Prologue
When the war of the beasts brings about the world’s end
The goddess descends from the sky
Wings of light and dark spread afar
She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting


Act I
Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess
We seek it thus, and take to the sky
Ripples form on the water’s surface
The wandering soul knows no rest.


Act II
There is no hate, only joy
For you are beloved by the goddess
Hero of the dawn, Healer of worlds


Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul
Pride is lost
Wings stripped away, the end is nigh


Act III
My friend, do you fly away now?
To a world that abhors you and I?
All that awaits you is a somber morrow
No matter where the winds may blow


My friend, your desire
Is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess


Even if the morrow is barren of promises
Nothing shall forestall my return


Act IV
My friend, the fates are cruel
There are no dreams, no honor remains
The arrow has left the bow of the goddess


My soul, corrupted by vengeance
Hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey
In my own salvation
And your eternal slumber


Legend shall speak
Of sacrifice at world’s end
The wind sails over the water’s surface
Quietly, but surely


Act V
Even if the morrow is barren of promises
Nothing shall forestall my return
To become the dew that quenches the land
To spare the sands, the seas, the skies
I offer thee this silent sacrifice



-- LOVELESS

Great Shakespeare lost, Cervantes gone
The sun at noon goes down. The dawn
Refuses light. Time holds its breath
At this coincidence of death
Then can it be? and is it so
That these twin gods to darkness go
All in a day! and none to stop
The harvesting of this fell crop
Each in its field, and each so bright
They, burning, hurled away the night.
Yet night returns to seize its due,
One Spirit Spout? No! Death takes two.
First one. The world goes wry from lack
Then two! tips world to balance back.
Two Comet strikes within a week,
First Spain, then dumbstruck England's cheek.
The world grinds mute in dreads and fears
Antarctica melts down to tears,
And Caesars ghosts erupted, rise
All bleeding Amazons from eyes,
An age has ended, yet must stay
As witness to a brutal day
When witless God left us alone
By deathing Will, then Spanish clone.
Who dares to try and gauge each pen
We shall not see such twins again.
Shakespeare is lost, Cervantes dead?
The conduits of God are bled
And gone the Light, and shut the clay
Two Titans gone within a day,
Two felled by one sure stroke of death,
Christ gapes his wounds. God stops his breath.
And we are staggered by twin falls
The vastness of the day appalls
As if a tribunal of Kings
From Caesars down to our Royal Things,
A pageant of rich royalty
Were drowned in Time's obscenity.
Who ordered thus: "Two giants - die."
First one and then our other eye
God shut the great, then greatest dream
One not enough? No, it would seem
A void half full if Shakespeare, done
Went down to doom at sunset's gun.
So then lamenting, then with laugh,
God seized and filled the other half.
Cervantes pulled across the sill
To heart of Comet brim and fill.
God sent both forth, twin stars whose fire
Birthed whales and beauteous beasts for hire
And long years since we beg for rides
Where Cervantes plus Shakespeare hides
Their fall? knocked echoes round the Stage
And still we reckon our outrage
Because where is the sense in this
Our left hand and our right we miss
Which clapped together made applause
For God and Primal Cosmic Cause.
But Cervantes and Bard strewn cold
Two wild Dreams in one dumb soil mold?
Let all the echoes flow in tides
Where comets are their flowering brides
And Cervantes and bawdy Will
Do windmill fight our hopes uphill
And rouse us up in nightmare bed
To cry: Quixote, Hamlet, dead?
In one fell day? Get off! Get. Go!
Such funerals I will not know.
Their graves, their stones, these I refuse.
Lend me their books, show me their Muse.
By end of day or, latest, week,
I bid Cervantes/Shakespeare speak
To brim my heart, to fill my head
With what? Good Don. Fine Lear. Not dead. Not dead!


Anyone know the title of this poem? More importantly, what book was it published with?

quote:

Originally posted by Kukai_Aoki:
Anyone know the title of this poem? More importantly, what book was it published with?

It's called A Poem Written on Learning that Shakespeare and Cervantes Both Died on the Same Day, and it's collected in I Live By the Invisible.

Doug-san, what happened to this thread that you started? It blew away! Whoosh! To the dust returned!

didnt to die together mean to smash back in the day ?

quote:

Originally posted by Kukai_Aoki:
Doug-san, what happened to this thread that you started?

It abides, and it endures.

And now, something for the season:


Summer Melanoma

‘That’s nice’ I said, as Juno bathed me
In her sun.
Soon, a bronze Adonis – ogling girls!
It must be done!

I rolled over; bared a snowy skin
To bake and burn and sear beneath a din
Of ultraviolet rays…

Now I’m on the ward, I count the days to
Lesser pain, torrential rain; accepting
I’m a fool to be so vain!

I bore an awful mole, you see –
A growth, a blighted entity
Presenting as an ugly melanoma!

Oh! how tricky life can be
When unprotected by the sea, to
Sizzle with a barbecue aroma!


- Mark R Slaughter

This is my wish:
That the rays of the rising sun
May impartially light the corners of the world

- Emperor Showa's New Year's Poem for 1960

Autumn Movement by Carl Sandburg

I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

Sometimes she felt like a possession,
an impulsive purchase, coveted,
but truly enjoyed only for a moment,
and then forever more placed upon a dusty shelf,
part of an eclectic collection of valuable,
though rarely utilized,
noticeably under appreciated,
seldom handled trinkets.

Spring

A sense of warmth is tapping at the door;
And hope, a feeling out from distant lore
– Or so it seems – clears the deep refrain!

Emerging youth: a dormant lea awakes.
The raging colour, singing loud, partakes
In annual birth – spring is born again!

A zest anew for nascent life
Begins in floral train:
Carriage one: a snowdropp thrill;
Carriage two: the crocus;
Number three, a daffodil – dancing,
Drawing focus – as she would,
Attention seeker!

How I love our spring:
The bold and sleeker feel I get,
An inner glow, a ring!
I’ve paid the winter’s chilly debt, so
Now upon the wing!

- Mark R Slaughter

With the passing of baseball Hall of Famer, Harmon Killebrew, this poem is appropriate. It is was written as a eulogy to Babe Ruth, but Harmon was also a "big guy".

Game Called by Grantland Rice © 1948


Game Called by darkness — let the curtain fall.
No more remembered thunder sweeps the field.
No more the ancient echoes hear the call
To one who wore so well both sword and shield:
The Big Guy’s left us with the night to face
And there is no one who can take his place.

Game Called — and silence settles on the plain.
Where is the crash of ash against the sphere?
Where is the mighty music, the refrain
That once brought joy to every waiting ear?
The Big Guy’s left us lonely in the dark
Forever waiting for the flaming spark.

Game Called — what more is there for us to say?
How dull and drab the field looks to the eye
For one who ruled it in a golden day
Has waved his cap to bid us all good-bye.
The Big Guy’s gone — by land or sea or foam
May the Great Umpire call him “safe at home.”

Very nice, Doug!

Here's one I posted in June of 2007. Worth checking out some posts from back then.

T. A. DALY
Mia Carlotta

Giuseppe, da barber, ees greata for "mash,"
He gotta da bigga, da blacka moustache,
Good clo’es an’ good styla an’ playnta good cash.

W’enevra Giuseppe ees walk on da street,
Da peopla dey talka, "how nobby! how neat!
How softa da handa, how smalla da feet."

He leefta hees hat an’ he shaka hees curls,
An’ smila weeth teetha so shiny like pearls;
Oh, manny da heart of da seelly young girls
He gotta.
Yes, playnta he gotta—
But notta
Carlotta!

Giuseppe, da barber, he maka da eye,
An’ lika da steam engine puffa an’ sigh,
For catcha Carlotta w’en she ees go by.

Carlotta she walka weeth nose in da air,
An’ look through Giuseppe weeth far-away stare;
As eef she no see dere ees som’body dere.

Giuseppe, da barber, he gotta da cash,
He gotta da clo’es an’ da bigga moustache,
He gotta da seelly young girls for da "mash,"
But notta—
You bat my life, notta—
Carlotta.
I gotta!

In honor of Memorial Day (few days late). An excerpt from George S. Patton's reincarnation poem "Through a Glass, Darkly". In the movie, there is a great scene where Patton recites part of this poem in the midst of ancient ruins, and an ancient battlefield.

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me

June

I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'T were pleasant, that in flowery June,
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain-turf should break.

A cell within the frozen mould,
A coffin borne through sleet,
And icy clods above it rolled,
While fierce the tempests beat--
Away!--I will not think of these--
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
Earth green beneath the feet,
And be the damp mould gently pressed
Into my narrow place of rest.

There through the long, long summer hours
The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife bee and humming-bird.

And what if cheerful shouts at noon
Come, from the village sent,
Or song of maids, beneath the moon
With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothèd lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know that I no more should see
The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow;
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene;
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is that his grave is green;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.

~ William Cullen Bryant

Age and Wise Imparting
By: Anonymous

The Frail Wind
Musters his strength in its entirety.
And grimaces
A shrieking howl of agony as he hoists the leaves
Littered
Strewn on the concrete parking lot,
Thrown from a hand abundant with careless beauty and loveliness.

They float now, ever-buoyant,
Loud as the most raucous silence.
Crisping.
Crinkling.
Cackling
Like a Halloween witch,
Like a freight train glutted with
Breaking Bones
Or being-bitten apples.
To imagine their voices is to imagine
A God or Goddess,
Overwhelming.
Like glass milk bottles in the early morning,
Rattling in the truck’s cramped wooden crates,
Clinking in a million congratulatory toasts,
Tapping with a jingling jubilation.
The leaves shout to one another,
Surprised at their sudden stroke of luck,
Smiling their sly leaf smiles.

Then the wind, worn to a shrivel with age and overrun wisdom,
Dies to a whisper in no more ears, to ruffle no more hairs.
And the leaves fall, flittering and fluttering as fairy wings.
Their landing, slightly less graceful.
A slap here. There.
One lands on a wad of gum.
Another a windshield.

And one lucky fellow caught
In a small, gloved hand,
Moist under the warm fabric.
A smile lights the face,
A radiant, pure smile, missing two front teeth.
The leaf is waved and shuffled
From hand to hand,
Eye to eye,
Shoved under noses.
Shown off as a marvelous beacon of pride at
Show and Tell.

Later, at home pressed in a book to save forever,
Left to flatten,
But the days pass
And months
And years
And decades.
The leaf is forgotten
There in the book,
Never again to feel the wind,
The wind who never again will blow.
But the leaf carries secrets, make no mistake.
Secrets of the wind and secrets of the book.
In these is holds a comfort,
In these it is content to ripen its knowledge,
Strengthen its wise ways,
And wither away
Into the pages
Until someone decides to read.


"'So-So' is good, very good, very excellent good, and yet it is not so: it is but so-so." -Shakespeare