Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
Marriage
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
A Wife In London (December, 1899)
I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Ars Poetica?
I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
A Common Addiction Among Poets
Intoxicated by the inspiration
Of his trade—
With mental powers at work,
A true poet rarely sleeps.
His mind ever churning
With powerful imagery
That produces thought,
Sound, rhythm and gesture.
He molds with metaphor,
Shapes with simile,
The Interpretation Of Nature And
I.
MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
II.
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.
A Cricket Sang Good Luck
I sat against your knees all night.
I watched the sun rise in your coffee cup.
In all that time you never spoke to me.
I think I must have cried a thousand tears.
Inside the wall a cricket sang good luck.
The irony of that did not escape you.
For when I tilted up my chin you smiled
To think how once he conned us with that song.
Iris Of Poetry
Introduction: We don't really think deep enough about 'What A Poetry Actually Is', the obvious question which we all know but don't think how to really elaborate on. We mostly see the story, depth and the purpose it delivers. Well, here's one a little bit different this time...
Poetry is the reflection of our lives like in the mirror,
It is something we can relate to and share.
It's our memories written in jumbled words,
It's like a song, with a meaning it holds.
A mere idea of our mystical lives,
Sun N Son
Something has gone wrong with meaning of words,
'Sun' and 'Son' beautiful creation of lords,
Both represent energy having sharpness of swords,
Both are crucial for survival and existence of world,
Son is embodiment of energy and power,
Darkness disappears when sun rays appear,
All worship Sun god and offer prayer
Light may appear through clouds from layer
Benevolence
Oftentimes there are things that we want to achieve,
Thinking that our world’s immortal
But through the years that pass by,
Radiant morning rays await us.
How important it is to cherish each moment
To spend each minute with the one you love,
Through these you feel and you can see
How blessed you are in spite of life’s hardship.
The Hill
This normative hill
like all others
is transparently accessible,
out there
and in the mind,
not to be missed
except in peril of one's life.
Do not muse on it
from a distance:
0020 Finger Lickin' Blood
At Wendy's Restaurant in San Jose,
California, USA,
a woman 'found' a finger, rather illy
hidden in her bowl of chilli.
The management's reaction -
and this is just no laugh -
is irony in action:
they've had to cut the staff.
True Confession
1
Today, recovering from influenza,
I begin, having nothing worse to do,
This autobiography that ends a
Half of my life I'm glad I'm through.
O Love, what a bloody hullaballoo
I look back at, shaken and sober,
When that intemperate life I view
From this temperate October.
To nineteen hundred and forty-seven
! ! Impressionism In Paint, In Music, In Words
To know the impossible to be impossible
and yet to love the attempt;
to demonstrate that beauty is eternal, yet
seen only in that moment now,
never to be captured, ever changing -
'evanescent' holds a little of the sound of it -
this, the heroic failure that betokens love.
Monet was that hero. For perhaps you may
catch beauty's shadow in a photograph;
Irony
The twentieth century has often fooled us.
We've been squeezed in by falsehood as by taxes.
The breath of life has denuded our ideas
as quickly as it strips a dandelion.
As boys fall back on biting sarcasm,
so we rely for safe defense
on an irony not too suppressed,
not too naked either.
Essay On Psychiatrists
I. Invocation
It‘s crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eves and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Than sweeps, opticians, poets or masseurs.
Moreover, they are for more than one reason
Difficult to speak of seriously and freely,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt. Canto Iii.
I.
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,--not as now we part,
But with a hope.--
Awaking with a start,
The waters heave around me; and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
L'Héautontimorouménos (The Man Who Tortures Himself)
L'Héautontimorouménos
Je te frapperai sans colère
Et sans haine, comme un boucher,
Comme Moïse le rocher
Et je ferai de ta paupière,
Pour abreuver mon Saharah
Jaillir les eaux de la souffrance.
Mon désir gonflé d'espérance
Sur tes pleurs salés nagera
Painted Head
By dark severance the apparition head
Smiles from the air a capital on no
Column or a Platonic perhaps head
On a canvas sky depending from nothing;
Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur
By tickling the instinct of heads to be
Absolute and to try decapitation
And to play truant from the body bush;
The Ballad Of A Bachelor
Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.
John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.
Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,
And bravely did they strive to bring