Post by sparrowsong09 on Mar 31, 2014 7:34:22 GMT -5
When I Heard the Learned Astronomer
When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Post by sparrowsong09 on Mar 31, 2014 7:44:55 GMT -5
I Confess
I stalked her in the grocery store; her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip her erect bearing, radiating tenderness, the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes in her basket, beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, “What aisle did you find your serenity, do you know how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone, excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis.” But we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays. So I said, “I love your hair.”
Post by sparrowsong09 on Mar 31, 2014 7:47:31 GMT -5
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere."
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"
I stalked her in the grocery store; her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip her erect bearing, radiating tenderness, the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes in her basket, beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, “What aisle did you find your serenity, do you know how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone, excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis.” But we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays. So I said, “I love your hair.”
-Alison Luterman
This is perfect. I may have done the same thing before.
I stalked her in the grocery store; her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip her erect bearing, radiating tenderness, the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes in her basket, beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, “What aisle did you find your serenity, do you know how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone, excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis.” But we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays. So I said, “I love your hair.”
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
I just found this thread. I want to roll around in it.
The Hollow Men T.S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead. A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar.
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer—
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.