'I lived well, but life was awful'
There's the key. Come on Virgil, try a bit harder!
Printable View
'I lived well, but life was awful'
There's the key. Come on Virgil, try a bit harder!
I don't know what any Welch sounds like unfortunately. I would imagine it would sound Gaelic, but then I don't know. I would wonder how much of the welch was infleuenced by Latin prior to Anglo-Saxon conquest and then by Germanic languages after that. The translator does have old English in mind. The translated poem has a Gerard Manly Hopkins feel to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
You're right. I was blinded by the last stanza with the red and the pink! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by blp
I think I preferred the previous poem.
capture my mind in your eyes
It can be seen if you look deep
Like looking through a face to find a lie
Test my madness by being blind
But only blind to my exterior
You have to look far into my eyes
Then you'll see my thougts and fears
See that my anger has came from love
My pride has been smashed yet I still don't care
I've banished my demons
Now I just need A reason to keep them away
any opinions on this poem
smoothherb
This thread is for estabished, published poems. The personal poetry forum is for our poetry.
Orion
Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you're young
my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won't give over
though it weighs you down as you stride
and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
an old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.
Indoors I bruise and blunder,
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.
A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life.
Pity is not your forte.
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow's nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back
it's with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can so least damage.
Breathe deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.
Adrienne Rich
Wow, very nice choice Riesa. I really like this. Nice lines:
Here a little melodramaitc, but still nice:Quote:
Indoors I bruise and blunder,
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Quote:
A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
Interesting poem, seems to be rather "starry" and sad.
Since no one has posted in a few days, I'll post another.
Quote:
At Melville's Tomb by Hart Crane
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death's bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps,
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Wonderful choice Virgil.
Thank you Hyacinth
I believe there is there has always been controversy as to the openning sentence:
Does anyone comprehend what it means? I'm baffled.Quote:
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy.
Virgil, I will give this a stab, but I'm really rusty at exegesis, so bear with me. :D
I view this as referring to the ocean, seen as a wide expanse from the "ledge" of land. "wide" also seems to denote distance - the ocean being far from Melville's particular "ledge".Quote:
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The "dice" of dead sailors indicate chance, and the vagaries of Fortune/Fate that caused their gamble to fail. It also echoes "The Tempest" slightly, and I do mean slightly :"those are pearls that were his eyes/his bones of coral made"(I'm probably misquoting a tetch, as I do this from memory) in that dice were once made of ivory. The bones "bequeath an embassy" - they seem to move across the wide expanse beneath the waves as an ambassador to those on land, to the living. In the next line they "beat upon the dusty shore" - carried along under the waves, but fail in their mission to reach the "ledge" of the land. The use of "dusty" seems to echo "dust to dust" - the bones seem to seek their proper place among the buried , "and were obscured" - returning under the water to the deep expanse they journeyed from, their ambassadorial mission incomplete. The lack of burial and tombstone seems to lend to their being "obscured," due to the absence of a physical memorial.Quote:
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath/an embassy
Nice poem Virgil, and very good analysis Hyacinth! You are actually quite good, and it makes sense.
No man is an island
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne