PS - my own poetry

Some of my favourites:

Wisława Szymborska - A little on the soul

Rimbaud  - Nina

Federico Garcia Lorca  - Pequeno vals vienes

Kahlil Gibran
        -loveletters
        -the prophet
        -the madman
        
Walt Whitman
        -song of myself
        -I saw in Louisiana a live oak growing
        -born
        -Passage to India
        -I sing the body electric
        -to think of time
        -Song of the Open Road

Dylan Thomas
        -Being but men
        -Before i knocked
        -Song
        

D.H. lawrence
        -Tortoise Shout 
        -How still the trees are
        
Pablo Neruda
        -If You Forget Me
        -Poetry
        -Clenched Soul
        -Leaning Into The Afternoons
        -Like For You to Be Still
        -And now you're mine
        -If your eyes
        -I love you as...
        -Naked
        -Walking Around
        
Leonard Cohen

        -came so far for beauty
        -Take this longing
        -Suzanne
        -Dance me to the end of love
        -Joan of Arc        
        -Hallelujah
        -If it be your will
        
Sting

        -Sister Moon
        -Love is the Seventh Wave
        -Fortress around your heart
        -Fields of gold
        -Be still my beating heart
        -Fragile
        -Message in a bottle
        -Why should i cry for you

Shakira


K. du Plessis

        -spore

      
Robert Frost

Matthew Arnold
        -Dover Beach
Robert Burns
        -A red red rose
Auden
        -Stop all the clocks
        
William Blake
        -London                
        -The tiger

Herman Hesse
        -Wanderer
        -Elizabeth
        
Some of mine:
        -Matters of the heart
        -Poetry
        -Zanzibar
        -No matter
        -Spiral Dream
        - etc....
        





Fall is a big ball
always dancing up and down
leaves flying around

In the fall birds sing
Brown leaves fall from bright tall tress
I love fall don't you?

- 2 children's haikus

Ah in the thunder air
How still the trees are!

And the lime-tree, lovely and tall,every leaf silent
Hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.

And the  ghostly, creamy colored little tree of leaves
White, ivory white among the rambling greens
How evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
As if, in another moment, she would disappear
With all her grace of foam!

And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
And the balsam-pines that are blue with the gray-blue blueness of things
    from the sea,
And the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
How still they are together, they stand so still
In the thunder air, all strangers to one another
As the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the garden.
                                                        D.H.Lawrence

Being but men

Being but men, we walked imto the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And after the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That,then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.

Being but men we walked into the trees.


Song

Love me, not as the dreaming nurses
My falling lungs, nor as the cypress
In his age the lass's clay.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, not as the girls of heaven
Their airy lovers, nor the mermaiden
Her salty lovers in the sea.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, not as the ruffling pigeon
The tops of trees,  nor as thee legion
Of the gulls the lip of waves.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, as loves the mole his darkness
And the timid dear the tigress:
Hate and fear be your two loves.
Love me and lift your mask.

The Prophet

These are two excerpts of letters Kahlil Gibran wrote to May, the love of his life.

"As for the The Prophet - this is a book which i thought of writing a thousand years ago, but i did not get any of its chapters down on paper until the end of last year. What can i tell you about this prophet? He is my rebirth and my first baptism, the only thought in me that will make me worthy to stand in the light of the sun. For this prophet had already 'written' me before i attempted to 'write' him, had created me before i created him, and had silently set me on a course to follow him for seven thousand leagues before he appeared in front of me to dictate his wishes and inclinations.
Please ask my companion and helper, the translucent element, about this prophet as he tells his story. Ask that translucent element, ask it in the silence of the night when the soul is freed from its shackles and discards its apparel, and it will reveal to you the mysteries of this prophet and the mysteries of all the prophets that preceded him.
I believe, my friend, that there is enough resolution in this translucent element for an atom of it to move a mountian;...

This book is only a small part of what i have and of what i see every day, a small part only of the many things yearning for expression in the silent hearts of men and in their souls. There has never been anyone on the face of this earth with the ability to achieve anything by himself, as an individual completely cut off from all other human company. Nor is there anyone among us today who is able to do more than record what people say inadvertantly. The Prophet, May, is only the first letter of a single word ... In the past i was under the impression that this word was mine, in me and derived from me;for that reason i was unable to pronounce the first letter of that word. My inability to do so was the cause of my illness, indeed the cause of my soul's pain and suffering. After that God willed that my eyes be opened so that i could see the light, and God willed that my ears be opened so that i could hear other people pronounce this first letter, and God willed that i should open my lips and repeat that letter. I repeat it with joy and delight because for the first time i recognised that other people are everything and that i with my separate self am nothing. No-one knows better than you what freedom, comfort and tranquillity this realisation brought me, and no-one knows better than you about the feelings of someone who finds himself released from the prison of his own limited self."

"Oh, I wish you knew how weary i am of this unnecessary confusion; if you only knew how much i need simplicity. I wish you knew how much i long for the absolute, the white absolute, the absolute in the storm, the absolute on the cross, the absolute that cries but does not hide its tears, and the absolute that laughs and is not embarrassed by its laughter - I wish you knew, i wish you knew."

"...every heart has its special Qiblah, every heart has a special direction towards which it turns when it is all alone. Every heart has a hermitage to which it retires by itself to seek comfort and consolation. Every heart yearns for another heart with which it may join in order to enjoy life's blessings and peace or forget life's pain and suffering."

Come Rain or Come Shine

I'm gonna love you, like nobody's loved you
Come rain or come shine
High as a mountain, deep as a river
Come rain or come shine

I guess when you met me
It was just one of those things
But don't you ever bet me
'Cause I'm gonna be true if you let me

You're gonna love me, like nobody's loved me
Come rain or come shine
We'll be happy together, unhappy together
Now won't that be just fine

The days may be cloudy or sunny
We're in or out of the money
But I'm with you always
I'm with you rain or shine

He: your breast on my breast, eh? We could go, with our nostrils full of air,
into the cool light of the blue good morning that bathes you in the wine of
daylight? .. When the whole shivering wood bleeds, dumb with love, from every
branch green drops, pale buds, you can feel in things unclosing the quivering
flesh: you would bury in the Lucerne your white gown, changing to rose-colour in
the fresh air the blue tint which encircles your great black eye, in love with
the country, scattering everywhere, like champagne bubbles, your crazy laughter:
laughing at me, suddenly, drunkenly - I should catch you like this - lovely
hair, ah!  - I should drink in your taste of raspberry and strawberry, oh
flower-flesh! Laughing at the fresh wind kissing you like a thief, at the wild
rose teasing you pleasantly: laughing more than anything, oh madcap, at your
lover!...

(Seventeen! You'll be so happy! Oh the big meadows! The wide loving countryside!
- Listen, come closer!.)Your breast on my breast, mingling our voices, slowly
we'd reach the stream; then the great woods!... Then, like a little ghost, your
heart fainting, you'd tell me to carry you, your eyes half closed.

I'd carry your quivering body along the path: the bird would spin out his
andante: Hard by the hazel tree..

I'd speak into your mouth; and go on, pressing your body like a little girl's I
was putting to bed, drunk with the blood that runs blue under your white skin
with its tints of rose: and speaking to you in that frank tongue.. There!...
that you understand. Our great woods would smell of sap, and the sunlight would
dust with fine gold their great green and bronze dream.

In the evening? . We'd take the white road which meanders, like a grazing herd,
all over the place.

Oh pleasant orchards with blue grass and twisted apple trees! How you can smell
a whole league off their strong perfume! We'd get back to the village when the
sky was half dark; and there'd be a smell f milking in the evening air; it would
smell of the cowshed full of manure, filled with the slow rhythm of breathing,
and with great backs gleaming under some light or other; and right down at the
far end there'd be a cow dunging proudly at every step. - Grandmother's
spectacles and her long nose deep in her missal; the jug of beer circled with
pewter foaming among the big-bowled pipes gallantly smoking: and the frightful
blubber lips which, still puffing, snatch ham from forks: so much, and more: the
fire lighting up the bunks and the cupboards.

The shining fat buttocks of the fat baby on his hands and knees who nuzzles into
the cups; his white snout tickled by a gently growling muzzle that licks all
over the round face of the little darling.

(Black and haughty on her chair's edge, a terrifying profile, an old woman in
front of the embers, spinning) What sights we shall see, dearest, in those
hovels, when the bright fire lights up the grey window panes!...- And then,
small and nestling right inside the cool dark lilacs: the hidden window smiling
in there.

You'll come! You will come! I love you so! It will be lovely. You will come,
won't you? And even.

She: - And what about my office?

-- Rimbaud August 15, 1870

En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la ma𠭡
en el mueso de la escarcha
Hay un salon con mil ventanas

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

Este vals, este vals, este vals,
de si, de muerte y de conac
que moja su cola en el mar

Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancolico pasillo
en el oscuro desvan del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que sue🟬a tortuga.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

En Viena hay cuatro espejos
donde juegan tu boca y los ecos,
Hay una muerte para piano,
que pinta de azul a los muchachos.
Hay mendigos por los tejados
Hay frescas guirnaldas de llanto

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

Porque te quiero, te quiero, amor mio,
en el desvan donde juegan los ni𮱬
so𠭤o viejas luces de Hungria
por los rumores de la tarde tibia,
viendo ovejas y lirios de nieve
por el silencio oscuro de tu frente.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

En viena bailare contigo
con un disfraz que tenga
cabeza de rio.
Mira que orillas tengo de jacintos
Dejare mi boca entre tus piernas,
mi alma en fotografias y azucenas,
y en las ondas oscuras de tu andar
quiero, amor mio, amor mio, dejar,
violin y sepulcro, las cintas del vals.

-- Federico Garcia Lorca

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
     who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
     who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
     Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
     who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
    'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
    after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
     'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
     and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
     "I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

      -- Monty Python
      
      
Although i conquer all the earth,
yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there.
The shining joy and jewel of all my
kingdom.
        -- Sanskrit poem
        


Elizabeth
  
I should tell you a story,
The night is already so late-
Do you want to torment me,
Lovely Elizabeth?

I write poems about that,
Just as you do;
And the entire history of my love
Is you and this  evening.

You mustn't be troublesome,
And blow these poems away.
Soon you will listen to them,
Listen, and not understand.

    -- Herman Hesse


A LITTLE ON THE SOUL

Periodically one has a soul.
Nobody has it all the time and forever.

Day after day, year after year
can pass without it.

Sometimes only in rapture
and in fears of childhood
it dwells within longer.
Sometimes only in the astonishment,
that we have become old.

It rarely assists us
in strenuous pursuits,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases
or tromping through a road in tight shoes.

While filling in forms
and chopping meat
it usually takes the day off.

In a thousand of our conversations
it participates in one,
and not even necessarily in one,
preferring silence.

When our bodies start aching more and more,
it silently leaves the ward.

It's fussy:
it doesn't see us immediately in a crowd,
it sickens at our attempts at mere advantage
and the shrill clamor of business.

Joy and sorrow
are not all that different to it.
Only in the combination of them
does it stand up.

We can rely on it,
when we are certain of nothing,
and when everything seizes us.

Among all material objects
it likes best clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which work fervently,
Even when nobody looks.

It doesn't say where it comes from
and when it will disappear next,
But it clearly awaits such questions.

It looks like,
as much as we need it,
also it
needs us for something too.

	--Wisława Szymborska
	(Translated from the Polish by Rick Hilles & Maja Jablonska)



The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

	--Wisława Szymborska
	(Transl. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)