Poetry Quotes - Page 31

Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone,While pain and guilt still linger here below,Blindness and numbness--these please me alone;Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature.

We don't know how to say goodbye,We wander on, shoulder to shoulderAlready the sun is going downYou're moody, and I am your shadow.Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the deadWhy are we so different from the rest?Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.That stick in your hand is tracingMansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

She wore his flowerIn her hairScent of amberSweetened the airHer dress was whiteHer feet bareHe found heavenWaiting thereShe is aliveIn his painful sigh...

For if our bodies aren’t our own,And justice isn’t ours,And our love is just a sin,And voices by the peopleAre no longer for the people,What have we left to lose?

Fear is the vehicle in which love can do its worst.

If you can feed in the presence of your enemies, if you can be blessed under the weight of burdens, when you praise God in pain, it is preparation for provision.

Music does not need language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation.

Don't be afraid to be afraid. Have fear, and then conquer the shit out of it.

I do not write to you, but of you,/because the paper that we write on/is our perishable skin.

Alas! this is not what I thought life was.I knew that there were crimes and evil men,Misery and hate; nor did I hope to passUntouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.In mine own heart I saw as in a glassThe hearts of others ... And whenI went among my kind, with triple brassOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

. . . On a sandbarsunlight stretches out its limbs, or is ita sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?

This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.

The world is thinningand the earth...it's still spinningmy world is thinningand it’s all because of one person I’m missing.

Truths are written, never said... Lines are drawn, but then they fade.

Hay menos tiempo que lugar, no obstante, hay lugares que duran un minuto y para cierto tiempo no ha lugar.

In vogue and cosmopolitan they clutch their Pomeranians and walk among the millionaires or watch from swayback steamer chairs

Slowness means cleaving perfectly to time, so closely that the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone. This stretching of time deepens space. It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship.

Some teach youwhat can't be taught,by turning their backon you & helpingyou get internallycloser to everythingyou externallysought.

They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.

Don't blame my heart's appetite for how it chooses to feast, for my heart is a wild lover, an all-consuming beast.

Reality is not made of dreams, until you make them real.

You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

She was the death of me,the beginning and the end.And I never understood her,for how could someoneSo beautiful be the causeof so much destructionafter all.

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

We weep,tears of blood,we weep,In despair, crying,we weep;the sun forever has stolenthe light from his eyes.No more his face do we see,no more his voice do we hear,nor will his affectionate gazewatch over his people.

Be anxious for no thing, be concerned about the state of your soul and that of your children, be concerned about God's work in the world; these are genuine concern but when it comes to the things in your life.....be not anxious. If God is for us who can be against us?

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

...loving a fairy lady with a magic song will leave you desolate on a cold hillside ... but from there you can see the stars...

If you can't see the assets in you, it will be hard for you to export it to the world. Recognise who you are and the world will recognise you.

Not every given chance deserves love, but every love deserves a given chance.

Listen.Do you see that you can’t hear snowfall?Look.Do you sensethat you can’t see love?Touch.Do you graspthat you can’t catch poems?Try.Smell this glass. Go on taste this cloud.These material senses won’t get you far untilyou feelthe velvet glove caress your soul.

You ask me why I don't speakNot a word at willBut write so much worth well over a mill'Well I value words like I value kissesA sober one, a closer one penetrates the heartDarling it's how it mends it

Once I dated a woman I only liked 43%.So I only listened to 43% of what she said.Only told the truth 43% of the time.And only kissed with 43% of my lips.Some say you can't quantify desire, attaching a number to passion isn't right, that the human heart doesn't work like that.But for me it does-I walk down the streetand numbers appear on the foreheadsof the people I look at. In bars, it's worse.With each drink, the numbers go upuntil every woman in the joint has a blurryeighty something above her eyebrows, and the next day I can only remember 17%of what actually happened. That's the problemwith booze-it screws with your math.

There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and ideas. Poetry and love. All of it bound into one perfect, calm place.

And stay, my dearstay...forever, as my quiet song,in my lilac dawn.

I crouch in cornersThe infection is widespreadLove epidemic

I love being able to see an un-written future.

We are all born free and spend a lifetime becoming slaves to our own false truths.

I’ve come down from the skylike some damned ghost, delayedtoo long…To the abandoned fieldsthe trees returned and grew.They stand and grow. Time comesTo them, time goes, the treesStand; the only placeThey go is where they are.Those wholly patient ones…They do no wrong, and theyAre beautiful. What moreCould we have thought to ask?...I stand and wait for lightto open the dark night.I stand and wait for prayerto come and find me here.” Sabbaths 2000 IX

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.

Understand the poem not the poet.

i am like the moon--sometimes, full.sometimes, black.sometimes,forever and ever alone.

Spilling a Secret What its size, will have varying consequences. It’s not possible to predict what will happen if you open the gunnysack, let the cat escape. A liberated feline might purr on your lap, or it might scratch your eyes out. You can’t tell until you loosen the knot. Do you chance losing a friendship, if that friend’s well-being will only be preserved by betraying sworn-to silence trust? Once the seam is ripped, can it be mended again? And if that proves impossible, will you be okay when it all falls to pieces?

It nods and curtseys and recoversWhen the wind blows above,The nettle on the graves of loversThat hanged themselves for love.The nettle nods, the wind blows over,The man, he does not move,The lover of the grave, the loverThat hanged himself for love.

My love, can't you seehow much i love theeFor i through your eyesshall seeOur great lovefor all eternity

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.

After seven days of fasten so it was, that the thoughts of my heart were very grievous unto me- and my soul recovered the spirit of understanding.

be good to yourselfyou're the only youyou'll ever get

See--two who dreamed that dream, and you were one.

Her memories splashed my nights with a magical illumination. Her thoughts were my intoxication!

Nobility is not only in forgiveness.

Look athow deeply flawedwe areand yet capable of lovingso perfectly.

Spend the glittering moonlight therePursuing down the soundless deepLimbs that gleam and shadowy hair,Or floating lazy, half-asleep.Dive and double and follow after,Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,With lips that fade, and human laughterAnd faces individual,Well this side of Paradise! . . .There's little comfort in the wise.

Promise me you'll stay and I promise to haunt you in the most heavenly way - with dark devotion and deep emotion.