Million uncles lamenting the dead Grandfather millions homeless and sad Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk in the mud Millions of children wash in the flood A Million girls vomit & groan Millions of families hopeless alone
Millions of souls nineteenseventyone homeless on Jessore road under grey sun A million are dead, the million who can Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan
Taxi September along Jessore Road Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load past watery fields thru rain flood ruts Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts
Wet processions Families walk Stunted boys big heads don't talk Look bony skulls & silent round eyes Starving black angels in human disguise
Mother squats weeping & points to her sons Standing thin legged like elderly nuns small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer Five months small food since they settled there
on one floor mat with small empty pot Father lifts up his hands at their lot Tears come to their mother's eye Pain makes mother Maya cry
Two children together in palmroof shade Stare at me no word is said Rice ration, lentils one time a week Milk powder for warweary infants meek
No vegetable money or work for the man Rice lasts four days eat while they can Then children starve three days in a row and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees Bengali tongue cried mister Please Identity card torn up on the floor Husband still waits at the camp office door
Baby at play I was washing the flood Now they won't give us any more food The pieces are here in my celluloid purse Innocent baby play our death curse
Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys Crowded waiting their daily bread joys Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks to whack them in line They play hungry tricks
Breaking the line and jumping in front Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage
Why are these infants massed in this place Laughing in play & pushing for space Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread Why this is the House where they give children bread
The man in the bread door Cries & comes out Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today" Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!"
Run home to tents where elders await Messenger children with bread from the state No bread more today! & and no place to squat Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months Dysentery drains bowels all at once Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep
Refugee camps in hospital shacks Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die
September Jessore Road rickshaw 50,000 souls in one camp I saw Rows of bamboo huts in the flood Open drains, & wet families waiting for food
Border trucks flooded, food cant get past, American Angel machine please come fast! Where is Ambassador Bunker today? Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?
Where are the helicopters of U. S. AID? Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light? Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Where are the President's Armies of Gold? Billionaire Navies merciful Bold? Bringing us medicine food and relief? Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?
Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain? Where can these families go in the rain? Jessore Road's children close their big eyes Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?
Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care? Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair? Millions of children alone in the rain! Millions of children weeping in pain!
Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know Ring out ye bells of electrical pain Ring in the conscious of America brain
How many children are we who are lost Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost? What are our souls that we have lost care? Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--
Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain waits by the pump well, Woe to the world! whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past? What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked? Move on and leave them without any coins? What should I care for the love of my loins?
What should we care for our cities and cars? What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars? How many millions sit down in New York & sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?
How many millions of beer cans are tossed in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost? Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams Stinking the world and dimming star beams--
Finish the war in your breast with a sigh Come tast the tears in your own Human eye Pity us millions of phantoms you see Starved in Samsara on planet TV
How many millions of children die more before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord? How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild Armed forces that boast the children they've killed?
How many souls walk through Maya in pain How many babes in illusory pain? How many families hollow eyed lost? How many grandmothers turning to ghost?
How many loves who never get bread? How many Aunts with holes in their head? How many sisters skulls on the ground? How many grandfathers make no more sound?
How many fathers in woe How many sons nowhere to go? How many daughters nothing to eat? How many uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions of babies in pain Millions of mothers in rain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of children nowhere to go
New York, November 14-16, 1971
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 24, 2014 16:14:35 GMT -5
Autumn
Siegfried Sassoon
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Along the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 28, 2014 16:25:50 GMT -5
September Song
Geoffrey Hill
born 19. 6. 32 - deported 24. 9. 42
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable you were not. Not forgotten or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died. Things marched, sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries.
(I have made an elegy for myself it is true)
September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 28, 2014 16:26:22 GMT -5
When it was autumn in Eden
Ian Emberson
When it was autumn in Eden and chestnuts held golden leaves against dimming light , Eve touched her toes on the sodden soil - ran fingers through harvest sheaves - feeling all things were right : and hip and haw turned red - the sloe to dusk and swallows gathered in flocks with waitful wings .
Then an east wind blew - quite sudden leaves of the beech - the ash withered and fell , and beyond the branches of Eden the grey clouds split with a gash like a hint of hell : and the hedgehog delved in the mould , whilst the swallows flew south .
It was then that Eve first sensed warmth had gone out of the air - abruptly she felt alone unnerved by the strange immense vastness - was it despair ? - bird song became subdued and changed its tone , and somehow it troubled her mind that the trees were leafless now .
At once she went and searched for Adam , setting her sights on a trembling star ; moving tight lips she beseeched God that all heaven's lights shine from afar ; but she had to grope on - confused - bemused by forebodings of pain .
At last she found him there close by their bower - in thoughtful mood lit by dim light ; and at that sight all her despair melted , her mind felt imbued with warmth , joy , comfort , delight that he was her master still and she his only love .
He stroked that long cool hair which broke in waves to her hips , kissed tears from her eyes ; and she , without one care , gave him her cheeks and her lips freely - her breasts - her thighs - the everything of herself gave as a gift - the perfect present to seal their love .
And that strange venomous thing perched on the Tree of Life looked down on the pair , and , though aware of the poison in his sting shortly to usher forth all hate - all strife emptiness and despair , viewed with reluctance his predestined part : the fruit - the guilt - and then the banishing sword .
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 30, 2014 16:27:26 GMT -5
The Day Is A Poem (September 19 1939) Robinson Jeffers
This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice.
A man of genius: that is, of amazing Ability, courage, devotion, cored on a sick child's soul, Heard clearly through the dog wrath, a sick child Wailing in Danzig; invoking destruction and wailing at it.
Here, the day was extremely hot; about noon A south wind like a blast from hell's mouth spilled a slight rain On the parched land, and at five a light earthquake Danced the house, no harm done. Tonight I have been amusing myself Watching the blood-red moon droop slowly Into the black sea through bursts of dry lightning and distant thunder.
Well: the day is a poem: but too much Like one of Jeffers's, crusted with blood and barbaric omens, Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk's cry.
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