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Fix It

But a grey
Leaf of memories is my
Broken haiku

poem by Bob Axell
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The Ballad of the White Horse

DEDICATION

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood

[...] Read more

poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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The House Of Dust: Complete

I.

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

II.

[...] Read more

poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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Everything Is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds
Aint no use jivin, aint no use jokin
Everything is broken
Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts, streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken
Seems like every time you stop and turn around
Someone else has just hit the ground
Broken cutters, broken saws, broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones, broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like youre chokin
Everything is broken
Every time you leave and go off some place
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken plows, broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools, people bending broken rules
Hound dog howlin, bullfrog croakin
Everything is broken

song performed by Bob Dylan
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Everything Is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Aint no use jiving,
Aint no use joking,
Everything is broken.
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
Seems like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like youre chokin,
Everything is broken.
Every time you leave and go off someplace
Thangs fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.

song performed by Kenny Wayne Shepherd
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Seasonable Retour-Knell

SEASONABLE RETOUR KNELL
Variations on a theme...
SEASONABLE ROUND ROBIN ROLE REVERSALS

Author notes

A mirrored Retourne may not only be read either from first line to last or from last to first as seen in the mirrors, but also by inverting the first and second phrase of each line, either rhyming AAAA or ABAB for each verse. thus the number of variations could be multiplied several times.- two variations on the theme have been included here but could have been extended as in SEASONABLE ROUND ROBIN ROLE REVERSALS robi03_0069_robi03_0000

In respect of SEASONABLE ROUND ROBIN ROLE REVERSALS
This composition has sought to explore linguistic potential. Notes and the initial version are placed before rather than after the poem.
Six variations on a theme have been selected out of a significant number of mathematical possibilities using THE SAME TEXT and a reverse mirror for each version. Mirrors repeat the seasons with the lines in reverse order.

For the second roll the first four syllables of each line are reversed, and sense is retained both in the normal order of seasons and the reversed order as well... The 3rd and 4th variations offer ABAB rhyme schemes retaining the original text. The 5th and 6th variations modify the text into rhyming couplets.

Given the linguistical structure of this symphonic composition the score could be read in inversing each and every line and each and every hemistitch. There are minor punctuation differences between versions.

One could probably attain sonnet status for each of the four seasons and through partioning in 3 groups of 4 syllables extend the possibilites ad vitam.

Seasonable Round Robin Roll Reversals
robi03_0069_robi03_0000 QXX_DNZ
Seasonable Retour-Knell
robi03_0070_robi03_0069 QXX_NXX
26 March 1975 rewritten 20070123
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllll
For previous version see below
_______________________________________
SPRING SUMMER

Life is at ease Young lovers long
Land under plough; To hold their dear;
Whispering trees, Dewdrops among,
Answering cow. Bold, know no fear.

Blossom, the bees, Life full of song,
Burgeoning bough; Cloudless and clear;
Soft-scented breeze, Days fair and long,
Spring warms life now. Summer sends cheer.

AUTUMN WINTER

Each leaf decays, Harvested sheaves
Each life must bow; And honeyed hives;
Our salad days Trees stripped of leaves,
Are ending now. Jack Frost has knives.

Fruit heavy lays Time, Prince of thieves,
Bending the bough, - Onward he drives,

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Grey Wolves Grey

The Russian march is soft and slow,
Through dust and heat, or slush and snow,
When the Russian skies hang grey and low
To the frontiers far where the Russians go;
And they march to-night and they march to-day
Like the grey wolves grey, like the grey wolves grey.
Nor song nor sound their track reveals,
Save the ceaseless “clock” of the waggon wheels;
But a rift in the mist shows a glint of sun
On the long, dark shape of a toiling gun;
And they strain by night and they drag by day
To a distant goal, like the grey wolves grey.

As the horses toil at the ends of trains,
And the ends of roads on the Blacksoil Plains.
And Ivan digs in the frozen clay,
And he rolls the logs a bed to lay
For a gun that’s five hundred miles away,
But as sure to come as the grey wolves grey.

He is marching on with a purpose grand,
For brother Slav in another land;
Whose tongue, perchance, he cannot understand.—
But he knows the cry from the far-away,
And he smells the blood like the grey wolves grey.

And Ivan’s wife in her den at home,
While hunger looms and his lean wolves come—
With her grey-black bread like the Darling mud,
And her tea-bricks bound with the bullock’s blood—
She shields her cubs by night and day
Like the crouching sluts of the grey wolves grey.

And I march with Ivan where’er he be,
With the foreign blood that is strong in me,
And the love and the hate that is fantasy,
Like the ghosts of a father’s memory.
With the blood that is strange to us to-day
As the strange wild blood of the grey wolves grey.
Grey wolves,
Grey wolves—
The strange wild blood of the grey wolves grey.

poem by Henry Lawson
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Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin

BOOK I

S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.

Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,
The swift innumerable spears,
The horsemen with their floating hair,
And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,
Those merry couples dancing in tune,
And the white body that lay by mine;
But the tale, though words be lighter than air.
Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,

But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft bosom rose and fell.

S. Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.

Oisin. 'Why do you wind no horn?' she said
'And every hero droop his head?
The hornless deer is not more sad
That many a peaceful moment had,
More sleek than any granary mouse,
In his own leafy forest house
Among the waving fields of fern:
The hunting of heroes should be glad.'

'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,
'We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain

[...] Read more

poem by William Butler Yeats
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Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament (excerpt)

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a wither'd leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"

For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead.
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' mid air
Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree
Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind
Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
And all unscarr'd from beak or talon, brought
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,
Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young life
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold
Past from her; and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
"Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize."

To whom the King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honour after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear."

"Would rather you had let them fall," she cried,
"Plunge and be lost--ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me!--ye look amazed,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as given--
Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out
Above the river--that unhappy child
Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Last Tournament

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, `Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?'

For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air
Bearing an eagle's nest: and through the tree
Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind
Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
And all unscarred from beak or talon, brought
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,
Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
And named it Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young life
Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold
Past from her; and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
`Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.'

To whom the King, `Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honour after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear.'

`Would rather you had let them fall,' she cried,
`Plunge and be lost-ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me!-ye look amazed,
Not knowing they were lost as soon as given-
Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out
Above the river-that unhappy child
Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Memories

Memories of good times
Memories of bad times
Memories of our love
So many memories

Memories of us crying
Memories of us laughing
Memories of our commitment
So many memories

Memories of us hugging
Memories of us kissing
Memories of those late nights
So many memories

Memories of how we met
Memories of how you left
Memories of what you said
So many memories

Why did you leave me
with so many memories
Did you ever realize
that my memories are yours

Everything we did together
stays within our memories
I remember getting hurt
Do you hurt too

Let's make a new memory
that we can both share
Let's love again
in our memories

poem by Adam McKim
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Edge Of A Broken Heart

And there I stood, just like a soldier
I was tough, until I saw her
I said hello, but she just turned away
Hey romeo, whatcha doin with my girl,
Who are you using now, well I turn and walk away (turn and walk away)
Im gonna please her, now you can believe it
Ill be there to catch her when she falls
Oooo, here I am (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im a man (on the edge of a broken heart)
Here we stand (on the edge of a broken heart)
So run if you can cause you know
Im a man on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the outside, looking inside
Youre with him, whos on the wrong side now
Do you still think of me
Ive tried to call, but no one answers
Two silhouettes, a private dancer
Lights go dim, as the music starts to fade, away (turn and walk away)
Im the one who needs you, now you can believe it
Ill be there to catch you when you fall
Ooo you better believe Im the man (on the edge of a broken heart)
Here I am (on the edge of a broken heart)
And we stand (on the edge of a broken heart)
So run if you can cause you know
Im a man on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Solo
Ooohh
And when I hold out my hands Ill be reaching for you
I give it all that Ive got, thats all I can do
When youre waiting for love
Ill be waiting for you (on the edge of a broken heart)
Only for you (on the edge of a broken heart)
Oh baby for you (on the edge of a broken heart)
So run if you can, you know
Im a man on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the edge (on the edge of a broken heart)
Im on the edge (of a broken, broken, broken broken, broken, broken, broken)

song performed by Bon Jovi
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Grey, Grey Sky

Someday I will ride the great bird
Into the sky, into the grey
And will take a bright secret of mine
Into the grey, grey sky.

And the light will come, piercing my eyes
Out of the sky, out of the grey
Come blinding and searing these eyes
Out of the grey, grey sky.

And I will find comfort in this
In the wide sky, in the wide grey
In the painful dark brightness of light
Light of the grey, grey sky.

My secret will fly away home
Into the sky, into the grey
And the great bird will follow it there
Into the grey, grey sky.

And I will be riding that bird
Bird of the sky, bird of the grey
And I will come home once again
Home to the grey, grey sky.

But for now I am weighted, earthbound
One of the mud, one of the ground
And I write this sad song to sad sound
Girl of the pavement sighs.

poem by Grace Hutton
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Memories

Memories
All I have is memories
All I have is memories
Memories of you
Now youre gone
They linger on, these memories
All these precious memories
Memories of you
How they linger in the twilight
In the morning in the small hours
Just before dawn
Memories
Of summer days so long ago
People in the places
That we used to know
Oh those memories
How they linger in the twilight
And in the wee small hours
Sometime just before the dawn
Oh those memories
Oh happy times those memories
All I have now is memories
Memories of you
Oh memories
All those precious memories
All I have is memories
Memories of you

song performed by Van Morrison
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Memories in the mind

Memories are made in the mind,
and there if you search, you will find.
There in the mind, so many things,
so many memories it brings.

So many years have passed,
of our youth, away we have cast
some memories happy, some memories sad,
memories have I, when I was a lad.

Memories have I, of a dog named shep,
memories of him, when he kept in step.
Memories of my friends, when we played,
of those days, for ever memories relayed.

Memories of family and fun,
when we talked until the setting of sun.
Memories of washing our fifty-seven Ford,
and wanting things we couldn't afford.

Memories are made in the mind,
long lost, search and you will find,
memories of days gone by,
searching memories, oh how you try.

Memories will fade out,
you have forgotton, what it's about,
memories lost in the mind,
dig them out and you will find.

poem by Jim Foulk
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A Dream of Venice

NUMB, half asleep, and dazed with whirl of wheels,
And gasp of steam, and measured clank of chains,
I heard a blithe voice break a sudden pause,
Ringing familiarly through the lamp-lit night,
“Wife, here's your Venice!”
I was lifted down,
And gazed about in stupid wonderment,
Holding my little Katie by the hand—
My yellow-haired step-daughter. And again
Two strong arms led me to the water-brink,
And laid me on soft cushions in a boat,—
A queer boat, by a queerer boatman manned—
Swarthy-faced, ragged, with a scarlet cap—
Whose wild, weird note smote shrilly through the dark.
Oh yes, it was my Venice! Beautiful,
With melancholy, ghostly beauty—old,
And sorrowful, and weary—yet so fair,
So like a queen still, with her royal robes,
Full of harmonious colour, rent and worn!
I only saw her shadow in the stream,
By flickering lamplight,—only saw, as yet,
White, misty palace-portals here and there,
Pillars, and marble steps, and balconies,
Along the broad line of the Grand Canal;
And, in the smaller water-ways, a patch
Of wall, or dim bridge arching overhead.
But I could feel the rest. 'Twas Venice!—ay,
The veritable Venice of my dreams.

I saw the grey dawn shimmer down the stream,
And all the city rise, new bathed in light,
With rose-red blooms on her decaying walls,
And gold tints quivering up her domes and spires—
Sharp-drawn, with delicate pencillings, on a sky
Blue as forget-me-nots in June. I saw
The broad day staring in her palace-fronts,
Pointing to yawning gap and crumbling boss,
And colonnades, time-stained and broken, flecked
With soft, sad, dying colours—sculpture-wreathed,
And gloriously proportioned; saw the glow
Light up her bright, harmonious, fountain'd squares,
And spread out on her marble steps, and pass
Down silent courts and secret passages,
Gathering up motley treasures on its way;—

Groups of rich fruit from the Rialto mart,
Scarlet and brown and purple, with green leaves—
Fragments of exquisite carving, lichen-grown,
Found, 'mid pathetic squalor, in some niche
Where wild, half-naked urchins lived and played—

[...] Read more

poem by Ada Cambridge
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Broken

Till U come back 2 me
There'll be nothing left 2 say, no
Broken
My heart is broken, yeah
Broken, oh baby
My heart's just broken in 2
Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery
Broken, Lord
My heart is broken, Lord
Broken, yeah
My heart's just broken in 2
If U think that I'll beg 4 your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery
Lonely
I'm so lonely
Lonely
I don't know what do 2
Until U bring your sweet pussy, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery
Cryin'
I'm just a-cryin'
I'm just a-cryin', baby, all night
I don't know what 2 do
Until U bring your sweet honey, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery
Oh oh, baby
Until U, baby
Until U, baby, Lord
Until U, baby
Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery
Cymbals!
Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone, baby
Broken-hearted man alone, baby
Broken-hearted man alone in misery

song performed by Prince
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Rubaiyat Of A Robin - After Edward Fitzgerald - Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam

Jest plays with rubaiyat and, four by four,
unseals for your amusement more and more
verses together thread in rosary
unreeled to bloom till tomb will curtains draw.

Repealed are value judgement and perspective
revealed through standpoint purely introspective,
darkside concealed of moon’s yin-yang shines clear
when we’re in orbit, - option more effective.

Rolled form performs rôle midwife to perception,
sprung tongue in cheek, tweaks sense of imperfection
or willingness to leach between the lines,
impeach entrenched ideas of self-[s]election.

This prose arose as stream deprived of section,
where ‘dip at will’ will still sustain inspection,
the current’s sense, at odds with current views
ignores round holes, square pegs, top-down direction.

Here there’s no fear of critics’ peer rejection,
contention treated with due circumspection
intention is to mention for retention
an overview or clue to extrospection.

Life’s curtains are a veil through which few see,
as many haste taste-waste eternity,
mixed up, ignore life fixes finite sum
to/through infinite opportunity.

Can “Truth” exist? all ask, who seek its core,
we, modest, etch our words to sketch the score,
diverse the verses which converge to link
reflections mirrored many times before.

Vast content, style, a while, united are,
aim at soul stimulation, nothing bar,
to pleasure, treasure, or discard at will
as minds outreach to other minds on par.

Meditating, we shed light on what
tomorrow’s tot may factor into ‘bot’ -
the poet’s lot, forgot, to help all think
ahead of time, enhance life for a lot

Some seek Nirvana, Faith speaks more than “how”.
Others reject Salvation’s wraith, - w[h]ine “now”.
Verifying facts? Inventing dreams?
Each furrow-burrows with a different plough.

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
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The Grey World

Grey nights in the wind,
And the grey-faced dead.
Grey hairs in my head,
And grey eyes in my mind.

Grey mists in the morn,
And grey waves that rave,
Grey mould on my grave,
And grey eyes forlorn.

Grey clouds in the sky,
And the grey world asleep,
Grey ghosts that sigh,
And grey eyes that weep.

poem by Leon Gellert
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Canto the Fourth

I.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O’er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

III.

In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone - but beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -
The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

V.

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poem by Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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An Athenian Reverie

How the returning days, one after one,
Came ever in their rhythmic round, unchanged,
Yet from each looped robe for every man
Some new thing falls. Happy is he
Who fronts them without fear, and like the gods
Looks out unanxiously on each day's gift
With calmly curious eye. How many things
Even in a little space, both good and ill,
Have fallen on me, and yet in all of them
The keen experience or the smooth remembrance
Hath found some sweet. It scarcely seems a month
Since we saw Crete; so swiftly sped the days,
Borne onward with how many changing scenes,
Filled with how many crowding memories.
Not soon shall I forget them, the stout ship,
All the tense labour with the windy sea,
The cloud-wrapped heights of Crete, beheld far off,
And white Cytaeon with its stormy pier,
The fruitful valleys, the wild mountain road,
And those long days of ever-vigilant toil,
Scarcely with sleepless craft and unmoved front
Escaping robbers, that quiet restful eve
At rich Gortyna, where we lay and watched
The dripping foliage, and the darkening fields,
And over all huge-browed above the night
Ida's great summit with its fiery crown;
And then once more the stormy treacherous sea,
The noisy ship, the seamen's vehement cries,
That battled with the whistling wind, the feet
Reeling upon the swaying deck, and eyes
Strained anxiously toward land; ah, with what joy
At last the busy pier at Nauplia,
Rest and firm shelter for our racking brains:
Most sweet of all, most dear to memory
That journey with Euktemon through the hills
By fair Cleonae and the lofty pass;
Then Corinth with its riotous jollity,
Remembered like a reeling dream; and here
Good Theron's wedding, and this festal day;
And I, chief helper in its various rites,
Not least, commissioned through these wakeful hours
To dream before the quiet thalamos,
Unsleeping, like some full-grown bearded Eros,
The guardian of love's sweetest mysteries.
To-morrow I shall hear again the din
Of the loosed cables, and the rowers' chaunt,
The rattled cordage and the plunging oars.
Once more the bending sail shall bear us on
Across the level of the laughing sea.
Ere mid-day we shall see far off behind us,

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poem by Archibald Lampman
Added by Poetry Lover
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