John Cooper Clarke, Twat.
John Cooper Clarke, Haiku
From Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Yes, I thought about including a comment to that effect, but wanted to leave out the politics. Besides, I love those lines because they can be applied so many ways. They were originally written about World War I, but they became my touchstone after 9/11, when they perfectly described my feelings. And now they’ve come around again…
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
And
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away
Sea Fever (1st stanza)
By John Masefield
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
Brian
Only those elements which time cannot wear were created before me
and beyond eternity I stand
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
Dante’s Inferno
On the shores of Lake Michigan
I bit into a Whitefishigan.
– Ogden Nash, on a postcard
From Binyon’s For the Fallen
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
The second verse:
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
T. S. Eliot:
*We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. *
I love it anyway.
From Horatius by Thomas Babington Macaulay:
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?”
Another quote from Bobby Frost.
“We keep the wall between us as we go.”
That line infers so much!
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Thomas Gray
This is quietly sad, and very true.
Like one who on a lonesome road
doth walk in fear and dread,
and having looked back once
no more will turn his head,
for close behind he knows
a fearful fiend doth tread.
Samuel Coleridge; Rime of the Ancient Mariner
A good poem for halloween, no?
James Dickey Cherrylog Road. Best poem ever written about a junkyard. And sex.
*And I to my motorcycle
Parked like the soul of the junkyard
Restored, a bicycle fleshed
With power, and tore off
Up Highway 106, continually
Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever. *
Great choice, I love that poem, V being my favourite stanza:
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
The conclusion of Eliot’s Prufrock:
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
and from Bashō:
The old pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water.
That’s what I came here to mention, especially the last stanza.
In French, I’d pick:
Verlaine’s Chanson d’Automne
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
Baudelaire’s A une Passante
Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!
Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
O toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!
And La Cloche Fêlée
Moi, mon âme est fêlée, et lorsqu’en ses ennuis
Elle veut de ses chants peupler l’air froid des nuits,
Il arrive souvent que sa voix affaiblie
Semble le râle épais d’un blessé qu’on oublie
Au bord d’un lac de sang, sous un grand tas de morts,
Et qui meurt, sans bouger, dans d’immenses efforts.
Reverdy’s Sable Mouvant
Alors
Je prie le ciel
Que nul ne me regarde
Si ce n’est au travers d’un verre d’illusion
Retenant seulement
sur l’écran glacé d’un horizon qui boude
ce fin profil de fil de fer amer
si délicatement délavé
par l’eau qui coule
les larmes de rosée
les gouttes de soleil
les embruns de la mer
Very difficult to choose, there are so many, but I’ll choose two.
The first is from the great John Dryden’s translation of Horace, Odes, I, ix. I get shivers down my spine whenever I read these lines.
Secondly I’d choose Sonnet 23 of John Milton which speaks of a dream he had of his dead wife. Milton had been blind for years when he wrote the poem and the last line is heartbreaking.