Poetry. 19 notes.

Beautiful 🤩

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

Those first 4 lines!

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 A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage A Dove house filld with Doves and Pigeons Shudders Hell thro all its regions A Dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State A Horse misused upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fibre from the Brain does tear A Skylark wounded in the wing A Cherubim does cease to sing The Game Cock clipd and armd for fight Does the Rising sun affright Every Wolfs and Lions howl Raises from Hell a Human Soul

Read the full poem here.

Oooh, what a delightful collection of verse. Emily Dickinson is a goddamn genius. Sooo good.

I DWELL in Possibility
A fairer house than Prose,
More numerous of windows,
Superior of doors.

Of chambers, as the cedars—
Impregnable of eye;
And for an everlasting roof
The gables of the sky.

Of visitors—the fairest—
For occupation—this—
The spreading wide my narrow hands
To gather Paradise.

Source.

God damn it, this is beautiful!

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.

My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

From WikiSource.

Ufff. What a poem. Each verse feels saturated with the bloody, neglected horrors of our own time — horrors I’m no doubt forcing into it, but can’t help seeing there

Couldn’t stop hearing the echoes of the present.

While loud the red-flecked mouths of cannons sing
And grapeshot whistles under empty sky;
While, red and green, before each preening King,
The massed battalions break, and thousands die;
While flowers bloom and sweet grass grows again,
In splendid sunshine, under summer heat,
And madness grinds a hundred thousand men
Into a steaming pile of rotting meat; …

A God smiles down through incense-laden air
At chalices and altars, gold, ornate,
And slowly dozes off to mumbled prayer;
But wakes when black-clad mothers, bowed with grief
And weeping, clink into His silver plate
The few coins in a knotted handkerchief.

By Arthur Rimbauld

I came across George Oppen in this article, and a random Google led me to this poem, and the only word that can succinctly capture my reaction is “dayum!”

Truth also is the pursuit of it:

Like happiness, and it will not stand.

Even the verse begins to eat away

In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;

A wind moves a little,

Moving in a circle, very cold.

How shall we say?

In ordinary discourse—

We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,

The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable

Is the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights

Daily with that predominance

And we have become the present.

We must talk now. Fear

Is fear. But we abandon one another.

George Oppen.

Beautiful.

Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.

While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,

away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.

The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.

Source.

Beautiful poem.

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise—
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday—or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through to-day,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

Source.

Beautiful.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I learned that the famous line “The heart wants what it wants” is from a famous letter by Emily Dickinson and not Woody Allen.

The full line:

Dear Mary -

When the Best is gone - I know that other things are not of consequence - The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care -

You wonder why I write - so - Because I cannot help - I like to have you know some care - so when your life gets faint for it’s other life - you can lean on us - We wont break, Mary. We look very small - but the Reed can carry weight.

Read the letter here.