The snow man by Wallace STEVENS (1879-1955)

The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

HARMONIUM (1923)
Wallace STEVENS

Whispers of heavenly death by Withman

in LEAVES OF GRASS

Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

} Whispers of Heavenly Death

Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear,
Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,
Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,
Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,
Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,
With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.

(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;
On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,
Some soul is passing over.)

Walt WHITMAN ( 1819-1892)

O living always by Walt Whitman

O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and
look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.


Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Poet by Moe SEAGER

You Poet
Set lines afire
Spit vowels bursting
Hot flash: as ideas are food for thought
I could eat your words
Suck the salt of your inner vision
Tap the marrow of meaning

You Poet
I could wade the waters of you mouth
Lick your wind blown tongue to its liquorice roots
Caress melody from your vocal cords

You Poet
Send me turning pages on you
To the end of verse time
Time to ask you
To start it, all, anew

You Poet
I could throw away
My pens and paper plans
Lay my tomes
As stepping stones
To cross over

Let's go out, beyond
Far beyond the last metaphor
A new found hunger
For fresh poems, ripened fruits
Days at play, awesome wander
At the tree of life.

After long silence by W B YEATS

Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.

William Butler YEATS

Despair (part II) by Lord Alfred TENNYSON

(...)

II

What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell?
Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me—yet—was it well
That you came unwish’d for, uncall’d, between me and the deep and my doom,
Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom
Of a life without sun, without health, with out hope, without any delight
In anything here upon earth? but ah God, that night, that night
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal neck
Of land running out into rock—they had saved many hundreds from wreck—
Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as we past,
Does it matter how many they saved? we are all of us wreck’d at last—
‘Do you fear?’ and there came thro’ the roar of the breaker a whisper, a breath,
‘Fear? am I not with you? I am frighted at life not death.’

(...)

Lord Alfred TENNYSON

Phoenix by Joe SEPHOZA

phoenix

so often thoughts wander
I'm not laughing
while thinking
- being haunted
behind me, spinning, turning
the wheel of fortune
and slowly
headlights
reflecting
in distorting mirrors
to blind my dream
of who I would be, if alive

they do have a limp, sumbling up the stairs towards the seat
where my life, partly, dies
the other half of misery
is reality's phoenix

empty grave
cold bones
I might laugh
once dead

sometimes - friendly - they ask me
'who's that stranger'
they don't know
and I
a stranger to myself

midnight in longing
I close a freudian pact
with my thoughts
and they return
tired of the world
in bed they're like the fantasy
of a one-night sleep
the sun turns me over
and falls asleep.


in :http://www.polumnia.net/writing/poetry.html