Favourite Poems

Ethyl

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In the night we shall go in
to steal
a flowering branch.

We shall climb over the wall
into the darkness of the alien garden,
two shadows in the shadow.

Winter is not yet gone,
and the apple tree appears
suddenly changed
into a cascade of fragrant stars.

In the night we shall go in
up to its' trembling firmament
and your little hands and mine
will steal the stars.

And silently
to our house,
in the night and shadow,
with your steps will enter
perfume's silent step
and with starry feet
the clear body of spring.
 

SpoiledPrincess

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[SIZE=+1]THE RELIC.[/SIZE]
by John Donne

W[SIZE=-1]HEN[/SIZE] my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
—For graves have learn'd that woman-head,
To be to more than one a bed—
And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will he not let us alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls at the last busy day
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

If this fall in a time, or land,
Where mass-devotion doth command,
Then he that digs us up will bring
Us to the bishop or the king,
To make us relics ; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
A something else thereby ;
All women shall adore us, and some men.
And, since at such time miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

First we loved well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what we loved, nor why ;
Difference of sex we never knew,
No more than guardian angels do ;
Coming and going we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals ;
Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals,
Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.
These miracles we did ; but now alas !
All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.

I've got lots of favourite poems, but Donne is a long time favourite of mine.
 

jason_els

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Widely regarded as America's best writer, this piece by Edgar Allan Poe certainly is appropriate for this Halloween night.

Annabel Lee​

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love---
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from be,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me---
Yes!---that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we---
Of many far wiser than we---
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side,
Of my darling---my darling---my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
 

Not_Punny

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I'm a big fan of Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll... but I have to admit a fondness for Buchowski...

and... e.e. cummings':

the ways to hump a cow is not
to push and then to pull
but draw a circle round the spot
and call it beautiful
 

jason_els

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Rilke was not believed to be gay but this poem strikes most gay men quite deeply. It doesn't rhyme in English due to the translation and that's OK. The power of the poem is retained. The quality of this translation by John Waterfield is exceptional:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]THE FIRST ELEGY[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]
Who, if I cried, would hear me, of the angelic
orders? or even supposing that one should suddenly
carry me to his heart &#8211; I should perish under the pressure
of his stronger nature. For beauty is only a step
removed from a burning terror we barely sustain,
and we worship it for the graceful sublimity
with which it disdains to consume us. Each angel burns.
And so I hold back, and swallow down the yearning,
the dark call heard in the cave of the heart. Alas,
who then can serve our need? Not angels, not human
beings; and even the sly beasts begin to perceive
that we do not feel too much at home
in our interpreted world. Perhaps we can call on
a tree we noticed on a slope somewhere
and passed in our daily walk &#8211; the streets
of a city we knew, or a habit&#8217;s dumb fidelity,
a habit that liked our space, and so it stayed.
Oh, and the night, the night &#8211; when the wind full of emptiness
feeds on our features &#8211; how should he not be there?
&#8211; the long desired, mild disenchanter,
sure disappointer of the labouring heart.
Is he kinder to lovers perhaps? No, they hide from him,
seeking security in an embrace.
Haven&#8217;t you grasped it yet? Throw from your arms the nothing that
lies between them
into the space that we breathe as an atmosphere &#8211;
to enable the birds, perhaps, in new zest of feeling
to hurl their flight through the expanded air.
Yes, the springtimes needed you. Stars now and then
craved your attention. A wave rose
in the remembered past; or as you came by the open window
a violin was singing its soul out. All this
was a given task. But were you capacious
enough to receive it? Weren&#8217;t you always
distracted with expectation, imagining
these hints the heralds of a human love? (Where will you keep him,
the loved one &#8211; you with your vast strange thoughts
always coming and going, and taking up too much houseroom.)
If you feel longing, though, sing of the lovers, the great ones;
who has adequately immortalized
their alchemy of the heart? The unrequited -
you envied them almost, finding them so much more
loving than the physically satisfied. Begin, then,
the praise of what can never be praised enough.
Consider: the hero maintains an identity,
even his last stand merely a last occasion
for self-assertion &#8211; a kind of ultimate birth.
But lovers Nature takes to herself again
as if she lacked resources
to do it a second time: exhausted and fulfilled.
Have you pondered enough on Gaspara Stampa &#8211; that any boy
whose lover jilts him can take that life as a model
and think: I could be like him?
Shouldn&#8217;t at last these ancient familiar sorrows
bear feeling fruit in our lives? Isn&#8217;t it time
to free ourselves from the loved one, and bear the tension
as the arrow endures the tensed string &#8211; to gather its forces
and spring to a state of being that is more
than it could ever be? It is death to stand still.
Voices; voices, and echoes. Listen, my heart, as only
saints listened of old, till the giant summons
lifted them from the ground &#8211; but they went on kneeling,
impossibly, and stopped the ears of the heart.
That was their way. Don&#8217;t think, though, that you could endure
God&#8217;s voice &#8211; far from it. But listen for the whisper,
the wind that breathes out of silence continuing news.
Those who died young: their fate a picture
you saw on speaking tablets at Rome or Naples
or in Santa Maria Formosa, where a few bare words
spoke volumes.
What do they want of me? That I should gently
undo the apparent injustice of their deaths:
that last hindrance to their spirits&#8217; progress.
Strange it is, to inhabit the earth no longer,
to have no more use for habits hardly acquired &#8211;
roses, and other things of singular promise,
no longer to see them in terms of a human future;
to be no more all that we nurtured and carried
in endlessly anxious hands, and to leave by the roadside
one&#8217;s own name even, like a child&#8217;s broken doll.
Strange, not to have wishes any more.
To see, where things were related, only a looseness
fluttering in space. And its hard, being dead,
and takes much difficult recapitulation
to glimpse the tiniest hint of eternity.
The living, though, are too ready to posit a border
between two states of being: a human mistake.
Angels, it&#8217;s said, are often uncertain
whether they traverse the living or the dead. The eternal current
pours through both worlds, bearing all ages with it,
and overpowers their voices with their song.

They finally need us no longer, the early departed:
they grow beyond earthly things, as a child mildly
outgrows the mother&#8217;s breast. But we, left standing
before closed doors &#8211; we from whose living sorrow
blessedest growth can spring &#8211; where should we be
without them?
Think again of the story
how at Linus&#8217; departing a boldly tentative music
pierced, for the first time, the soul&#8217;s blank grief;
and in that startled vacuum from which an almost godlike
boy exited for ever, the air fell
into that intermittent pure vibration
which for us mortals is rapture, and comfort, and help.
[/FONT]
 

prince_will

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I do love this poem. I don't knowy why, but i guess it's because i find it sweet..even though it is a bit cynical...

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.


Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.


They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.


They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly, they


Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,


Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:


Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.


Phillip Larkin
 
M

Mr Ed in Mass

Guest
There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose cock was so long,he could suck it
He said with a grin,
As he wiped off his chin
If my ear was a cunt,I could fuck it.