unask

 

 

catkin

 

A frost came in the night and stole my world
And left this changeling for it - a precocious
Image of spring, too brilliant to be true:
White lilac on the window-pane, each grass-blade
Furred like a catkin, maydrift loading the hedge.

C. Day-Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

wing

 

Little Fly
Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath;
And the want
of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

William Blake

 

 

 

 

 

tunnel

 

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through which the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

Pablo Neruda

 

 

 

 

 

scamel

there is a new entry in our scamel blog.

 

 

 

 

green

 

Green, how I sought for you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of bright silver.
Green, how I sought for you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Lorca

 

 

 

 

 

the white and the green

 

I am Taliesin. I sing the true beat of the words
Which will last to the end of the world.

I know why in hollow things the echo rings
I follow the shine of silver
I know why women love
I understand the white and the green
the flower and the leaf, they are mine, they are me.

I am the salt of the sea, I am the bitter in beer
the linnet song, the red of the berry,
they are me. Me.

I know why Pharaoh's army perished
I know why a white swan has black feet.

I have been a blue salmon,
a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain,
A stallion, a bull,
I have been cooked in the oven
swallowed by a hen.
I have been dead.
I have been alive.
I am Taliesin.

Tom Davis, after Taliesin, a possibly not entirely legendary Welsh poet (6th century)

 

 

 

 

 

break into blossom

 

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and inimitable

Like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.
But all you say is
Will you give me a cigarette?
And I smile and,
returning to the marvelous world
of possibility
I give you one
with a hand that trembles
with a human trembling.

Norman MacCaig

 

 

 

 

 

world is a leaf

 

so world is a leaf is a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

we're everything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

e. e. cummings