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Pull up a chair...
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 7, 2009 3:56 PM
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I let you go
and now you hang around my neck.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 7, 2009 9:27 AM
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We are the time
by Jorge Luis Borges
We are the time. We are the famous
metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.
We are the water, not the hard diamond,
the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.
We are the river and we are that Greek
that looks himself into the river. His reflection
changes into the waters of the changing mirror,
into the crystal that changes like the fire.
We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.
The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.
Memory does not stamp his own coin.
However, there is something that stays
however, there is something that bemoans.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 5, 2009 11:44 AM
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Comfort of pure Thought.
Washington Irving
~ The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languish into vapid civility and commonplace these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow. ~
--
Edited by SONRA43 at 11/05/2009 9:28 AM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 4, 2009 9:10 PM
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I Don't Know if You are Alive or Dead
by Anna Akhmatova
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 2, 2009 10:29 PM
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A Sea Song
by: Jean Ingelow
Old albion sat on a crag of late.
And sang out-- " Ahoy! ahoy!
Long life to the captain, good luck to the mate.
And this to my sailor boy!
Come over, come home.
Through the salt sea foam
My sailor, my sailor boy.
Here's a crown to be given away, I ween,
A crown for my sailor's head.
And all for the worth of a widowed queen.
And the love of the noble dead;
And the face and the fame,
Of the islands name.
Where my boy was born and bred.
Content thee, content thee, let it alone.
Thou marked for a choice so rare;
Though treaties be treaties, never a throne
Was proffered for cause as fair.
Yet come to me home
Through the salt sea foam.
For the Greek must ask elsewhere.
" Tis a pity my sailor but who can tell?
Many lands they look to me:
One of these might be wanting a Prince as well.
But that's as hereafter may be"
She raised her white head
And laughed and she said.
" That's as hereafter may be."
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 2, 2009 5:26 PM
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I've Searched for My Love
Andrey Kneller
I've searched for my love in the most unlikely of places,
translated ancient manuscripts from Hebrew and Latin,
studied hieroglyphs in pyramids' basements,
meditated for months on a mountaintop, in a cabin,
achieved enlightenment, but found it all irrelevant,
walked the streets of Boston, naked and penniless,
picked up prostitutes on the corner outside of my tenement,
made love to all of them, but it was false and strenuous,
gave money to charity, broke bread with lepers and thieves,
drowned my sorrow nightly in bars and taverns,
beheld the spectrum, observing colors of leaves,
groped my way through the ruins of Rome and Athens,
converted to all religions, and renounced them violently,
smoked weed and cigarettes, and became rather restless.
Suddenly, she appeared out of nowhere and asked me quietly,
I've been looking for you.... will you join me for breakfast?
--
Edited by svengali2 at 11/05/2009 9:40 PM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 2, 2009 2:40 PM
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Tomorrow Is a Long Time
Bob Dylan
If today was not an endless highway,
If tonight was not a crooked trail,
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time,
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.
I can't see my reflection in the waters,
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain,
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps,
Or can't remember the sound of my own name.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.
There's beauty in the silver, singin' river,
There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky,
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.
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4,613
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Nov 1, 2009 6:14 PM
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Thomas Builds-the-Fire
recites a slightly altered
forgiving our fathers
by dick lourie
maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free
or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken
maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all
for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them
for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent
in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left
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Posts:
4,613
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8/22/07
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(2359 of 2367)
Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 31, 2009 5:07 PM
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Sven! This is so very, very cool! I love it. Thanks.
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 31, 2009 2:12 PM
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Happy
Halloween!
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 26, 2009 9:13 PM
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from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
by Walt Whitman
9
Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping,
Now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for -I awake,
And already a thousand singers' a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me,
Never to die.
O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself - projecting me;
O solitary me, listening - nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd - the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.
O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere
O if I am to have so much, let me have more!
O a word! O what is my destination? (I fear it is henceforth chaos)
O how joys, dreads, convolutions, human shapes, and all shapes, spring as from graves around me!
O phantoms! you cover all the land and all the sea!
O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or frown upon me;
O vapor, a look, a word! O well-beloved!
O you dear women's and men's phantoms!
A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle, sent up - what is it? - I listen;
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
--
Edited by svengali2 at 10/27/2009 11:13 AM PDT
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 25, 2009 3:46 PM
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Keep Me Fully Glad
by Rabindranath Tagore
II
Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand.
In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing.
I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast.
Make my life glad with nothing.
The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full my heart with nothing but my own depth of joy.
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804
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 25, 2009 3:15 PM
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- He missed it though, she'd read his mind, "You don't get off that easy". She was standing in front of him before he could notice her intrusion. "Who has who cast in bronze? I have had magicians like you before, you do not have the power of will you believe you have". It was his stare meeting hers after all.
--
Edited by SpiritontheWater at 11/07/2009 12:42 PM PST
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 24, 2009 3:14 PM
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The Queen of Carthage
by Louise Glück
Brutal to love,
more brutal to die.
And brutal beyond the reaches of justice
to die of love.
In the end, Dido
summoned her ladies in waiting
that they might see
the harsh destiny inscribed for her by the Fates.
She said "Aeneas
came to me over the shimmering water;
I asked the Fates
to permit him to return my passion,
even for a short time. What difference
between that and a lifetime: in truth, in such moments,
they are the same, they are both eternity.
I was given a great gift
which I attempted to increase, to prolong.
Aeneas came to me over the water: the beginning
blinded me.
Now the Queen of Carthage
will accept suffering as she accepted favor:
to be noticed by the Fates
is some distinction after all.
Or should one say, to have honored hunger,
since the Fates go by that name also".
--
Edited by svengali2 at 10/27/2009 11:18 AM PDT
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Re: The Algonquin Round Table
Oct 24, 2009 2:24 PM
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- She made a mistake in looking and he knew she would, she could never resist. His charms were not beyond his command, they were his trade. As always, he was suddenly sad, grieved and pained, it was the same again and again, he could not prevent it anymore, the wave of nausea, his heart pounding, unable to catch his breath, always having to draw back and resist with such difficulty, their weakness, and the myriads of incantations that flooded his mind, words and words and words rushing at him, all to take control, screaming at him to take over, manipulating and bending her will, so easy, so effortless. He looked away, "I will not submit to practice this alchemy, her beauty I will not mold as if she were a cold sculpture. I will not cast another into this precious metal simply to advance my dark art".
--
Edited by SpiritontheWater at 10/25/2009 12:21 PM PDT
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