Ars Poetica - "A poem should not mean/But be"

Sonnet - Edna St Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain
I want him at the shrinking of the tide
The old snows melt from every mountainside,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot nor shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

This poem brought me back to a year ago.
Two months of pain and suffering, trying to forget and forgive.
15/04/08
Tuesday
7:47pm
Haha, rmb? (:


Absence - Elizabeth Jennings
I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Once again, catapulted to the days of yesteryear.
April - June.
Nonetheless, im glad it's behind us.
And im glad there's a whole yellow brick road waiting for us to embark on.


Long Distance - Tony Harrison
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone,
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping, just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

I just thought this poem was sad.
Heh.

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I used to think poems were such frivalous things - Strings of words that emo people use to beat around the bush and finally get their point across in the last two lines.
But now one can imagine the force of those last two lines: the emphasis and the strength of those last few words the poet puts so much thought and effort into to make sure his or her reader infuses the point so strongly into himself.
The reader can be haunted just by those last two lines. Incredible huh? (:

That's why i love poetry :D

And now, my fave poem (until i find another one of course)!


Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the mistry panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white etes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

And this is me saying:
You must not make a plaything of the rain.