Storm Meditation — Ancient Skies

Leaves dance to the rhythm of the rain, while tree limbs sway and I realize,
something within me enjoys the wildness of the storm, thunder rolls and boils in the sky, yet I’m not afraid, instead…amazed how creation nourishes the earth, as the rain becomes gentle again.

via Storm Meditation — Ancient Skies

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Acquainted with the Night

A poem By Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night” from The Poetry of Robert Frost,

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A Man

A poem by Adelina Adalis.

A man about himself is still not clear, –
That is one thing in life of which I’m sure.
A man is like this oak , or ash-tree here,
Which from the depths broke through the
forest floor….

 

A man is not what’s visible at a glance,
Not what you feel, when hands on him you lay!
He came to know himself not all at once,-
But tramped, and tramped, and tramped
from far away….

From: The Tender Muse, Collection of Verse, 1976

 

What I want to know is why…

Poetry By Carl Muller from And Now, We Want to be Gods!

TWO

I listen to the priest. He’s got it all pat–we are all made
of clay, oh yes – clay.
God moulded us.
I wilt. This God and his box of plasticine…
and I think: In that case, we inherited
no intermediate characteristics.

What I want to know is why, with that clay,
couldn’t God have made us
into a more splendid form?
The priest kicks me out.
He yells about the power and the glory…
but of course, there must be this power —
Things grow; seeds become trees,
and in this simian line of descent,
we have our own power… or have we?

 

THREE
I’ve got to think this one out:
Imagine our hairy ancestors.
They become monkey kings…
well, obviously, they gave the world to us.
but what about ants or bees?
Why couldn’t we have come from them?
They have a superb capacity for co-operative labour.
They have no unemployment, no poverty,
no riots, no strikes, not unstable governments.
Why did we have to come from the monkeys?

From: A Bedlam of Persuasions by Carl Muller, A Vijitha Yapa Publication, 2005.

Indian Weavers – The Passing Stages of Life…

Indian weavers by Sarojini Naidu highlights in beautiful verse the coming and passing of birth, youth and death. The stages of life observed in heartbreakingly glorious impermanence. 

Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.Weavers, weaving at fall of night,
Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .
Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,
We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,
What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .
White as a feather and white as a cloud,
We weave a dead man’s funeral shroud.

Poem: You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise

Be strengthened and inspired by this poem, Still I Rise from Maya Angelou:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

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Poem: This is the weather the cuckoo likes…

A poem by Thomas Hardy

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s Rest,’
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.

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Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley shows the reality of impermanence.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The Soldier

By Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:

      That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

         Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

         In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

This poem has had two titles: “The Soldier” and “Nineteen-Fourteen: The Soldier”.

Poem: The Highwayman

One of my favourites, The Highwayman By Alfred Noyes

PART ONE:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

         His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

         Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

Read PART TWO at The Poetry Foundation

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