This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
What is your favorite poem and why?
Poems may be the keys to understanding how the invisible pieces of our soul fit together. Poems are tools that help us not only to understand ourselves but also the world around us.
As Amartya Sen said - "If one can find the right poem, quoting someone else can be as much an expression of one's deeper self as anything one can write oneself."
Topics:
Understanding philosophy sharing
Tim Petersen
Anisha Rikhy
Peter Panacci
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Tim Petersen
The Double Life
How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A restless me to drift and roam
A quiet me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and new found thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.
And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancey risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell
But shackled to that Restless Me
My other self rebeliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home-dear prisonment,
With candle light and well-loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,
With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun.
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where....just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.
One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back.
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "No,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.
The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.
--Don Blanding
In the way this provokes relaxation and a little smile for me I hope you all enjoy it, too.
Felipe Morales-Torres
"I have to tell you,
there are times when the sun
strikes me like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears."
...because it is impossible not to understand it.
Tim Petersen
Thanks Paul, because you have also made evident that everything is energy and power, even in silence. We are unable to conceal all that we have been taught to believe sleeps in silence. Energy and power never sleep and silence speaks infinitely.
I really, really appreciate like-minded hearts, it is my pleasure to have met you all.
B Maher
Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
Juliette Zahn 50+
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn't make any sense.”
- Rumi
I love this because we - all of us- belong here.
Laura Haynes
Love After Love by Derek Wolcott:
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Miki Yamanaka
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with
Colleen Steen 500+
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
Miki,
This is another one of my favorites...thanks:>)
Mary M. 100+
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too.".......
Tim Petersen
Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act.
Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no side stepping your own being,
or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.
You are the message.
-Leonard Peltier, 1998
....that is one of my favorites for an extremely internal and personal relationship which lives within myself.
This is another, but for a message I wish for the uni-verse (one-song) to hear...
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love,
But to be loved alone....
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police:
We must love one another or die.
-W.H. Auden, I believe..
It may be titled, The Normal Heart, that, I am also not completely sure of. I read it years ago in a play by Larry Kramer, called: September, 1939
thank you all for sharing your words. It is like the opening of an old wound and becoming vulnerable to others when we share words and thoughts of our personal love. Without this opportunity, to share and offer ourselves to each other, the wounds have a greater chance of scarring over, rendering love, and our hopes nothing more than a distant intellectual memory that warns us of risk and fear of ever hurting again. For me, keeping this wound open I never forget the intense feelings of being alive because I am, yet, in touch with the emotion, and this justifies the future risk of all that I may share, say or do.
As Amartya Sen put so well, "If one can find the right poem, quoting someone else can be as much an expression of one's deeper self as anything one can write oneself." Thanks Amartya; your quote, my feelings. Tim.
Paul Lillebo
Here's Leonard Cohen's poem, "Gift" from 1958.
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.
(And who has written more beautifully about silence than Paul Simon?):
. . .
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence.
. . .
Mary M. 100+
Wonderful reflection at the end of your entry Mr. Petersen.
Juliette Zahn 50+
Tim Petersen
I failed to insert my reply to all of you properly and it has ended up at the top of the page.
Thanks again, to all of you.
Zahra Amini
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
enjoy:)
Zahra Amini
A dream within a dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
see how beautifully he engages in the idea of persuit of reality which is not to be found whatsoever...
Comment deleted
Zahra Amini
thamks for the comments though:)
alaa dief
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
By 2pac.
Colleen Steen 500+
Why? Just read it:>)
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
marleen catmull
I watched the loving die
Did you ever really love me or,
was your love a lovely lie.
After the breakdown of a marriage this poem poleaxed me.
Mahesh Gokhale
Ekla chalo by Ravindranath Tagore, it is so realistic on the verge of being unromantic, yet it is a poem for th heart when you are alone and it pushes you to "alk alone evern when no one heeds you"
I like Harivansharai Bachhans "Agni path"
And I like "prem asav" by kusumagraj
Zev Keisch
Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
Letitia Falk 10+
Zahra Amini
Scott Armstrong 50+
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Alfred R, Ferguson.
Lot's of people zero in on the religious elements but that's beside the point, for me.
I just like the imagery and the sadness evoked because, in all her beauty, Nature (and the nature of Time) is heartless.
Genevieve Tran 50+
http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html
According to that, depending on what cultural worldview you were brought up on, you might interpret that poem as you have. OR you could think cyclically, where Every Day is Gold :)
Scott Armstrong 50+
However, I think the crux of this particular poem is about the nature of experience - everything begins fresh and beautiful and fades over time.
He doesn't mention the next day :)
Genevieve Tran 50+
Scott Armstrong 50+
He then brings in some good old religious imagery which tells the story of how we started as perfect, fresh and innocent but eventually end up succumbing to the ravages of time and experience and continues the theme of new becomes old.
The great thing about the cyclic level of life is that it renews itself constantly. I don't think he was thinking on that level when he wrote the poem.
tishe Hires 10+
Outside of that flower, there are two humans, that have enough love,
to make that flower bloom." It is probably not quoted right. It stuck with me. It stuck with me as a teenager!! :)
Silvia Marinova 20+
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Colleen Steen 500+
I just posted this poem as one of my favorites, then scrolled down and found your contribution! Looks like we're on a similar page again...LOVE it:>)
Silvia Marinova 20+
I wanted to share another great poem in Bulgarian and hopefully translate it well so that I can get the gist of the meaning:
Не питай за цената на мечтата -
бори се, литвай, падай и умирай!. . .
Носи я винаги напред -в ръката,
възкръсвай: ставай, искай и намирай!
Не я затваряй в себе си, в душата. . .
Изправен дишай, никога не спирай,
мечтай за радостта, за красотата!
С възторг и трепет, с вяра в чудесата -
тя ражда и мира, и светлината,
с кръвта заплаща любовта и свободата. . .
НЕ ПИТАЙ ЗА ЦЕНАТА НА МЕЧТАТА!. . .
Людмил Янков 1984 год.
Don't ask about the dream's price ...
fight, fly, fall and die! ...
Take it always ahead - in your hand,
Revive: get up, want and find!
Don't close it inside, in your soul ...
Standing breathe, never stop,
Dream of joy, of beauty!
With rapture and thrill, with faith in miracles -
it gives birth to both peace and light,
In blood it pays for love and freedom ...
DON'T ASK ABOUT THE DREAM'S PRICE! ...
Lyudmil Yankov 1984
This is a man who was lost too soon ...
Mary M. 100+
Colleen Steen 500+
I came across the poem "IF" at a frightening time in my life. I challenged a toxic business in the community years ago. My life was threatened, my home vandalized and damaged, and I was afraid to walk down the street in a community where I lived for 40 years. I was percieved as public enemy number 1, for trying to put these "nice people" out of business. I questioned myself and my actions over and over again during several years. The question to myself was always..."do I want to be liked and feel safe"?, or "do I want to do what is right for our environment"?
I kept this poem close by, read and re-read it many many times to help give me strength to carry on. Finally, the business was ordered by the environmental court to vacate the site.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise......................
This poem means so much to me in so many ways:>)
Mary M. 100+
alisa ivanova
The poem "IF" is also one of my favorite ones.and why did not you post till the end of the poem. here it's:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
Colleen Steen 500+
Thank you. I DID enjoy reading the poem "ANYWAY", which I had not seen before...thank you:>)
I think/feel that bravery comes and goes. The piece that never leaves my mind and heart, is that I did not come back to this earth school to be complacent:>)
Colleen Steen 500+
I posted the entire poem in another comment earlier and didn't want to take up any more space.
It is always good for a repeat...thanks:>)
Juliette Zahn 50+
(I have too many favorite poems to pick just one).
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For that.
This poem is called "A Great Need" - by Hafiz ...... maybe " Not loving is a letting go" would be a better title !!!! In other words “ A world without love is a deadly place.” - Dr Helen Fisher
Denis Fitzpatrick
“When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.”