Some Poems That We Might share ....

[size=150]I know why the caged bird sings[/size] :cry:
by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

[size=150]Ode on a Grecian Urn [/size]
by John Keats

Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flow’ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal -yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

[size=150]WE WEAR THE MASK[/size]
Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile,
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
…We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
…We wear the mask!

Very poignant poem, I think. I like it a lot. The masks we wear generally, unfortunately, hide us mostly from ourselves.

So nice to have finally made my way here :smiley:

~Power~

I can make the earth stop in
its tracks. I made the
blue cars go away.

I can make myself invisible or small.
I can become gigantic & reach the
farthest things. I can change
the course of nature.
I can place myself anywhere in
space or time.
I can summon the dead.
I can perceive events on other worlds,
in my deepest inner mind,
& in the minds of others.

I can

I am


People need Connectors
Writers, heroes, stars,
leaders
To give life form.
A child’s sand boat facing
the sun.
Plastic soldiers in the miniature
dirt war.  Forts.
Garage Rocket Ships

Ceremonies, theatre, dances
To reassert Tribal needs & memories
a call to worship, uniting
above all, a reversion,
a longing for family & the
safety magic of childhood.

The grand highway
is crowded
w/
lovers
&
searchers
&
leavers
so
eager
to
please
&
forget

Wilderness


Now is blessed
The rest
remembered

A man rakes leaves into
a heap in his yard, a pile,
& leans on his rake &
burns them utterly.
The fragrance fills the forest
children pause & heed the
smell, which will become
nostalgia in several years


Sirens
Water
Rain & Thunder
Jet from the base
Hot searing insect cry
The frogs & crickets
Doors open & close
The smash of glass
The Soft Parade
An accident
Rustle of silk, nylon
Watering the dry grass
Fire
Bells
Rattlesnake, whistles, castanets
Lawn mower
Good Humor man
Skates & wagons
Bikes

Where’d you learn about
Satan- out of a book
Love?- out of a box


night of sin (The Fall)
-1st sex, a feeling of having
done this same act in time before
O No, not again

Between childhood, boyhood,
adolescence
& manhood (maturity) there
should be sharp lines drawn w/
Tests, deaths, feats, rites
stories, songs, & judgements


Men who go out on ships
To escape sin & the mire of cities
watch the placenta of evening stars
from the deck, on their backs
& cross the equator
& perform rituals to exhume the dead
dangerous initiations
To mark passage to new levels

To feel on the verge of an exorcism
a rite of passage
To wait, or seek manhood
enlightenment in a gun

To kill childhood, innocence
in an instant.

[i]By Jim Morrison[/i]

~Jail~

The walls screamed poetry disease & sex
an inner whine like a mad machine -
dropped in a
cave of roaches
or rodents

The Computer
faces of the men

The wall collage
reading matter

The Traders (dealers)


I am a guide to the labyrinth
Come & see me
in the green hotel
Rm. 32
I will be there after 9:30 p.m.

I will show you the girl of the ghetto
I will show you the burning well
I will show you strange people
haunted, beast-like, on the
verge of evolution

-Fear The Lords who are
secret among us

Leaving the phone-booth, I was
Struck by a whiff of
the weird.
Insane old country woman
come to nag the haunts
of town
Hairy legs w/open sores.

From what swamp or under-rock
did you crawl to remind
us what we choose
to leave


[i]By Jim Morrison[/i]

~underwaterfall~

down
down
down
down
down
down
deep
below

children of the caves will let their
secret fires glow


An explosion of birds
Dawn
Sun strokes the walls
An old man leaves the Casino
A young man reading pauses
on the path to the garden

Bitter winter
Fiction dogs are starving
The radio is moaning softly
calling to the dogs
There are still a few
animals left in the yard

Sit up all night,
talking smoking
Count the dead & wait
’til morning
Will warm names & faces
come again
Does the silver forest end?


December Isles
Hot morning chambers
of the New Day
Idiot first to awaken (be born)
w/shadows of new play
learned men
in Sunday best
we’ve had our chance to rest
to mourn the passing of day
to lament the death of our
glorious member
(she whispers secret messages
of love in the garden
to her friends, the bees)
The garden would be here
forevermore

Mexican parachute
Blue green pink
Invented of Silk
& stretched on grass
Draped in the trees
of a Mexican Park
T-shirt boys in their
Slumbering art


-I fear that he’s been
maim’d beyond all
recognition

He hears them come &
murmur over his corpse.

Street Pizza.

funny,
I keep expecting a
knock on the door
well, that’s what you
get for living around
people

a Knock? would shatter
my dreams’ illusions
deportment & composure
The struggle of a poor poet
to stay out of the grips
of novels & gambling
& journalism


A quality of ignorance,
self-deception may be
necessary to the poet’s
survival.

Actors must make us think
they’re real
Our friends must not
make us think we’re acting

They are, though, in slow
Time

My wild words
slip into fusion
& risk losing
the solid ground

So stranger, get
wilder still

Probe the Highlands


Bourbon is a wicked brew, recalling
courage milk, refined poison
of cockroach & tree-bark, leaves
& fly-wings scraped from the
land, a thick film; menstrual
fluids no doubt add their splendour.
It is the eagle’s drink.

Why do I drink?
So that I can write poetry.

Sometimes when it’s all spun out
and all that is ugly recedes
into a deep sleep
There is an awakening
and all that remains is true.
As the body is ravaged
the spirit grows stronger.

Forgive me Father for I know
what I do.
I want to hear the last Poem
of the last Poet.


[i]By Jim Morrison[/i]

The Last Man,

Ah, I am just so happy that you finally made it and i am sorry that I was not here to greet you. Next time, the drinks will be on me and we can sit and have some conversation together. :laughing:

The poetry you recited warmed my establishment. Wonderful ambiance - everyone loved them. And next time, I will be sure you get a table by the fireplace.

You are welcome any time, Sir. :banana-dance:

Story Of Isaac
by Leonard Cohen

The door it opened slowly,
my father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
his blue eyes they were shining
and his voice was very cold.
He said, “I’ve had a vision
and you know I’m strong and holy,
I must do what I’ve been told.”
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
and his axe was made of gold.
Well, the trees they got much smaller,
the lake a lady’s mirror,
we stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
and he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
but it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
he looked once behind his shoulder,
he knew I would not hide.
You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody,
you were not there before,
when I lay upon a mountain
and my father’s hand was trembling
with the beauty of the word.
And if you call me brother now,
forgive me if I inquire,
“Just according to whose plan?”
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
man of peace or man of war,
the peacock spreads his fan.

Wow, that is very powerful.

Here are some poems I have translated. No English translations of them exist apart from what I have done.

First, a bit of Latin from Adrianus’s Galatea.

[i]
Illa vagos quondam sensus hac voce monebat,
nescitis miseri quot mala gignat amor.
Tempore forma perit, paucisque ea carpitur annis.
Dum licet, Idalii pellite tela Dei.
His ego firmatus monitis me posse putavi innocua
Cypriam mente videre Deam.

My laments for thee, they do recall my roving lusts,
though the fruits of misery I am unwilling to let bear upon the stalk of love.
To beauty time lays waste, that is assured;
though I shan’t even permit her fruit to bear;
as long as it is permitted me to drive out amor’s dart,
upon Aphrodite’s very temple.
For it strengthens me in this conviction,
to suppose that the Cyprian goddess, too, was innocent.[/i]

[Cyprian Goddess, ie. Eris.]

Some old Italian from Vincenzo da Filicaia’s Avvertimento ali Anima.

[i]Ahi qual fallo e mirar cio, che mirato
desta il desire, e col desir tormenta!
Le Stelle indarno, indarno accusa il fato
chi del proprio suo mal fabbro diventa:
Stassi al varco del ciglio in dolte aguato
amor dolce nemico, e ment ei tenta
nel cuor l ingresso, con felice inganno
ospite v entra, e vi riman tiranuo.

Oh! What an error to look still upon your image,
even after you have taken leave and given me your farewell,
for when desire is named, desire torments!
Desire, hence, what a fruitless star! Fruitlessly to accuse fate,
and her wrought smithy in the firmament,
and the circuit it hath thereby bore her to tread forever;
together she, with the beloved, in sweet ambush
confound love’s vision, and makes of it a sweet enemy,
which, happy to be deceived, the heart entreats and welcomes,
again and again subject to your tyrannizing.[/i]

Here is an aphorism of mine in which I translate an old French epigram I always found consolation in.

[size=85]539. How beautiful is the sea! Even when I can see nothing within it. So should we learn to view a beautiful woman-- even when we cannot have her. And, failing this, we can at least console ourselves in that beautiful verse:

Ne deves pas servir en vain,
car ne serves pas vainement.

I do not serve thee, my woman, in vain,
as long as I serve not vanity. [Miserere by Barthélemy reclus de Molliens][/size]

That is actually very beautiful. I have felt this way about a man or two. It isn’t so much about possessing, at all, but rather about that feeling of being possessed by…whether it is by the Sea or a certain man.

ah, but love, there still is nothing like it in all the world…whether it be romantic love or real love :laughing: It really is the energy that burns through the universe, isn’t it? These are really romantic poems. What does Avvertimento ali Anima mean?

Avvertimento ali Anima, the title of the poem I quoted (only a stanza from it, I might work on typing out the rest of it in English some time) means “A warning/caution to the soul.”

Yes, the idea of love is important to me. I have never experienced it, in the sense of reciprocation, and most likely never will. I am indifferent to happiness and sorrow, though. I love a woman for who she is, what she is- not for how she makes me feel personally or what she does for me, and rather or not I “have” her is irrelevant.

Wonderful contributions here Ascolo, thanks for sharing.

Ascolo Parodites"

I might imagine that translating these poems into English is a little like working on a very expensive watch with all of its intricacies. I think you just might have to be intimately familar with the poets’ works and what they might really be trying to convey, or am I wrong? It would seem to me that it would not just be about translating Italian into English but also in conveying the real meaning and depth of what the poet might be saying and feeling. This can be challenging but oh so worthwhile especially for those to experience the fruits of your wonderful labor.

In this way, these translations, might be difficult but indeed a work of love. I can imagine you sitting hunched over at your desk, like the monks of old trying to translate old biblical text…but maybe not quite like that…but then again, maybe just like that.

Anyway, what you are doing is important. How else might we have and feel the beauty of these wonderful romantic Italian poems.

I am rather surprised that you have not experienced reciprocation in love - your ideal and sense of love is real I think.
Edited: Sat., Feb. 13th

[size=150]The Wayfarer[/size]
Stephen Crane

The wayfarer.
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

This drives home a very poignant fact - that the path from honesty into truth is the “road less traveled”!

Yes. To translate you must be able to reproduce the poem, not just materially, but in such a way as to expose the spell of misery or joy under which it was originally composed. I read not just poetry but philosophy in foreign languages, a few hundred pages a day. I don’t bother translating something unless I am able to reproduce it in my own language in this specific way.

There was one time when I was going through a period of nihilism, and this poem seemed to pick up the shattered pieces before me and make them dance for me.

All Is Truth
By Walt Whitman

Standing aloof, denying portions so long,
Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,
Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,
but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,
Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.

(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be
realized,
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
And that the universe does.)

Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?
Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?
or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see
that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called
lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,
And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as
space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth–but
that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,
And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

Ascolo Parodites,

You must really live, become totally immersed within the life that Emerson spoke of within these words: “The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both.”

What you are also doing is getting at the truth found within their words. How many languages are you fluent in, if I might ask, but you needn’t answer, of course.

And thank you for your work.