Favourite Poems and Prose.

I think it was Esme who mentioned somewhere about the poppy day coming up soon, and war poems are my favorite, as they really have a substance to them that I can understand.

I like this one, and I like the spin used on how he tells us we should see Death:

The Dead ~ Robert Brooke

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

Travelling

Mountains, lakes. I have been here before and on other mountains, wooded or rocky,

smelling of thyme. Lakes from whose beds they pulled the giant catfish, for food, larger,

deeper lakes that washed up dead carp and mussel shells, pearly or pink. Forests where,

after rain, salamanders lay, looped the dark mess with gold. High up, in a glade, bells

clanged, the cowherd boy was carving a pipe. And I moved on, to learn one of the million

histories, one weather, one dialect of herbs, one habitat after migration, displacement,

with greedy lore to pounce on a place and possess it, with the mind’s weapons, words,

while between land and water yellow vultures, mewing, looped empty air once filled with

the hundred names of the nameless, or swooped to the rocks, for carrion.

@toybulldog wrote:

Travelling

Mountains. A lake. One of a famous number. I see these birds, they dip over wavelets,

looping, martins or swallows, their flight is enough, to be here, forgetful, in a boat, on

water, the famous dead have been here. They saw and named what I see, they went and

forgot.

I climb a mountainside, soggy, then springy with heather. The clouds are low, the shaggy

sheep have a name, old, less old than the breed less old than the rock. And I smell hot

thyme that grows in another country, through gaps in the Roman wall a cold wind carries it here.

Patmos

— for the Earl of Homburg

The god
Is near, and hard to grasp.
But where there is danger,
A rescuing element grows as well.
Eagles live in the darkness,
And the sons of the Alps
Cross over the abyss without fear
On lightly-built bridges.
Therefore, since the summits
Of Time are heaped about,
And dear friends live near,
Growing weak on the separate mountains —
Then give us calm waters;
Give us wings, and loyal minds
To cross over and return.

Thus I spoke, when faster
Than I could imagine a spirit
Led me forth from my own home
To a place I thought I’d never go.
The shaded forests and yearning
Brooks of my native country
Were glowing in the twilight.
I couldn’t recognise the lands
I passed through, but then suddenly
In fresh splendour, mysterious
In the golden haze, quickly emerging
In the steps of the sun,
Fragrant with a thousand peaks,
Asia rose before me.

Dazzled I searched for something
Familiar, since the broad streets
Were unknown to me: where the gold-bejeweled
Patoklos comes rushing down from Tmolus,
Where Taurus and Messogis stand,
And the gardens are full of flowers,
Like a quiet fire. Up above
In the light the silver snow
Thrives, and ivy grows from ancient
Times on the inaccessible walls,
Like a witness to immortal life,
While the solemn god-built palaces
Are borne by living columns
Of cypress and laurel.

But around Asia’s gates
Unshaded sea-paths rush
About the unpredictable sea,
Though sailors know where
The islands are. When I heard
that one of these close by
Was Patmos, I wanted very much
To put in there, to enter
The dark sea-cave. For unlike
Cyprus, rich with springs,
Or any of the others, Patmos
Isn’t splendidly situated,

But it’s nevertheless hospitable
In a more modest home. And if
A stranger should come to her,
Shipwrecked or homesick
Or grieving for a departed friend,
She’ll gladly listen, and her
Offspring as well, the voices
In the hot grove, so that where sands blow
and heat cracks the tops of the fields,
They hear him, these voices,
And echo the man’s grief.
Thus she once looked after
The prophet that was loved by God,
Who in his holy youth

Had walked together inseparably
With the Son of the Highest,
Because the Storm-Bearer loved
The simplicity of his disciple.
Thus that attentive man observed
The countenance of the god directly,
There at the mystery of the wine,
Where they sat together at the hour
Of the banquet, when the Lord with
His great spirit quietly foresaw his
Own death, and forespoke it and also
His final act of love, for he always
Had words of kindness to speak,
Even then in his prescience,
To soften the raging of the world.
For all is good. Then he died. Much
Could be said about it. At the end
His friends recognised how joyous
He appeared, and how victorious.

And yet the men grieved, now that evening
Had come, and were taken by surprise,
Since they were full of great intentions,
And loved living in the light,
And didn’t want to leave the countenance
Of the Lord, which had become their home.
It penetrated them like fire into hot iron,
And the one they love walked beside them
Like a shadow. Therefore he sent
The Spirit upon them, and the house
Shook and God’s thunder rolled
Over their expectant heads, while
They were gathered with heavy hearts,
Like heroes under sentence of death,

When he again appeared to them
At his departure. For now
The majestic day of the sun
Was extinguished, as he cast
The shining sceptre from himself,
Suffering like a god, but knowing
He would come again at the right time.
It would have been wrong
To cut off disloyally his work
With humans, since now it pleased
Him to live on in loving night,
And keep his innocent eyes
Fixed upon depths of wisdom.
Living images flourish deep
In the mountains as well,

Yet it is fearful how God randomly
Scatters the living, and how very far.
And how fearsome it was to leave
The sight of dear friends and walk off
Alone far over the mountains, where
The divine spirit was twice
Recognised, in unity.
It hadn’t been prophesied to them:
In fact it seized them right by the hair
Just at the moment when the fugitive
God looked back, and they called out to him
To stop, and they reached their hands to
One another as if bound by a golden rope,
And called it bad —

But when he dies —he whom beauty
Loved most of all, so that a miracle
Surrounded him, and he became
Chosen by the gods —
And when those who lived together
Thereafter in his memory, became
Perplexed and no longer understood
One another; and when floods carry off
The sand and willows and temples,
And when the fame of the demi-god
And his disciples is blown away
And even the Highest turns aside his
Countenance, so that nothing
Immortal can be seen either
In heaven or upon the green earth —
What does all this mean?

It is the action of the winnower,
When he shovels the wheat
And casts it up into the clear air
And swings it across the threshing floor.
The chaff falls to his feet, but
The grain emerges finally.
It’s not bad if some of it gets lost,
Or if the sounds of his living speech
Fade away. For the work
Of the gods resembles our own:
The Highest doesn’t want it
Accomplished all at once.
As mineshafts yield iron,
And Etna its glowing resins,
Then I’d have sufficient resources
To shape a picture of him and see
What the Christ was like.

But if somebody spurred himself on
Along the road and, speaking sadly,
Fell upon me and surprised me, so that
Like a servant I’d make an image of the god —
Once I saw the lords
Of heaven visibly angered, not
That I wanted to become something different,
But that I wanted to learn something more.
The lords are kind, but while they reign
They hate falsehood most, when humans become
Inhuman. For not they, but undying Fate
It is that rules, and their activity
Spins itself out and quickly reaches an end.
When the heavenly procession proceeds higher
Then the joyful Son of the Highest
Is called like the sun by the strong,

As a watchword, like a staff of song
That points downwards,
For nothing is ordinary. It awakens
The dead, who aren’t yet corrupted.
And many are waiting whose eyes are
Still too shy to see the light directly.
They wouldn’t do well in the sharp
Radiance: a golden bridle
Holds back their courage.
But when quiet radiance falls
From the holy scripture, with
The world forgotten and their eyes
Wide open, then they may enjoy that grace,
And study the light in stillness.

And if the gods love me,
As I now believe,
Then how much more
Do they love yourself.
For I know that the will
Of the eternal Father
Concerns you greatly.
Under a thundering sky
His sign is silent.
And there is one who stands
Beneath it all his life.
For Christ still lives.
But the heroes, all his sons
Have come, and the holy scriptures
Concerning him,
While earth’s deeds clarify
The lightning, like a footrace
That can’t be stopped.
And he is there too,
Aware of his own works
From the very beginning.

For far too long
The honour of the gods
Has been invisible.
They practically have to
Guide our fingers as we write,
And with embarrassment the energy
Is torn from our hearts.
For every heavenly being
Expects a sacrifice,
And when this is neglected,
Nothing good can come of it.
Without awareness we’ve worshipped
Our Mother the Earth, and the Light
Of the Sun as well, but what our Father
Who reigns over everything wants most
Is that the established word be
Carefully attended, and that
Which endures be interpreted well.
German song must accord with this.

Friedrich Hölderlin

Patmos is the island where St. John lived and wrote the Apocalypse. The poem was written before February 1803 and dedicated to the Landgraf von Homburg, the ruler of a small German state near Frankfurt. The Landgraf was known as a Bible student, and is probably addressed personally in the second-last strophe.

The poem views the Christian gospel with Hellenic eyes. The “mystery of the wine” links the Last Supper with Dionysus, and the written Gospels were created as a human response to the impossibility of merging with godhead, of being a god oneself. Thus the Evangelists are viewed as sharing the same destiny as poets of antiquity: they are the intermediaries and seers left after the departure of the gods to recount their deeds in writings (scriptures) that endure.

The Art of Poetry
by Jorge Luis Borges

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.