Borges

The Art of Poetry
Jorge Luis Borges


To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

Emily

Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson

In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson

this is my favorite excerpt from this Epic poem...


I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

Lisa's Current Favorites

T.S. Elliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

(It's a long one, so I'll give you my favorite excerpts)

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will
reverse.


For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;


But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.


Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”


I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Secret Machines
An Epic Case of Mistaken Identity

I still remember that look
that moment you took
or maybe I’m just full of it

I made my mind up right then
I’m staying in bed
laying beside myself

weren’t you the one we found?
shooting up sound?
in the bathroom of that charming little place
we shared alone

of all the things that I’ve read
all the words that you said
a few I still can’t believe

the ones I care to recall
you shared with us all
the reasons why, I’ll never see

weren’t you the one I saw?
holding up the wall?
that stood between the “We”
in “Me and You”

measured space eclipsed
what courage failed to
cover constellations with forever
collapsing strings of reason tied together
undone by the birthright of the truth

what I failed to grasp was
what this came to too late
all the memories I’d collected
projections on the walls that we'd erected
oh no!
on the face of normal time
revolves in seconds
breathing down the throat
of disappearing acts arranged
as me

and it makes no difference for us
what’s left unsaid

to reacquaint ourselves with love
a hopeless word

as insignificance befriends us all in time
our lives become unwound
what then?

like the bad days go on for weeks
some other times they pass unnoticed
just like the thought
that all along I had the wrong you
all along I had the wrong you

I'd pay to see
what surrounds you
when heaven falls on your eyes
I’ll stand on trees in my hands
and all the limbs you cut before

I saw the morning's brand new light
it’s just a scratch
I’ll be alright
I’ll wake to see what tomorrow brings
it’s like the whole time was wrong
all along I had the wrong you

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edgar Allen Poe
Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Beatles
You Never Give Me Your Money

One sweet dream,
pick up the bags
get in the limousine.
Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
One sweet dream
Came true
Today

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