a boat

Sea Wind
by Tom Paulin
@

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=415

From The Owl in the Sarcophagus

By Wallace Stevens

"This was peace after death, the brother of sleep,
The inhuman brother so much like, so near,
Yet vested in a foreign absolute [...]"

Sea Rose

by H.D.

Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
More precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem --
you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?

Altarwise by Owl Light (IV)

By Dylan Thomas


What is the metre of the dictionary?
The size of genesis? the short spark's gender?
Shade without shape? the shape of Pharoah's ec?
(Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow).
What of a bamboo man among your acres?
Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy?
Button your bodice on a hump of splinters,
My camel's eyes will needle through the shroud.
Love's reflection of the mushroom features,
Stills snapped by night in the bread-sided field,
Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures,
Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood.

Thalassa

By Lois Macneice

Run out the boat, my broken comrades;
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge --
Here we must needs embark again.

Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let each horizon tilt and lurch --
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church --
But let your poison be your cure.

Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

Let it Go

by William Empson

It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

Water

By Philip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

To Whom Else?

by Robert Graves

To whom else other than,
To whom else not of man
Yet in human state,
Standing neither in stead
Of self nor idle godhead,
Should I, man in man bounded,
Myself dedicate?

To whom else momently,
To whom else endlessly,
But to you, I?
To you who only,
To you who mercilessly,
To you who lovingly,
Plucked out the lie?

To whom else less acquaint,
To whom else without taint
Of death, death-true?
With great astonishment
Thankfully I consent
To my estrangement
From me in you.

Probably Stevens's Sexiest Poem...

and pretty

The Plot against the Giant

First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.

Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.

Third Girl
Oh, la...le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.

(from "Harmonium," 1923)

Whitman

Yo.
Seeing as I have a copy of Whitman in front of me, he is the subject of today's post. My main observation about WW is that he sounds totally high. What's the story with that?

Here are some bits from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" from Sea-Drift (Book XIX of Leaves of Grass):


Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun!
While we bask, we two together.

Two together!
Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
While we two keep together. (lines 12-23)


Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
It is lagging -- O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love.

O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see there in the white? (lines 59-64)


Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray beach,
With the thousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
that strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle,
swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,)
The sea whisper'd me.

(last lines)

PS John thinks this is terrible.