Poems and Couplets

2021-09-07 18:20:41 The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Stanley Kunitz The Collected Poems

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2021-09-07 13:20:26 You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Pablo Neruda The Captain's Verses

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2021-09-07 10:20:25 You lethargic, waiting upon me,
waiting for the fire and I
attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty
Shaken by your beauty
Shaken.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
William Carlos Williams Paterson

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2021-09-06 18:20:35 There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Dejan Stojanovic

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2021-09-06 13:20:45 But my heart is an old house
(the kind my mother
grew up in)
hell to heat and cool
and faulty in the wiring
and though it’s nice to look at
I have no business
inviting lovers in.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Clementine von Radics

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2021-09-05 10:20:35 See with your soul and not your eyes
because to dance with the beasts you
must penetrate their disguise.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
P.C. Cast

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2021-09-04 18:20:37 Each in the most hidden sack kept
the lost jewels of memory,
intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses,
the fragment of public or private happiness.
A few, the wolves, collected thighs,
other men loved the dawn scratching
mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers.
For me happiness was to share singing,
praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes.
I ask forgiveness for my bad ways:
my life had no use on earth.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Pablo Neruda Still Another Day

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2021-09-04 13:20:32 Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Billy Collins The Apple that Astonished Paris

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2021-09-04 10:20:45 I am God, la de dah.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Anne Sexton The Complete Poems

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2021-09-03 18:20:37 Gather the stars if you wish it so
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.
And then...
Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say good-bye.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ
Carl Sandburg

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