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Dear Derek,

 

Well, I guess those two were my favorites. that is all i know.... huh.gif

Tried to read Robert Frost one time and gave up. Believe me I had trouble even understanding what i wrote... rolleyes.gif

 

And yes all is vanity .... i just make no pretense about it like you. tongue.gif

 

joseph

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Joe,

 

I too have been bemused by certain poems, particularly by those termed "modern", finding many impenetrable. This applies equally to those by Thomas Merton, which highlights the problem! Anyhow, one of my favorite poets is Philip Larkin who is more often than not easier to comprehend. Here's one........

 

 

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

 

They f**k you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

 

But they were f**ked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

 

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

 

Well, perhaps the concluding advice is rather harsh. Maybe better to seek not to be one of the "fools" referred to - yet this can be a little bit tricky at times! (Speaking of myself, it doesnt take much self-analysis to realise that I'm more in the "soppy" camp than the "stern", and I can't actually remember at any time going for my partners throat.....)

 

Hopefully this thread will soon have more contributionsfrom other members of the forum. All quotes, stories, verses welcome.

 

:)

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Derek,

 

OK. That is more my style. Now that is one I can understand. It was not much applicable to my parents and myself ( I CAME HERE MESSED UP ALREADY laugh.gif )

 

However I can surely understand and relate to it and would prefer the last line to read "and start looking for your self"

 

Joseph

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Joe,

 

Hey! "self" and "shelf"! You show promise.............

 

Just came here from peeping at another thread, where things look like getting nasty.

 

Maybe I'm just indulging myself, but here's another by Philip Larkin, this is called Faith Healing.....

 

Slowly the women file to where he stands

Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,

Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly

Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,

Within whose warm spring rain of loving care

Each dwells some twenty seconds. Now, dear child,

What's wrong, the deep American voice demands,

And, scarcely pausing, goes into a prayer

Directing God about this eye, that knee.

Their heads are clasped abruptly; then, exiled

 

Like losing thoughts, they go in silence; some

Sheepishly stray, not back into their lives

Just yet; but some stay stiff, twitching and loud

With deep hoarse tears, as if a kind of dumb

And idiot child within them still survives

To re-awake at kindness, thinking a voice

At last calls them alone, that hands have come

To lift and lighten; and such joy arrives

Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a crowd

Of huge unheard answers jam and rejoice -

 

What's wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:

By now, all's wrong. In everyone there sleeps

A sense of life lived according to love.

To some it means the difference they could make

By loving others, but across most it sweeps

As all they might have done had they been loved.

That nothing cures. An immense slackening ache,

As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,

Spreads slowly through them - that, and the voice above

Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.

 

I'll leave it for now, and hope a few more "voices" can be heard on this thread.

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Always liked "This be the verse" --must be Larkin's most famous poem.

 

Here is one by Louise Gluck, from her book THE WILD IRIS

 

The Red Poppy

 

The great thing

is not having a mind.

Feelings: oh, I have those;

they govern me. I have a lord

in heaven called the sun,

and open for him, showing him

the fire of my own heart,

fire like his presence.

What could such glory be if not a heart?

Oh my brothers and sisters,

were you once like me, long ago,

before you were human?

Did you permit yourselves

to open once, who would never

open again? Because in truth

I am speaking now

the way you do. I speak

because I am shattered.

Edited by rivanna
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Another one by Mary Oliver

 

MAYBE

 

Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness,

stood up in the boat

and the sea lay down, silky and sorry.

 

So everybody was saved that night.

But you know how it is

when something different crosses the threshold –

the uncles mutter together, the women walk away,

the young brother begins to sharpen his knife.

 

Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes, like wind over the water –

sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it.

 

Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed,

one or two of them felt the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight,

before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything,

gripped their bones

and left them miserable and sleepy,

 

as they are now,

forgetting how the wind tore at the sails

before he rose and talked to it –

tender and luminous and demanding as he always was –

a thousand times more frightening

than the killer sea.

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There are a couple of excerpts from longer poems that I have long considered "companions" to each other. Once I posted them on a Buddhist forum and asked the question: "Would you consider that these verses express Buddhist ideas?" Well, being a Buddhist forum the answers tended to range between "No, not Buddhist at all" to "Oh yes, very Buddhist indeed!"...and all points in between! Now I no longer really care just what "faith" they may - or may not - have to do with. Pondering them, for me, gives tantalising hints of many things.......

 

 

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not

find it

Until you have looked everywhere and found nowhere

that is not a desert. (W.H.Auden)

 

 

 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. (T.S.Eliot)

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Another favorite of mine, this by R S Thomas, entitled "The Kingdom"

 

 

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.

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Another by R.S Thomas. Titled "H'm".........

 

and one said

speak to us of love

and the preacher opened

his mouth and the word God

fell out so they tried

again speak to us

of God then but the preacher

was silent reaching

his arms out but the little

children the ones with

big bellies and bow

legs that were like

a razor shell

were too weak to come

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Beautiful poems - Edward Thomas I’m familiar with, but this name was new to me.

 

here is another by Franz Wright –so many good ones in God’s Silence it’s hard to choose. Though his life has been full of anguish and addiction (his father James Wright, a well known poet, abandoned him when he was a child), his writing always aches to get beyond his own private demons and drama toward a larger order – sometimes with ironic wit /detachment, more often a blend of passion / compassion--

 

Why is the Winter Light

 

Why is the winter light disturbing,

and who if anyone shares this impression?

 

Surrounded by so vast a cloud of witnesses

why do I feel this alone

in the first place?

 

Why do I want to live forever,

and the next day fervently wish I had died

when I was young? Why do I abruptly feel blessed?

 

Empty me of the bitterness and disappointment

of being nothing but myself

Immerse me in the mystery of reality

Fill me with love for the truly afflicted

Awaken me to the reality of this place

And from the longed for or remembered place

And more than this, behind each face

induct, oh introduce me

into the halting soundless words of others’ thoughts

Blot me out, fill me with nothing but consciousness

of the holiness, the meaning of these unseeable,

all these unvisitable worlds which surround me:

others’ actual thoughts – everything I can’t perceive

yet know

 

know it is there.

Edited by rivanna
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rivanna,

 

really like the Franz Wright poem, so real in parts. Wishing to "live forever" but then.........I'll look him up at some time. I've always liked R.S.Thomas, but more his earlier poems. Later they become cryptic and impenetrable, at least to me! (Could be a way of admitting that I'm slightly thick! :D )

 

Well, time for a quote, from Julian of Norwich (Her words could be mirrored by some of the Pure Land hymns of Shinran, but as we are on a Christian Forum.....)

 

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown, that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

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Julian of Norwich is great. Franz Wright is perhaps a bit too dark. This time of year with the shorter colder days affects my whole outlook, despite the fact that holidays are just around the corner (and I’m way behind on preparations!)

 

A short quote from poet Louise Bogan -

 

“I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!”

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rivanna, the words of Louise Bogan brought to mind a few words by some Buddhist sage from the long past, I think more associated with Ch'an (Zen) than Pure Land. They float on the edge of my mind and I'm unable to trace them, but the meaning was that there is just a hairs breath between nirvana and samsara. I think that perhaps the tragedy is that we spend our entire lives seeking to make samsara more comfortable, instead of taking the short "leap" into nirvana! Ahhh! Anyway, these thoughts in turn have prompted the memory of the following poem by Maya Angelou, which you may be familiar with.

 

I know why the caged bird sings....

 

The free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wings

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

 

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

 

The caged bird sings

with fearful trill

of the things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill for the caged bird

sings of freedom

 

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

 

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

 

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

 

Just to add a note of humour to these musings of mine, there is a small verse written by the comedian Spike Milligan, where he adapts some words from "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. No prizes fo guessing just where Blakes words end and Milligans begin!

 

The Robin Redbreast in a cage

Puts all heaven in a rage,

But not the Lesser Spotted Twit

She doesn't mind a bit.

 

:)

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Dear Joe,

 

Thanks for your contribution to this thread. Given that I asked for favorite poetry and quotes, the fact that you have now posted two of your own pieces compels me to offer the following quote......

 

Ecclesiastes 1:2 All is vanity

 

;):P

 

 

LOL!

 

I think it's terribly easy to pick a favorite poem from a range of existing authors and works.

 

I think it's both more difficult and more creative to write one of your own, and think very well of it to boot. We've grown into a society where people increasingly think very little of themselves and what they have to contribute to society. If we aren't famous, we have nothing worth reading... so I say all power to JM ;)

 

Here's two of my own work that I happen to enjoy :D

 

And just to pacify the masses... one from a different author ;)

 

 

 

---------------------------------

 

The Child

 

 

I

 

Everything drowns in grey overtones

and people, unaware of cautious sight,

step gently to avoid dark holes

and prune the flowers 'round the outer rim.

Except, one child, a curiosity of sorts

with ice-fresh eyes and straw-toned hair

turns back to move against the crowd.

 

II

 

Something no one ever saw in a black and white world

their backs to see and faces to ignore

This light that seems the end of Earth, he sees

with piercing gaze, and reaches, feels, but cannot touch

and lives in life like no one ever tried.

Music from a far off place, a song

a smile, in faded pink, yet lost.

 

III

 

Grand innocence beauty doth abide

to fight lurking clouds, moored above the lake -

but nurture's strained, and Nature can't contend

the fog and mist, unknown, conspire defeat.

And turning from the bright horizon here

he takes the only hand he ever knew

and dies.

 

 

 

---------------------------------

 

I walk alone

 

I walk alone, but not dejected,

not upset and not rejected,

not embossed with tear-stained eyes,

complacent under sundry skies.

I've come full circle, here I stand

along this road with no demands,

unwinding candor strand by strand --

 

... the world just falls away.

 

 

---------------------------------

 

"Not All There" by Robert Frost

 

I turned to speak to God

About the world's despair;

But to make bad matters worse

I found God wasn't there.

 

God turned to speak to me

(Don't anybody laugh)

God found I wasn't there——

At least not over half.

Edited by ada
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ada,

 

Thank you for your attempt to pacify the masses (!! :) ) however, like Joseph I did find more in your own work. Thank you.

 

Here is a little vanity of my own, a naive childlike piece that I wrote many years ago. At the time we lived next door to a family who had a young child, Georgie, who unfortunately had been starved of oxygen at birth and had suffered brain damage. One day as I walked past their gate the mother, with Georgie in his push chair, was chatting to another lady. This lady bent down and ruffled little Georgie's hair and said..." Oh, he's a little angel, a little angel." For some reason I felt real anger, and still find it difficult to really articulate exactly why. Anyway, I wrote this.....written, I suppose, for his mother, though I never gave it to her.

 

see no wings on georgie

else he would be bound

set no seal upon him

place no fences round

 

see him not for what he could be

what he should or what he would be

see him as he is before you

see the living truth, see georgie

 

hope for guidance, hold no answers

in the morning when you wake him

as he casts his eyes upon you

your response can make or break him

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I've long had a great love for the poetry of William Blake. In the long long ago I often dipped into the prose of a guy called Malcolm Muggeridge, who wrote on various topics. Every now and agin, for one reason or another, he would colour his words with a couplet from Blake. Thses tiny snippets were alweays attractive to me, and one day when browsing in a book shop I just happened to see a copy of "The Portable Blake" at a knock-down price (always have had an eye for a bargain, being basically tight!) Anyway, I bought the book and my love affair with Blake began. Apparently, as I learnt from a little bit of biographical detail, the guy talked to angels.........this did make me think once that maybe he was just a little bit ga ga.....well, until yesterday, when I caught myself talking to some of the merchandise I was putting out on the shelves during my shift at the local store! Better to talk to angels than demister pads, methinks!

 

Well, perhaps I've waffled enough.......just one or two quotes from Blake that I have always loved, and often reflected upon for one reason or another.

 

God appears and God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day. (From Auguries of Innocence)

 

And from his long poem, "The Everlasting Gospel"

 

Loud Pilate Howl'd, loud Caiphas yell'd,

When they the Gospel Light beheld.

It was when Jesus said to Me,

"Thy sins are all forgiven thee."

 

and....

 

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

Is my Vision's Greatest Enemy:

Thine has a great hook nose like thine,

Mine has a snub nose like to mine;

Thine is the friend of All Mankind,

Mine speaks in parables to the Blind:

Thine loves the same world that mine hates,

Thy Heavens doors are my Hell Gates.

 

And as Blake said once....."If moral virtue were Christianity then Socrates was the Savior"

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Derek

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  • 2 weeks later...

My wife gave me adaybook of the thoughts of C. S. Lewis. Narnia was my last interaction with Lewis but the entry from January 26 will take the next few months to digest.

 

...life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

 

C. S. Lewis, the Great Divorce, Preface

 

Hmmmm

 

Dutch

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Greetings Dutch, good to see you again. Happy new year.

 

I guess the C.S. Lewis quote affirms the PC idea of “to each his (or her) own.”

 

Tariki, perhaps you won’t mind this rather well known poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, a native of northern Ontario:

 

The Invitation

 

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

 

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

 

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own. If you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, remember the limitations of being human.

 

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

 

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

 

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the fire with me and not shrink back.

 

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

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Dutch, nice for you to pop into the thread. Your quote is something to chew on.........golden lotus flowers.

 

rinanna, to be honest, after reading through the The Invitation a couple of times, I find it far too overwhelming, like a roaring tidalwave that just sweeps me away. Can't "live up" to that, making a list of how we ought to be, of how we are shaping up in someone elses eyes. I'd rather just fall short and rest in mercy and grace and then be surprised by joy on the odd ocassion.

 

well, thats how I see it...

 

:)

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Rivanna, Tariki,

thanks for the welcome.

 

The Invitation does seem overwhelming - maybe a verse a day.

 

The verse that I would choose is:

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

 

also -truth telling

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;

 

 

In "The Shack", which is part of my temporary canon, Mack didn't tell his wife about the note which may or may not have been from God because he thought he was protecting his wife. Abba observes that if Mack had told her then his wife would be fully free to make her own choice. She might even leave Mack, but Mack would be a truth teller which is better than any good Mack might have thought he was doing.

 

To be a vulnerable truth teller --

 

And there is Jonathan Star's translation of Tao Le Ching Chapter 6 which leaves me breathless.

 

Endlessly creating

Endlessly pulsating

The Spirit of the Valley never dies

She is called the Hidden Creator

 

Although She becomes the whole universe her immaculate purity is never lost

Although She assumes countless forms her true identity remains intact

Whatever we see or don't see

Whatever exists or doesn't exist

Is nothing but the creation of this Supreme Power

 

Tao is limitless, unborn, eternal--It can only be reached though the Hidden Creator

She is the very face of the Absolute

The gate to the source of all things eternal

 

Listen to her voice; hear it echo through creation

Without fail, She reveals her presence

Without fail, She brings us to our own perfection

 

Dutch

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Dutch,

 

The more the merrier! Just picking up on the line about whether a story is true or not............just a demonstration of how my dustbin of a mind spins off at tangents......what came into mind was the little saying I remember from somewhere...

 

When wrong person uses right means, right means work in wrong way.

 

 

Derek

 

:)

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Thought I would just post another by R.S.Thomas. He was a Anglican Priest who was given a parish in Wales, among the hill farmers. He came to love this land, and those people.

 

Anyway, "The Hill Farmer Speaks"

 

I am the farmer stripped of love

And thoughts and grace by the land's hardness;

But what I am saying over the fields'

Desolate acres, rough with dew,

Is, Listen, listen, I am a man like you.

 

The wind goes over the hill pastures

Year after year, and the ewes starve,

Milkless, for want of the new grass.

And I starve, too, for something the spring

Can never foster in veins run dry.

 

The pig is a friend, the cattle's breath

Mingles with mine in the still lanes;

I wear it willingly like a cloak

To shelter me from your curious gaze.

 

The hens go in and out at the door

From sun to shadow, as stray thoughts pass

Over the floor of my wide skull.

The dirt is under my cracked nails;

The tale of my life is smirched with dung;

The phlegm rattles. But what I am saying

Over the grasses rough with dew

Is, Listen, listen, I am a man like you.

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