My 'Old Poetry Friends' for Viv

Here is my list of ‘old friends’ that Viv asked me to compile.
I have included a couple of lines from each poem in case you want to read a sample.  If I had added the whole poem my blog would be a mile long.

I might add I have added more than one poem from some poets because I couldn’t choose a favorite.

I hope you enjoy discovering these, if they are not already ‘old friends’ of yours’.

 Google or Bing will find them all for you by title. Some Poets have different translators giving their interpretation of the same poem. This is true for Rimbaud, Lorca and Rilke.
Best  to read a few different translations to find your favorite. For example my favorite translation of Rilke’s SIxth Elegy is translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann)

Let me know what you think of my ‘friends.’

Walking Asleep

Green as I would have you be.
Green wind. Green boughs.
The boat on the sea
And the horse on the mountain.
With shadow around her waist
She is dreaming at her railing,
Green flesh, green hair,
Eyes of frozen silver.
Green as I would have you be.
Under the gypsy moon,
Things are watching her,
Things she cannot see.
(excerpt)
from "The Gypsy Ballads of Garcia Lorca"
translated by Rolfe Humphries
Indiana University Press, 1953

Rainer Marie Rilke

from The First Elegy

True, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to use no longer customs scarcely acquired,
not to interpret roses, and other things
that promise so much, in terms of a human future;
to be no longer all that one used to be
in endlessly anxious hands, and to lay aside
even one's proper name like a broken toy.
(excerpt)

The Sixth Elegy

From The Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann)

Fig tree, for how long have I found meaning
in the way you almost skip the flowering
and thrust your pure mystery,
unsung, into the early set fruit.
(excerpt)

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
(excerpt)

e. e. cummings
now does our world descend 

the path to nothingness 

(cruel now cancels kind;
(excerpt)

Not in Vain

I Knew a Woman