Poetry Corner

[Kiffer]

Re: Poetry Corner

Please, can you tell me where I can find the armenian version of this poem from Barouyr Sevak. I looked for it all this morning and I did not find it. Thank you.
Louise Kiffer

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Poetry Corner

"Dulce et Decorum Est "

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-- Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

[hipeter924]

Re: Poetry Corner

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

[MrHyeSev]

Re: Poetry Corner

To Omar Khayyam

Omar, within thy scented garden-close,
When passed with eventide
The starward incense of the waning rose—
Too precious to abide
After the glad and golden death of spring—
Omar, thou heardest then,
Above the world of men,
The mournful rumor of an iron wing,
The sough and sigh of desolating years,
Whereof the wind is as the winds that blow
Out of a lonesome land of night and snow
Where timeless winter weeps with frozen tears;
And in thy bodeful ears
The brief and tiny lisp
Of petals curled and crisp,
Fallen at eve in Persia's mellow clime,
Was mingled with the mighty sound of time.

Omar, thou knewest well
How the fair days are sorrowful and strange
With time's inexorable mystery
And terror ineluctable of change:
Upon thine eyes the bleak and bitter spell
Of vision, thou didst see,
As in a magic glass,
The moulded mists and painted shadows pass—
The ghostly pomps we name reality;
And, lo, the level field,
With broken fane and throne
And dust of old, unfabled cities sown,
In unremembering years was made to yield,
From out the shards of Power,
The pillars frail and small
That lift for capital
The blood-like bubble of the poppy-flower;
And crowns were crumbled for the airy gold
The crocus and the daffodil should hold
As inalienable dower.
Before thy gaze the sad unvaried green
The cypresses like robes funereal wear,
Was woven on the gradual looms of air
From threadbare silk and tattered sendaline
That clothed some ancient queen;
And from the spoilt vermilion of her mouth
The myrtles rose, and from her ruined hair
And eyes that held the summer's ardent drouth
In blown, disrooted bowers;
And amber limbs and breast
Through ancient nights by sleepless love oppressed,
Or by the iron flight of loveless hours.

Knowing the weary wisdom of the years,
The empty truth of tears;
The suns of June that with some great excess
Of ardor slay the unabiding rose;
And grey-haired winter, wan and fervorless,
For whom no flower grows;
Seeing the paradisal bloom that pales
On orient snows untrod
In magic morns that grant,
Across a land of common green and grey,
The disenchanted day;
Knowing the gulf-deep veils
And walls of adamant
That ward the darkling verities of God—
Knowing these things, ah, surely thou wert wise
To kiss on ardent breast and avid mouth
Some girl whose eyes
Were golden with the sun-belovèd south—
To pluck the rose and drain the rose-red wine
In gardens half-divine;
Before the broken cup
Be filled and covered up
In dusty seas of everlasting drouth.

-- Clark Ashton Smith

"The deep green garden, its walls plastered with mud, faced the river with the village behind it."

-- Parsipur, Sharnush. Women Without Men (A Novel of Modern Iran), p.1 (1989).

You never dissapoint me.

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Poetry Corner

To Omar Khayyam

Omar, within thy scented garden-close,
When passed with eventide
The starward incense of the waning rose—
Too precious to abide
After the glad and golden death of spring—
Omar, thou heardest then,
Above the world of men,
The mournful rumor of an iron wing,
The sough and sigh of desolating years,
Whereof the wind is as the winds that blow
Out of a lonesome land of night and snow
Where timeless winter weeps with frozen tears;
And in thy bodeful ears
The brief and tiny lisp
Of petals curled and crisp,
Fallen at eve in Persia's mellow clime,
Was mingled with the mighty sound of time.

Omar, thou knewest well
How the fair days are sorrowful and strange
With time's inexorable mystery
And terror ineluctable of change:
Upon thine eyes the bleak and bitter spell
Of vision, thou didst see,
As in a magic glass,
The moulded mists and painted shadows pass—
The ghostly pomps we name reality;
And, lo, the level field,
With broken fane and throne
And dust of old, unfabled cities sown,
In unremembering years was made to yield,
From out the shards of Power,
The pillars frail and small
That lift for capital
The blood-like bubble of the poppy-flower;
And crowns were crumbled for the airy gold
The crocus and the daffodil should hold
As inalienable dower.
Before thy gaze the sad unvaried green
The cypresses like robes funereal wear,
Was woven on the gradual looms of air
From threadbare silk and tattered sendaline
That clothed some ancient queen;
And from the spoilt vermilion of her mouth
The myrtles rose, and from her ruined hair
And eyes that held the summer's ardent drouth
In blown, disrooted bowers;
And amber limbs and breast
Through ancient nights by sleepless love oppressed,
Or by the iron flight of loveless hours.

Knowing the weary wisdom of the years,
The empty truth of tears;
The suns of June that with some great excess
Of ardor slay the unabiding rose;
And grey-haired winter, wan and fervorless,
For whom no flower grows;
Seeing the paradisal bloom that pales
On orient snows untrod
In magic morns that grant,
Across a land of common green and grey,
The disenchanted day;
Knowing the gulf-deep veils
And walls of adamant
That ward the darkling verities of God—
Knowing these things, ah, surely thou wert wise
To kiss on ardent breast and avid mouth
Some girl whose eyes
Were golden with the sun-belovèd south—
To pluck the rose and drain the rose-red wine
In gardens half-divine;
Before the broken cup
Be filled and covered up
In dusty seas of everlasting drouth.

-- Clark Ashton Smith

"The deep green garden, its walls plastered with mud, faced the river with the village behind it."

-- Parsipur, Sharnush. Women Without Men (A Novel of Modern Iran), p.1 (1989).

[MrHyeSev]

Re: Poetry Corner

Restless

You wake up & the clouds are grey
And you have no idea what to say
You take a look outside
And you see rain coming from the clouds upright
You want to go back to bed
But you have work..isn't that WHACK!


Now thats poetry LOL LOL.

[MrHyeSev]

Re: Poetry Corner

Compliments with criticism... so sweet...

Heh I know, isn't it.

[Anush]

Re: Poetry Corner

Anush good poetry, but you will never be advanced like freakyfreaky.

Compliments with criticism... so sweet...

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Poetry Corner

Then the cooks brought forth a table of gold, and Zal was seated beside the Shah and all the nobles according to their rank, and they ate flesh and drank wine together. Then when the mantle of night was fallen over the earth Zal sprang upon his steed and scoured the land in the unrest of his spirit, for his heart was full of thoughts and his mouth of words. But when morning was come he presented himself before the Shah in audience. And his speech and mien found favour in the eyes of the Shah, and he called unto him his Wise Men and bade them question the stars of this matter. Three days and three nights did the Mubids search the heavens without ceasing, and on the fourth they came before the Shah and spake. And they said unto him-


"Hail to thee, hero of the golden girdle, for we bring unto thee glad tidings. The son of Saum and the daughter of Mihrab shall be a glorious pair, and from their union shall spring a son like to a war-elephant, and he shall subdue all men by his sword and raise the glory of Iran even unto the skies. And he shall uproot the wicked from the earth so that there shall be no room for them. Segsars and Mazinderan shall feel the weight of his mace, and he shall bring much woe upon Turan, but Iran shall be loaded with prosperity at his hands. And he will give back sleep to the unhappy, and close the doors of discord, and bar the paths of wrong-doing. The kingdom will rejoice while he lives; Roum, Ind, and Iran will grave his name upon their seals."
When the Shah had heard this he charged the Mubids that they keep secret that which they had revealed unto him. And he called for Zal that he might question him and test his wisdom. And the Wise Men and the Mubids were seated in a circle, and they put these questions to the son of Saum.

And the first opened his mouth and said-


"Twelve trees, well grown and green,
Fair and lofty, have I seen;
Each has sprung with vigorous sprout,
Sending thirty branches out;
Wax no more, nor wane, they can
In the kingdom of Iran."

And Zal pondered a while and then answered and said-


'Twelve moons in the year, and each I praise
As a new-made king on a new throne's blaze:
Each comes to an end in thirty days."

Then the second Mubid questioned him and said-


"Thou whose head is high in air,
Rede me now of coursers twain;
Both are noble, swift to speed;
Black as storms in the night one steed,
The other crystal, white and fair,
They race for ever and haste in vain,
Towards a goal they never gain."

And Zal thought again yet a while and answered-


"Two shining horses, one black, one white.
That run for ever in rapid flight;
The one is the day, the other the night,
That count the throbs of the heavens height,
Like the hunted prey from the following chase
They flee, yet neither wins the race."

Then the third Mubid questioned him and said-


"Thirty knights before the king
Pass along. Regard the thing
Closely; one is gone. Again
Look- the thirty are in train."

And Zal answered and spake-


"Thirty knights of whom the train
Is full, then fails, then fills again,
Know, each moon is reckoned thus,
So willed by God who governs us,
And thy word is true of the faint moon's wane,
Now failing in darkness, now shining plain."

Then the fourth Mubid questioned him and said-


"See a green garden full of springs;
A strong man with a sickle keen
Enters, and reaps both dry and green;
No word thine utmost anguish wrings."

And Zal bethought him and replied-


"Thy word was of a garden green,
A reaper with a sickle keen,
Who cuts alike the fresh and the dry
Nor heedeth prayer nor any cry:
Time is the reaper, we the grass;
Pity nor fear his spirit has,
But old and young he reaps alike.
No rank can stay his sickle's strike,
No love, but he will leave it lorn,
For to this end all men are born.
Birth opes to all the gate of Life,
Death shuts it down on love and strife,
And Fate, that counts the breath of man,
Measures to each a reckoned span."

Then the fifth Mubid questioned him and said-


"Look how two lofty cypresses
Spring up, like reeds, from stormy seas,
There builds a bird his dwelling-place;
Upon the one all night he stays,
But swift, with the dawn, across he flies;
The abandoned tree dries up and dies,
While that whereon he sets his feet
Breathes odours out, surpassing sweet.
The one is dead for ever and aye,
The other lives and blooms alway."

Then Zal yet again bethought him before he said-


"Hear of the sea-born cypresses,
Where builds a bird, and rests, and flees.
From the Ram to the Scales the earth o'erpowers,
Shadows obscure of the night that lowers,
But when the Scales' sign it must quit,
Darkness and gloom o'ermaster it;
The sides of heaven thy fable shows
Whence grief to man or blessing flows,
The sun like a bird flies to and fro,
Weal with him bringing, but leaving woe."

Then the sixth Mubid questioned him, and it was the last question that he asked, and he deemed it the hardest of all to answer. And all men hung upon his words and listened to the answer of Zal. And the Mubid said-


"Builded on a rock I found
A town. Men left the gate and chose
A thicket on the level ground.
Soon their soaring mansions rose
Lifting roofs that reach the moon,
Some men slaves, some kings, became,
Of their earlier city soon
The memory died in all. Its name
None breathed. But hark! an earthquake; down,
Lost in the chasm lies the land-
Now long they for their rock-built town,
Enduring things they understand.
Seek in thy soul the truth of this;
This before kings proclaim, I was,
If rightly thou the riddle rede,
Black earth to musk thou hast changed indeed."

And Zal pondered this riddle but a little while, and then opened his mouth and said-


"The eternal, final world is shown
By image of a rock-built town;
The thicket is our passing life,
A place of pleasure and of pain,
A world of dreams and eager strife,
A time for labour, and loss, and gain;
This counts thy heart-beats, at its will
Prolongs their pulse or makes it still.
But winds and earthquake rouse: a cry
Goes up of bitterness and woe,
Now we must leave our homes below
And climb the rocky fastness high.
Another reaps our fruit of pain,
That yet to another leaves his gain;
So was it aye, must so remain.
Well for us if our name endure,
Though we shall pass, beloved and pure,
For all the evil man hath done,
Stalks, when he dies, in the sight of the sun;
When dust is strown on breast and head,
Then desolation reigns with dread."

-- Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahmaneh, ch.4, "Zal and Rubadeh"

[MrHyeSev]

Re: Poetry Corner

Anush good poetry, but you will never be advanced like freakyfreaky.