Re: poetry thread

[eddie]

CHRISTMAS EVE IN THE WORKHOUSE

It was Christmas night in the workhouse
And the paupers was having their dinners.
And the preacher he called from the top of the hall--
"Get down on your knees, you sinners.

And them poor paupers knelt in that cheerless room
On their benches hard and wooden.
And the preacher called in a voice of doom--
"Bring on the Christmas puddin."

"Put down your heads," says he with a leer,
"Cause I want you all to think
Of the sins of the flesh that has brung us here,
Tobacco and women and drink."

"And I'm telling youse now and I'm telling youse good.
" And his voice took a dangerous edge.
"No one gets to ate the puddin
Till everyone takes the pledge."

And a chill of doom ran round the room.
You could cut the air with a knife
As each man searched in the depths of his soul
For the sins of his wasted life.

And then them paupers rose as one
And said as bold as brass.
"You can keep your Christmas puddin and stick it ....

[Guest]

Dance me to the end of love
a song by Leonard Cohen

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

[Guest]

^ I was listening to that song when my sister came and asked "are you listening to Julio Iglesias? "
It was because of the music (chorus) at the beginning...

[Guest]

Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home”
Posted by The New Yorker



The Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has a poem in the magazine this week, “Going Home,” that he also set to music on his upcoming album, “Old Ideas.”


Going Home
by Leonard Cohen

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He will never have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want to make him certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision

That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
That is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

[eddie]

I've reached the Paradiso section of my contemporary Divine Comedy...been writing some more poems about my personal Beatrice...going to use this as as an epigraph for this section:

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello" she said
"You look like the silent type"
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue
(Bob Dylan)

Don't know that it really matters but Bob gets the century wrong: Dante lived in 14th c. Tuscany.

[eddie]

Remember the I Ching reading you did for me, Moony? The Marriage hexagram? We were puzzling over whether this referred to book or babe. Turns out it was both.

[Guest]

I know I'm not Moony but... do I understand what you're saying? Is she a witch?

[eddie]

Is she a witch?

Indubitably.

[Guest]

Remember the I Ching reading you did for me, Moony? The Marriage hexagram? We were puzzling over whether this referred to book or babe. Turns out it was both.

...you are going to MARRY her?????

[Guest]

that's the question I didn't dare to ask

[Guest]

[eddie]

Ha! Beat you to the draw. That illustration's already in the book: Dante's first sight of Beatrice working on the gateline at Liverpool Street station. But great anticipation there, Moony.

Marriage? Dunno about that. If it comes to anything of the sort, I'd imagine that a wood and a druid would probably come into it at some point.

[Guest]

Remember the I Ching reading you did for me, Moony? The Marriage hexagram? We were puzzling over whether this referred to book or babe. Turns out it was both.

...took me ages to locate the hexagram and appropriate line.

...a snow white steed
progress delayed by a betrothal
unwarranted suspicion

Makes no sense to me

[Guest]

Dante's first sight of Beatrice

...the musician ex-partner sent it as a postcard from Firenze, a long time ago. I still have it.

[Guest]

Marriage? Dunno about that. If it comes to anything of the sort, I'd imagine that a wood and a druid would probably come into it at some point.

Pagan weddings, in many cases performed by a recognized druid, will now be allowed in Ireland.

Following a five-year campaign the Irish state has now recognized the right of the Pagan Federation Ireland to perform weddings.

Couples will now be able to be legally married after a ceremony that concludes with jumping over a broomstick to mark crossing over from an old life to a new one.

Pagan weddings are also known as hand-fasting and most recently, the nephew of Richard Branson got married that way and they have become increasingly popular. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Pagan-weddings-now-allowed-in-Ireland-84903247.html

[eddie]

...took me ages to locate the hexagram and appropriate line.

...a snow white steed
progress delayed by a betrothal
unwarranted suspicion

Can you remember in which line the 6 or 9 appeared?

[Guest]

Line 6 for the FOURTH place

Six in the fourth place means:
Grace or simplicity?
A white horse comes as if on wings.
He is not a robber,
He will woo at the right time.

An individual is in a situation in which doubts arise as to which is better-to
pursue the grace of external brilliance, or to return to simplicity. The doubt
itself implies the answer. Confirmation comes from the outside; it comes like
a white winged horse. The white color indicates simplicity. At first it may be
disappointing to renounce the comforts that might have been obtained, yet
one finds peace of mind in a true relationship with the friend who courts
him. The winged horse is the symbol of the thoughts that transcend all limits
of space and time.

...hmmm...pegasus:

"The symbolism of Pegasus varies with time. Symbol of wisdom and especially of fame from the Middle Ages until the Renaissance, he became one symbol of the poetry and the creator of sources in which the poets come to draw inspiration, particularly in the 19th century. Pegasus is the subject of a very rich iconography, especially through the ancient Greek pottery and paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance. Personification of the water, solar myth, or shaman mount, Carl Jung and his followers have seen in Pegasus a profound symbolic esoteric in relation to the spiritual energy that allows to access to the realm of the gods on Mount Olympus."

[eddie]

^

I am very much obliged to you for that, Moony.

You understand that the treacherous young witch will always take second place in my affections.

[Guest]

^

I am very much obliged to you for that, Moony.

You understand that the treacherous young witch will always take second place in my affections.

...age and stealth will always defeat youth and inexperience

[eddie]

Dante's first sight of Beatrice

...the musician ex-partner sent it as a postcard from Firenze, a long time ago. I still have it.

In the book, the painting gets an Elvis Costello caption:

When we first met I didn't know what to do
My old love lines were all worn out on you
And the world walked round my mouth
(Jack of All Parades- EC.)

[Guest]

Dante's first sight of Beatrice working on the gateline at Liverpool Street station.

In the book, the painting gets an Elvis Costello caption:



When we first met I didn't know what to do
My old love lines were all worn out on you
And the world walked round my mouth
(Jack of All Parades- EC.)

I've reached the Paradiso section of my contemporary Divine Comedy...been writing some more poems about my personal Beatrice...going to use this as as an epigraph for this section:

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello" she said
"You look like the silent type"
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue
(Bob Dylan)

Don't know that it really matters but Bob gets the century wrong: Dante lived in 14th c. Tuscany.

I'm looking forward to the book....

[Guest]

We have just learned that Svetlana's son has set a poem by Pablo Neruda to music, and that we will be performing it with the Metropolitan Chorus in April.

EL FUTURO ES ESPACIO

EL futuro es espacio,
espacio color de tierra,
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños,
espacio blanco para toda la nieve,
para toda la música.

Atrás quedó el amor desesperado
que no tenía sitio para un beso,
hay lugar para todos en el bosque,
en la calle, en la casa,
hay sitio subterráneo y submarino,
qué placer es hallar por fin,
subiendo
un planeta vacío,
grandes estrellas claras como el vodka
tan transparentes y deshabitadas,
y allí llegar con el primer teléfono
para que hablen más tarde tantos hombres
de sus enfermedades.

Lo importante es apenas divisarse,
gritar desde una dura cordillera
y ver en la otra punta
los pies de una mujer recién llegada.

Adelante, salgamos
del río sofocante
en que con otros peces navegamos
desde el alba a la noche migratoria
y ahora en este espacio descubierto
volemos a la pura soledad.

...I haven't been able to find a translation.

[Guest]

^

THE FUTURE IS SPACE
Pablo Neruda

The future is space,
earth-colored space,
cloud-colored,
color of water, air,
black space with room for many dreams,
white space with room for all snow,
for all music.

Behind lies despairing love
with no room for a kiss.
There's a place for everyone in forests,
in streets, in houses;
there's an underground space, a submarine space,
but what joy is to find in the end,
rising,
an empty planet
great stars clear as vodka,
so uninhabited and so transparent,
and arrive there with the first telephone
so that so many men can later discuss
all their infirmities.

The important thing is to be scarcely aware of oneself,
to scream from a rough mountain range
and see on another peak
the feet of a woman newly arrived.

Come on, let's leave
this suffocating river
in which we swim with other fish
from dwan to shifting night
and now in this discovered space
let's fly to a pure solitude



Artwork for the poem by someone called Caroline Attan

[Guest]

thank you vera.

[Guest]

I live my life in growing orbits
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 -1926)

I live my life in growing orbits
Which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

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