Poetry

[Sub Zero 3308]

Look not above, there is no answer there;

Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;

Near is as near to God as any Far,

And Here is just the same deceit as There.

 

And do you think that unto such as you;

A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:

God gave the secret, and denied it me?

Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

 

"Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,

And at the same time make it sin to drink?

Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus

Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!"

 

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

[Ea. 8993]

There was once a lady named Kite,

Whose speed was faster than light,

She travelled one day on a mysterious way,

and returned on the previous night

[Ea. 8993]

Far from where I am

the threshold of silvery flakes

sifts the space of crumbly stars

 

- as if -

 

as if this was a mere reluctance to exist

below orbs of fused sunshine,

 

its attic, a solstice

that resonates, in a timorous glissando,

with the tone

of incipient, make-believe rains.

 

~ ~ Irina Moga

[Sub Zero 3308]

She Walks In Beauty

by George Gordon, Lord Byron

 

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

 

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

[Ea. 8993]

Edward Estlin Cummings

"I carry your heart with me "

 

I carry your heart with me

(I carry it in my heart)

I am never without it

(Anywhere i go you go, my dear;

And whatever is done by only me

Is your doing, my darling)

 

I fear no fate

(For you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world

(For beautiful you are my world, my true)

And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

And whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

And the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

Which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

 

I carry your heart...

(I carry it in my heart...)

[Ea. 8993]

[Ea. 8993]

[Ea. 8993]

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

'The breath goes now,' and some say, 'No:'

 

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

 

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

 

But we by a love so much refin'd,

That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

 

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the' other do.

 

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begun.

 

John Donne

[Sub Zero 3308]

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

[Ea. 8993]

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