Poemunity — your poem community

(A Reincarnation Phantasy) This was the story never told By one who cared not for the world’s gold. One of the idle and wise, A beggar with unfathomable eyes. One who had nothing but dreams to give To men who are eager to labour and live. For the world in its wisdom deep and dim Had taken all pleasure and treasure from him. This was the story his soul could tell, Immortal and unfathomable. There was no record in his brain, He did not know he should live again. But there was one who read the whole, Buried deep in a dead man’s soul. “In the days of Atlantis, under the wave, I was a slave, the child of a slave. When the towers of Atlantis fell, I died and was born again in hell. From that sorrowful prison I did escape And hid myself in a hero’s shape. But few years had I of love or joy, A Trojan I fell at the Siege of Troy. I came again in a little while, An Israelite slave on the banks of the Nile. Then did I comfort my grief-laden heart. With the magic lore and Egyptian art. Fain was I to become Osiris then, But soon I came back to the world of men. By the Ganges I was an outcast born, A wanderer and a child of scorn. By the Waters of Babylon I wept, My harp amongst the willows slept. In the land of Greece I opened my eyes, To reap the fields of Plotinus the Wise. When the great light shattered the world’s closed bars, I was a shepherd who gazed at the stars. For lives that were lonely, obscure, apart, I thank the Hidden One, in my heart, That always and always under the sun I went forth to battle and never won. A slayer of men, I was doomed to abide, For ever and aye, on the losing side. Whenever. I dream of the wonderful goal, I thank the hidden God in my soul That though I have always been meanly born, A tiller of earth and a reaper of corn, Whenever through ages past and gone The light divine for a moment shone, Whenever piercing laborious night A ray fell straight from the Light of Light, Whenever amid fierce, lightning and storm The divine moved in a human form, Whenever the earth in her cyclic course Shook at the touch of an unknown force, Whenever the cloud of dull years grew thin And a great star called to the light within, I have braved storm and labour and sun To stand at the side that Holy One. No matter how humble my birth has been, There are few who have seen what I have seen. Mine the shepherd’s star and the reaper’s reward, And the dream of him who fell by the sword. One thing I have learned the long years through, To know the false words from the true. The slave who toiled on the banks of the Nile With wisdom gladdened his long exile. From Buddha at eve by the Ganges’ side An outcast learnt the worth of the world’s pride. To the tired reaper, when day was done, Did Plotinus unveil the hidden sun. Amongst the stars, on a Syrian night, A ragged shepherd found the Light of Light. From dream to dream, o’er valley and hill, I followed the Lord Christ's wandering will. Kings there are who would barter a throne For the long day’s toil and the light unknown, The deed of the strong and the word of the wise, And the night under cold and starry skies— The white light of dawn on the hillside shed On Him who had nowhere to lay His head. Behold there are kings who would change with me, For the love of the ancient mystery. Shepherd and reaper and slave I have been, There are few who have seen what I have seen. I have been a gipsy since those days, And lived again in the wild wood ways. Wise with the lore of those hidden things, Learnt from Lord Christ in His wanderings, Beggar and reaper and shepherd and slave, I am one who rests not in any grave; I will follow each stormy light divine, And the secret of all things shall be mine. These things have I seen, would you bid me mourn That I was never an Emperor born?”

South Carolina, c.1950 You got that clean waistcoat, the bright white of a well-tailored shirt, you got those loose-as-sacks slacks and some spit-polished shoes, and you know, whether you are looking like money, or about to take a stroll, to tilt that hat like you own the world; yeah, smoke your pipe, roll your tobacco, and hold loose as authority, your muscles, lithe and hard; and every so often, when you feel the urge, you reach into the waist pocket and pull out that watch on its chain, then look in the sky and say Gonna be a cold one when it come, like God gave you that fancy clock to tell the future. These are the easy boys of the goodly South; waiting for what is out of frame to happen: the sheriff with his questions, the paddy wagon, the chain gang, the weight of the world. Waiting, with such delicate dignity, fickle as the seasonal sky.

Ah, gaze not on those eyes! forbear That soft enchanting voice to hear: Not looks of basilisks give surer death, Nor Syrens sing with more destructive breath. Fly, if thy freedom thou’dst maintain, Alas! I feel th’advice is vain! A heart, whose safety but in flight does lie, Is too far lost to have the power to fly.

Lady, lovely lady, Careless and gay! Once when a beggar called She gave her child away. The beggar took the baby, Wrapped it in a shawl, “Bring her back,” the lady said, “Next time you call.” Hard by lived a vain man, So vain and so proud, He walked on stilts To be seen by the crowd. Up above the chimney pots, Tall as a mast, And all the people ran about Shouting till he passed. “A splendid match surely,” Neighbours saw it plain, “Although she is so careless, Although he is so vain.” But the lady played bobcherry, Did not see or care, As the vain man went by her Aloft in the air. This gentle-born couple Lived and died apart. Water will not mix with oil, Nor vain with careless heart.

A working river, a working valley, The gray-green Rhône Lined with workings, heaps of dust, gravel, cement, And log jams waiting for transport, Like the island exporting itself to its neighbors one barge at a time. The river, the road, and the railway, A plait, a tangle, a place of through. The river not navigable, the boggy valley floor not walkable, The locals came down from the mountains a little way To site castles on moraine and regulate trade. Hannibal marched his elephants through here, dynamited rocks with vinegar. Poplars were planted en passant by Napoleon’s Grande Armée Two-hundred-some years ago. Goethe came to visit. The shade endures. Rilke was reminded of Spain. He lived among apricots at Muzot, Just the other side of the language barrier, And fixed to be buried with a view of France. No one knows who I am, were his dying words. Smells of hay and dung, the murmurs of subtle conversation Next door are tax-efficient sheep The underground chicken palace like CERN Or a discreet gun emplacement. The lights come on when we appear, and go off after we’re gone. Larchwood and rye bread, chocolate and slate, Dried beef and stone All one striated substance, The staff of life breaking explosively, crumblingly, If it breaks at all, A stash of daunting verticals, A washing machine delivered by helicopter Winched down into the Renaissance casbah. Time was a man had to carry his donkey across his shoulders up a cliff; Now everything is tunnel fodder. Electricity and water come piped through the mountains, The vineyards get a sousing under great rainbow arcs, Who wouldn’t want to die in a thirteenth-century tower With light sensors and cold running water Off the hills and a chill in the sunny air of the contemporary archaic.

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us, How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sybil’s glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me, Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love’s subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There, the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world’s form, this all-graved tome In cipher writ, or new made idiom; We for love’s clergy only’are instruments, When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and the Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. Here Love’s divines (since all divinity Is love or wonder) may find all they seek, Whether abstract spiritual love they like, Their souls exhaled with what they do not see, Or loth so to amuse Faith’s infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, Beauty’a convenient type may be to figure it. Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Both by what titles mistresses are ours, And how prerogative these states devours, Transferred from Love himself, to womankind, Who though from heart, and eyes, They exact great subsidies, Forsake him who on them relies And for the cause, honor, or conscience give, Chimeras, vain as they, or their prerogative. Here statesmen (or of them, they which can read) May of their occupation find the grounds, Love and their art alike it deadly wounds, If to consider what’tis, one proceed, In both they do excel Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; In this thy book, such will there nothing see, As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I’ll study thee, As he removes far off, that great heights takes; How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be; To take a latitude Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed At their brightest, but to conclude, Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when, and where the dark eclipses be?

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Let me pour forth My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here Whilst I stay here This poem is a valediction, meaning that it is an act of saying goodbye to someone. Donne wrote other poems with “Valediction” in the title, including “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “A Valediction of My Name,” and “Valediction to his Book.” , For thy face coins coins Makes, as a mint foundry stamps/makes coins. Compare this line with “As Kings do coynes, to which their stamps impart” from Donne’s poem, “Image of her whom I love, more then she.” them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they be Pregnant Pregnant Also meaning: filled with emotion or significance, rich in meaning or implication of thee; Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more, When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore diverse shore On different lands . On a round ball round ball That is, the Earth A workman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afric Afric Archaic reference to Africa, used here as two syllables to fit the fixed meter of the line , and an Asia Asia Pronounced ‘Ay-zee-ay’, rhyming with “lay” , And quickly make that, which was nothing nothing Both the “round ball” and later “each tear” are likened to a zero (“0”) , all; So doth each tear Which thee doth wear, A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear forbear When used as a verb, to avoid or refrain from doing something To teach the sea what it may do too soon; Let not the wind Example find, To do me more harm than it purposeth; Since thou and I sigh one another's breath, Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death Whoe’er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other’s death Compare to the lines “When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind, / But sigh’st my soul away” from Donne’s poem, “ Song: Sweetest love, I do not go ” (lines 25-26) .

simplicity say sleep or shall we shower have an apple you are as I need water shall I move? do you dream? shallow snow flesh melt this

for David Cobb Craig At first, we had ways of talking That filled up the evening Until some things could be said. It was a made-up Situation in which lives could be lost. Whatever that was now grows inside Our bodies—a spongy, pulpy cell— Causing pieces of paper we hold In our hands to appear And disappear. All I ask Is to take me away from this place, To another place, very much like This place, where we can meet And six months later Be married. You laughed and went with me.