Poems We Love - a place to share poetry

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[wind5001]

Thanks peter and Glenda,

that is what makes his poems so appealing to me...they are full of life. I have a signed copy of one of his books and he signs like this: "Ko Un!" This exclamation mark to me shows his vividness and his strong will of being alive and being present at whatever place he is. His vita is very interesting: he lived as a Buddhist monk for over 10 years before he decided to get engaged in the democratic movements of his back then authoritarian country. He was imprisoned for many, many years, being tortured. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to meet him at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2005, when Korea was Guest of Honour there. He slipped my grasp...

Oli

[RichardF]

Here's one I barely can read to my wife, which I did today.  I like the following adapted version better than the original.

The Paradoxical Commandments
by Kent M. Keith

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may just never be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it's all between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

[wind5001]

Richard: 

[Jill]

KivaFriends has a special poet among us.

       Tonight, when I was supposed to be packing, instead I found myself rifling through her book. 
I'd ordered it after I read about it in her Introduction.
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,98.150.html
Reply #152.   See her Reply #154, too -- same page, same thread.   Really interesting, poignant.

      On my way out of here, I thought I'd offer you a sampling of her poetry with the hope that some of you might PM her and invite her to participate more with us here at the Forum.  Her book contains quite an eclectic and fascinating collection.
Here are a couple of examples....

                       Loggerheads
                              
                                for Lars

From the surface
we sank below silence into
unfathomable silence, and you
being a sea turtle
have less need for air

this isn't to condemn you but to say,
I miss you

you linger below green waves
with your ancient beak and flippers
complacent and content
but still, when I think of you
I am reminded of birds in
flight and rising winds
evolution and something smoldering

because I build sand castles
you underestimate the waiting I do
or perhaps you imagine I'm
calling dolphins to me

if I write you a poem and
you see it, you'll send one back
from the quietness
not one you've written

but one you discover
among reefs and plankton
some obscure poet for me to love
tossed like a polished stone, a gift
from deep waters

I am waiting

                       Lisa Haynes

 
   

[Jill]

       And this excerpt is from her poem,

"What Walter Has to Say About The Army" :

"..... when God wears a green beret, watch out.  beneath it he
carries war and rumors of war the same color as his
righteous anger and suddenly you know he's looking for a
sacrifice.  there is a heavenly lottery.  you don't want to get
caught looking in his direction at the wrong time.  he comes
in the body of a drill sergeant and if you don't recognize
him he'll turn you into a pillar of salt.  he marks it all down
in the Book of Life and hands you your discharge papers...."
                                                                       
                                                     Lisa Haynes

[wind5001]

Another Ko Un poem that has grabbed my imagination and gone right to my heart:

At the window

What kind of wishes remain for me?

The distance.
The closeness.

[Peter S]

Armada, by Brian Patten

Long, long ago
when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now,
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.

A broken fortress of twigs,
the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines -
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond.
And you, mother, stood behind me,
impatient to be going,
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us.
In a hospital a mile or so from that pond
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,
reach out across forty years to touch once more
that pond’s cool surface,
and it is your cool skin I’m touching;
for as on a pond a child’s paper boat
was blown out of reach
by the smallest gust of wind,
so too have you been blown out of reach
by the smallest whisper of death,
and a childhood memory is sharpened,
and the heart burns as that armada burnt,
long, long ago.

~~~~~~~~~

[Peter S]

I came across this poem a while ago.
It has stayed with me - to use a word that's in the poem itself, it reverberates...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eulogy, by Brian Turner

      It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
      as tower guards eat sandwiches
      and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
      Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
      though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
      The sound reverberates down concertina coils
      the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
      And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
      when Private Miller pulls the trigger
      to take brass and fire into his mouth:
      the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
      a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
      and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
      blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
      crackle over the radio in static confusion,
      because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
      and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
      down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
         
                                  PFC B. Miller
                                  (1980-March 22, 2004)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brian Turner has left the US Army, and is now a teacher in Fresno.

Here he is reading Eulogy at Bowdoin College.  Explore elsewhere on that From the Fishouse site for more by him.

Here's an interview on NPR, and he reads a couple other of his poems

He has a blog in the New York Times "Homefires" series - interesting from a Kiva & "development" point of view is his recent trip to Uganda

I found a good intelligent SF Chronicle article about him.

This is the Amazon (USA) page for "Here, Bullet", in which Eulogy appears. 

[Jill]

       Poetry.... at 3:54 on a Saturday morning. Poetry at any time of the day or night, if it speaks or sings to you, is a present.
     Peter, I really liked your "Brian" poems... especially the Armada one.
Here are a few that "spoke" to me.

Don't forget (Many of you already know the mantra):
      Poetry is much more fun and you have a better chance of it touching you if you Read It Out Loud.
         
         These two spoke my heart when I first knew
the inexpressible joy and exaltation of being in love.
What I felt.......
                                                   
I fly
through
blue sky
to
you
sweet love
feet
move
so
slow
     -John Ciardi-                                      
               
               
                                            
    “ ... and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes
    and then he asked me would I yes ....
    and first I put my arms around him yes
    and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume         
    yes
    and his heart was going like mad
    and yes I said yes I will Yes. ”

                           from  Ulysses
                           by  James Joyce
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one made me think of my mom....

TRAVELER’S SONG

My loving mother thread in hand,

Mended the coat I have on now,

Stitch by stitch, just before I left home.

Thinking that I might be gone a long time.

How can a blade of grass

Ever repay the warmth of the spring sun?
                                                          -Meng Jia-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These poems mirrored for me the NATURE that I love ....

                                        FUELED

               Fueled
               by a million
               man-made
               wings of fire---
               the rocket tore a tunnel
               through the sky---
               and everybody cheered.
               Fueled
               only by a thought from God---
               the seedling
               urged its way
               through the thicknesses of black---
               and as it pierced
               the heavy ceiling of the soil---
               and launched itself
               up into outer space---
               no
               one
               even
               clapped.
                     -Marcie Hans-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                TO LOOK AT ANY THING

            To look at any thing,
            If you would know that thing,
            You must look at it long:
            To look at this green and say
            “I have seen spring in these
            Woods,” will not do -- you must
            Be the thing you see:
            You must be the dark snakes of
            Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
            You must enter in
            To the small silences between
            The leaves,
            You must take your time
            And touch the very peace
            They issue from.             
                                                          -John Moffitt-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

See the little kids of that wood drake of the poem, here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      And this one, well, I just liked it....
"HAPPINESS"

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me
     what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
     thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I
     was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the
     Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their
     women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
                                                     -Carl Sandburg-

                        

                                                               

[Peter S]

... I really liked your "Brian" poems... especially the Armada one.

I really hadn't noticed that coincidence of first names until you pointed it out Jill.

Yes that closing Molly Bloom soliloquy from Joyce's Ulysses is poetry, yes.

The whole of it is here for anyone with plenty of time on their hands to travel from the opening "yes" to the magnificent "yes" at the end:
http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/18/

I had to get to grips with Ulysses as an undergrad.  Took three readings to get "inward" with it, but I'm so glad I did.