Poetry thread

Paul Celan - Todesfuge

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne er pfeift seine Rüden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau
stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

Gottfried Benn

Lebe wohl, du Flüchtige, Freie
die Flügel zu Fahrt und Flug -
geschlossen die Rune, die Reihe,
die deinen Namen trug.

Ich muß nun wieder
meine dunklen Gärten begehn,
ich höre schon Schwanenlieder
vom Schilf der nächtigen Seen.

Lebe wohl, du Tränenbereiter,
Eröffner von Qual und Gram,
verloren – weiter
die Tiefe, die gab und nahm.

Miloš Crnjanski - Misery

Like on a corpse
the lanterns shine around
our poor garden.
Has the night covered you with silky spreads?
Did you rise to be a lady instead?
Where are you now?

Do you still love the streets at night
when whores and lights stand alike
in the rain?
And the horses drag wet couples,
in carts,
that creak like a coffin?

Are you now somewhere smiling,
rich and distrait
where laughter bursts?
O, don't be warm, blossomy,
O, don't be happy,
at least you, you.
O, don't love anything,
not books, not theatres,
like the educated do.
Do you sometimes, suddenly,
in good company,
still say what side you hold to?

O, do you still remember
how we walked,
through all the streets in the rain?
Do you remember,
all the nightly birds, thieves
and whores,
were innocent to us.

We were ashamed of richly homes,
and we swore we'd stay unhappy,
at least you and I.
In my heart I feel the rattly gnawing
and the rain falls, cold outside.
Where are you now?

>>10002183
this wasn't this good when I last read it

Cavafi - Days of 1903

I never found them again—all lost so quickly...
the poetic eyes, the pale face...
in the darkening street...

I never found them again—mine entirely by chance,
and so easily given up,
then longed for so painfully.
The poetic eyes, the pale face,
those lips—I never found them again.

File: psalm 8.jpg (107KB, 475x840px) Image search: [Google]

107KB, 475x840px

Bertolt Brecht

Robert Frost - After Apple-picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

(I'll try to write some analysis of this next)

>>10003334
Analysis:
I think most of the poem is very self-explanatory; Frost was of course known for being something of a voice of the common man, accessible even to those without any background in poetry, and that legacy endures in his frequent inclusion in high-school literary collections, at least in the United States (I'd be curious to know if he's garnered the same esteem in the rest of the anglophone world). Nevertheless, this poem takes on a sort of mystical quality which is not at all characteristic of Frost's body of work. It seems that the very mundane life the narrator lives from day to day has a symbolic meaning beneath it which he can only somewhat discern; he gives that to us directly with "the strangeness from my sight/I got from looking through a pane of glass", suggesting there's another world, or another realm of meaning, which is present in ours and can be observed only vaguely. And at the end of the poem, he contrast's the woodchuck's sleep with "some human sleep", implying that the narrator's sleep can be mistaken for the woodchuck's; what is odd here is that the principal biological difference there is in duration (woodchucks hibernate for months), but nothing in the poem indicates that the narrator intends to sleep longer than a regular night. So we have to believe that there's something deeper and more contemplative about the woodchuck's sleep that the narrator sees in his own.

>tfw /lit/ can't into poetry
Andrew Marvell - The Definition of Love

My love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown,
But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow’r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have plac’d,
(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac’d;

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp’d into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

File: Cole-My-John-Berryman-Poet-Unease.jpg (124KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

124KB, 960x720px

Dream Song 29, by John Berryman.

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

File: rilke-portrait.jpg (113KB, 750x926px) Image search: [Google]

113KB, 750x926px

Pietà, by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Translated by Jessie Lemons.

So thus, Jesus, I see thy feet again
As in those past days when thy feet were young.
Timidly I unclothed and washed them,—bare—;
And then they were entangled in my hair
Like a white stag caught in a bush of thorn.

I see thy limbs that love hath never known
For the first time on this our night of love.
We two never have lain down;
Now one, adoring, keepeth watch thereof.

See how thy hands are thorn—thy gentle hands—;
Beloved, not by me, not by my kiss.
Thy infinite heart to all men open stands:
O I alone, alone, should have that bliss.

Now thou art tired, and thy tired mouth
Hath no delight in my own mournful mouth.
O Jesus, Jesus, when did our hours pass by?
How strangely both of us go down to die.

I transcribed that myself because I could not find the same translation online, so you better read it you dimwits.

ee cummings - Chansons Innocentes: I

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

>>10004226
This is way too erotic, did Rilke have a mommy fetish?

>>10004618
There's definitely an Oedipal undertone.

jingle bells
anon is fat and smells
his poems are the dregs
i read them and lost the will to live another day
hey