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Thread: Who's your favorite poet?

  1. #61
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    Ah ha, I think I'm gonna have fun with this thread!

    I have lots of favorites, so I'm gonna pop in as soon as I can with an author as often as possible.

    Starting off, W.B. Yeats.

    THE SECOND COMING

    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?

  2. #62
    Registered User Darcy88's Avatar
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    Another spectacular Auden poem -

    September 1, 1939
    by W. H. Auden


    I sit in one of the dives
    On Fifty-second Street
    Uncertain and afraid
    As the clever hopes expire
    Of a low dishonest decade:
    Waves of anger and fear
    Circulate over the bright
    And darkened lands of the earth,
    Obsessing our private lives;
    The unmentionable odour of death
    Offends the September night.

    Accurate scholarship can
    Unearth the whole offence
    From Luther until now
    That has driven a culture mad,
    Find what occurred at Linz,
    What huge imago made
    A psychopathic god:
    I and the public know
    What all schoolchildren learn,
    Those to whom evil is done
    Do evil in return.

    Exiled Thucydides knew
    All that a speech can say
    About Democracy,
    And what dictators do,
    The elderly rubbish they talk
    To an apathetic grave;
    Analysed all in his book,
    The enlightenment driven away,
    The habit-forming pain,
    Mismanagement and grief:
    We must suffer them all again.

    Into this neutral air
    Where blind skyscrapers use
    Their full height to proclaim
    The strength of Collective Man,
    Each language pours its vain
    Competitive excuse:
    But who can live for long
    In an euphoric dream;
    Out of the mirror they stare,
    Imperialism's face
    And the international wrong.

    Faces along the bar
    Cling to their average day:
    The lights must never go out,
    The music must always play,
    All the conventions conspire
    To make this fort assume
    The furniture of home;
    Lest we should see where we are,
    Lost in a haunted wood,
    Children afraid of the night
    Who have never been happy or good.

    The windiest militant trash
    Important Persons shout
    Is not so crude as our wish:
    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.

    From the conservative dark
    Into the ethical life
    The dense commuters come,
    Repeating their morning vow;
    "I will be true to the wife,
    I'll concentrate more on my work,"
    And helpless governors wake
    To resume their compulsory game:
    Who can release them now,
    Who can reach the deaf,
    Who can speak for the dumb?

    All I have is a voice
    To undo the folded lie,
    The romantic lie in the brain
    Of the sensual man-in-the-street
    And the lie of Authority
    Whose buildings grope the sky:
    There is no such thing as the State
    And no one exists alone;
    Hunger allows no choice
    To the citizen or the police;
    We must love one another or die.

    Defenceless under the night
    Our world in stupor lies;
    Yet, dotted everywhere,
    Ironic points of light
    Flash out wherever the Just
    Exchange their messages:
    May I, composed like them
    Of Eros and of dust,
    Beleaguered by the same
    Negation and despair,
    Show an affirming flame.
    Last edited by Darcy88; 08-15-2011 at 02:05 AM.

  3. #63
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    Farewell false love, the oracle of lies,
    A mortal foe and enemy to rest,
    An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,
    A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,
    A way of error, a temple full of treason,
    In all effects contrary unto reason.

    A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,
    Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,
    A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers
    As moisture lend to every grief that grows;
    A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,
    A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.

    A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,
    A siren song, a fever of the mind,
    A maze wherein affection finds no end,
    A raging cloud that runs before the wind,
    A substance like the shadow of the sun,
    A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

    A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,
    A path that leads to peril and mishap,
    A true retreat of sorrow and despair,
    An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap,
    A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,
    A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.

    Sith* then thy trains my younger years betrayed,[since]
    And for my faith ingratitude I find;
    And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed*,[revealed]
    Whose course was ever contrary to kind*:[nature]
    False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu.
    Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

    Sir Walter Raleigh

  4. #64
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    I'm quite a big fan of Emily Bronte. I find her use of natural imagery amazing and I feel like I can relate to what she writes. If that makes sense? She wrote a lot about death, love and nature and drew inspiration from her surroundings (which were the Yorkshire Moors mostly). She lived in the first half of the 19th century. Here's a poem of hers that I particularly enjoy, entitled To Imagination .

    When weary with the long day's care,
    And earthly change from pain to pain,
    And lost, and ready to despair,
    Thy kind voice calls me back again:
    Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
    While then canst speak with such a tone!

    So hopeless is the world without;
    The world within I doubly prize;
    Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
    And cold suspicion never rise;
    Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
    Have undisputed sovereignty.

    What matters it, that all around
    Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
    If but within our bosom's bound
    We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
    Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
    Of suns that know no winter days?

    Reason, indeed, may oft complain
    For Nature's sad reality,
    And tell the suffering heart how vain
    Its cherished dreams must always be;
    And Truth may rudely trample down
    The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

    But thou art ever there, to bring
    The hovering vision back, and breathe
    New glories o'er the blighted spring,
    And call a lovelier Life from Death.
    And whisper, with a voice divine,
    Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

    I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
    Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour,
    With never-failing thankfulness,
    I welcome thee, Benignant Power;
    Sure solacer of human cares,
    And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!
    JazzJazz

  5. #65
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    Art thou pale for weariness
    Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
    Wandering companionless
    Among the stars that have a different birth,
    And ever changing, like a joyless eye
    That finds no object worth its constancy?

  6. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by jajdude View Post
    Reckon I'll go with Yeats --

    for he is one of the greats.

    haha

    http://www.online-literature.com/for...play.php?f=193

    I kind of like his early poem, "The Stolen Child"
    which is also a song covered by the Irish group The Waterboys.

    oohhhh , he is a greaaat poet

  7. #67
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    Crossing the Bar - Tennyson

    Sunset and evening star,
    And one clear call for me!
    And may there be no moaning of the bar,
    When I put out to sea.

    But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
    Too full for sound and foam,
    When that which drew from out the boundless deep
    Turns again home!

    Twilight and evening bell,
    And after that the dark!
    And may there be no sadness of farewell,
    When I embark;

    For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
    The flood may bear me far,
    I hope to see my Pilot face to face
    When I have crost the bar.
    -----

    Tom O Roughly - W.B. Yeats

    ‘THOUGH logic choppers rule the town,
    And every man and maid and boy
    Has marked a distant object down,
    An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
    Or so did Tom O’Roughley say 5
    That saw the surges running by,
    ‘And wisdom is a butterfly
    And not a gloomy bird of prey.

    ‘If little planned is little sinned
    But little need the grave distress. 10
    What’s dying but a second wind?
    How but in zigzag wantonness
    Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?’
    Or something of that sort he said,
    ‘And if my dearest friend were dead 15
    I’d dance a measure on his grave.’

    -------------------

    Ode to the West Wind - Shelley

    O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
    Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
    Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

    Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
    Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou 5
    Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

    The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
    Each like a corpse within its grave, until
    Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

    Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 10
    (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
    With living hues and odours plain and hill;

    Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
    Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

    II


    Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15
    Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
    Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

    Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
    On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
    Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20

    Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
    Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
    The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

    Of the dying year, to which this closing night
    Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 25
    Vaulted with all thy congregated might

    Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
    Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

    III


    Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
    The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30
    Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,

    Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
    And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
    Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

    All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35
    So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
    For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

    Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
    The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
    The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40

    Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
    And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

    IV


    If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
    If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
    A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45

    The impulse of thy strength, only less free
    Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
    I were as in my boyhood, and could be

    The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
    As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50
    Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven

    As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
    O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
    I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

    A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 55
    One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

    V


    Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
    What if my leaves are falling like its own?
    The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

    Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60
    Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
    My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
    Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
    And, by the incantation of this verse, 65

    Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
    Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
    Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

    The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
    If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70

    -----------------

    Ode to a Nightingale - Keats

    MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
    Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
    'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
    But being too happy in thine happiness,
    That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
    In some melodious plot
    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
    Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

    O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
    Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
    O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
    And purple-stainèd mouth;
    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
    And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

    Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
    What thou among the leaves hast never known,
    The weariness, the fever, and the fret
    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
    Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25
    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
    And leaden-eyed despairs;
    Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30

    Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
    But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
    Already with thee! tender is the night, 35
    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
    But here there is no light,
    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

    I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
    But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
    The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
    And mid-May's eldest child,
    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

    Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
    Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
    Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
    In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
    To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

    Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
    No hungry generations tread thee down;
    The voice I hear this passing night was heard
    In ancient days by emperor and clown:
    Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
    The same that ofttimes hath
    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

    Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
    Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
    As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
    Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75
    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
    In the next valley-glades:
    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? 80

    ---------------------


    Why East Wind Chills - Dylan Thomas

    Why east wind chills and south wind cools
    Shall not be known till windwell dries
    And west's no longer drowned
    In winds that bring the fruit and rind
    Of many a hundred falls;
    Why silk is soft and the stone wounds
    The child shall question all his days,
    Why night-time rain and the breast's blood
    Both quench his thirst he'll have a black reply.

    When cometh Jack Frost? the children ask.
    Shall they clasp a comet in their fists?
    Not till, from high and low, their dust
    Sprinkles in children's eyes a long-last sleep
    And dusk is crowded with the children's ghosts,
    Shall a white answer echo from the rooftops.

    All things are known: the stars' advice
    Calls some content to travel with the winds,
    Though what the stars ask as they round
    Time upon time the towers of the skies
    Is heard but little till the stars go out.
    I hear content, and 'Be Content'
    Ring like a handbell through the corridors,
    And 'Know no answer,' and I know
    No answer to the children's cry
    Of echo's answer and the man of frost
    And ghostly comets over the raised fists.

    ----------------------------
    Mad Song - Blake

    The wild winds weep
    And the night is a-cold;
    Come hither, Sleep,
    And my griefs infold:
    But lo! the morning peeps
    Over the eastern steeps,
    And the rustling birds of dawn
    The earth do scorn.

    Lo! to the vault
    Of paved heaven,
    With sorrow fraught
    My notes are driven:
    They strike the ear of night,
    Make weep the eyes of day;
    They make mad the roaring winds,
    And with tempests play.

    Like a fiend in a cloud,
    With howling woe,
    After night I do crowd,
    And with night will go;
    I turn my back to the east,
    From whence comforts have increas'd;
    For light doth seize my brain
    With frantic pain.
    --------------------

    TWICKENHAM GARDEN.
    by John Donne


    BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
    Hither I come to seek the spring,
    And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
    Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
    But O ! self-traitor, I do bring
    The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
    And can convert manna to gall ;
    And that this place may thoroughly be thought
    True paradise, I have the serpent brought.

    'Twere wholesomer for me that winter did
    Benight the glory of this place,
    And that a grave frost did forbid
    These trees to laugh and mock me to my face ;
    But that I may not this disgrace
    Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love, let me
    Some senseless piece of this place be ;
    Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
    Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.

    Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,
    And take my tears, which are love's wine,
    And try your mistress' tears at home,
    For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
    Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine,
    Nor can you more judge women's thoughts by tears,
    Than by her shadow what she wears.
    O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
    Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me.
    ---------------

    These are some poems I chose of the poets I read most often. Though I have more.
    What is now proved was only once imagined. Blake

  8. #68
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    I love so many poets... but my favourite is Wilfred Owen. The man had a beautiful gift for expression and he brings me into the horrors of war every time I read his work. However, my favourite POEM is by Lemn Sissay.. which I will share with you here:

    Love Poem

    You remind me,
    Define me,
    Incline me.
    If you died,
    I'd.

    For that alone, he rivals Mr Owen. I also love Ted Hughes, ('Lovesong'), Robert Browning, Robert Burns, Percy Shelley, Emily Dickenson... too many. I love too many of them!

    But Wilfred Owen... what a babe x

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    I'm going to have to go along with several others in praising Yeats. One of my favorites is:

    "A Coat"

    I made my song a coat
    Covered with embroideries
    Out of old mythologies
    From heel to throat;
    But the fools caught it,
    Wore it in the world's eye
    As though they'd wrought it.
    Song, let them take it
    For there's more enterprise
    In walking naked.

    This is one of his later poems, published 1916 I believe. It's great because I see this being written by an older Yeats who has become known within not only the artistic community but the Revolutionary community in Ireland. Others are trying to mimic him, yet he would rather cast his "song", rather restructure his entire style, than keep the same style being mimicked by others.
    Last edited by maud's_mead; 10-07-2011 at 12:02 AM.

  10. #70
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    i like byron's poetry. in his childe harold pilgrimage poems he has very beautifully described the might of natural forces like that of ocean. also i love to read keats' poetry. there is nothing so beautiful as reading his poetry and feeling it. his description of autumn in his ode to autumn is marvellous. since i read the poem i always picture autumn as a woman reaper.

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    I really like that Walter Raleigh poem someone posted!

    I don't have a favourite. But Yeats, Rilke, Keats and Philip Larkin would top my list.

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    So many great poets, so many great poems. Here's a couple of poets who nobody's mentioned so far, and who I think are terrific: Andrew Marvell (his "The Garden" is pure poetry and perfect), and more modern: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose The World Is a Beautiful Place is a modern classic.

    -A.

  13. #73
    Registered User Darcy88's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by amca01 View Post
    So many great poets, so many great poems. Here's a couple of poets who nobody's mentioned so far, and who I think are terrific: Andrew Marvell (his "The Garden" is pure poetry and perfect), and more modern: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose The World Is a Beautiful Place is a modern classic.

    -A.
    I love Ferlinghetti's poetry! Here is another great one from him -

    Constantly risking absurdity

    and death

    whenever he performs

    above the heads

    of his audience

    the poet like an acrobat

    climbs on rime

    to a high wire of his own making

    and balancing on eyebeams

    above a sea of faces

    paces his way

    to the other side of the day

    performing entrechats

    and sleight-of-foot tricks

    and other high theatrics

    and all without mistaking

    any thing

    for what it may not be

    For he's the super realist

    who must perforce perceive

    taut truth

    before the taking of each stance or step

    in his supposed advance

    toward that still higher perch

    where Beauty stands and waits

    with gravity

    to start her death-defying leap

    And he

    a little charleychaplin man

    who may or may not catch

    her fair eternal form

    spreadeagled in the empty air

    of existence

  14. #74
    Registered User PoeticPassions's Avatar
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    Ah way too many favorites...
    1. Pablo Neruda
    2. William Blake
    3. Khalil Gibran
    4. Federico Garcia Lorca
    5. Dylan Thomas
    6. John Milton
    7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    One of my favorite poems:

    CLOWN IN THE MOON

    My tears are like the quiet drift
    Of petals from some magic rose;
    And all my grief flows from the rift
    Of unremembered skies and snows.

    I think, that if I touched the earth,
    It would crumble;
    It is so sad and beautiful,
    So tremulously like a dream

    ~Dylan Thomas

    or Gibran...

    HOW I BECAME A MADMAN

    You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen -- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives, -- I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the curséd thieves."

    Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

    And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

    Thus I became a madman.

    And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

    But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.


    Will post more favorites when I get more time later!
    "All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley

    "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake

  15. #75
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    Damn, Shelley's been posted

    OK, how about these?

    MURASAKI SHIKIBU (974-1031)

    This life of ours would not cause you sorrow
    if you thought of it as like
    the mountain cherry blossoms
    which bloom and fade in a day.

    Bai Juyi/Po Chu-i, "Feelings on Watching the Moon"

    The times are hard: a year of famine has emptied the fields,
    My brothers live abroad- scattered west and east.
    Now fields and gardens are scarcely seen after the fighting,
    Family members wander, scattered on the road.
    Attached to shadows, like geese ten thousand li apart,
    Or roots uplifted into September's autumn air.
    We look together at the bright moon, and then the tears should fall,
    This night, our wish for home can make five places one.

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