Quotes Tagged "poetry"

I'll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I'll dictate it, if it comes to that. They'll have to pry my pen out of my cold, dead fingers - and even then, I'll fight 'em for it. Guaranteed.

J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère L'automne est morte souviens-t'en Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre Odeur du temps brin de bruyère Et souviens-toi que je t'attends

ليس من أجلهم ولا من أجلي أجلسُ كلَّ مساء أفكرُ كيفَ أنَّ أحزانَ الآخرين، دموعَهُم وخذلاناتهِم المُرّةَ لا تُعير اكتراثاً لأحد ترقُدُ منسيةً ومُهملةً، كإطارٍ على الطريقِ السريع.

ليسَ من أجلي أنهضُ كلَّ صباحٍ بصوتٍ يتكسرُ وحلمٍ يصدأُ. ليسَ من أجلي أجولُ كلَّ يومٍ الأرصفةَ ذاتَها. ضاحكاً من كتابةِ ذكرى، مؤجلاً غَدِي برعبِ يومي. متوثِّبٌ للنسيان. مخلصٌ للسهو أسهو عن مخاذلِ العيش عن الأصدقاءِ وهم يكذبون عن جثةٍ -هي الحقيقةُ- تبلغُها فتموتُ بين يديكَ عن رِعدَةٍ تجيءُ وتنسلُّ دونَ اكتراثِ أحد عن ظلٍّ زائفٍ وشعوبٍ بآجالٍ ورقية عن الخيانات عن أطفالٍ يموتونَ قبلَ أن يُدركوا الرمق وعن شتلةِ المطاطِ تموتُ في الزاويةِ رغماً عني

Here dwell together still two men of note Who never lived and so can never die: How very near they seem, yet how remote That age before the world went all awry. But still the game’s afoot for those with ears Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo: England is England yet, for all our fears– Only those things the heart believes are true. A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon this fabled street: A lonely hansom splashes through the rain, The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet. Here, though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

العينان الخضراوان مروحتان فى أروقة الصيف الحران أغنيتان مسافرتان أبحرتا من نايات الرعيان بعبير حنان بعزاء من الهة النور الى مدن الأحزان سنتان وأنا أبنى زورق حب يمتد عليه من الشوق شراعان كى أبحر فى العينين الصافيتين الى جزر المرجان ماأحلى أن يضطرب الموج فينسدل الجفنان وأنا أبحث عن مجداف عن ايمان !

This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.

I never heard sound and thrill of my painful heart until that very day she touched it.

anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame. If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn form the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...

On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.

If you heard your lover scream in the next room and you ran in and saw his pinkie on the floor, in a small puddle of blood. You wouldn't rush to the pinkie and say, 'Darling, are you OK? ' No, you'd wrap your arms around his shoulders and worry about the pinkie later. The same holds true if you heard the scream, ran in and saw his hand or -god forbid- his whole arm. But suppose you hear your lover scream in the next room, and you run in and his head is on the floor next to his body. Which do you rush to and comfort first?

We didn’t deny the obvious, but we didn’t entirely accept it either. I mean, we said hello to it each morning in the foyer. We patted its little head as it made a mess in the backyard, but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed up at our bedroom door, in its pajamas, unable to sleep, in need of a hug, and we just stared at it like an Armenian, or even worse— hid beneath the covers and pretended not to hear its tiny sobs.

I surrendered my identity in your eyes. Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the way someone falling down in the street is funny. I entered a revolving door and emerged as a human being. When you think of me is my face electronically blurred? I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest satellite dish in the universe, your smile as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed. Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder. I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand. I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence so far, without spilling a drop.

Only times and places, only names and ghosts.

Come boy, and pour for me a cup Of old Falernian. Fill it up With wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear; Our host decrees no water here. Let dullards drink the Nymph's pale brew, The sluggish thin their blood with dew. For such pale stuff we have no use; For us the purple grape's rich juice. Begone, ye chilling water sprite; Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!

I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not speak to you, and you do not speak to me; we listen only to the music of silence. Silence is the friend's trust of friend, imagination's self-confidence between rain and rainbow. A rainbow is inspiration provoking the poet, uninvited, the infatuation of the poet with the prose of the Quran. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown? We are absent, you and I; we are present, you and I. And absent. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?

New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood. Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines. Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored, The recociliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning. See your rivers stirring with musk alligators And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens. Just open your eyes to the April rainbow And your eyes, especially your ears, to God Who in one burst of saxophone laughter Created heaven and earth in six days, And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep.

A poem is a meteor.