Literature: Poetry

Poetry, in one form or another, likely predates written history. Its ancient roots are found in oral tradition, and religious rites, as well as hunting and other rituals, dating back at least to the 25th Century BC (in the Pyramid Texts.) It is expressed in many styles and genres, through many avenues and throughout all cultures.

Please feel free to post favorite examples or general comments.

The Right Kind of People

Gone is the city, gone the day, Yet still the story and the meaning stay:

Once where a prophet in the palm shade basked
A traveler chanced at noon to rest his miles.

“What sort of people may they be,” he asked, “In this proud city on the plains o’erspread?”

“Well, friend, what sort of people whence you came?”

“What sort?” the packman scowled; “why knaves and fools.”

“You’ll find the people here the same,” the wise man said.

Another stranger in the dusk drew near,
And pausing, cried “What sort of people here
In your bright city where yon towers arise?”

“Well, friend, what sort of people whence you came?”

“What sort?” the pilgrim smiled, “Good, true and wise.”

“You’ll find the people here the same,” The wise man said.

~ Edwin Markham (1832 – 1940)

Gacela Of The Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to withdraw from the tumult of cemeteries. I want to sleep the dream of that child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood, that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water. I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass, nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile, awhile, a minute, a century; but all must know that I have not died; that there is a stable of gold in my lips; that I am the small friend of the West wind; that I am the immense shadow of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil, because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me, and wet with hard water my shoes so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to learn a lament that will cleanse me of the earth; for I want to live with that dark child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

~ Federico García Lorca

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world

my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry – the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

~ e.e. cummings