Tag Archives: poetry

Fog by Carl Sandburg

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The fog comes
 on little cat feet.

It sits looking
 over harbor and city
  on silent haunches
 and then moves on.

Depreciation [Tanka]

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in the morning,
 a fresh blanket of snow
  makes the world look new.
 by day's end, it's well-trodden:
  a car driven off the lot.

PLAYTHINGS by Rabindranath Tagore [w/ Audio]

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CHILD, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.

 I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.

 I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.

 Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!"

 Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies.

 I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver.
 
 With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain. 

 In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.

BOOKS: The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore

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The Crescent Moon : Poems and Stories [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] Rabindranath TagoreThe Crescent Moon : Poems and Stories [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] Rabindranath Tagore by Rabindranath Tagore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available free at Project Gutenberg

Amazon.in Page

This is a collection of forty poems that are all connected by the theme of childhood. Many are in the voice of a child, but others are in a parent’s voice as he contemplates the nature of youth and how life has changed — or simply as he looks upon a sleeping infant. Some are brief stories or vignettes and others are scenes or philosophical reflections. Among the more well-known inclusions are: “Playthings,” “Paper Boats,” “The Gift,” and “My Song.”

This is Tagore at his most playful, but it retains his usual clever musing.

View all my reviews

Stillness in Flow [Haiku]

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with taut anchor line,
 the fisherman's boat looks still
  in flowing waters.

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
   I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
 Under my head till morning; but the rain
   Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
 Upon the glass and listen for reply,
   And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
 For unremembered lads that not again
   Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
   Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
 Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
   I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
 I only know that summer sang in me
   A little while, that in me sings no more.

Fish Drift [Free Verse]

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With lazy mazy motion
  the fish slips through
   its watery world.

With no apparent purpose
  but to trace out a route
   through dreamland.

The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats [w/ Audio]

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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: somewhere in sands of the desert
   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
 Reel 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 toward Bethlehem to be born?

Jack-O-Lantern [Free Verse]

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Orange orbs
   cut with fearful faces:
 Burning brightly
   - daily & nightly -
 As menacing medicine
   for the cringe-impaired,
 The ones who 
   never get scared --
 unless a banal ball,
   blazing & brainless,
(and in a manner
   all but painless)
 replaced the head
  of their town's barber.