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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season has made stand. My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand. Dust in sunlight and memory in corners Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Grant us thy peace. I have walked many years in this city, Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor, Have given and taken honour and ease. There went never any rejected from my door. Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children When the time of sorrow is come? They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home, Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords.
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation Grant us thy peace. Before the stations of the mountain of desolation, Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow, Now at this birth season of decease, Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word, Grant Israel’s consolation To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.
According to thy word. They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation With glory and derision, Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair. Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer, Not for me the ultimate vision. Grant me thy peace. (And a sword shall pierce thy heart, Thine also). I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me, I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me. Let thy servant depart, Having seen thy salvation.
T.S. Eliot, “Song for Simeon”
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Poem: I lik the form
My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail I am my best / when formats are not mix’d Wen poits play / subversions often fail
Stik out their toung / to rebel with no cause At ruls and norms / In ignorance they call: My words are free / Defying lit'rate laws To lik the forms / brings ruin on us all
A sonnet I / the noblest lit'rate verse And ruls me bind / to paths that Shakespeare paved Iambic fot / allusions well dispersed On my behind / I stately sit and wave
You think me tame /   Fenced-in and penned / bespelled I bide my time /   I twist the end / like hell
* “lik” should be read as “lick”, not “like”. In general, the initial section on each line should be read sort of phonetically.
Written for World Poetry Day, March 21, 2018. When I had this idea earlier today, I thought it was the worst, most faux hip pretentious idea for a shallow demonstration of empty wordsmithing skill in poetry ever. So I had to try to write it. I mean, how often do you get to fuse the iambic dimeter of bredlik - one of the newest and most exciting verse forms - with the stately iambic pentameter of the classic sonnet?
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Sometimes the very fiber you select      Has its own plans, defying the restriction      Of plotted narrative, how you’d expect      Your knitting would turn out. A contradiction      Can add a touch of friction to the fiction.      Tear out the row, recalculate your gauge —      Or wear the lumpy stockings with conviction?      (But darn the plot holes.) Patterns can’t presage The textile or the text, the garment or the page.
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Tree honorifics
You whose roots go down forever; the whisperer of all twelve winds; strong against the storm; harbour of birds; knot of your own tying; you whose glades dance in dappled delirium; seeder of a thousand saplings; who stands alone at the hilltop; anchor of the oldest forest; you of the dancing green; you who rise again after endless Winter; the thorn in the thicket whom no axe will move; you who have grown silently; observer of nine centuries; to whom all paths lead; whose branches snag both clouds and dreams; the lord of your own grove; berry-provider; moss-grower; whose heartwoods are ancient secrets.
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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“To tell a girl you loved her—my God!—  that was a leap off a cliff, requiring little  sense, sweet as it was. And I have loved 
many girls, women too, who by various fancies  of my mind have seemed loveable. But only  with you have I actually tried it: the long labor, 
the selfishness, the self-denial, the children  and grandchildren, the garden rows planted  and gathered, the births and deaths of many years. 
We boys, when we were young and romantic  and ignorant, new to the mystery and the power,  would wonder late into the night on the cliff’s edge: 
Was this love real? Was it true? And how  would you know? Well, it was time would tell,  if you were patient and could spare the time, 
a long time, a lot of trouble, a lot of joy.  This one begins to look—would you say?—real?”
— Wendell Berry: “Over the Edge”
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Light in the Dark Academia for @freenarnian
“The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.”     
-G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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“So push’d them all unwilling toward the gate. And there was no gate like it under heaven. For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave, The Lady of the Lake stood: all her dress Wept from her sides as water flowing away ; But like the cross her great and goodly arms Stretch’d under all the cornice and upheld : And drops of water fell from either hand ; And down from one a sword was hung, from one A censer, either worn with wind and storm ; And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish ; And in the space to left of her, and right, Were Arthur’s wars in weird devices done, New things and old co-twisted, as if Time Were nothing, so inveterately, that men Were giddy gazing there ; and over all High on the top were those three Queens, the friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need.”
— Tennyson, The Idylls of the King: Gareth and Lynette. Gareth and his companions approach Camelot. (St. Martin’s Press, 1968) p.24. (via septembersung)
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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what is one line of poetry/writing that lives in ur head rent free please share i would like to know 
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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"January" by Rhina P. Espaillat, from Where Horizons Go
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’ And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi”
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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The Trees by Philip Larkin
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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I Was Made for Sunny Days - The Weepies
I went to the market though it was threatening rain I was late to the station so I missed that train And the streets filled with umbrellas and we all looked the same But I'm the one who's waiting 'til the sun comes out again I was made for sunny days I made do with grey, but I didn't stay I was made for sunny days And I was made for you Found a book you gave me When we were first in bloom When I thought that you might save me from the dark side of the moon Instead we both went walking through the shadows and the gloom And we never did stop talking And you still light up the room Oh, the nights are longer Oh, you make me stronger And the late light lingers on the grass And the nights are dark but then they pass They don't seem so deep I'm still losing sleep but I don't mind, no I don't mind Got you a winter jacket that our baby wears around And we chase him through the springtime and the sleeves drag on the ground And every hour we're working and work and play are bound And every day is Sunday 'cause the sun comes dancing down
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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It seems unwise to linger under icicles      Along an eave or barren branch. For lack Of better words, I’ll simply say: they’re nicicles      Viewed safely at a distance, standing back A ways. These tips (or, if you will: advicicles)      Are just plain prudence. Ice is prone to crack. I love the sparkle on the window ledges; I’m not so fond of all the pointy edges.
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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Tatsuya Tanaka
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”
— Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (via milkboydotnet)
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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A Christmas Carol
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world,   But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,   His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are the kings,   But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart, His hair was like a fire. (O weary, weary is the world,   But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,   His hair was like a crown, And all the flowers looked up at him.   And all the stars looked down.
— G.K. Chesterton
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wheatpsalm · 2 years
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