Passing Time

I felt the end is drawing near,

would time be so kind to slow?
You are everything
to me, my dear-
you are all I really know.

But as I sit and wait and fear
and watch the hours go-

Everything that happened here,
happened long ago.

***

-Lang Leav

Strange and New

“If they just went straight they might go far,
They are strong and brave and true;

But they’re always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new”

– ‘The Men That Don’t Fit In’, Robert Service William 

“All I loved”

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.

.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Eyes did close

Posed and Written

It was a drawn out breeze

that shook free what was left.

A timid, though unrelenting thing that cast shade and shape

over our faces.

Summoning aged branches to sway.

Aged limbs, that threatened to break when they bent and tilted the light

which we trusted to show us the truth.

Turning foul the friend thought foe

to stand in unforgiving shadow.

Placing heartbreak’s color – raven,

to reign over eyes that once saw rose.

And my eyes did close at the breeze’s soft bidding.

Though closing, not to hide,

they closed to remember.

They chose to remember

the good they’d once seen.

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“The Journey”- Mary Oliver

 

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

“A Dream Within A Dream”- Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

The girl who loved balloons

wow…..such a sweet poem 🙂

AND” THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR” – Lord Byron

And thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,

Too soon return’d to Earth !

Though Earth received them in her bed

And o’er the spot the crowd may tread

In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.
I will not ask where thou liest low,

Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved, and long must love,

Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,

Tis Nothing that I loved so well.
Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now

The love where Death has set his seal,

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,

Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine,

That all those charms have pass’d away;

I might have watch’d through long decay.
The flower in ripen’d bloom unmatch’d

Must fall the earliest prey;

Though by no hand untimely snatch’d,

The leaves must drop away;

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf

Than see it pluck’d to-day;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear

To trace the change to foul from fair.
I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beatuies fade;

The night that follow’d such a morn

Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d,

And thou wert lovely to the last;

Extinguish’d , not decay’d;

As stars that shoot along the sky

Shine brightest as they fall from high.
As once I wept, if I could weep,

My tears might well be shed,

To think I was not near to keep

One vigil o’er thy bed;

To gaze, how fondly !    On thy face,

To fold thee in a faint embrace,

Uphold thy drooping head;

And show that love, however vain,

Nor thou nor I can feel again.
Yet how much less it were to gain,

Though thou hast left me free,

The loveliest things that still remain,

Than thus remember thee !

The all of thine that cannot die

Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears

Than aught except its living years.

“Condolence”- Dorothy Parker

They hurried here, as soon as you had died,
Their faces damp with haste and sympathy,
And pressed my hand in theirs, and smoothed my knee,
And clicked their tongues, and watched me, mournful-eyed.
Gently they told me of that Other Side-
How, even then, you waited there for me,
And what ecstatic meeting ours would be.
Moved by the lovely tale, they broke, and cried.

And when I smiled, they told me I was brave,
And they rejoiced that I was comforted,
And left to tell of all the help they gave.
But I had smiled to think how you, the dead,
So curiously preoccupied and grave,
Would laugh, could you have heard the things they said.

Sonnet XVII- Pablo Neruda

 

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.