Old world

Comments (17)

• On November 25, 2008 at 4:53 pm Henry Gould wrote:

  “I think he will take this island home in his pocket
  And give it to his son for an apple.”
  - Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest
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• On November 26, 2008 at 4:05 am Lavinia Greenlaw wrote:

  ‘As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way…’
  Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
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• On November 26, 2008 at 11:24 am Gary B. Fitzgerald wrote:

  A Noiseless Patient Spider
  A noiseless patient spider,
  I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
  Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
  It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
  Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
  And you O my soul where you stand,
  Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
  Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
  Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
  - Walt Whitman
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• On November 26, 2008 at 10:23 pm Mary Meriam wrote:

  Dark Pines Under Water
  This land like a mirror turns you inward
  And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
  The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
  You dream in the green of your time,
  Your memory is a row of sinking pines.
  Explorer, you tell yourself this is not what you came for
  Although it is good here, and green;
  You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
  You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.
  But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
  And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
  In an elementary world;
  There is something down there and you want it told.
  Gwendolyn MacEwen
  The Shadow Maker (1972)
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• On November 27, 2008 at 10:05 am Lavinia Greenlaw wrote:

  A monster
  rising from the sea,
  ‘Will you take tea?’
  from “Gaelic Stories”, Iain Crichton Smith
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• On November 27, 2008 at 7:07 pm Gary B. Fitzgerald wrote:

  And you as well must die, belovèd dust
  And you as well must die, belovèd dust,
  And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
  This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
  This body of flame and steel, before the gust
  Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
  Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
  Than the first leaf that fell,this wonder fled,
  Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
  Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
  In spite of all my love, you will arise
  Upon that day and wander down the air
  Obscurely as the unattended flower,
  It mattering not how beautiful you were,
  Or how belovèd above all else that dies.
  - Edna St. Vincent Millay
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• On November 27, 2008 at 10:35 pm Don Share wrote:

  It does not matter who you are,
  It does not matter who I am.
  This book has not been purposely
  made for any reason.
  It has made itself by circumstances.
  It is aimed at nobody at all.
  It is now left just as an object by me
  to be encountered by somebody else.
  - from a notebook of W.S. Graham, ca. 1973
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• On November 28, 2008 at 12:43 am Mary Meriam wrote:

  That all my poems over the long years before I met you made you come true
  Hayden Carruth
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• On November 28, 2008 at 2:37 am Lavinia Greenlaw wrote:

  Call to walk comes as of true nature,
  Easy should the body move.
  And poetry comes after eight miles’ seeking,
  Mere right out of mere love.
  Ivor Gurney, Silver Birch
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• On November 28, 2008 at 4:03 am Desmond Swords wrote:

  wow ! wow ! wow !
  Yo tiny town squeezers
  whaazzup wiv yiz trippin full time on the miseriblic moment?
  Yiz wanna get like, dead busy ‘n up to all sorts of daftness
  wiv da full time unemployed penniless poet
  just offered a well paid voluntary position bein a global
  news hound, reviewin for the World Poetry Council
  Surf Collective; but it’s a bit tricky at the mo coz I’m banged up
  on the secure unit of Ward 11.
  If yous lot out there in cyberville can rustle up a snatch squad
  and have a do at smuggling me past the nurses
  when showtime explodes on the pages
  I’m your number one hack, firin on all the ink cylindrical spikes
  I can stick in and go to OD heaven on, squeeze feelin’ trainee corpses.
  Just tell me sister about the where’s ‘n when’s and make sure
  there’s a stash of unmentionables on standby
  so we can get in the right frame of mind as befits a posse
  at the press launch of such an august red alert occassion.
  wow ! wow ! wow !
  rantin great right through to the giftless of our too few true poetic
  community, banged up wiv the Ron Sillyman red alert ’bout poetry
  theft, satirically disected in that part of da ed known as the Jan Manzwotz
  Daemon Blogspot — so get clickin ‘n tell uz what yiz R finkin laah.
  Hallelujah Hallelujah
  wow ! wow ! wow !
  Hallelujah Hellelujah
  Wow ! Wow ! Wow !
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• On November 28, 2008 at 8:59 am aonymous wrote:

  A cricket.
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• On November 28, 2008 at 11:58 am Mary Meriam wrote:

  “what sort of enchantment is this?
  what art will you weild with a fagot?
  are you Hectate? are you a witch?
  a vulture, a hieroglyph,
  the sign or the name of a goddess?
  what sort of goddess is this?
  where are we? who are you?
  where is this desolate coast?
  who am I? am I a ghost?”
  H.D., Helen in Egypt
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• On November 28, 2008 at 2:21 pm Gary B. Fitzgerald wrote:

  For You Not Yet
  As I write, right now, your mother
  is the size of a pea.
  She will grow and be born
  and not hear of me.
  You at this time
  do not even exist and only
  by luck and grace will you be
  if your mother survives
  and gets married.
  But I write not for your mother
  or even right now.
  Now knows nothing of me.
  Now knows not what I now do.
  I write for tomorrow, for they
  not yet here.
  I have written for you.
  Copyright 2008 – HARDWOOD-77 Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald
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• On November 28, 2008 at 3:18 pm Lavinia Greenlaw wrote:

  High Country Weather
  Alone we are born
  And die alone;
  Yet see the red-gold cirrus
  Over snow mountain shine.
  Along the upland road
  Ride easy, stranger:
  Surrender to the sky
  Your heart of anger.
  James K. Baxter
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• On November 28, 2008 at 4:20 pm Gary B. Fitzgerald wrote:

  when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
  and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-
  when thorns regard their roses with alarm
  and rainbows are insured against old age
  when every thrush may sing no new moon in
  if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
  -and any wave signs on the dotted line
  or else an ocean is compelled to close
  when the oak begs permission of the birch
  to make an acorn – valleys accuse their
  mountains of having altitude – and march
  denounces april as a saboteur
  then we’ll believe in that incredible
  unanimal mankind (and not until)
  .
  - E.E.Cummings
  .
  Is that phone ringing?
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• On November 29, 2008 at 12:21 am Mary Meriam wrote:

  The composer’s name was Beagle or something,
  one of those Brits who make the world wistful
  with chorales and canticles and this piece,
  a tone poem or what-have-you,
  chimes and strings aswirl, dangerous for one
  whose eyelids and sockets have been rashing from tears.
  April Bernard, Beagle or Something
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• On November 30, 2008 at 9:11 pm Henry Gould wrote:

  The train ride to Oxford was something else.
  Profound droning weight of iron travel machine,
  farmland English backyard a pale moss green
  in the moist December light, your pulse
  is calm outside of London, Providence
  might be a way of life, a common sphere,
  fair, sensible and just – a Hertfordshire
  in an ovoid Shakespeare’s head, a salience.
  - Henry Gould, Stubborn Grew
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