Poetry Page

[BarbStAubrey]

Spring Poetry Famous Poets and Poems about Spring Spring Poems

Cuttings ~ Michael P. Garofalo Ahh, the wide almond groves in full white flower Stunning in the morning sun. Old naked Winter in his garb of grays and browns has run. Forsythia blooms Come and go in the blink of a yellow Eye, Then, suddenly, mysteriously, Green erupts; and we sigh. We would love you to Join us As our hearts race to meet Spring! Discussion Leaders: Barb & fairanna

[JoanK]

Jackie: thanks for the link. I am endlessly fascinated with haiku. A good haiku sinks deeper and deeper, with more and more meanings.

I read the link, and some that followed from it, and will spend more time with it later. I often compare three or four translations, and take the one I like best. My best sources are "The Essential Haiku: the poetry of Basho, buson, and Issa", Robert Hass editor, (he sometimes translates, sometimes uses another's) And Henderson: "Haiku", especially "Volume1 Eastern Thought"

[Babi]

Ow, Barb, that's harsh! How did she go from daughters playing to burning
at the stake? Brrr!

  JOAN, maybe you were Japanese in a previous life. 

[mrssherlock]

Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred More Japanese Poems has some lovely non-haikus.  Some, however, are the exchanges between lovers and refer to the night's intimacies more explicitly than I care for, feels voyeuristic.  Still worth it for the goodies:

Amidst the notes of
Of my koto is another
Deep mysterious tone,
A sound that comes from
Within my own breast.

Like tiny golden
Birds the ginko leaves scatter
From the tree on the
Hill in the sunset glow.

Yosano Akiko

In the dusk the path
You used to come to me
Is overgrown and indistinguishable,
Except for the spider webs
That hang across it
Like threads of sorrow,

Izumi Shikibu

Here is a gingko tree in fall:  http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/22/fall-ginkgo-tree_9713.jpg

In San Jose there was one street I traveled frequently which became butter-yellow every year around Thanksgiving.

[Babi]

 Such a thick carpet of leaves!  I love it here in the spring when the redbuds shed their
blossoms.  I walk through a rosy footpath and become amazingly cheerful.

  I found this one for you, JACKIE

 Ne-ga-wa-ku wa (I would die in the spring,)
ha-na no shi-ta ni te (under the blossoms,)
ha-ru shi-na-mu (in the second month)
so-no ki-sa-ra-gi no (at the time of)
mo-chi-zu-ki no ko-ro (the full moon)
Script : kanji, hiragana

[mrssherlock]

Babi: Thank you.  What a way to go.

[BarbStAubrey]

Good stuff...  there is something so beautiful in the simplicity of  both Japanese and Chinese poetry - thanks for calming my mind

Here is a poet new to me - Rita Dove

Wiring Home

Lest the wolves loose their whistles
and shopkeepers inquire,
keep moving, though your knees flush
red as two chapped apples,
keep moving, head up,
past the beggar's cold cup,
past the kiosk's
trumpet tales of
odyssey and heartbreak-
until, turning a corner, you stand,
staring: ambushed
by a window of canaries
bright as a thousand
golden narcissi.


Exit

Just when hope withers, the visa is granted.
The door opens to a street like in the movies,
clean of people, of cats; except it is your street
you are leaving. A visa has been granted,
"provisionally"-a fretful word.
The windows you have closed behind
you are turning pink, doing what they do
every dawn. Here it's gray. The door
to the taxicab waits. This suitcase,
the saddest object in the world.
Well, the world's open. And now through
the windshield the sky begins to blush
as you did when your mother told you
what it took to be a woman in this life.


Rusks

This is how it happened.

Spring wore on my nerves--
all that wheezing and dripping
while others in galoshes
reaped compost and seemed
enamored most of the time.

Why should I be select?
I got tired of tearing myself down.
Let someone else have
the throne of blues for a while,
let someone else suffer mosquitoes.

As my mama always said:
half a happinnes is better
than noe at all.

[mrssherlock]

Oh, I really like her poems.  My library has several of her books; think I'll start with Selected Poems.

[mrssherlock]

Aching nostalgia-
As evening darkens
And every moment grows
Longer and longer, I feel
Ageless as the thousand year pine,

Anonymous

Oh snail,
climb Mt. Fuji,
but slowly, slowly

ISSA

A camellia drops
and spills yesterday’s rain

BOSUN

[JoanK]

Two of my favorite haiku.

[Babi]

Rita Dove seems to be writing about what it's like to be starting off
in life. The scenes and feelings are very real. When she says she is
tired of tearing herself down, I want to say "Good for you, girl!"

 I would love to feel 'ageless as the thousand year-old pine'. 

[BarbStAubrey]

DayStar
          ~ by Rita Dove

She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming
on the line,

A doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind
the garage to sit out the
children's naps

Sometimes there were things to watch--
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf.

Other days she stared until she
was assured when she closed
her eyes she'd only see her own
vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best,
before Liza appeared pouting from
the top of the stairs.

And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice?
Why, building a palace.

Later that night when Thomas
rolled over and lurched into her,

She would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour--where she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day

[BarbStAubrey]

From Mountain Poems

Don't think a mountain home means you're free
a day doesn't pass without its problems
old ladies steal my bamboo shoots
boys lead oxen into the wheat
grubs and beetles destroy my greens
boars and squirrels devour the rice
when what happens isn't what you expect
forget it and turn to yourself

          ~ by Stonehouse (Shih wu) - translated by Red Pine

[BarbStAubrey]

The River's Blue, The Bird A Perfect White

The river's blue, the bird a perfect white; the mountain is green with flowers about to blaze.  I've watched the Spring pass away again, when will I be able to return?

          ~ by DU FU (A.D. 712-770)

I've read that men were gathered as the army marched through a village and often the men would be gone for  years and  years - there are poems and stories of young men returning when their hair is white so that poems of longing for home or imagining the wife left behind id gazing at the same moon at the same time are popular themes.

[Babi]

  With St. Patrick's day only a week away, I thought I'd offer this sma' poem. It's an oldie.

 There's a dear little plant
that grows in our isle,
'Twas St. Patrick himself
sure that set it;
And the sun on his labour
with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye
often wet it.
It thrives through the bog,
through the brake,
through the mireland;
And he called it the dear
little shamrock of Ireland—
The sweet little shamrock,
the dear little shamrock,
The sweet little, green little,
shamrock of Ireland!
Andrew Cherry,
Irish Playwright (1762-1812)

[BarbStAubrey]

Ah yes - St. Patricks Day - there are so many wonderful Irish poets - in fact my reading of both lit and poetry is always an extra joy reading the work of an Irish author - they all seem to have an astonishing way with words.

Here is an evening song sung by St. Patrick

An Even-Song

May Thy holy angels, O Christ, son of living God,
Guard our sleep, our rest, our shining bed.

Let them reveal true visions to us in our sleep,
O high-prince of the universe, O great king of the mysteries!

May no demons, no ill, no calamity or terrifying dreams
Disturb our rest, our willing, prompt repose.

May our watch be holy, our work, our task,
Our sleep, our rest without let, without break.

[BarbStAubrey]

Another of Ireland's poets

The Morning Star
          ~ by George William Russell

IN the black pool of the midnight Lu has slung the morning star,
And its foam in rippling silver whitens into day afar
Falling on the mountain rampart piled with pearl above our glen,
Only you and I, beloved, moving in the fields of men.

In the dark tarn of my spirit, love, the morning star, is lit;
And its halo, ever brightening, lightens into dawn in it.
Love, a pearl-grey dawn in darkness, breathing peace without desire;
But I fain would shun the burning terrors of the mid-day fire.

Through the faint and tender airs of twilight star on star may gaze,
But the eyes of light are blinded in the white flame of the days,
From the heat that melts together oft a rarer essence slips,
And our hearts may still be parted in the meeting of the lips.

What a darkness would I gaze on when the day had passed the west,
If my eyes were dazed and blinded by the whiteness of a breast?
Never through the diamond darkness could I hope to see afar
Where beyond the pearly rampart burned the purer evening star.

[BarbStAubrey]

Another Irish poet - this time a woman - Not many acclaimed women poets so this is special -  Katharine Tynan was a prodigious writer of 105 popular Novels, 18 books of Poetry, 5 Plays, 7 books of Devotion, 12 collections of Short Stories, and innumerable newspaper articles.  She was a friend to Yeats, married the scholar Hickson, had 3 children and died in 1931. The name of this poem is legend in Ireland - there are several sets of lyrics written by others for song and movie. It is the title chosen for a movie set in 1920 about the IRA and the war for Irish Independence.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley
          ~ by Katharine Tynan

There's music in my heart all day,
I hear it late and early,
It comes from fields are far away,
The wind that shakes the barley.

Above the uplands drenched with dew
The sky hangs soft and pearly,
An emerald world is listening to
The wind that shakes the barley.

Above the bluest mountain crest
The lark is singing rarely,
It rocks the singer into rest,
The wind that shakes the barley.

Oh, still through summers and through springs
It calls me late and early.
Come home, come home, come home, it sings,
The wind that shakes the barley.

[Tomereader1]

Wow, awesome!  I have seen that movie.  Lovely, lovely poem.

[Babi]

WOW! The dear woman must have done nothing but write!  No, she had three
children, didn't she?  Amazing.

 You saw the movie, TOMEREADER?  It must have been older than either of us.  An
old one reel black and white? 

[BarbStAubrey]

Babi here is the movie info - it won the PALME D'OR (Top Honor) award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. The Wind That Shakes the Barley

My favorite is still the David Lean's film Ryan's Daughter although, this one was pretty good.

Yes, exasperating isn't it - there always are folks who can put us to shame with their accomplishments -

I am not finding  information on the kind of novels or even the titles but I did find on Amazon this novel written by Katharine which allows you to bring up the first chapter - if the entire book is written like these pages from the first chapter you can hardly read it without hearing the Irish on your tongue - it does not seem to be a very deep book but then there is only the first pages of the first chapter.  Dick Pentreath by Katharine Tynan Hinkson

[Babi]

Thanks for those links, BARB.  I'll have to see if Netflix has this
one. The cast seems entirely Irish; a pity I won't be able to hear that
wonderful Irish lilt.

[BarbStAubrey]

For St. Patrick's Day I found this John Locke poem - long lovely and of course he pines for the Texas Skies so I had to share this one...  

DAWN ON THE IRISH COAST

Glory to God but there it is
The dawn on the hills of Ireland
With all the pent up love in my heart
I bid you the top of the mornin'.

This one short hour pays lavishly back
For many a year of mourning
I'd almost venture another flight
There is so much joy in returning
Watching out for the hallowed shore
All other attractions scorning
O Ireland don't you hear me shout?
I bid you the top of the mornin'.

Ho ho upon Cloidlma's shelving strand
The surges are grandly beating
And Keary is pushing its headlands out
To give us the kindly greeting
To the shore the seabirds fly
On pinions that know no drooping
And out of the cliffs where welcomes charged
A million of waves come trooping.

O kindly generous Irish land
So leal and fair and loving
No wonder that wondering Celt should think
And dream of you in his roving
The alien home may have gems and gold
Shadows may have never have gloomed it
But the heart will sigh for the absent land
Where the love light first illumed it.

And doesn't old cove look charming there
Watching the wild waves motion
Leaning her back up against the hills
And the tip of her toe in the ocean
I wonder why I don't hear Shannon's bells
Ah! Maybe their chimings over
For its many a year since I began
The life of a western rover.

For thirty summers a stir me Chroialhe
Those hills I now feast my eyes on
Neer met my Vision save when they rose
Over memory's dim horizon
E'en so twas grand and fair they seemed
In the landscape spread before me
But dreams are dreams and my eyes would ope
To see Texas skies still o're me.

Oh often upon the Texas plains
When the day and the chase were over
My thoughts would fly oer the weary wave
And around the coastline hover,
And the prayer would rise that some future day
All danger and doubting scorning
I'd help to win for my native land
The light of young liberty's morning.

Now fuller and truer the shore line shows
Was ever a scene so splendid?
I feel the breath of the Munster breeze
Thank God that my exile's ended
Old scenes, old songs, old friends again,
The vale and the cot I was born in
Oh Ireland up from my heart of hearts
I bid you the top of the morning!

[bellemere]

Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irisry.

from Under Ben Bulben, William Butler Yeats

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

And a Yeats quote I just discovered: Education is not the filling of a pail; it is the lighting of a fire.

[BarbStAubrey]

"Education is not the filling of a pail; it is the lighting of a fire"

Wonderful!
Thanks for bringing it to us Bellemere.

[Babi]

 I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for a trip to Baton Rouge for my son's wedding. I'll be
pretty much out-of-pocket for the next three days, so don't think I've forgotten you. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Have a good Trip Babi and a wonderful time at the wedding.Just a tad too early for the roadside Texas wildflower show but just maybe there will be a few Bluebonnets - let us know if  you spot any.

Beautiful
Lupine
trUe
wildflowEr
Blue
blOoms
spriNgtime
reNewal
sElfless
gifT

"Lovely Bluebonnets, More Beautiful Than All the Rest” from "The Daughters of The Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo."

[mrssherlock]

Barb:  When did we do Seamus Heaney?   I remember that one of the postings was a very touching poem about grieving.

[BarbStAubrey]

Looks like in March of 2006

Could the poem you are remembering be either of these

Leavings:

A soft whoosh, the sunset blaze
of straw on blackened stubble,
a thatch-deep, freshening
barbarous crimson burn -

I rode down England
as they fired the crop
that was the leavings of a crop,
the smashed tow-colored barley.

down from Ely's Lady Chapel,
the sweet tenor Latin
forever banished
the sumptuous windows

threshed clear by Thomas Cromwell
Which circle does he tread,
scalding on cobbles,
each one a broken statue's head?

After midnight, after summer,
to walk in a sparking field
to smell dw and ashes
and start Will Brangwen's ghost

from the hot soot -
a breaking sheaf of light,
abroad in the hiss
and clash of smoking.

~Seamus Heaney

In Memory of Colum McCartney

Across that strand of yours the cattle graze
Up to their bellies in an early mist
And now they turn their unbewildered gaze
To where we work our way through squeaking sedge
Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge
Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.
I turn because the sweeping of your feet
has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees
with blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes,
Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss
Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
With rushes that shoot green again, I plait
Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.

[BarbStAubrey]

Then there is

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

[mrssherlock]

Gosh, it doesn't seem that long ago.  Thanks, Barb, it wasn't any of those you posted, maybe it wasn't Heaney, but it was in the poetry discussion.  Steph was mentioning that she carries that poem:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

(1) I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

(2) When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
(Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!)

Text by Mary Frye

I was reminded of that poem I'm trying to remember, for my widowed sister, for my daughter who lost a friend like another mother. for me grieving my baby sister's deqth at 49.  Guess it's lost now though I'll keep searching.

[Babi]

There were a surprising number of wildflowers blooming, BARB. Not a
great variety, but masses of some yellow blossoms and some white ones.
Couldn't identify them, but suspect in your yard they would be considered
weeds. Beautiful, nonetheless. I saw a couple of beautiful tulip trees
blooming in LA., but after that cold front moved in yesterday morning,
a lot of those blossoms were on the ground.
  I was most thankful the weather held just long enough for the outdoor
wedding!

  The poems are so sad. The Irish do know how to write of sadness.

[mrssherlock]

babi;  glad the weather cooperated, for once.  is this your first term as mother-in-law?

[Octavia]

I'm wondering if Steph's poem is Stop All The Clocks by W.H.Auden?

Stop all the clocks,/cut off the telephone,/Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,/Silence the pianos...... it was in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Another poem is niggling in the back of my mind, but it won't come through .

[JoanK]

BABI: were you in LA? I live just 15 minutes from LAX. If I'd known, we could have met for coffee.

[BarbStAubrey]

 I was  not ready for this cold wind that blew in here over the weekend - it is finally warming up again and it was lovely today.

Joan I think Babi was in Baton Rouge - I believe she lives in Houston and it is a nice run over of sevaral hours on I-10 from Houston to Beaumont and on to Orange the entry town to Texas at the Louisiana border, then on to Lake Charles and Layfayette finally Baton Rouge. Just past Baton Rouge is the cut off to New Orleans or continue on the I-12 spur to Slidell - all so familiar to me since i drive it every year on my way home from my daughter's in North Carolina - I usualy go by way of I-20 and return by way of I-10 where I have less risk of cold, ice or snow.

I-20 is probably a prettier drive however, folks in northern Louisiana and northern Mississippi are not comfortable sharing the road with the eighteen wheelers were as along I-10 folks just barrel along with a lot of long distance drivers from the license plates.

All this traveling reminds me of the Willie Nelson song

On the road again -
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is making music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again

Goin' places that I've never been.
Seein' things that I may never see again

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again -
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends.
Insisting that the world keep turning our way

And our way
is on the road again.
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is makin' music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again

Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends

Insisting that the world keep turning our way

And our way
is on the road again.
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is makin' music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
And I can't wait to get on the road again.

[BarbStAubrey]

I love these Basho Haku Spring poems - simple story telling.

Wrapping dumplings in  
bamboo leaves, with one finger  
she tidies her hair   

[BarbStAubrey]

in my new clothing
i feel so different, i must
look like someone else

[BarbStAubrey]

Heated spring air
In tiny waves of an inch or two -
Above wintery grass

[BarbStAubrey]

Spring rain
Leaking through the roof,
Dripping from the wasps' nest

From all these trees – 
in salads, soups, everywhere – 
cherry blossoms fall