Written by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot |
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden.
Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner.
Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy.
Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate.
Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die.
Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.
Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.
The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
|
Written by
George William Russell |
HE bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away,
The life that had been light to him,
So fled her beauty leaving dim
The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows not why.
Love’s immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this—but not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way.
So blind he wept above her clay,
“I did not think that you could die.
Only some veil would cover you
Our loving eyes could still pierce through;
And see through dusky shadows still
Move as of old your wild sweet will,
Impatient every heart to win
And flash its heavenly radiance in.
”
Though all the worlds were sunk in rest
The ruddy star within his breast
Would croon its tale of ancient pain,
Its sorrow that would never wane,
Its memory of the days of yore
Moulded in beauty evermore.
Ah, immortality so blind,
To dream all things with it conjoined
Must follow it from star to star
And share with it immortal years.
The memory, yearning, grief, and tears,
Fall from it and it goes afar.
He walked at night along the sands,
He saw the stars dance overhead,
He had no memory of the dead,
But lifted up exultant hands
To hail the future like a boy,
The myriad paths his feet might press.
Unhaunted by old tenderness
He felt an inner secret joy—
A spirit of unfettered will
Through light and darkness moving still
Within the All to find its own,
To be immortal and alone.
|
Written by
Eavan Boland |
It was the first gift he ever gave her,
buying it for five five francs in the Galeries
in pre-war Paris.
It was stifling.
A starless drought made the nights stormy.
They stayed in the city for the summer.
The met in cafes.
She was always early.
He was late.
That evening he was later.
They wrapped the fan.
He looked at his watch.
She looked down the Boulevard des Capucines.
She ordered more coffee.
She stood up.
The streets were emptying.
The heat was killing.
She thought the distance smelled of rain and lightning.
These are wild roses, appliqued on silk by hand,
darkly picked, stitched boldly, quickly.
The rest is tortoiseshell and has the reticent clear patience
of its element.
It is
a worn-out, underwater bullion and it keeps,
even now, an inference of its violation.
The lace is overcast as if the weather
it opened for and offset had entered it.
The past is an empty cafe terrace.
An airless dusk before thunder.
A man running.
And no way to know what happened then—
none at all—unless ,of course, you improvise:
The blackbird on this first sultry morning,
in summer, finding buds, worms, fruit,
feels the heat.
Suddenly she puts out her wing—
the whole, full, flirtatious span of it.
|
Written by
Nick Flynn |
I want to erase your footprints
from my walls.
Each pillow
is thick with your reasons.
Omens
fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon.
Shadows
creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes.
I can't watch
as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief
stuck in my throat.
You know the way Jesus
rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it.
I'm afraid
the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.
I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus
around my house, for me to find
when I come home; Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked
into the mirror.
He wants to save me
but we disagree from what.
My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt
and saying, Look what I did for you.
.
.
|
Written by
Galway Kinnell |
He climbed to the top
of one of those million white pines
set out across the emptying pastures
of the fifties - some program to enrich the rich
and rebuke the forefathers
who cleared it all at once with ox and axe -
climbed to the top, probably to get out
of the shadow
not of those forefathers but of this father
and saw for the first time
down in its valley, Bruce Pond, giving off
its little steam in the afternoon,
pond where Clarence Akley came on Sunday mornings to cut
down
the cedars around the shore, I'd sometimes hear the slow
spondees
of his work, he's gone,
where Milton Norway came up behind me while I was
fishing and
stood awhile before I knew he was there, he's the one who
put the
cedar shingles on the house, some have curled or split, a
few have
blown off, he's gone,
where Gus Newland logged in the cold snap of '58, the only
man will-
ing to go into those woods that never got warmer than ten
below,
he's gone,
pond where two wards of the state wandered on Halloween,
the Na-
tional Guard searched for them in November, in vain, the
next fall a
hunter found their skeletons huddled together, in vain,
they're
gone,
pond where an old fisherman in a rowboat sits, drowning
hooked
worms, when he goes he's replaced and is never gone,
and when Fergus
saw the pond for the first time
in the clear evening, saw its oldness down there
in its old place in the valley, he became heavier suddenly
in his bones
the way fledglings do just before they fly,
and the soft pine cracked .
.
.
I would not have heard his cry
if my electric saw had been working,
its carbide teeth speeding through the bland spruce of our
time, or
burning
black arcs into some scavenged hemlock plank,
like dark circles under eyes
when the brain thinks too close to the skin,
but I was sawing by hand and I heard that cry
as though he were attacked; we ran out,
when we bent over him he said, "Galway, In¨¦s, I saw a
pond!"
His face went gray, his eyes fluttered close a frightening
moment .
.
.
Yes - a pond
that lets off its mist
on clear afternoons of August, in that valley
to which many have come, for their reasons,
from which many have gone, a few for their reasons, most
not,
where even now and old fisherman only the pinetops can see
sits in the dry gray wood of his rowboat, waiting for pickerel.
|
Written by
Robert Creeley |
1)
Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me
inside this black room,
back of the white moon.
In the dark night
sight frightens me.
2)
Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?
Who, perched on the skin,
body's float, is holding on?
What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?
3)
Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,
small guardians of the painful
outside coming in --
in stuck in vials with needles,
bleeding life in, particular, heedless.
4)
Matrix of world
upon a turtle's broad back,
carried on like that,
eggs as pearls,
flesh and blood and bone
all borne along.
5)
I'll tell you what you want,
to say a word,
to know the letters in yourself,
a skin falls off,
a big eared head appears,
an eye and mouth.
6)
Under watery here,
under breath, under duress,
understand a pain
has threaded a needle with a little man --
gone fishing.
And fish appear.
7)
If small were big,
if then were now,
if here were there,
if find were found,
if mind were all there was,
would the animals still save us?
8)
A head was put
upon the shelf got took
by animal's hand and stuck
upon a vacant corpse
who, blurred, could nonetheless
not ever be the quietly standing bird it watched.
9)
Not lost,
not better or worse,
much must of necessity depend on resources,
the pipes and bags brought with us
inside, all the sacks
and how and to what they are or were attached.
10)
Everybody's child
walks the same winding road,
laughs and cries, dies.
That's "everybody's child,"
the one who's in between
the others who have come and gone.
11)
Turn as one will, the sky will always be
far up above the place he thinks to dream as earth.
There float the heavenly
archaic persons of primordial birth,
held in the scan of ancient serpent's tooth,
locked in the mind as when it first began.
12)
Inside I am the other of a self,
who feels a presence always close at hand,
one side or the other, knows another one
unlocks the door and quickly enters in.
Either as or, we live a common person.
Two is still one.
It cannot live apart.
13)
Oh, weep for me --
all from whom life has stolen
hopes of a happiness stored
in gold's ubiquitous pattern,
in tinkle of commodious, enduring money,
else the bee's industry in hives of golden honey.
14)
He is safely put
in a container, head to foot,
and there, on his upper part, wears still
remnants of a life he lived at will --
but, lower down, he probes at that doubled sack
holds all his random virtues in a mindless fact.
15)
The forms wait, swan,
elephant, crab, rabbit, horse, monkey, cow,
squirrel and crocodile.
From the one
sits in empty consciousness, all seemingly has come
and now it goes, to regather,
to tell another story to its patient mother.
16)
Reflection reforms, each man's a life,
makes its stumbling way from mother to wife --
cast as a gesture from ignorant flesh,
here writes in fumbling words to touch,
say, how can I be,
when she is all that was ever me?
17)
Around and in --
And up and down again,
and far and near --
and here and there,
in the middle is
a great round nothingness.
18)
Not metaphoric,
flesh is literal earth.
turns to dust
as all the body must,
becomes the ground
wherein the seed's passed on.
19)
Entries, each foot feels its own way,
echoes passage in persons,
holds the body upright,
the secret of thresholds, lintels,
opening body above it,
looks up, looks down, moves forward.
20)
Necessity, the mother of invention,
father of intention,
sister to brother to sister, to innumerable others,
all one as the time comes,
death's appointment,
in the echoing head, in the breaking heart.
21)
In self one's place defined,
in heart the other find.
In mind discover I,
in body find the sky.
Sleep in the dream as one,
wake to the others there found.
22)
Emptying out
each complicating part,
each little twist of mind inside,
each clenched fist,
each locked, particularizing thought,
forgotten, emptying out.
23)
What did it feel like
to be one at a time --
to be caught in a mind
in the body you'd found
in yourself alone --
in each other one?
24)
Broken hearts, a curious round of echoes --
and there behind them the old garden
with its faded, familiar flowers,
where all was seemingly laced together --
a trueness of true,
a blueness of blue.
25)
The truth is in a container
of no size or situation.
It has nothing
inside.
Worship --
Warship.
Sail away.
|
Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
Beautiful Monikie! with your trees and shrubberies green
And your beautiful walks, most charming to be seen:
'Tis a beautiful place for pleasure-seekers to resort,
Because there they can have innocent sport,
taking a leisure walk all round about,
And see the ang1ers fishing in the pand for trout.
Besides, there's lovely white swans swimming on the pond,
And Panmure Monument can be seen a little distance beyond;
And the scenery all round is enchanting I declare,
While sweet-scented fragrance fills the air.
Then away, pleasure-seekers of bonnie Dundee,
And have a day's outing around Monikie,
And inhale the pure air, on a fine summer day,
Which will help to drive dull care away;
As ye gaze on the beautiful scenery there,
Your spirits will feel o'erjoyed and free frozen care.
Then near to the pond there's a beautiful green sward,
Where excursionists can dance until fatigue does them retard;
And if they feel thirsty, the Monikie water's near by,
Where they can quench their thirst if very dry.
Then, after that, they can have a walk at their ease,
Amongst the green shrubbery and tall pine trees;
And in the centre of the pand they can see
Three beautiful little islets dressed in green livery.
Monikie is as bonnie a place as ye could wish to see,
And about eleven or twelve miles from bonnie Dundee;
It's the only place I know of to enjoy a holiday,
Because there's a hall of shelter there to keep the rain away.
Then there's a large park, a very suitable place,
For the old and the young, if they wish to try a race;
It's there they can enjoy themselves during the live-long summmer day,
Near to the little purling burn, meandering on its way,
And emptying itself into the pond of Monikie,
Which supplies the people with water belonging to Dundee.
|
Written by
Constantine P Cavafy |
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.
)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.
|
Written by
Algernon Charles Swinburne |
from Atalanta in Calydon
When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nigthingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Maenad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening with sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
|
Written by
John Berryman |
My mother has your shotgun.
One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister,—felt less
and more about less than us .
.
.
?
Now—tell me, my love, if you recall
the dove light after dawn at the island and all—
here is the story, Jack:
he verbed for forty years, very enough,
& shot & buckt—and, baby, there was of
schist but small there (some).
Why should I tell a truth? when in the crack
of the dooming & emptying news I did hold back—
in the taxi too, sick—
silent—it's so I broke down here, in his mind
whose sire as mine one same way—I refuse,
hoping the guy go home.
|