I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
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If I could live as a tree, as a river, as the moon, as the sun, as a star, as the earth, as a rock, I would. ...Writing permits me to experien...
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We held hands on the last night on earth. Our mouths filled with dust, we kissed in the fields and under trees, screaming like dogs, bleeding dark into the leaves. It was empty on the edge of town but we knew everyone floated along the bottom of the river. So we walked through the waste where the road curved into the sea and the shattered seasons lay, and the bitter smell of burning was on you like a disease.In our cancer of passion you said, 'Death is a midnight runner.' The sky had come crashing down like the news of an intimate suicide. We picked up the shards and formed them into shapes of stars that wore like an antique wedding dress. The echoes of the past broke the hearts of the unborn as the ferris wheel silently slowed to a stop. The few insects skidded away in hopes of a better pastime. I kissed you at the apexof the maelstrom and asked if you would accompany me ina quick fall, but you made me realize that my ticket wasn't good for two. I rode alone. You said,'The cinders are falling like snow.' There is poetry in despair, and we sang with unrivaled beauty, bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence.Of blue and grey. Strange, we ran down desperate streets and carvedour names in the flesh of the city. The sun has stagnated somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon and the darkness is a mystery of curves and line.Still, we lay under the emptiness and drifted slowly outward,and somewhere in the wilderness we foundsalvation scratched into the earth like a message. the untitled poem--afi
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At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.
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The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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If people really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will get in; for I don’t believe there are any locks on that door, or any guards at the gate. I always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor Christian as he comes up from the river.
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You know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows. And a dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes. Trying to learn from what's behind you and never knowing what's in store makes each day a constant battle just to stay between the shores. And I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry. Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky. I'll never reach my destination if I never try, So I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry. Too many times we stand aside and let the water slip away. To what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today. So don't you sit upon the shore and say you're satisfied. Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tides.
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We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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Towery city and branching between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded.
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Till last by Philip's farm I flowTo join the brimming river,For men may come and men may go,But I go on for ever.
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Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.
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One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.
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Five miles meandering with mazy motion,Through dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank the tumult to a lifeless oceanAnd 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war
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Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
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One moment, on the rapid's top, our boat Hung poised —and then the darting river of Life...
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You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become accquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. To the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But in this separation, I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm. Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
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Five miles meandering with mazy motion, Through dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank the tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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The Volunteer AT dawn, he said, I bid them all farewell, To go where bugles call and rifles gleam. And with the restless thought asleep he fell, And glided into dream. A great hot plain from sea to mountain spread, - Through it a level river slowly drawn: He moved with a vast crowd, and at its head Streamed banners like the dawn. There came a blinding flash, a deafening roar, And dissonant cries of triumph and dismay; Blood trickled down the river's reedy shore, And with the dead he lay. The morn broke in upon his solemn dream, And still, with steady pulse and deepening eye, Where bugles call, he said, and rifles gleam, I follow, though I die!
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The great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees.
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Life is our teacher. Life communicates with us all the time and it is a lesson to see how life continuously has led me to the people I need to met, to the situations I need to experience, and to the places I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole.
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Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
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You and me, we used to talk Like a river underground, the sewer where we used to walk. The hole at the end empties out to the pier Where paperboats disappear Me, I try to send this note, Float it like a paper boat, But paper sinks and words are weak. I try but I don't speak Join together in the silent snow Turn our faces up to see Not endless night, but day A pier And you and me, talking.
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The Eagle wasn't always the Eagle. The Eagle, before he became the Eagle, was Yucatangee, the Talker. Yucatangee talked and talked. It talked so much it heard only itself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the Wolf. The Raven came and said The Wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you'll hear him. The wind too. And when you hear the wind, you'll fly. So he stopped talking. And became its nature, the Eagle. The Eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say.
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Dr. Joel Fleischman in nature. Not exactly the man you knew. He couldn't see past the Hudson River if he tried. He liked his fish smoked or preferable hand sliced from Zabars on a sliced bagel served with onions. Nature, to him, was an irritant. Birds didn't sing, they woke him up. A body of water wasn't life, it was a golf hazard..
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TIO SMÅ NISSAR:
Midvinternattens köld är svår tio små nissar i djupsnö går. Rävsax gömd under skynke vitt knipsar nisse av på mitt. Livsandarna snabbt för honom tryter snart i eget blod han flyter.
Nio små nissar i midnattstimma traskar fram i månljusstrimma. Ugglan hoar i sitt näste istapp faller från sitt fäste. Nisse spetsas utav tappen tomte ligger död på trappen.
Utanför dörren står gröten och ångar åtta nissars intresse fångar. Under stigande hunger faten de nalkar en stackars tomte på kanten halkar. Han flyter, han kämpar, han svettas, blir blöt men sjunker likväl i kvicksandens gröt.
Många springor stugan har där sju tomtar in sig tar. Katten som bakom dörren ruva slukar nisse med hull och luva. Resterna av tomtehand suger misse bort från tand.
Sex små nissar mot julbord ila snabbt dom uppför bordsben kila. När sista tomten över kanten hasar tappar han greppet och neråt rasar. Faller nedåt likt ett lod mattan färgas röd av tomteblod.
Tomtar fem i väldig iver springer runt ty hungern river. Nisse snubblar på sitt skägg faller rätt på knivens egg. Lilla nisse, stackars saten rinner ut i sillsalaten.
Fyra nissar har festat på sill och nu de törsten sin släcka vill. Mot glöggen de springer i samlad tropp och tar för sig i varsin kopp. Ner faller nisse i glögghett hav likt en skållad mandel, hans skinn faller av.
Tre små tomtar i granen svingar mellan ljus och änglavingar. Nisse sig för nära våga strax han står i ljusan låga. Doftar snart likt en vidbränd stek ångrar då sin ystra lek.
Två små tomtar omkring sig tittar så en smällkaramell de hittar. Nisse ner på den då hoppar men för detta den ej stoppar. I tak, på golv, på gardin med frans finns nu nisses hjärnsubstans.
Husbonn stiger upp i natten för att kasta lite vatten. Under husbonns tunga toffla nisse blir till krämig våffla. Snön ligger vit lite här och var inte en djävla tomte finns kvar.
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We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of the drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day ... The dawn were heralded by a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric planet ... But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roof, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droops of heavy and motionless foliage.
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He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current... Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.
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Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?
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Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
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About fifteen miles above New Orleans the river goes very slowly. It has broadened out there until it is almost a sea and the water is yellow with the mud of half a continent. Where the sun strikes it, it is golden.
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