Poetry Page

[PatH]

Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

Barb, you weren't in our discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, but there is a memorable, vivid sequence involving a desperate trek across frozen mountains.  JoanK posted this haiku there, and it summed up the landscape perfectly.

[BarbStAubrey]

Sorta remember the title and looked it up on Amazon - it was a fantasy novel - sometimes I am enchanted by a fantasy novel and other times I have novels that are riddled with enough fantastical scenes to bring smiles and wonderment to my face and brain.

I am still swayed by the sound of words and where some fantasy is filled with images of color beyond my imagination I did not join the read as I remember because I prefer writers whose writing stirs me as much as their colorful described characters and scenes. I think I have figured out I like a story with a philosophical bent that I can chew upon.

But the Haiku from Busho is magical isn't it - for that reason another I like to read is Han Shan the Cold Mountain poet - his poetry also has that magic of description that includes words that conjure up sounds and smells.

The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,
People who climb here are always getting scared.
When the moon shines, water sparkles clear
When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.
On the bare plum, flowers of snow
On the dead stump, leaves of mist.
At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live
At the wrong season you can't ford the creeks.

On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon
Lights the whole clear cloudless sky.
Honor this priceless natural treasure
Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.

Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind -
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.

[Babi]

"Death Be Not Proud" is also a book title, one that caught my eye because
of the power of that phrase from Donne. It was a sad but powerful book; John
Gunther's story of the death of his son.

 BARB, I think that poem, "Sweetest love..." shows so much of what is best
in Donne. I have to think how true it is that our good fortune is often so
quickly forgotten, while we seem to hang on to 'bad chance' and 'teach it
art and length'.

 Love the tea poem in the heading. I am surprised it wasn't written by an
Englishman.

[BarbStAubrey]

Sergei Aleksandrovitch Esenin's Last Poem
          ~ by Jane Ellen Glasser

Here's the night table with its lit candle.
Here the looped rope dangling from a pipe
like a question mark or a passenger's handle
on a crowded bus. I am going on a trip.

Not far away. One step. One small kick,
a little dance and the light goes out.
I am sick of the industry of living, sick
of sleepless nights. Elizaveta, no doubt

true to your word, unopened my poem
written in the wine of my blood
sits in your pocket like a worry stone.
No stitched brow. No flood

of tears. A last breath, the psyche flies.
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.

Short Bio Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin

[BarbStAubrey]

Shaganet, o my love, Shaganet!
          ~ Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin

Shaganet, o my love, Shaganet!
You will know because I am Nordic;
I can tell you a meadow, most scenic,
Moonlit rye waves one cannot forget.
Shaganet, o my love, Shaganet,

You will know because I am Nordic;
So bright shines the moon out there
That it may outglow any glare
Of Shiraz blazing forth from its tunic.
You will know because I am Nordic;

I can tell you a meadow, most scenic,
For my hair was gifted from rye,
Twixt your fingers you may intertwine -
I don’t feel any pain, any heartache.
I can tell you a meadow, most scenic.

Moonlit rye waves, one cannot forget,
Look so much like my curly hair, darling.
Oh, my love, please keep joking and smiling,
But don’t let me think of the silhouette
Of the rye waves, one cannot forget.

Shaganet, o my love, Shaganet!
There, up north, lives a maiden who also
Does resemble you terribly close,
May be now she’s thinking of me…
Shaganet, o my love, Shaganet.

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is this Happiness
          ~ Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin

Here is this happiness — silly —
Windows looking out to the lawn.
The sunset is peaceful, it’s gliding
On the lake like a scarlet-necked swan.

Greetings to you, golden stillness,
The birch, white and svelte as a stork.
Over the roof, a flock of jackdaws
Tends vespers to Lodestar.

Coyly, somewhere in the garden
Right where the guelder rose blooms,
A delicate girl in a white gown —
Chants her delicate tunes.

Grey haze ascends from the pastures;
Little night cold slowly creeps.
Happiness — silly and precious —
The innocent rose of your cheeks

[BarbStAubrey]

No More Searching Footsteps
          ~ Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin


No more searching footsteps in the groves,
No more strolling in the leaves…
With your flaxen hair like a sheaf of oats
You have disappeared from my dreams.

Skin in crimson berry juices splashes;
You were sweet, and beautiful, and kind!
Like the dusk, last sunrays in your lashes,
And like snow, radiant and bright.

As a subtle tune, your name has faded;
And your eyes, like berries, withered and grew cold.
Yet the scent of honey from your chaste hands
Still remains inside your rumpled shawl.

On the roof, when a quiet sleepy morning
Like a kitten cleanses lips by hand,
Honeycombs about you are chanting,
And their chants are echoed by the wind.

Let the blue eve whisper to me, sometimes,
How you were a fantasy, a dream,
Yet the dreamer of your slender waist and shoulders,
Has affixed his lips to the secret realm…

No more searching footsteps in the groves,
No more strolling in the leaves…
With your flaxen hair like a sheaf of oats
You have disappeared from my dreams.

[Babi]

What a sad life.  The third poem, on happiness, came as a welcome relief.
I read that one again. 

[mabel1015j]

You may already know this site, but i share w/ you just in case you don't.................

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Literature/Poetry/37-American-Poems/34570

from learnoutloud.com's "free learning guide."

Jean

[BarbStAubrey]

Thanks Jean - looks like a good site...

[BarbStAubrey]

Love After Love
          ~ Derek Walcott

   The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

[BarbStAubrey]

After The Storm
          ~ Derek Walcott

There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall,and so it always was,
on one hand Venus,on the other Mars;
fall,and are one,just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea.Now,is my last.
I stop talking now.I work,then I read,
cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work,I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door,and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea.

[BarbStAubrey]

Pentecost
          ~ by Derek Walcott

Better a jungle in the head
than rootless concrete.
Better to stand bewildered
by the fireflies' crooked street;

winter lamps do not show
where the sidewalk is lost,
nor can these tongues of snow
speak for the Holy Ghost;

the self-increasing silence
of words dropped from a roof
points along iron railings,
direction, in not proof.

But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul.

[Babi]

 Definitely a new name to me.  I find myself frowing from time to time, trying
to figure out what he's saying. 
  the self-increasing silence
of words dropped from a roof
points along iron railings,
direction, in not proof.
     
   Those lines, for instance.   Is the 'in' correct in the last line? It surely
increases the confusion.

[BarbStAubrey]

I wonder if it is his dialect - he is from the Islands - St. Lucia in the West Indiies - the 1992 Noble Prise winner in Literature.

[Tomereader1]

"Love After Love" is most beautiful.  Have we felt this way?  Oh, yes.

[BarbStAubrey]

The Sea is History    
          ~ by Derek Walcott

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that grey vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.

First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, like a light at the end of a tunnel,

the lantern of a caravel,
and that was Genesis.
Then there were the packed cries,
the shit, the moaning:

Exodus.
Bone soldered by coral to bone,
mosaics
mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow,

that was the Ark of the Covenant.
Then came from the plucked wires
of sunlight on the sea floor

the plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women,

and those were the ivory bracelets
of the Song of Solomon,
but the ocean kept turning blank pages

looking for History.
Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,
then the foaming, rabid maw

of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal,
and that was Jonah,
but where is your Renaissance?

Sir, it is locked in them sea-sands
out there past the reef's moiling shelf,
where the men-o'-war floated down;

strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself.
It's all subtle and submarine,
through colonnades of coral,

past the gothic windows of sea-fans
to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed,
blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen;

and these groined caves with barnacles
pitted like stone
are our cathedrals,

and the furnace before the hurricanes:
Gomorrah. Bones ground by windmills
into marl and cornmeal,

and that was Lamentations—
that was just Lamentations,
it was not History;

then came, like scum on the river's drying lip,
the brown reeds of villages
mantling and congealing into towns,

and at evening, the midges' choirs,
and above them, the spires
lancing the side of God

as His son set, and that was the New Testament.

Then came the white sisters clapping
to the waves' progress,
and that was Emancipation—

jubilation, O jubilation—
vanishing swiftly
as the sea's lace dries in the sun,

but that was not History,
that was only faith,
and then each rock broke into its own nation;

then came the synod of flies,
then came the secretarial heron,
then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote,

fireflies with bright ideas
and bats like jetting ambassadors
and the mantis, like khaki police,

and the furred caterpillars of judges
examining each case closely,
and then in the dark ears of ferns

and in the salt chuckle of rocks
with their sea pools, there was the sound
like a rumour without any echo

of History, really beginning.

[roshanarose]

I like the Walcott poems very much.  The last reminded me of a poem by a Greek poet I studied:

Marina of the Rocks (Odysseus Elytis)

You have a taste of tempest on your lips—But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.

But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on your breast, iambic heroine.

You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?

There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.

Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.

It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.

Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.

I don't think the English translation of propped is appropriate here.  I will check the Greek.

[Babi]

 Great poem, ROSE.  It took me a while to understand what had happened,
but the poem has so many great images and lines.  Perhaps the simplest was
".. time is a passionate sculptor of men".

[BarbStAubrey]

Nice Roshanarose - darkish - sounds like the backdrop for a wonderful adventure story

here is one, shorter, on land, but in a similar mood...

Bleak House
          ~ Jerry Hughes

   I used to pass it on my way to school,
an eerie place with a tumbled-down fence
and gates that groaned on windy days.

Around its terraces gargoyles leered
at passers-by in stoney silence.
Ivy wrapped the house in a green cocoon
and the curtains were always drawn.

A crone lived there they said - died long ago,
but I'll swear I saw her framed by a window
dressed in crinoline and lace.

A Gainsborough lady of such exquisite beauty
she took my breath away.
Such are the fantasies of an adolescent boy
on the threshold of pubescence.

[BarbStAubrey]

Poem by Yakamochi, dated 739 A.D., on his young wife’s death

Though it is destined
to come but to this,
my wife and I trusted in life
as if it would last
a thousand years.

[BarbStAubrey]

Bleak House, White Cloister

In the poet's morn, the pale sun
Encrimsones the hills folded in mist
And sets slowly ajar
The nail-studded gates of my heart.
In the poet's morn, I see myself
Frenzied in the cloister of solitude
Meditating upon Man and Time,
Lying on the palliasse.
Indiscriminately chosen
Underactions of the Play
Irresistibly throw about
The pandemonium fair,
Implacably draw me
Somewhere away.
I am lost in the mirror,
A narcissus face.

"There's a withered flower
Forgotten on the floor
In the formed by the window
Sunlit tetragon..."
My broken-nailed fingers
Blurred in delirium
Scratch words of quatrains
For grown up children.

Just another martyr
Waiting on the shore,
Paralyzed in his chair,
Tied to the dawn.
With feelings gone
In the vanity of his obscure thoughts,
Looking small, alone,
With blind eyes staring eastward.

The walls entwine me and whisper,
They whisper with a silent grin,
"The time has come,
The ceremony must begin.
Hero, are you still asleep?"
Are they whispering to me?
Another mute heroic posture
With restricted incidence.

In the mirror I can see
A white relentless mask
Gazing at me, and I shiver inside.
I tremble like a captured deer
Trying hopelessly to reach
That dead flower on the floor.
But the mask has already said
That it is now too late.

It is a custom here,
A custom to feel lonely.
I cried to the mask:
"Don't leave me to my thoughts!"
It disappeared, in the mirror -
Just the bleak house
With rooms chained in webs,
The hero and the icy narcissus.

A carpet-knight latched in his dreams.

[Babi]

 Who is the poet on that last one, BARB?  He does sound in dire straits.

 I saw a beautiful picture of a snowbird a few weeks ago, and since then the
old song "Snowbird" has been running through my head...what I could recall of
it, anyway.  I'm hoping that offering it here may help me get it out of my head!
You may remember Anne Murray had a hit with this.

SnowbirdWritten by Gene MacLellan

Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean
The unborn grass lies waiting for its coat to turn to green
The snowbird sings the song he always sings
And speaks to me of flowers that will bloom again in spring

When I was young my heart was young then, too
Anything that it would tell me, that's the thing that I would do
But now I feel such emptiness within
For the thing that I want most in life's the thing that I can't win

CHORUS
Spread your tiny wings and fly away
And take the snow back with you
Where it came from on that day
The one I love forever is untrue
And if I could you know that I would
Fly away with you

The breeze along the river seems to say
That he'll only break my heart again should I decide to stay
So, little snowbird, take me with you when you go
To that land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow

CHORUS

Yeah, if I could I know that I would fl-y-y-y-y away with you

[BarbStAubrey]

Babi I cannot be sure if the poet is the same guy whose web site where I found this bleak bleak poem. After Bleak House was chosen and since I am anxious for anything but bleak I thought I would have fun and find a few poems centered around the concept and word bleak.

The site if from a guy in Bulgaria and his name is Robert Heinlein - his English is quite good however, I cannot  figure out if all that he offers is his work or is he gathering and translating the work of others in his region

http://www.gotterdammerung.org/

I am trying to remember the performer that made Snow Bird popular - was it Anne Murray from Canada...?

[Tomereader1]

Yes, Anne Murray.  One of my very favorite pop singers.

and P.S. - Robert Heinlein is an author of sci-fi and space travel books.  Very famous.  He passed away in 1988.

[BarbStAubrey]

Ah so...thanks Tomereader -

I will be without a computer for a few days - its been hacked into and some programing now has to be changed. Since I send it to my son-in-law's Computer Direct Outlet store and service SC this could take about a week...

[Babi]

BARB, as TOMEREADER says, there is a Robert Heinlein who writes a kind of
science fiction. I don't care for him as I find him...and his characters..
too cynical and world-weary. So, that could very well be his poetry.

[JoanK]

The Belgian writer has a quote from heinlein at the top of his website, but that's not his name.

[Babi]

  So, we still don't know who wrote the poem, right?  Not that it matters in
the grand scheme of things. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Computer back in business again - we sure are connected aren't we - it was like what I imagine withdrawal must be like - huh I wonder if we are all addicts - but then we would be addicts to any muchine that we use each day wouldn't we - as much as I could manage without a phone or stove I think it would be just as awful as it has been to be without a computer.

We are having one  sign of Spring after the other so here are a few first robin poems.

        TO THE FIRST ROBIN
                  ~ by: Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

        ELCOME, welcome, little stranger,
        Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
        We are glad to see you here,
        For you sing "Sweet Spring is near."
         
        Now the white snow melts away;
        Now the flowers blossom gay:
        Come dear bird and build your nest,
        For we love our robin best.

[BarbStAubrey]

FIRST ROBIN
          ~ Albert Laighton

     Robin, tell it far and wide
On many a leafless spray,
Last night the sullen Winter died,
And Spring was born to-day!

Pour forth the gladness of thy breast
In music clear and strong.
And fill again each empty nest
With echoes of thy song.

Tell that the prisoned woodland stream
Its fetter soon will break;
And from its long and frozen dream
The violet awake.

Tell that the zephyrs soft and warm
Will kiss the budding trees,
The maple's garnet blossoms swarm
Like myriads of bees,

By moss-clad walls the columbine
Uplift its scarlet bloom,
By grassy paths the eglantine
Exhale its sweet perfume.

O robin, tell it in thy song
Of joy, this sunny morn.
And bid the hearts that waited long
Rejoice, for Spring is born!

[BarbStAubrey]

          ~ Emily Dickinson

I dreaded that first Robin, so,
But He is mastered, now,
I'm accustomed to Him grown,
He hurts a little, though --

I thought If I could only live
Till that first Shout got by --
Not all Pianos in the Woods
Had power to mangle me --

I dared not meet the Daffodils --
For fear their Yellow Gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own --

I wished the Grass would hurry --
So -- when 'twas time to see --
He'd be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch -- to look at me --

I could not bear the Bees should come,
I wished they'd stay away
In those dim countries where they go,
What word had they, for me?

They're here, though; not a creature failed --
No Blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me --
The Queen of Calvary --

Each one salutes me, as he goes,
And I, my childish Plumes,
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking Drums --

[JoanK]

That is the way I felt about Spring after my mother died.

But it's too early for Spring now. Today is the day halfway between the shortest day of the year and the Spring Equinox. It's celebrated in many countries in different ways. In England, I believe it's called Candlemas, the day the churches get new candles. The US custom of Groundhog Day comes from German immegrants, only in Germany, bears were used instead of groundhogs. So, if any of you see a bear, he's right on time.

[BarbStAubrey]

   Smile Joan its coming your way

But it's too early for Spring now.

A week ago Sunday our yards were covered with Robins heading north - and each day since we have had beyond flocks - what could be the word that describes these thousands of fluttering, fleeting, can't be still a minute birds of various species on their way north - Austin is in a flyway out of Mexico and points further south - in town and in my front yard the daffodils are in bloom in addition to the Jasmin in bloom covering the side fence. Spring is here...!

[Babi]

 This has been the shortest, mildest winter we've had in a long time. I
suppose after the terrible hot, dry summer Texas suffered, we needed
a break.  I only hope we've gotten enough rain to restore the water
tables.
   We get some flocks of birds thru' here, tho' not as many as you
describe, BARB.  Enough to coat the telephone wires like a line of dark,
plumb clothespins.  Here's a poem about migrating birds and poets.

   Birds of Passage  by: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;
And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.
But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near,
And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.
I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.
I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.
O, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.
They are the throngs
Of the poet's songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
The sound of winged words.
This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime,
From their distant flight
Through realms of light
It falls into our world of night,
With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

[BarbStAubrey]

BAbi what a wonderful poem you shared - those American poets from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century capture nature like no other - I think we take from their poems our idealized view of what our nation looks like and fantasize it is still running over with woods, forests, large gardens, flocks of birds and busy insects, when in reality we are not near the country of 1755 much less 1855.

[Babi]

 Sadly, too true, BARB.  I am prepared to testify, however, that the
insects seem to be more than plentiful enough!

 What a perfect place for Bobbie Burns little gem!

           To A Louse
On Seeing One On A Lady's Bonnet, At Church
Robert Burns
 
Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her -
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it -
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
 

[BarbStAubrey]

Wonderful!!!  Just perfect - within the poem I love these lines
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations; I just love saying them - they sort roll on the tonge and make me smile.

As to insects I think it is according - we still hear of the dangerous loss of bees - acknowledging bees rather than sharing one of Emily's many bee poems here is one [with lots of metaphors] by of all people, Sylvia Plath, written in 1963.

The Bee Meeting

Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the
          villagers-----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
Thev will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,
Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.
Their smiles and their voices are changing. I am led through a beanfield.

Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.

Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
And a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.
They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.
Is it the hawthorn that smells so sick?
The barren body of hawthorn, etherizing its children.

Is it some operation that is taking place?
It is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,
This apparition in a green helmet,
Shining gloves and white suit.
Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?

I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
With its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
I could not run without having to run forever.
The white hive is snug as a virgin,
Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.

Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
If I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,
A gullible head untouched by their animosity,

Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.
The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.
Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.
She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
While in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins

Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
A curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,
The upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.
The villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.
The old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?

I am exhausted, I am exhausted -
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished,
          why am I cold.

[JoanK]

Ph, my. I'm going to have to read that several times.

[Babi]

 

Famous Poets and Poems - Winter Winter Poems Discussion Leaders: Barb

To The Magic, The Words Of... Winter Poetry Tea and Cupcakes With Fairies ~ Justin Gildow      Sitting down With me and them in a circle There's laughter all around As we prepare for tea and cupcakes Tea gets poured While cupcakes get passed around After a few words We eat our cupcakes And drink our tea Everything is perfect Nothing more and nothing less It's all good

Now, I would have found that visit to the bees fascinating. I was amused when she hoped the bees would mistake her for a bit of cow parsley.  Really, it must have been simply the fear and anxiety that made Ms. Plath feel so cold and exhausted.  Really exhausting emotions, those.