Po-mz

Beautiful Wislawa Szymborska Poems Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

A FEW WORDS ON THE SOUL

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

- Wislawa Szymborska 

. 

ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

It can’t take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn’t strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won’t help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d’etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies’ skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not.

There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.

- Wislawa Szymborska 

. 

SOME LIKE POETRY

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don’t know and don’t know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing

- Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996. Of all the winners of that prize none have produced so little work. There are only about 250 Szymborska poems in existence. They are however, without exception treasures and every one of them worthy of the prize. 

2 Wonderful Maya Angelou Poems Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

PHENOMENAL WOMAN

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

- Maya Angelou

. 

A CONCEIT

Give me your hand
Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

- Maya Angelou 

The Beauty Of Hartley Alexander Poetry Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

THE WET GRASS OF MORNING

In the spring when I bathe my feet in the wet grass of morning,
I see many smiles upon the meadows… .

There are drops of shining dew clinging to the blue harebells,
And the little white starflowers sparkle with dew, shining… .

Old Woman Spider has beaded many beautiful patterns,
Spreading them where the Sun’s ray fails… .

He also is smiling as he catches the red of the blackbird’s opening wing,
As he hearkens to the mocking-bird inventing new songs… .

I was an old man as I sat by the evening fire;
When I bathe my feet in the wet grass of morning I am young again.

- Hartley Alexander 

A Timeless Shakespeare Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
   For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

- William Shakespeare 

One More Neruda Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

ODE TO OLIVE OIL

Near the murmuring
In the grain fields, of the waves
Of wind in the oat-stalks
The olive tree
With its silver-covered mass
Severe in its lines
In its twisted
Heart in the earth:
The graceful
Olives
Polished
By the hands
Which made
The dove
And the oceanic
Snail:
Green,
Inumerable,
Immaculate
Nipples
Of nature
And there
In
The dry
Olive Groves
Where
Alone
The blue sky with cicadas
And the hard earth
Exist
There
The prodigy
The perfect
Capsules
Of the olives
Filling
With their constellations, the foliage
Then later,
The bowls,
The miracle,
The olive oil.
I love
The homelands of olive oil
The olive groves
Of Chacabuco, in Chile
In the morning
Feathers of platinum
Forests of them
Against the wrinkled
Mountain ranges.
In Anacapri, up above,
Over the light of the Italian sea
Is the despair of olive trees
And on the map of Europe
Spain
A black basketfull of olives
Dusted off by orange blossoms
As if by a sea breeze
Olive oil,
The internal supreme
Condition for the cooking pot
Pedestal for game birds
Heavenly key to mayonaise
Smoothe and tasty
Over the lettuce
And supernatural in the hell
Of the king mackerals like archbishops
Our chorus
With
Intimate
Powerful smoothness
You sing:
You are the Spanish
Language
There are syllables of olive oil
There are words
Useful and rich-smelling
Like your fragrant material
It’s not only wine that sings
Olive oil sings too
It lives in us with its ripe light
And among the good things of the earth
I set apart
Olive oil,
Your ever-flowing peace, your green essence
Your heaped-up treasure which descends
In streams from the olive tree.

- Pablo Neruda

Okay, I admit it, I think Neruda is so wonderful that I named my eldest son after him. He is the only poet that reaches me so totally as Shakepeare does. This gem was sent to me by Ruth Duncan, Thank you Ruth. 

More Neruda Poetry Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

 XIV

I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.
One by one I should detail your hairs and praise them.
Other lovers want to live with particular eyes;
I only want to be your stylist.

In Italy they call you Medusa,
Because of the high bristling light of your hair.
I call you curly, my tangler;
my heart knows the doorways of your hair.

When you lose your way through your own hair,
Do not forget me, remember that I love you.
Don’t let me wander lost - without your hair -

Through the dark world, webbed by empty
Roads with their shadows, their roving sorrows,
‘Til the sun rises, lighting the high tower of your hair.

- Pablo Neruda

IX

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
The clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
And the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,
To one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
Magnetic transient whose death blooms
And vanishes - being, nothingness - forever:
Broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You and I, love, together we ratify the silence,
While the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
Collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

Because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
Galloping water, incessant sand,
We make the only permanent tenderness.

- Pablo Neruda 

Another Valentine's Day Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are.”

Pussy said to the Owl “You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?”
Said the Piggy, “I will”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon. 

- Edward Lear

Published in 1871, The Owl And The Pussycat is the most famous work by Edward Lear. It has inspired other artists ever since. Stravinski, for example, set it to music and it was the inspiration for a Monty Python book. The poem is about impossible love and is autobiographical as Lear loved a certain woman yet could never find the courage to tell her or to propose to her. He should have sent a Valentine.

In case anyone is wondering what a runcible spoon is, unfortunately no one knows. Lear made the word up and never told anyone what he meant. Well, it sounds good anyway.

Thanks to Ruth. 

A Beautiful Edgar Allen Poe Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

A VALENTINE

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!— they hold a treasure
Divine— a talisman— an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure—
The words— the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets— as the name is a poet’s, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto— Mendez Ferdinando—
Still form a synonym for Truth— Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle,
though you do the best you can do.

- Edgar Allen Poe

Happy Valentines Day everyone. 

A Wonderful Len Roberts Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

THE LIST OF MOST DIFFICULT WORDS

I was still standing although
Gabriella Wells and Barbara Ryan were too, 
their bodies dark against the wall of light 
that dull-pewter December afternoon, 
shadows with words that flowed
so easily from their mouths, 
fluorescent and grievous,  
pied and effervescent,
words I’d spelled out to the rhythm 
of my father’s hoarse whispers 
during our nightly practice sessions
beneath the dim bulb,
superfluous, excelsior,
desultory and exaggeration
mixed with his Schaefer breath
and Lucky Strike smoke

as I went down 
The List of Most Difficult Words
with a man whose wife had left,
one son grown into madness,
the other into death, 
my father’s hundred-and-five-pound skeleton 
of skin glowing in that beer-flooded kitchen 
when he’d lift the harmonica

to blow a few long, sad riffs
of country into a song
while he waited for me to hit
the single l of spiraling, 
the silent i of receipt,
the two of us working words hard
those nights on Olmstead Street,
sure they would someday save me.

- Len Roberts 

A Great Tennyson Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson