Friday, December 28, 2018

Poetry...Because...



Let us remember . . . that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.  ~Christian Wiman

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I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
-- Lala, 14th century Persian poet

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If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. ~Derek Walcott


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Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies."

Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."

~William Congreve, The Way of the World

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Monday, December 24, 2018

In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti



In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light by Charles Wright

Sunny & Susie, custom Blythe dolls





As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light
By Charles Wright
 
The sky unrolls like a rug,
                                                unwelcoming, gun-grey,
Over the Blue Ridge.
Mothers are calling their children in,
                                                mellifluous syllables, floating sounds.
The traffic shimmies and settles back.

The doctor has filled his truck with leaves
Next door, and a pair of logs.
                                                Salt stones litter the street.
The snow falls and the wind drops.
How strange to have a name, any name, on this poor earth.

January hunkers down,
                                                the icicle deep in her throat---
The days become longer, the nights ground bitter and cold,
Single grain by single grain
Everything flows toward the structure,
                                                last ache in the ache for God.

1995
 
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I last posted this excellent poem in 2012.  I opened my "Norton Anthology of Poetry" to this poem this morning, just as I did that day six years ago.  It's quite worthy of a repeat.  

Please pray for my Mama or send good thoughts to her (Snow :-).  Her name is Juanita.  She's not doing well.  Thank you, my faithful readers & fellow poetry lovers.  I appreciate you all so much. 

xo,
Marion


“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”-C.S. Lewis

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Phoenix by Ijeoma Umebinyuo



Green!  Sunlight through my Fiddle Leaf Figs & pals...

Phoenix by Ijeoma Umebinyuo
From:  "Questions For Ada"

One day,
your bones will get weary
of men
who refuse to worship the God in you.
On that day,
you will either slit your soul
or gather your spirit
leaving any man
who has never called you
Holy.
Remember
how your mother kept her bones warm
on nights your father was far away.
So,
do not love a man who keeps you clinging
to the pillow for too many nights.
Stay away
from men who peel the skin
of other women, forcing you to wear them.
Remember how your mother struggled
to find her skin in the pile.
Do not
scratch your words,
soften your pain or scrub yourself in shame.
Do not
drown yourself in a man.
He will leave you struggling to breathe.
וווו×

All Things Pass...

(Moh-noh-noh-ah-wah-ray)

Buddha & my singing bowls...

Klimt

All Things Pass
By Timothy Leary, homage to Lao Tzu


All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass

 A cloudburst does not last all day 
All things pass 
Nor a sunset all night 

But Earth... sky... thunder... 
wind... fire... lake... 
mountain... water... 
These always change

And if these do not last 
Do man’s visions last? 
Do man’s illusions ? 

Take things as they come 
All things pass the

וווו×

RIP President George H. W. Bush