NIGHT BLIND
The moonlight I am never to see,
Nor of the moon to speak,
Why does darkness fall on me
As it falls upon the sea ?
Don’t you know ? Don’t you see ?
I see by day and not by night,
I must close my eyes by dark
And open them only in light.
People talk of beautiful sights,
Of the planet, of the stars,
I can never see them for myself,
Nor enjoy fireworks as they burst.
If I were blind, I wouldn’t know,
That blue is blue and yellow is yellow,
But blind I am only at night,
I can see well during daylight.
The bright shiny Venus, I don’t see,
Nor the red Mars do I know.
Haley’s comet will twice have passed,
Before I see the moon’s soft glow.
THE FALL
I hear them falling,
Sinking to the ground,
Sighing when they touch it,
One long last breath.
They are pushed or pulled,
All around me, now.
Sometimes altogether,
Or just one by one.
They make lovely sounds,
A ‘plip’ and a ‘plop’
Not really very loud,
Except to a waiting heart.
They leave their fellows
At home for the earth.
They are brown, red and yellow,
A riot of colour.
I hear them falling,
Sinking to the ground,
Away from their kin and kith,
The leaves, they fall on me, now.
They whisper in my ear,
This thing and that,
From them I learn,
the true beat of my soul.
WRETCHED HOPE
My hopes, my dreams,
Ambitions and means
All is gone, beyond reach,
What can I do, now?
What can I have?
Tell me please, what to do?
I stood there as I watched,
Motionless yet alert,
As my life cement crumbled,
And the building crushed,
My family, my home,
Tell me please, what to do?
There was a time I stood,
First in class and in school,
And aimed for the highest,
But now, I struggle to digest,
That all is lost, and hope too,
Tell me please, what to do?
Times come and times go,
If I can find a slow
Yet steady job, I would be fine,
But in that rubble, back in time,
A precious leg, I’ve left behind.
Tell me please, what to do?
The world is all “ a-round”,
With two hemispheres,
And yet I can’t stand,
And face my fears.
I won’t be a lord,
I can’t be a god,
Oh! What will I be?
It’s just some fantasy.
I feel like a-playing
In the rain all day,
I’ve got to go and study,
I can’t stay and play.
Thank you, Lord,
For giving me some brains,
That’ll keep me studying
And away from the rains.
TIME
I would that I
Go back in time,
To when I was just nine,
To when I learnt,
All I know of life.
I would that I
Could sleep tonight,
And on the morrow find
That I was but a child.
I would that I
Write a different line,
In the book that’s life,
I would that I
Could turn back time…
Poetry and poets
There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
-Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), Mon Coeur Mis a Nu, XXII
The freedom of poetic license.
-Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Pro Publio Sestio
A poem is no place for an idea.
-Edgar Watson Howe (1853 - 1937), Country Town Sayings, 1911
My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
-Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964), "Some notes on my poetry" Collected Poems, 1957
Poetry is the deification of reality.
-Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964), Life magazine, 01-04-63
All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
-G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), Defendant (1901)
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
-G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.
-Horace (65 BC - 8 BC), Odes
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
-Jean Cocteau (1889 - 1963)
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
-John Ciardi (1916 - 1986)
Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.
-John Keats (1795 - 1821)
Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.
-M. C. Richards
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
-Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
-Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
-Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
-Robert Graves (1895 - 1985)
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
-Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988), Time Enough for Love, 1978
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
-Samuel McChord Crothers
A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)
A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
-W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973), Collected Poems
The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
-Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
