My favorite poems....

[Reverse Transcriptase]

(So I think the big difference between "poetry & blogging" and "literature" as that 'literature' is stuff that is not written by us, and poetry & blogging is stuff that we forum members have written.)

I have this audio tape, "Images of Fire" by David Whyte where he shares some poems of his own and others.

One of them is this:

A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different shapes:
All things change when we do.
The first word, "Ah" blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true.
Kükai

Kukai is a Zen Master from the 8th century or so.

FAITH
I want to write about faith,

about the way the moon rises

over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,

slowly becoming that last curving and impossible

sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself

I refuse it even the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,

like a new moon, slender and barely open,

be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

-- David Whyte

And I found this on another website:

When I see 'I am nothing' that is wisdom.
When I see 'I am everything' that is love.
My life is a movement between these two.
-Nisargadatta Mahara

 

[Anthile]

I really like the Zen poem.

This is my favourite poem:

[fieldset=Edgar Allan Poe - Alone]From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view. [/fieldset]​

 

[Vatroslav]

My translation of a poem, written by one Croatian author- Miroslav Krleža.

Nocturno
At night it occurs:
Cataract of the mind-it blows in despair
Around the wrecked stuff so ripped feels the air,
When the memories come back- so morbid, far away
When haunted by the night, like phantoms all they fly...
Oh! Everything gets by!
The sensation then reveals-rotten it is all and vain
The mumbling from the depths you hear-
The Earth herself cursing in pain
Corrupting the soul desperately in fear!

At night it occurs: the Earth in pain
When everything dies rotten and vain.

 

[Cavallier]

Poetry really needs to be read allowed to be truly appreciated. I find myself reading the poems you've posted out loud.