Some of my favorite poetry... Rainer Maria Rilke [Duino Elegies] The First Elegy Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierachies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.  And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision; there remains for us yestereday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.  Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinte space gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for -- that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers? But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.  Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.  Yes -- the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and coming and often staying all night.)  But when you feel longing, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost) who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified. Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on, even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth. But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself, as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time. Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her"? Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly feed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension, so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself. For there is no place where we can remain.  Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly, kneeling and didn't notice at all: so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure God's voice -- far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young. Didn't their fate, whenever you stepped into a church in Naples or Rome, quietly come to address you? Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission, as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa. What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance Of injustice about their death -- which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.  Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer, to give up customs one barely had time to learn, not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human failure; no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave even one's own first name behind, forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy. Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity. -- Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created. Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it, through both realms forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.  In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth--: could we exist without them? Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus, the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and them in the startled space which a youth is as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us. Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming e.e. cummings unto thee i unto thee i burn incense the bowl crackles upon the gloom arise purple pencils fluent spires of fragrance the bowl seethes a flutter of stars a turbulence of forms delightful with indefinable flowering, the air is deep with desirable flowers i think thou lovest incense for in the ambiguous faint aspirings the indolent frail ascensions, of thy smile rises the immaculate sorrow of thy low hair flutter the level litanies unto thee i burn incense, over the dim smoke straining my lips are vague with ecstasy my palpitating breasts inhale the slow supple flower of thy beauty, my heart discovers thee unto whom i burn olbanum MARGARET ATWOOD Variation on the Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed that necessary. W.H. Auden Song IX Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead. Put crpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good Dorothy Parker I Know I Have Been Happiest I know I have been happiest at your side; But what is done, is done, and all's to be. And small the good, to linger dolefully- Gayly it lived, and gallantly it died. I will not make you songs of hearts denied, And you, being man, would have no tears of me, And should I offer you fidelity, You'd be, I think, a little terrified. Yet this the need of woman, this her curse: To range her little gifts, and give, and give, Because the throb of giving's sweet to bear. To you, who never begged me vows or verse, My gift shall be my absence, while I live; But after that, my dear, I cannot swear. Sting A Thousand Years A thousand years, a thousand more, A thousand times a million doors to eternity I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times An endless turning stairway climbs To a tower of souls If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars, The towers rise to numberless floors in space I could shed another million tears, a million breaths, A million names but only one truth to face A million roads, a million fears A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty I could speak a million lies, a million songs, A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time But if there was a single truth, a single light A single thought, a singular touch of grace Then following this single point, this single flame, The single haunted memory of your face I still love you I still want you A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves Like galaxies in my head I may be numberless, I may be innocent I may know many things, I may be ignorant Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief I still love you I still want you A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves Like galaxies in my head On and on the mysteries unwind themselves Eternities still unsaid 'Til you love me Spring Poems           more poetry...