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Best Famous Festival Poems

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Written by Lascelles Abercrombie | Create an image from this poem

Emblems of Love

She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—
This mystery of a world sign of his striving?
Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind
With labouring in the wonder of it, that here
Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!—
But, lying on thy breast one notable day,
Sudden exceeding agony of love
Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.
I was not: yet I saw the will of God
As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,
Interminable, not to be supposed;
And there was no more creature except light,—
The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s
Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came
Shuddering and division in the light:
Therein, like trembling, was desire to know
Its own perfect beauty; and it became
A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
Adorable to each; against itself
Waging a burning love, which was the world;—
A moment satisfied in that love-strife
I knew the world!—And when I fell from there,
Then knew I also what this life would do
In being twin,—in being man and woman!
For it would do even as its endless Master,
Making the world, had done; yea, with itself
Would strive, and for the strife would into sex
Be cloven, double burning, made thereby
Desirable to itself. Contrivèd joy
Is sex in life; and by no other thing
Than by a perfect sundering, could life
Change the dark stream of unappointed joy
To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves
And worships its own Being. This is ours!
Yet only for that we have been so long
Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.—
But we, well knowing by our strength of joy
There is no sundering more, how far we love
From those sad lives that know a half-love only,
Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever
Sealed in division of love, and therefore made
To pour their strength always into their love’s
Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap
Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we:
The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage
Its flame against itself, here turned to one
Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this?
The joy falters a moment, with closed wings
Wearying in its upward journey, ere
Again it goes on high, bearing its song,
Its delight breathing and its vigour beating
The highest height of the air above the world.

She

What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul,
Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held
By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire,
My body knows itself to be nought else
But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul
Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air.
Nay, all my body is become a song
Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

He

And mine is all like one rapt faculty,
As it were listening to the love in thee,
My whole mortality trembling to take
Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

She

Surely by this, Beloved, we must know
Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds
The common dullard thought, we are things lost
In an amazement that is all unware;
But wonderfully knowing what we are!
Lo, now that body is the song whereof
Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight?
Knoweth not beautifully now our love,
That Life, here to this festival bid come
Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night,
Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all
The glad imagination of the Spirit?

He

Were it not so, Love could not be at all:
Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil
Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth
Of sense to hold and understand the vision
Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee!
But music mixt with music are, in love,
Bodily senses; and as flame hath light,
Spirit this nature hath imagined round it,
No way concealed therein, when love comes near,
Nor in the perfect wedding of desires
Suffering any hindrance.

She

Ah, but now,
Now am I given love’s eternal secret!
Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy
Of our for ever mated spirits; but now
The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit
Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy
Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them
Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire,
As into light of these exulting bodies
Flaming Spirit is uttered?

He

Yea, here the end
Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit,
And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit.
Now all life’s loveliness and power we have
Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning
Carries all shining upward, till in us
Life is not life, but the desire of God,
Himself desiring and himself accepting.
Now what was prophecy in us is made
Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy,
We in our marvellousness of single knowledge,
Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate
And drawing into his light the greeting fire
Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love
Wedding himself to utterance of himself 


Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

Diary of a Church Mouse

 Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes ... it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Paris

 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means to conquer and the ways, 


And coming where the crossroads separate 
And down each vista glories and wonders wait, 
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair 
You know not which to choose, and hesitate -- 


Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom 
Of some old quarter take a little room 
That looks off over Paris and its towers 
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -- 


So high that you can hear a mating dove 
Croon down the chimney from the roof above, 
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is 
To wake between Our Lady and our love. 


And have a little balcony to bring 
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming, 
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands, 
And swallows circle over in the Spring. 


There of an evening you shall sit at ease 
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees, 
There with your little darling in your arms, 
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise. 


And looking out over the domes and towers 
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours, 
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them 
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers, 


You cannot fail to think, as I have done, 
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one 
Who measures life's attainment by the hours 
That Joy has rescued from oblivion. 

II 


Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. 
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats. 


The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: 
Come out under the lights and leaves 
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . . 


Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant. 
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport." 


Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay, 
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat. 


And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine 
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . . 


But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along 
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel. 


Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: 
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport; 


Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, 
and courtezans like powdered moths, 
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths 
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; 


And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes 
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties; 


And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, 
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you: 


All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what 
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young. 


"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" 
Friends greet and banter as they pass. 
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere, 


A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood 
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . . 


The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, 
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme. 


And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, 
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war. 


But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet, 
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights. 


Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere 
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place. 


Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls, 
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street. 


From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there 
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall, 


That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue 
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . . 


Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, 
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen. 


Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim, 
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows. 


Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, 
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness, 


As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them 
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal. 


Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, 
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes, 


And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, 
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . . 


But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins 
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start. 


Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield 
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round, 


Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath 
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest. 


Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see 
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling. 


Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem 
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise, 


Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, 
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight. 


And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance 
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . . 


Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair, 
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball. 


Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile 
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse: 


The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees, 
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . . 


Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do, 
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show -- 


But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day 
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland. 


And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- 
That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife -- 


Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key, 
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands. 


And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory, 
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed: 


When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood, 
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice, 


At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled, 
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand. 

III 


Choral Song 


Have ye gazed on its grandeur 
Or stood where it stands 
With opal and amber 
Adorning the lands, 
And orcharded domes 
Of the hue of all flowers? 
Sweet melody roams 
Through its blossoming bowers, 
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour. 


A city resplendent, 
Fulfilled of good things, 
On its ramparts are pendent 
The bucklers of kings. 
Broad banners unfurled 
Are afloat in its air. 
The lords of the world 
Look for harborage there. 
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair. 


'Tis the city of Lovers, 
There many paths meet. 
Blessed he above others, 
With faltering feet, 
Who past its proud spires 
Intends not nor hears 
The noise of its lyres 
Grow faint in his ears! 
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. 


It was thither, ambitious, 
We came for Youth's right, 
When our lips yearned for kisses 
As moths for the light, 
When our souls cried for Love 
As for life-giving rain 
Wan leaves of the grove, 
Withered grass of the plain, 
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain. 


Under arbor and trellis, 
Full of flutes, full of flowers, 
What mad fortunes befell us, 
What glad orgies were ours! 
In the days of our youth, 
In our festal attire, 
When the sweet flesh was smooth, 
When the swift blood was fire, 
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Proud Music of The Storm

 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient! 
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts; 
You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry!
Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls! 
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless, 
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber—Why have you seiz’d me? 

2
Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire; 
Listen—lose not—it is toward thee they tend;
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber, 
For thee they sing and dance, O Soul. 

A festival song! 
The duet of the bridegroom and the bride—a marriage-march, 
With lips of love, and hearts of lovers, fill’d to the brim with love;
The red-flush’d cheeks, and perfumes—the cortege swarming, full of friendly
 faces,
 young and old, 
To flutes’ clear notes, and sounding harps’ cantabile. 

3
Now loud approaching drums! 
Victoria! see’st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying? the rout of the
 baffled? 
Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

(Ah, Soul, the sobs of women—the wounded groaning in agony, 
The hiss and crackle of flames—the blacken’d ruins—the embers of cities, 
The dirge and desolation of mankind.) 

4
Now airs antique and medieval fill me! 
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals:
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love, 
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages. 

5
Now the great organ sounds, 
Tremulous—while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth, 
On which arising, rest, and leaping forth, depend,
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength—all hues we know, 
Green blades of grass, and warbling birds—children that gambol and play—the
 clouds of
 heaven above,) 
The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not, 
Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest—maternity of all the rest; 
And with it every instrument in multitudes,
The players playing—all the world’s musicians, 
The solemn hymns and masses, rousing adoration, 
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals, 
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages, 
And for their solvent setting, Earth’s own diapason,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves; 
A new composite orchestra—binder of years and climes—ten-fold renewer, 
As of the far-back days the poets tell—the Paradiso, 
The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done, 
The journey done, the Journeyman come home,
And Man and Art, with Nature fused again. 

6
Tutti! for Earth and Heaven! 
The Almighty Leader now for me, for once has signal’d with his wand. 

The manly strophe of the husbands of the world, 
And all the wives responding.

The tongues of violins! 
(I think, O tongues, ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself; 
This brooding, yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.) 

7
Ah, from a little child, 
Thou knowest, Soul, how to me all sounds became music;
My mother’s voice, in lullaby or hymn; 
(The voice—O tender voices—memory’s loving voices! 
Last miracle of all—O dearest mother’s, sister’s, voices;) 
The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn, 
The measur’d sea-surf, beating on the sand,
The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream, 
The wild-fowl’s notes at night, as flying low, migrating north or south, 
The psalm in the country church, or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting, 
The fiddler in the tavern—the glee, the long-strung sailor-song, 
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep—the crowing cock at dawn.

8
All songs of current lands come sounding ’round me, 
The German airs of friendship, wine and love, 
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances—English warbles, 
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes—and o’er the rest, 
Italia’s peerless compositions.

Across the stage, with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion, 
Stalks Norma, brandishing the dagger in her hand. 

I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam; 
Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevell’d. 

I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden,
Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand, 
Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn. 

To crossing swords, and grey hairs bared to heaven, 
The clear, electric base and baritone of the world, 
The trombone duo—Libertad forever!

From Spanish chestnut trees’ dense shade, 
By old and heavy convent walls, a wailing song, 
Song of lost love—the torch of youth and life quench’d in despair, 
Song of the dying swan—Fernando’s heart is breaking. 

Awaking from her woes at last, retriev’d Amina sings;
Copious as stars, and glad as morning light, the torrents of her joy. 

(The teeming lady comes! 
The lustrious orb—Venus contralto—the blooming mother, 
Sister of loftiest gods—Alboni’s self I hear.) 

9
I hear those odes, symphonies, operas;
I hear in the William Tell, the music of an arous’d and angry people; 
I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert; 
Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan. 

10
I hear the dance-music of all nations, 
The waltz, (some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss;)
The bolero, to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets. 

I see religious dances old and new, 
I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre, 
I see the Crusaders marching, bearing the cross on high, to the martial clang of cymbals; 
I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers’d with frantic shouts, as they
 spin
 around, turning always towards Mecca;
I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs; 
Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing, 
I hear them clapping their hands, as they bend their bodies, 
I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet. 

I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers wounding each other;
I see the Roman youth, to the shrill sound of flageolets, throwing and catching their
 weapons, 
As they fall on their knees, and rise again. 

I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling; 
I see the worshippers within, (nor form, nor sermon, argument, nor word, 
But silent, strange, devout—rais’d, glowing heads—extatic faces.)

11
I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings, 
The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen; 
The sacred imperial hymns of China, 
To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone;) 
Or to Hindu flutes, and the fretting twang of the vina,
A band of bayaderes. 

12
Now Asia, Africa leave me—Europe, seizing, inflates me; 
To organs huge, and bands, I hear as from vast concourses of voices, 
Luther’s strong hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott; 
Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa;
Or, floating in some high cathedral dim, with gorgeous color’d windows, 
The passionate Agnus Dei, or Gloria in Excelsis. 

13
Composers! mighty maestros! 
And you, sweet singers of old lands—Soprani! Tenori! Bassi! 
To you a new bard, carolling free in the west,
Obeisant, sends his love. 

(Such led to thee, O Soul! 
All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee, 
But now, it seems to me, sound leads o’er all the rest.) 

14
I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul’s Cathedral;
Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies, oratorios of Beethoven,
 Handel,
 or Haydn; 
The Creation, in billows of godhood laves me. 

Give me to hold all sounds, (I, madly struggling, cry,) 
Fill me with all the voices of the universe, 
Endow me with their throbbings—Nature’s also,
The tempests, waters, winds—operas and chants—marches and dances, 
Utter—pour in—for I would take them all. 

15
Then I woke softly, 
And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream, 
And questioning all those reminiscences—the tempest in its fury,
And all the songs of sopranos and tenors, 
And those rapt oriental dances, of religious fervor, 
And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs, 
And all the artless plaints of love, and grief and death, 
I said to my silent, curious Soul, out of the bed of the slumber-chamber,
Come, for I have found the clue I sought so long, 
Let us go forth refresh’d amid the day, 
Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real, 
Nourish’d henceforth by our celestial dream. 

And I said, moreover,
Haply, what thou hast heard, O Soul, was not the sound of winds, 
Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk’s flapping wings, nor harsh scream, 
Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy, 
Nor German organ majestic—nor vast concourse of voices—nor layers of harmonies; 
Nor strophes of husbands and wives—nor sound of marching soldiers,
Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps; 
But, to a new rhythmus fitted for thee, 
Poems, bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night air, uncaught,
 unwritten, 
Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write.
Written by Wole Soyinka | Create an image from this poem

Civilian and Soldier

My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.

You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of your traing sessions, cautioning -
Scorch earth behind you, do not leave
A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration
Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth
From the lead festival of your more eager friends
Worked the worse on your confusion, and when
You brought the gun to bear on me, and death
Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight
And all of you came clear to me.

I hope some day
Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked
In stride by your apparition in a trench,
Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then
But I shall shoot you clean and fair
With meat and bread, a gourd of wine
A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that
Lone question - do you friend, even now, know
What it is all about?


Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

Cosmopolitan Greetings

 To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
 & International Bards 1986

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what's vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don't drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become 
 scientific data.

The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
 world after Einstein.

The universe is subjective.

Walt Whitman celebrated Person.

We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.

Universe is person.

Inside skull vast as outside skull.

Mind is outer space.

"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."

First thought, best thought.

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.


 Kral Majales
 June 25, 1986
 Boulder, Colorado
Written by Helen Hunt Jackson | Create an image from this poem

New Years Morning

 Only a night from old to new! 
Only a night, and so much wrought! 
The Old Year's heart all weary grew, 
But said: The New Year rest has brought." 
The Old Year's hopes its heart laid down, 
As in a grave; but trusting, said: 
"The blossoms of the New Year's crown 
Bloom from the ashes of the dead." 
The Old Year's heart was full of greed; 
With selfishness it longed and ached, 
And cried: "I have not half I need. 
My thirst is bitter and unslaked. 
But to the New Year's generous hand 
All gifts in plenty shall return; 
True love it shall understand; 
By all y failures it shall learn. 
I have been reckless; it shall be 
Quiet and calm and pure of life. 
I was a slave; it shall go free, 
And find sweet pace where I leave strife." 

Only a night from old to new! 
Never a night such changes brought. 
The Old Year had its work to do; 
No New Year miracles are wrought. 

Always a night from old to new! 
Night and the healing balm of sleep! 
Each morn is New Year's morn come true, 
Morn of a festival to keep. 
All nights are sacred nights to make 
Confession and resolve and prayer; 
All days are sacred days to wake 
New gladness in the sunny air. 
Only a night from old to new; 
Only a sleep from night to morn. 
The new is but the old coem true; 
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Aunt Imogen

 Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore 
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— 
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one 
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, 
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time 
Made all September a Queen’s Festival; 
And they would strive, informally, to make 
The most of them.—The mother understood, 
And wisely stepped away. Aunt Imogen
Was there for only one month in the year, 
While she, the mother,—she was always there; 
And that was what made all the difference. 
She knew it must be so, for Jane had once 
Expounded it to her so learnedly
That she had looked away from the child’s eyes 
And thought; and she had thought of many things. 

There was a demonstration every time 
Aunt Imogen appeared, and there was more 
Than one this time. And she was at a loss
Just how to name the meaning of it all: 
It puzzled her to think that she could be 
So much to any crazy thing alive— 
Even to her sister’s little savages 
Who knew no better than to be themselves;
But in the midst of her glad wonderment 
She found herself besieged and overcome 
By two tight arms and one tumultuous head, 
And therewith half bewildered and half pained 
By the joy she felt and by the sudden love
That proved itself in childhood’s honest noise. 
Jane, by the wings of sex, had reached her first; 
And while she strangled her, approvingly, 
Sylvester thumped his drum and Young George howled. 
But finally, when all was rectified,
And she had stilled the clamor of Young George 
By giving him a long ride on her shoulders, 
They went together into the old room 
That looked across the fields; and Imogen 
Gazed out with a girl’s gladness in her eyes,
Happy to know that she was back once more 
Where there were those who knew her, and at last 
Had gloriously got away again 
From cabs and clattered asphalt for a while; 
And there she sat and talked and looked and laughed
And made the mother and the children laugh. 
Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh. 

There was the feminine paradox—that she 
Who had so little sunshine for herself 
Should have so much for others. How it was
That she could make, and feel for making it, 
So much of joy for them, and all along 
Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled, 
That hungering incompleteness and regret— 
That passionate ache for something of her own,
For something of herself—she never knew. 
She knew that she could seem to make them all 
Believe there was no other part of her 
Than her persistent happiness; but the why 
And how she did not know. Still none of them
Could have a thought that she was living down— 
Almost as if regret were criminal, 
So proud it was and yet so profitless— 
The penance of a dream, and that was good. 
Her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane,
Sylvester, and Young George—might make herself 
Believe she knew, for she—well, she was Jane. 

Young George, however, did not yield himself 
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost 
That made no good return. He saw too much:
The accumulated wisdom of his years 
Had so conclusively made plain to him 
The permanent profusion of a world 
Where everybody might have everything 
To do, and almost everything to eat,
That he was jubilantly satisfied 
And all unthwarted by adversity. 
Young George knew things. The world, he had found out, 
Was a good place, and life was a good game— 
Particularly when Aunt Imogen
Was in it. And one day it came to pass— 
One rainy day when she was holding him 
And rocking him—that he, in his own right, 
Took it upon himself to tell her so; 
And something in his way of telling it—
The language, or the tone, or something else— 
Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat, 
And then went foraging as if to make 
A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved 
And unsophisticated confidence
Went mercilessly home; and had she sat 
Before a looking glass, the deeps of it 
Could not have shown more clearly to her then 
Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown, 
The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes
With anguish and intolerable mist. 
The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside 
Like fright so many times had found her now: 
Clean-thrust and final it had come to her 
From a child’s lips at last, as it had come
Never before, and as it might be felt 
Never again. Some grief, like some delight, 
Stings hard but once: to custom after that 
The rapture or the pain submits itself, 
And we are wiser than we were before.
And Imogen was wiser; though at first 
Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed 
A thankless heritage: there was no sweet, 
No bitter now; nor was there anything 
To make a daily meaning for her life—
Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow 
From ambush and threw sudden savor to it— 
But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams, 
No phantoms in her future any more: 
One clinching revelation of what was
One by-flash of irrevocable chance, 
Had acridly but honestly foretold 
The mystical fulfilment of a life 
That might have once … But that was all gone by: 
There was no need of reaching back for that:
The triumph was not hers: there was no love 
Save borrowed love: there was no might have been. 

But there was yet Young George—and he had gone 
Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy; 
And there was yet Sylvester with his drum,
And there was frowzle-headed little Jane; 
And there was Jane the sister, and the mother,— 
Her sister, and the mother of them all. 
They were not hers, not even one of them: 
She was not born to be so much as that,
For she was born to be Aunt Imogen. 
Now she could see the truth and look at it; 
Now she could make stars out where once had palled 
A future’s emptiness; now she could share 
With others—ah, the others!—to the end
The largess of a woman who could smile; 
Now it was hers to dance the folly down, 
And all the murmuring; now it was hers 
To be Aunt Imogen.—So, when Young George 
Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes,
And smiled to see the way she blinked at him, 
’T was only in old concord with the stars 
That she took hold of him and held him close, 
Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed.
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

Blues

 Those five or six young guys
lunched on the stoop
that oven-hot summer night
whistled me over. Nice
and friendly. So, I stop.
MacDougal or Christopher
Street in chains of light.

A summer festival. Or some
saint's. I wasn't too far from
home, but not too bright
for a ******, and not too dark.
I figured we were all
one, wop, ******, jew,
besides, this wasn't Central Park.
I'm coming on too strong? You figure
right! They beat this yellow ******
black and blue.

Yeah. During all this, scared
on case one used a knife,
I hung my olive-green, just-bought
sports coat on a fire plug.
I did nothing. They fought
each other, really. Life
gives them a few kcks,
that's all. The spades, the spicks.

My face smashed in, my bloddy mug
pouring, my olive-branch jacket saved
from cuts and tears,
I crawled four flights upstairs.
Sprawled in the gutter, I
remember a few watchers waved
loudly, and one kid's mother shouting
like "Jackie" or "Terry,"
"now that's enough!"
It's nothing really.
They don't get enough love.

You know they wouldn't kill
you. Just playing rough,
like young Americans will.
Still it taught me somthing
about love. If it's so tough,
forget it.
Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

My Triumph

 The autumn-time has come; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines, 
The low sun fainter shines. 

The aster-flower is failing, 
The hazel's gold is paling; 
Yet overhead more near 
The eternal stars appear! 

And present gratitude 
Insures the future's good, 
And for the things I see 
I trust the things to be; 

That in the paths untrod, 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still be led, 
My heart be comforted. 

O living friends who love me! 
O dear ones gone above me! 
Careless of other fame, 
I leave to you my name. 

Hide it from idle praises, 
Save it from evil phrases: 
Why, when dear lips that spake it 
Are dumb, should strangers wake it? 

Let the thick curtain fall; 
I better know than all 
How little I have gained, 
How vast the unattained. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let life be banned or sainted: 
Deeper than written scroll 
The colors of the soul. 

Sweeter than any sung 
My songs that found no tongue; 
Nobler than any fact 
My wish that failed of act. 

Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, -- 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 

What matter, I or they? 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made? 

Hail to the coming singers! 
Hail to the brave light-bringers! 
Forward I reach and share 
All that they sing and dare. 

The airs of heaven blow o'er me; 
A glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be, -- 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human, 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the Age of Gold! 

The love of God and neighbor; 
An equal-handed labor; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples! 
Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
Your triumph is my own! 

Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-reach the good to be, 
And share the victory. 

I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward, 
And take, by faith, while living, 
My freehold of thanksgiving.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things