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  1. TopTop #691
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Day Comes

    A day comes
    when the mouth grows tired
    of saying "I."

    Yet it is occupied
    still by a self which must speak.
    Which still desires,
    is curious.
    Which believes it also has a right.

    What to do?
    The tongue consults with the teeth
    it knows will survive
    both mouth and self.

    Which grin—it is their natural pose—
    and say nothing.


    - Jane Hirshfield
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  2. TopTop #692
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Heat

    When I was little, young men like my uncles would croon.
    Walking on the street or doing chores, a baritone groan:

    Blue Skies. The blue of the night meets the gold of the day.
    Body and Soul, Ramona, Ballerina, Too-ra-loo-ra-lay.

    I asked my mother, why did the uncles sing like that?
    Her three-syllable answer puzzled me: They’re in heat.

    I remember it today as the young guy driving his van
    With sound system blasting stops at a light, windows down.

    We want to sound hot and magnetic. Or warm and charming -
    Even the folk singer singing a song about global warming.

    Folk music? All music is folk music, said a great musician:
    I never heard a horse sing. (But they do play percussion.)

    The souls deepest in hell don’t burn, they’re frozen in ice.
    You’re full of hot air is an insult. But hot breath can be nice.

    Your mother, color, class, region all co-author your drama:
    Culture. A jerk politician can make hay in Oklahoma

    By saying he doesn’t believe in Darwin, or climate change.
    Let’s take a kayak to Nyack. Or be more at home on the range.

    Vote for you, sigh for you, die for you. Is this the counterfoil
    To sweetest music? Entropy, energy. Dead life come back as oil

    To enable movement, music, power and light, heat, racket.
    Cigarette lipstick traces, you know how we do, an airplane ticket.

    Cool or hot music, cold calculation or comfort. Ancestral voice
    Of pride or need: keening meaning — will we die of all this?

    - Robert Pinsky
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  3. TopTop #693
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Let's Not Waste Time

    If the sea is infinite and has nets,
    if its music comes from the wave,
    if the dawn is red and the sunset green,
    if the forest is lust and the moon a caress,
    if the rose opens and perfumes the house,
    if the girl laughs and perfumes life,
    if love comes and kisses me and leaves me trembling,
    What does it matter,
    while in my neighborhood there's a table without legs,
    a child with no shoes or a bookkeeper coughing,
    a banquet of potato peels,
    a concert of dogs,
    an opera of scabs.....
    We need to become worried enough to cure the seeds,
    bandage the hearts and write the poem
    that will infect everyone.
    And create the sentence which will embrace the whole world,
    poets must smash swords,
    must invent more colors and write Paternosters.
    Letting laughter stay in the mouths of the tunnel,
    not tell what's intimate, but sing in a choir,
    not sing to the moon, not sing to the bride,
    not write poems with ten-line stanzas, not fabricate sonnets,
    Because we know how, we must yell at the mighty,
    shout what I'm saying, that there are enough who live
    howling under tin roofs with only what they have on their backs,
    and mothers who don't comb their children's hair every day,
    and fathers who wake up early and don't go to the theatre.
    To clothe the humble placing our poems on their shoulders,
    it's right to sing to the one who has no song and help him.
    To kill usurers and with a rare patience convince them without
    disgust,
    To thresh in the fields, go down into a mine,
    to be a diver for a week, visiting nursing homes,
    jails, ruins, play with tiny children,
    dance in the leprosaria.

    Poets, let's not waste time, let's work,
    because very little blood is reaching the heart.

    - Gloria Fuertes
    (from Anthology and Poems of the Slum, 1954)
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  4. TopTop #694
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cutting Loose

    Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
    you sing. For no reason, you accept
    the way of being lost, cutting loose
    from all else and electing a world
    where you go where you want to.

    Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
    that a steady center is holding
    all else. If you listen, that sound
    will tell you where it is and you
    can slide your way past trouble.

    Certain twisted monsters
    always bar the path -- but that's when
    you get going best, glad to be lost,
    learning how real it is
    here on earth, again and again.

    - William Stafford
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  5. TopTop #695
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Falcon Moon


    From the glow of dawn a moon appeared
    It swept from the sky—speared me with its eyes

    With me in its talons, to the sky it soared--
    Like a hawk which snatches a songbird by force

    I glanced at myself--no me to be seen
    The moon of mercy pared my body to a soul

    Formless I flew, just seeing the moon--
    The moon, and the world lit in its gleam

    In the soul I traveled, with the moon as my beacon
    Lay bare the secret of the time before time

    Sky, and then sky, all merged with the moon
    The raft that is me was drowned in the sea

    Without the force of that Sunburst of Shams
    Neither the moon nor the sea can be seen.

    - Jelalludin Rumi
    Ghazal 19
    (Translation by Shantanu Phukan)




    Falcon Moon

    Dar Charkh-e sahargah yaki mah ayan shud

    Vaz charkh bazer amad o bar ma nigran shud



    Chun baz ke birbayad murghi ba-gahe said

    Birbud mara an mah o bar charkh ravan shud



    Dar khud chun nazar kardam, khud ra banadidam

    Zeera ke dar an mah tanamaz lutf chun jan shud



    Dar jan chun safar kardam juz mah nadidam

    Ta sirr-e tajalliye azal jumle bayan shud



    Na charkh-e falakjumle dar an mah firo shud

    Kashtiyye vujudam hame dar bahr-e nihan shud



    An bahr bazad mauj o khirad baz bar amad

    V-avaz dar afgand, chunin gasht o chunan shud



    An bahr kafi kard ba har pareh az an kaf

    Naqshi zi falan amad o jismi zi fulan shud



    Be daulate makhdumiye shams al haqi tabrez

    Nai mah tavan didan, o nai bahr tavan shud
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  6. TopTop #696
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When the Horses Gallop Away from Us, It's a Good Thing

    I always find it strange though I shouldn't how creatures don't
    care for us the way we care for them.
    Horses, for instance, and chipmunks, and any bird you'd name.
    Empathy's only a one-way street.

    And that's all right, I've come to believe.
    It sets us up for ultimate things,
    and penultimate ones as well.
    It's a good lesson to have in your pocket when the Call comes to
    call.

    - Charles Wright
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  7. TopTop #697
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Something About Habit

    Habit goes a long way
    to explain us, but not
    far enough. Take Mother.
    Dying of leukemia, she wanted
    to leave early for the doctor’s one morning
    so that I could see a new restaurant.
    “It’s a greenhouse and a restaurant!”
    She didn’t know that at that point
    she had five more days to live.

    Restaurants, we know, are places
    of pilgrimage for the middle class.
    Mother wanted nothing more
    than to keep living as she had.
    Even when she could no longer eat
    she kept going out with friends,
    ordering, then staring at her food.
    It wasn’t only habit, of course,
    but the love of life itself.

    Sometimes love can also bring us
    to question a habit. Each morning
    I receive an e-mail forecast
    for the weather in two places: my home
    and St. Louis, where Mother lived.

    Home again after her funeral,
    that e-mail looked strange one morning.
    I kept thinking, “Why does it matter
    what the weather is in St. Louis?”

    - Max Reif
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  8. TopTop #698
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Hunters

    (after the /xam Bushman)

    To see where the animals hide
    is what we wish.
    For the stars to take our hearts,
    our hungry hearts,
    and give us star-plenty, star-fullness,
    is what we wish.

    Always the stars are calling out:
    "Tsau! Tsau!"
    They are cursing the springbok's eyes
    for men to kill.
    Sitting outside in the cool of night
    my grandfather spoke,
    he said the springbok's eyes are cursed
    by the sound of stars.

    I listen for it now on summer nights
    the "tsau! tsau!" of stars.

    My grandfather said to the Ant Egg Star
    when she rose,
    "Take away my heart and change it
    for a star-heart,
    so my hunger, my burning hunger
    will be satisfied.
    I want a star's belly which is always full
    and star arms.
    My arrows stray and the game gets away
    but stars aim well."

    He sat down, he was silent,
    he sharpened his arrows.

    - Harold Farmer
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  9. TopTop #699
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Housecleaning

    I packed up my ambition and sent it to the Salvation Army,
    hoping for a tax deduction

    hoping its remnants might better serve some other lost soul.



    I washed my ego carefully
    and put it at the curb with the other recyclables,

    hoping it would come back in a milder form

    seven generations from now.

    I dismantled my arrogance
    and bubble wrapped it for shipping to far-off places
    more in need of my aggressive idealism,

    hoping its use would better balance justice in the world.


    I turned my jacket of pride inside out
    and found humility hiding in the lining.

    My karma exhausted by this cleaning, I took a nap.

    And awoke in the autumn afternoon light
    to find the last of the golden summer lilies in bloom.

    - Laura Freebairn-Smith
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  10. TopTop #700
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sympathy

    I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
    When the wind stirs soft though the springing grass,
    And the river flows like a stream of glass;
    When the first bird sings and the first bud opens,
    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
    I know what the caged bird feels!

    I know why the caged bird beats his wing
    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
    For he must fly back to his perch and cling
    When he fain would be on the bough a-wing;
    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
    And they pulse again with a keener sting--
    I know why he beats his wing!

    I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
    When he beats his bars and he would be free;
    It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
    I know why the caged bird sings!

    - Paul Laurence Dunbar (1899)
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  11. TopTop #701
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Everyone Sang

    Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
    And I was fill’d with such delight
    As prison’d birds must find freedom
    Winging wildly across the white
    Orchards and dark-green fields; on; on and out of sight.

    Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted,
    And beauty came like the setting sun.
    My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
    Drifted away . . . O but every one
    Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

    - Siegfried Sasson
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  12. Gratitude expressed by:

  13. TopTop #702
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sunday Phone Call

    Drab December, sleet falling.
    Dogs loosely coiled in torpor.
    Horses nose-down in hay.
    It's the hour years ago
    I used to call my parents
    or they'd call me.

    The phone rings. Idly
    empty of expectation
    I answer. It's my father's
    voice. Pop! I say, you're dead!
    Don't you remember
    that final heart attack,
    Dallas, just before
    Kennedy was shot?

    Time means nothing here,
    kiddo. He's jolly, expansive.
    You can wait eons for an open line.
    Time gets used up but
    comes back. You know.
    Like Ping-Pong.

    Ping-Pong! The table in
    the attic. My father, shirtsleeves
    rolled, the wet stub of
    a burnt-out cigarette
    stuck to his lower lip as
    he murdered each one
    of my three older brothers
    and me yearning under the eaves,
    waiting for my turn.

    You sound ... just like yourself,
    I say. I am myself, goddammit!
    Anyway, what's this
    about an accident?

    How did you hear about it?
    I read it somewhere. Broke
    your neck, et cetera.
    He says this vaguely,
    his shorthand way
    of keeping feelings at bay.

    Now I'm indignant.
    But I almost died!

    Didn't I tell you
    never buy land on a hill?
    It's worthless. What's
    an educated dame like you
    doing messing with horses?
    Messing with horses is
    for punks. Then, a little
    softer, I see you two've
    put a lot of work into
    that hunk of real estate.

    Thanks. Thanks for even
    noticing. We love it here.
    We'll never sell.

    Like hell you won't!
    You will!

    Pop, I say, tearing up,
    let's not fight for once.
    My only Poppa, when
    do I get to see you?

    A long pause. Then,
    coughing his cigarette cough,
    Pupchen, he says,
    I may be dead but
    I'm not clairvoyant.
    Behave yourself.
    The line clicks off.

    - Maxine Kumin
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  14. Gratitude expressed by:

  15. TopTop #703
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    this amazing day

    i thank You God for most this amazing
    day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
    and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
    which is natural which is infinite which is yes

    (i who have died am alive again today,
    and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
    day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
    great happening illimitably earth)

    how should tasting touching hearing seeing
    breathing any-lifted from the no
    of all nothing-human merely being
    doubt unimaginable You?

    (now the ears of my ears awake and
    now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

    - e.e. cummings
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  16. Gratitude expressed by:

  17. TopTop #704
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Arrival

    Evening arrives unnoticed,
    like a large black cat
    lying down,

    encircling the house,
    its purring felt,
    not heard,

    stars in its
    curled
    tail.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  18. Gratitude expressed by:

  19. TopTop #705
    marcwordsmith's Avatar
    marcwordsmith
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    wow, that was gorgeous.
    Thanks!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Arrival

    Evening arrives unnoticed,
    like a large black cat
    lying down,

    encircling the house,
    its purring felt,
    not heard,

    stars in its
    curled
    tail.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  20. Gratitude expressed by:

  21. TopTop #706
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Begin
    *
    Begin again to the summoning birds
    to the sight of light at the window,
    begin to the roar of morning traffic
    all along Pembroke Road.

    Every beginning is a promise
    born in light and dying in dark
    determination and exaltation of springtime
    flowering the way to work.
    Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
    the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
    bridges linking the past and future
    old friends passing though with us still.

    Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
    since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
    begin to wonder at unknown faces
    at crying birds in the sudden rain
    at* branches stark in the willing sunlight
    at seagulls foraging for bread
    at couples sharing a sunny secret
    alone together while making good.

    Though we live in a world that dreams of*ending
    that always seems about to give in
    something that will not acknowledge conclusion
    insists that we forever*begin.
    *
    - Brendan Kennelly
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  22. TopTop #707
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

    Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
    It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
    The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
    The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
    But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
    feet of the trees
    whose mouths open.
    Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
    Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
    until at last, now, they shine
    in your own yard?
    Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.
    When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
    outward, to the mountains so solidly there
    in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
    to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
    that was also there,
    beautiful as a thumb
    curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
    little love-ring,
    as he whirled,
    oh jug of breath,
    in the garden of dust?

    - Mary Oliver
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  23. TopTop #708
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    *Promise of Blue Horses

    A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning,
    then the sun --
    relating the difference between sadness
    and the need to praise
    that which makes us joyful, I can't calculate
    how the earth tips hungrily
    toward the sun - then soaks up rain -- or the density
    of this unbearable need
    to be next to you. It's a palpable thing -- this earth
    philosophy
    and familiar in the dark
    like your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It's no
    simple thing. Eventually
    we will be dust together; can be used to make a house, to stop
    a flood or grow food
    for those who will never remember who we were, or know
    that we loved fiercely.
    Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us
    toward the nearest star --
    a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible
    in the twilight as you travel
    east. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround
    the heart
    and imagine a promise made when no promise was possible.

    - Joy Harjo
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  24. Gratitude expressed by:

  25. TopTop #709
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Global Vomit

    some black gooey stuff
    emerged from the bottom
    under emerald water
    trapping an entire civilization
    in its fragrance
    its convenient charming essence
    of self propulsion and frantic travel

    it fooled us all
    the wealthy and impoverished alike
    accepted the inevitable
    oil cracking to gasoline
    transforming our lush world
    addiction rules the land

    now we feel the pangs of remorse
    as the vomit rages across air land and sea
    taking life and livelihood at will
    defiling and dishonoring everything it touches

    we, back in the driver's seat
    check the rearview mirror
    for what is to come

    - Richard Nichols
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  26. Gratitude expressed by:

  27. TopTop #710
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Already The Ripening Barberries

    Already the ripening barberries are red
    and the old asters hardly breathe in their beds.
    The man who is not rich now as summer goes
    will wait and wait and never be himself.

    The man who cannot quietly close his eyes
    certain that there is vision after vision inside,
    simply waiting for nighttime
    to rise all around him in darkness –
    it’s all over for him, he’s like an old man.

    Nothing else will come; no more days will open
    and everything that does happen will cheat him.
    Even You, my God. And You are like a stone
    that draws him daily deeper into the depths

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
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  28. TopTop #711
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reinventing America

    The city was huge. A boy of twelve could walk
    for hours while the closed houses stared down at him
    from early morning to dusk, and he'd get nowhere.
    Oh no, I was not that boy. Even at twelve I knew
    enough to stay in my own neighborhood,
    I knew anyone who left might not return.
    Boys were animals with animal hungers
    I learned early. Better to stay close to home.
    I'd try to bum cigarettes from the night workers
    as they left the bars in the heavy light of noon
    or I'd hang around the grocery hoping
    one of the beautiful young wives would ask me
    to help her carry her shopping bags home.
    You're wondering what I was up to. Not much.
    The sun rose late in November and set early.
    At times I thought life was rushing by too fast.
    Before I knew it I'd be my half-blind uncle
    married to a woman who cried all day long
    while in the basement he passed his time working
    on short-wave radio calls to anywhere.
    I'd sneak down and talk to him, Uncle Nathan,
    wiry in his boxer's shorts and high-topped boots,
    chewing on a cigar, the one dead eye catching
    the overhead light while he mused on his life
    on the road or at sea. How he loved the whores
    in the little Western towns and the Latin ports!
    He'd hold his hands out to approximate
    their perfect breasts. The months in jail had taught him
    a man had only his honor and his ass
    to protect. "You turn your fist this way," he said,
    taking my small hand in both of his, "and fire
    from the shoulder, so," and he'd extend it out
    to the face of an imaginary foe.
    Why he'd returned to this I never figured out,
    though life was ample here, a grid of crowded blocks
    of Germans, Wops, Polacks, Jews, wild Irish,
    plus some square heads from the Upper Peninsula.
    Six bakeries, four barber shops, a five and dime,
    twenty beer gardens, a Catholic church with a shul
    next door where we studied the Talmud-Torah.
    Wonderful how all the old hatreds bubbled
    So quietly on the back burner you could
    forget until one day they tore through the pool halls,
    the bowling alley, the high school athletic fields
    leaving an eye gone, a long fresh, livid scar
    running to touch a mouth, young hands raw or broken,
    boys and girls ashamed of what they were, ashamed
    of what they were not. It was merely village life,
    exactly what our parents left in Europe
    brought to America with pure fidelity.

    - Philip Levine
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  29. TopTop #712
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Twilight in Hendy Woods

    This is the hour of magic
    When this world and the other world
    Touch in a lingering kiss
    And a deep stillness settles over all things.

    This is the hour of magic
    When the Earth,
    For one eternal moment, holds its breath
    Before turning from the sun.

    This is the hour of magic
    When, if you listen
    With an open heart and a quiet mind,
    You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest

    Telling the old stories:
    Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
    Of the great ice ages and the birth of mountain ranges;
    Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.

    They are leaving us now.
    When they are gone,
    Who will tell these stories?

    - Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Larry Robinson; 08-09-2010 at 09:07 AM.
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  30. TopTop #713
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Saint Francis And The Sow

    The bud
    stands for all things,
    even for those things that don't flower,
    for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
    though sometimes it is necessary
    to reteach a thing its loveliness,
    to put a hand on its brow
    of the flower
    and retell it in words and in touch
    it is lovely
    until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
    as Saint Francis
    Put his hand on the creased forehead
    of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
    blessing of the earth on the sow, and the sow
    began remembering all down her thick length,
    from the earthen snout all the way
    through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
    from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
    down through the great broken heart
    to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
    from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing
    beneath them:
    the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

    - Galway Kinnell
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  31. TopTop #714
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Story That Could Be True

    If you were exchanged in the cradle and
    your real mother died
    without telling the story
    then no one knows your name,
    and somewhere in the world
    your father is lost and needs you
    but you are far away.

    He can never find
    how true you are, how ready.
    When the great wind comes
    and the robberies of the rain
    you stand on the corner shivering.
    The people who go by -
    you wonder at their calm.

    They miss the whisper that runs
    any day in your mind,
    “Who are you really, wanderer?” -
    and the answer you have to give
    no matter how dark and cold
    the world around you is:
    “Maybe I’m a king.”

    - William Stafford
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  32. TopTop #715
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Name For All

    Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
    And still wing on, untarnished of the name
    We pinion to your bodies to assuage
    Our envy of your freedom—we must maim

    Because we are usurpers, and chagrined—
    And take the wing and scar it in the hand.
    Names we have, even, to clap on the wind;
    But we must die, as you, to understand.

    I dreamed that all men dropped their names, and sang
    As only they can praise, who build their days
    With fin and hoof, with wing and sweetened fang
    Struck free and holy in one Name always.

    - Hart Crane
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  33. TopTop #716
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My beloved caressed me yesterday
    and let me,
    who has tasted nothing but sorrow,
    taste his soul.

    He gave wisdom to my mind
    and put an earring my ear.
    He gave light to my eyes
    and brought sweetness to my taste.

    He spoke to me:
    "O one who's become wasted
    because of me,
    O one who is afraid of me,
    know that I'm kind.
    I would never sell a slave I've bought."

    Look and see
    how he does help,
    the differences he makes.
    Joseph remembers the ones
    who cut off their hands for him.

    He embraced me like his own soul.
    My doubts and ill feelings left me.
    He put his beautiful face on my shoulder.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
    (translation by Nevit O. Ergin & Will Johnson)
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  35. TopTop #717
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reckless Poem

    Today again I am hardly myself.
    It happens over and over.
    It is heaven-sent.

    It flows through me
    like the blue wave.
    Green leaves – you may believe this or not –
    have once or twice
    emerged from the tips of my fingers

    somewhere
    deep in the woods,
    in the reckless seizure of spring.

    Though, of course, I also know that other song,
    the sweet passion of one-ness.

    Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
    **********tumbled pine needles she toiled.
    And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
    And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
    **********is she not wonderful and wise?
    And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
    **********until I came to myself.

    And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand,
    I have flown from the other window of myself
    to become white heron, blue whale,
    **********red fox, hedgehog.
    Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower!
    Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched
    among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.

    - Mary Oliver
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  36. TopTop #718
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The One Thing You Can Do

    You cannot by willing it alter the vast world outside of you.
    You cannot cut the lash from one whip.
    You cannot strike the handcuffs from one chained hand.
    You cannot even remake your own soul so that there shall be no inclination to evil in it.
    The great world rolls on, and you can do nothing to change it.
    But this one thing you can do.
    In that one, small, minute, almost infinitesimal place
    in the universe where you stand,
    there where, as God, your will prevails,
    strive to make what you hunger for real.

    - Howard Thurman
    Last edited by Larry Robinson; 08-16-2010 at 08:31 AM.
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  38. TopTop #719
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ithaca

    When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,

    pray that the road is long,

    full of adventure, full of knowledge.

    The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

    the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:

    You will never find such as these on your path,

    if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine

    emotion touches your spirit and your body.

    The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

    the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,

    if you do not carry them within your soul,

    if your soul does not set them up before you.

    Pray that the road is long.

    That the summer mornings are many, when,

    with such pleasure, with such joy

    you will enter ports seen for the first time;

    stop at Phoenician markets,

    and purchase fine merchandise,

    mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

    and sensual perfumes of all kinds,

    as many sensual perfumes as you can;

    visit many Egyptian cities,

    to learn and learn from scholars.

    Always keep Ithaca in your mind.

    To arrive there is your ultimate goal.

    But do not hurry the voyage at all.

    It is better to let it last for many years;

    and to anchor at the island when you are old,

    rich with all you have gained on the way,

    not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

    Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

    Without her you would have never set out on the road.

    She has nothing more to give you.

    And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

    Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

    you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

    - C.P. Cavafy
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  39. TopTop #720
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

    The buzzard never says it is to blame.
    The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
    When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
    If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

    A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
    Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
    Why should they, when they know they're right?

    Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
    in every other way they're light.

    On this third planet of the sun
    among the signs of bestiality
    a clear conscience is Number One.

    - Wislawa Szymborska
    (Translated by Stanislaw Baraczak and Clare Cavanagh)
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