Poet's Corner

Fascinating TED talk.

The Museum of Four in the Morning


'Four In The Morning'

"The hour from night to day.
The hour from side to side.
The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.
The hour when earth betrays us.
The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.
The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.
Blank, empty.
The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
--three cheers for the ants. And let five o'clock come
if we're to go on living."

Wislawa Szymborska

 

The Illusion of Love
by Boyd Cathey (October 2018)


At the Lapin Agile, Pablo Picasso, 1905


She was mine from the very first,
Or, so I thought in my proud mind’s eye,
Awakening in my loins unslakened thirst
Of desire and longing, and muted sigh.

But her one and twenty years
And my forty and five, thus doubled,
Spelled for me severest tears
And untold trouble.

Oh! What I desired from her
She would not deign,
And what she desired of me, alas,
Was just my brain.

 

Published posthumously after the author was killed at the battle of the Somme in 1916.

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

 

Who was the writer Mindful,I wonder if it was written in the Trenches..such a premonition (sic) and anticipated finality of Death that eventually came,Sad Indeed,Iwonder if it was written to a Loved One...st

I like your new avie,much indeed

 

Didn't say who the author was.

We've been immersed just lately with the armistice remembrances. All of those young men sent out to battle, and never returning.

Peter Jackson has put out a movie about the Great War. I watched it last night.

 

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII