Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

~Anne of Green Gables

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

~ W. B. Yeats

Among the men and women the multitude,

I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,

Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am,

Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.

Ah lover and perfect equal,
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

~ Walt Whitman

The mountains in autumn
there are so much fallen leaves,
- looking for my lost lover
I cannot find the path.

~author unknown

Living in this world -
to what shall I compare it?
Its like a boat
rowing out at break of day,
leaving no trace behind.

~ Sami Mansei


Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.

Another Morning

It’s a great feeling to savour coffee sip by sip early in the morning
recalling some stanza or the other from Neruda’s poetry.
It’s like stepping into life anew that very moment.
Mind and body lighten and effortlessly mingle with the thin morning fog.
Leaves of different colours fall in every house front and form a wonderful kalamkaree.
A housewife, hand on her hip, tries to sweep drowsiness and laziness away.
Thin fog settles like kindness on plants, trees and flowers.
Perhaps everything loses its natural hardness and turns gloriously soft in the morning.
That first awakened beauty of the morning world of
housewives, children, puppies, birds is absolutely astounding.
Having melted and letting off steam, we move about in bed delicately like warm lakes
Her hands move delicately to wash the faces of housefronts
clean, draw a few lines of muggu and set out with a whip.
By then we would get together by the pomegranate tree,
around a winter fire warming our hands, feet and face
and welcome fire into ourselves.
Some mother would have slit the sky with her fingertip.
Tightening its fist and crying lightly
A beautiful baby would appear over our heads.
Even if all the poets the world over wrote a poem each on the morning hour
It would still remain untouched, unsmelt, wonderful and fascinating
The entire body would reduce itself to a small poem and be moved.
Whosoever it is, he has to take a handful of water
Pay homage to life and only then move on to live.

~K. Siva Reddy

Water Lily

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors...

~Rainer Maria Rilke


ah... how delicious is this poem

Love

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.


~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Morning

Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.
You've moon-lines, apple pathways
Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;
You've vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.

Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
And you withdraw to the underground world.

As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores;
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.

- by Pablo Neruda

The Shipfitter's Wfie

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I would go to him where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles,
his calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me-the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the first man clanging
off the hull's silver ribs, spark of lead
kissing metal, the clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle
and the long drive home.

~ Dorianne Laux

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.

by Robert Hayden

Dear, though the night is gone,
Its dream still haunts today,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that gloom
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay:

Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each other’s necks
Inert and vaguely sad.

What hidden worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out.

~ W H Auden