snakesnakewhale

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1905

I live my life in widening rings
which spread over earth and sky.
I may not ever complete the last one,
but that is what I will try.

I circle around God, the primordial tower,
and I circle ten thousand years long;
and I still don't know if I'm a falcon, a storm,
or an unfinished song.

William Blake, 1794

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

Louise Glück, 1996

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,
Do now as I bid you, climb
The shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;
Wait at the top, attentive, like
A sentry or look-out. He will be home soon;
It behooves you to be
Generous. You have not been completely
Perfect either; with your troublesome body
You have done things you shouldn’t
Discuss in poems. Therefore
Call out to him over the open water, over the bright
Water
With your dark song, with your grasping,
Unnatural song—passionate,
Like Maria Callas. Who
Wouldn’t want you? Whose most demonic appetite
Could you possibly fail to answer? Soon
He will return from wherever he goes in the
Meantime,
Suntanned from his time away, wanting
His grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,
You must shake the boughs of the tree
To get his attention,
But carefully, carefully, lest
His beautiful face be marred
By too many falling needles.

W.E.B. DuBois, 1903

Within the veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,

a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head

ah, bitterly!

the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand -- ah, wearily! ---to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie.

Stephen Berg, 1981

You can't frighten me by saying Fate's dangerous,
by talking about the boredom of the great North.
I'm miles from the city now, almost asleep on the grass
    beside you
for the first time,
and I hear everybody I know call this weekend of ours
    Goodybye.
I feel your thighs pressing all along the front of
    my thighs,
my face swims in the hollows of your neck,
my hands are in your hair.
There's the smell of you and the earth

mortal,
    overwhelming!
So we won't see dawn swelling the fields again all that
    easily;
so the moon won't take its old path over us here.
Today I'm still going to give you
things no one else was ever able to

my face and breasts alive in the water
late at night when the stream won't let me sleep,
that sour, childish frown of helplessness
when a star vanishes and can't be brought back.
But best of all this tired, cracked voice, this echo
that was once liquid and young,
that soothed you and made you hear

till you stopped shivering

crows chattering all over Moscow, and made October
fresher than May. Then,
the raised, three-pointed brass stars on the plugs in the
    cannon muzzles
still gleamed. Oh remember me, my angel
of the hope and hopelessness that makes love possible,
remember me
I hate the paralyzing snow.

Christopher Logue, 1959 (begun)

“And Patroclus,
Shaking the voice out of his body, says:
‘Big mouth.
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A god, a boy, and, last and least, a prince.
I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet
Somehow it sounds like Hector.
And as I close my eyes I see Achilles’ face
With Death’s voice coming out of it.’

Saying these things Patroclus died.
And as his soul went through the sand
Hector withdrew his spear and said:
‘Perhaps.'”

Derek Walcott, 1990

These are the days when, however simple the future, we do not go
towards it but leave part of life in a lobby whose elevators
divide and enclose us, brightening digits that show

exactly where we are headed, while a young Polish woman
is emptying an ashtray, and we are drawn to a window
whose strings, if we pull them, widen an emptiness.

Audrey Lorde, 1978

The black unicorn is greedy.
The black unicorn is impatient.
The black unicorn was mistaken
for a shadow or symbol
and taken
through a cold country
where mist painted mockeries
of my fury.
It is not on her lap where the horn rests
but deep in her moonpit
growing.
The black unicorn is restless
the black unicorn is unrelenting
the black unicorn is not
free.

Adrienne Rich, 2008

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb    disgraced    goes on doing

there are adjectives up for sale

now diagram the sentence

Mom & daughter suspense/drama about a teen who's inherited her mother's powers. It's a little like the Norwegian movie Thelma, set in rural Appalachia instead.

Speaking of which, you should also definitely watch Thelma.

Elizabeth Bishop, 1946

From a magician's midnight sleeve
    the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.
    And like a fortune-teller's
their marrow-piercing guesses are whatever you believe.

But on the Navy Yard radio aerial I find
    better witnesses
for love on summer nights.
Five remote red lights
    keep their nests there; Phoenixes
burning quietly, where the dew cannot climb.