sarah_len

"Mystic"

2005-12-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

"The air is a mill of hooks-
Quesions without answers,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun's conflagrations, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
of Christ in the face of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable-
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis,
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breath, the window sweats,
The children jump in their cots,
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.

Sylvia Plath

"Pied Beauty"

2005-11-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

for Paul. . . . may he realize his own beauty. . . . may he see himself as God sees him. . . . a beautiful human being.

"Pied Beauty"

"Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth who beauty is past change:
Praise him. "

Hopkins

"Thoughts"

2005-11-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

"If thoughts were candy,
I'd gobble them up,
Get rid of the bad stuff,
But why should I, have to
Be so greedy-like? And
Take to make my heavy weight go away,

Such an unwanted burden to carry."

me

"I've written some poems I don't understand myself."- Carl Sandburg

"Maiden Name"

2005-11-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

"Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfull confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two,
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon-
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden."

Philip Larkin