Because there is a poem for every occasion...

Earlier today, Jeremiah and I were having a conversation in which he mentioned that during his interwebs perusal yesterday, he "found a picture of a swan raping a woman." (Please don't ask how we arrived at this conversational juncture; we just did.) His face, when I did not immediately recoil in horror, but instead agreed that such a thing was legit, was priceless. I told him the myth of Leda and the Swan, from which union Helen of Troy was born. He seemed less horrified after I explained it, and I decided to share this poem (again) from Yeats:

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Sonnet 15

National Poetry month officially ends today. In honor of that, here is one of my favorite poems:

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu -- farewell! -- the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon the hill, after the sun has set.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Click this link to watch a video of Tyne Daly reciting this poem. It is fantastically beautiful.

I'd love to get some comments on this post telling me your favorite poems. I'll post them, and we can all enjoy.

Just so you know:

While I have not posted a poem here every day, I have been reading poetry every day. It's been magic. I'm sorry I haven't shared it. Sometimes, there is too much to say...

Song Selection

If you're not in the know about Rachael Yamagata, get there; you won't regret it.

Words cannot express how much I love this song, and how amazing I think the imagery is. It's haunting, but it is powerful and beautiful and smart. I find it oddly hopeful and utterly lovely. You can listen to it and watch the video here.

Elephants

If the elephants have past lives
Yet are destined to always remember
It’s no wonder how they scream
Like you and I they must have some temper
And I am dreaming of them in the plains
Dirtying up their beds
Watching for some sign of rain
To cool their hot heads
And how dare that you send me that card
When I’m doing all that I can do
You are forcing me to remember
When all I want is to just forget you

If the tiger shall protect her young
Then tell me how did you slip by?
Oh my instincts have failed me for once
I must have somehow slept the whole night
And I am dreaming of them with their kill
Tearing it all apart
Blood dripping from their lips
Teeth sinking into heart
And how dare that you say you will call
When you know I need some piece of mind
If you had to take sides with the animals
Won’t you do it with one who is kind

If the hawks in the trees need the dead
If you’re living you don’t stand a chance
For a time though you share the same bed
There are only two ends to this dance
You can flee with your wounds just in time
Or lie there as he feeds
Watching yourself ripped to shreds
Laughing as you bleed
So for those of you falling in love
Keep in kind keep it good keep it right
Throw yourself in the midst of danger
But keep one eye open at night

Yep, Still Behind...

I'm just going to go on from here; making up is hard to do.

The Love-Hat Relationship

I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship.
It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats.
The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.
You don't necessarily even know the other person.
Also it is too dependent on whether the other person
is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats,
but they're not something to build an entire relationship on.
My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them.
Try having like-hat relationships with one another.
See if you can find something interesting about
the personality of the person whose hat you like.

--By Aaron Belz

The Wednesday/Thursday Mythology Two-fer

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

--W.B. Yeats

The next poem references a Welsh myth, telling of a woman made of flowers called Blodewedd. This poem was originally written in Irish by Nuala ni Dhomnaill, and has been translated here by John Montague.

Blodewedd

At the least touch of your fingertips
I break into blossom,
my whole chemical composition
transformed.
I sprawl like a grassy meadow
fragrant in the sun;
at the brush of your palm, all my herbs
and spices spill open

frond by frond, lured to unfold
and exhale in the heat;
wild strawberries rife, and pimpernels
fragrant and scarlet, blushing
down their stems.
To mow that rushy bottom;
sweet scything.

All winter I waited silently
for your appeal.
I withered within, dead to all,
curled away, and deaf as clay,
all my life forces ebbing slowly
till now I come to, at your touch,
revived as from a death swoon.

Your sun lightens my sky
and a wind lifts, like God's angel,
to move the waters,
every inch of me quivers
before your presence,
goose-pimples I get as you glide
over me, and every hair
stands on end.

Hours later I linger
in the ladies toilet,
a sweet scent wafting
from all my pores,
proof positive, if a sign
was needed, that at the least
touch of your fingertips
I break into blossom.

The Monday/Tuesday Silly Two-fer

My Beard

My beard grows down to my toes,
I never wears no clothes,
I wraps my hair
Around my bare,
And down the road I goes.

--Shel Silverstein

Spelling

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

-- Anonymous

Make Up Poems: Weekend Edition

I'm a bit behind folks, but life happens. I'm gonna try and play catch up here....

I have two lovely friends, both of whom are very fond of Mary Oliver, so a poem for each of them:

Wild Geese

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.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

He also has pretty pictures...

I don't feel well today, so I'm lazy. My friend Jeremiah has been posting song lyrics (which I think count as poems) on his blog in honor of National Poetry Month, so I'm going to refer you there.

These two are my favorites; enjoy.

Bright Star

Today's poem comes from John Keats. Today's poem is also the title of a Jane Campion movie released last year, starring Ben Whishaw as Keats, and Abbie Cornish as his love interest, Fanny Brawne. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen; I cannot recommend it enough.

The movie makes the assumption that this poem was written for Fanny, and although it very well could have been, no one knows for sure. The romantic in me is going to assume that it was.

Bright Star

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Whitman for Wednesday

I really love this poem. I love the language of it. I love the juxtposition of the earth-bound astronomy professor, tied to his proofs and figures and diagrams and lecture room and audience, and the quiet of the stars, offering the more perfect education.

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. --Walt Whitman

National Poetry Month 2010

In the spirit of my favorite time of year, I'm going to try again with this blog. For more information on National Poetry Month, visit this site. And now, a poem:

Hydrangea

From the bottom of the garden, enthroned in his earthenware pot,
the hydrangea god surveys his minions—
lavender agapanthuses bowing starburst heads,
red bignonia calyxes trumpeting his fame,
oleander leaves whispering of his misdeeds.
The central path leads straight to him. Behind,
a stained mirror and mossy wall back up his power.
Thousands of crinkled, tiny, white ideas occur to him
with frilled and overlapping edges. No one else
deploys such Byzantine metaphysics. No one
can read his mind. Only he remembers
the children's secret fort by the cypress tree
among fraught weeds, rusted buckets, and dumped ash,
and how lost the grown-ups sounded, calling, as night came.

--By Rosanna Warren