If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
- Rudyard Kipling
He'd be tickled to learn he has a hoard of prison fanboys or so I recently discovered.
**
Now it's your turn.
Poetry appreciation thread
Poetry appreciation thread
ENTP
"Our truest selves exist within the observational incongruencies among general first impressions and further analyses of the finer details."
- from my Ph.D. thesis in psychobabble
"Our truest selves exist within the observational incongruencies among general first impressions and further analyses of the finer details."
- from my Ph.D. thesis in psychobabble
Tags:
Re: Poetry appreciation thread
Theory and Practice Ladies and gentlemen Today we'll be discussing imperialism A difficult topic, if there is one Sometimes difficult to seize In just half an hour of dreadful news I will therefore attempt to approach it As pirate ships were approached In a happy and mysterious past That is In an irregular fashion Let's say, for example That a bell were tolling in the distance, meekly Cleansing speech and hanging Over the treetops like the sun Despite the heat on the horizon It dons its scarf As birds, free and agile Fly around it And they aren't swallows None of that is imperialism. Let's say, for example That a young woman were to break the dawn With her moving hips Her imperative gaze Her harvesting lips Her silent step While a young man waits, invincible and modest Including her in his destiny, studying her pore by pore Watching, as a sentry Daring or not daring That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That a boy were listening to the world and wondering Breathing his candor at it Learning what his feet are like, biting them Arguing with the ceiling and convincing it Crying, for a change, and because he knows That his wail will summon the breast With its milky promise and that skin That he likes to feel against his eyelids And he knows he's happy though he doesn't know The price he'll pay or the rejection That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That an old man were learning the alphabet Committing its dipthongs to memory Stressing the third to last syllables with ease Because their accent is indisputable He has a quaker's face But a nimble spirit And he spells RAIN because he never saw Little rain on his field That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That a machine whirred in its delerium Noisily announcing its product And hands help it and straighten it Clean it and arrange it and package it Hands that have known each other for years And have wet and dried themselves for years Saying hello and bidding farewell They ask and call and answer each other They rest on the maternal machine That announces its product and clears its throat And upon seeing the old hands together It sheds two or three tears of oil That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That on their serene wedding night a couple Made a child because they felt like it And they felt like it because they know That a child is a daily prophet That will announce them from sunrise to sunrise He'd tell everyone he is a son And feed an insolent Appetite and taste his motherland As if it were freshly baked bread That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That the borders lost their customs offices And we invaded each other And lent each other volcanoes and streams And copper and anthropologists and sugar And wool and proteins and rainbows And educators and railways And poets and prosists and oil And left the wind and migrating lovers To contraband That's not imperialism either. Let's say, for example That the sun and the rain belonged to us And the sky and the earth too The provinces of our hearts And the land of our labor Being equals among equals In a world of peers and no others A pretty folly of the sane And a certain strategem of justice Adding accents to the omens That come true or begin to Having once been mere islands Becoming urgent archipelagos That's not imperialism either. Lastly, let's say That we owned the night, and a house And a clock that wasn't ticking towards death While science advanced to the point Of isolating the xenophobic virus Our country, a salty baptism Stretching from sea to sea And an abyss, still existing Though none threw themselves into its silence It's always hard to live, but you could live Within the floodgates of life And once again I'll state That none of this is imperialism I trust I haven't been too sectarian In the theoretical focus of this topic Ladies and gentlemen A comrade has just informed me That some gentlemen, gendarmes, are waiting outside Perhaps to give us a practical lesson I wish us courage And good luck That is all Thank you. - Mario Benedetti
Re: Poetry appreciation thread
along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart singing like
an idiot whispering like drunken man
who(at a certain corner suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
awake
being not asleep elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner
-"Ici?"-"Ah non mon chéri;il fait trop froid"-
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind br
inging
rain and leaves filling the air with fear
and sweetness....pauses. (Halfwhispering....half
singing
stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)
when you were in Paris we met here
-eec
of memory comes my heart singing like
an idiot whispering like drunken man
who(at a certain corner suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
awake
being not asleep elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner
-"Ici?"-"Ah non mon chéri;il fait trop froid"-
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind br
inging
rain and leaves filling the air with fear
and sweetness....pauses. (Halfwhispering....half
singing
stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)
when you were in Paris we met here
-eec
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil
Re: Poetry appreciation thread
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
-eec
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
-eec
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil
Re: Poetry appreciation thread
From 2008 in my course for people with mental illnesses:
I also read it out to a crowd of about 20 people - the families of people with mental illnesses and intellectual/physical disabilities.... they thought it was funny...Stolen toys confession
Starting school,
I stole a Lego ladder.
A year or two later,
I stole a Lego man’s hairpiece.
From an acquaintance,
I stole two Lego pipes.
From a friend,
I stole a Transformer,
But got caught.
Another time, from that friend,
I stole some coloured paper clips,
But got caught.
At school,
I stole four Lego gears,
With the encouragement of a friend.
I treasure my stolen toys.