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| Messages 1 - 44 of total 44 in this topic |
Ka
Mountain climber
Charleston SC
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 20, 2009 - 09:09pm PT
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For me there is no escaping Robert Frost
from Mountain Interval:
The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:30pm PT
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Interesting thread!
There are two great poems in the English language that deal with the reconciling and anodyne quality of nature. I love them both. Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey." These may be the finest nature poems ever written in English.
From Muir to Jeffers, everything else seems to be indebted to the same early 19th late 18thc. Romanticism.
There’s a new movie about Keats called “Bright Star”… really worth seeing.
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adam d
climber
closer to waves than rock
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:33pm PT
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A Ritual To Read To Each Other
William Stafford
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may brevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give- yes or no, or maybe-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
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Gene
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:37pm PT
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I sing of arms and a man.
Virgil
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:39pm PT
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Hail to the Sun God,
For He is a Fun God,
Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra!
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franky
climber
Davis, CA
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:41pm PT
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One can't help think that old Samuel was dreaming of the very dome that was later named after his words. Maybe he confused some native americans with their distant ancestors?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Oct 20, 2009 - 10:17pm PT
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Two of the greatest poets of the19th century, Wordsworth and Longfellow, once had a verbal, on-site competition for who could come up with the best poem with an ending of Timbuktu.
And the winner was? don't recall but the poem went something like this:
"While walking through the woods we went
We spied three maidens in a tent
Since they were three
And we were two
I bucked one, and Timbuktu."
Kind of reminds one of Camp 4 when it was not so orchestrated.
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 20, 2009 - 10:56pm PT
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Well I think Wordsworth is underated in the moden world, this is an example of his work that always brings a (nice) tear into my eye. It is a stunning reflection on Wordsworths brilliance and his ability to communicate with the rural 'savage' of the English Lake District.
WE ARE SEVEN
A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl,
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--- Her beauty made me glad.
"Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me.
"And where are they, I pray you tell?"
She answered, "Seven are we,
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."
"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven; I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be?"
Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."
"You run above, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."
"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.
My stockings there I often knit,
My 'kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit
And sing a song to them.
And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
So in the church-yard she was laid;
And all the summer dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in Heaven?"
The little Maiden did reply,
"O Master! we are seven."
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
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Redwreck
Social climber
Echo Parque, Los Angeles, CA
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Oct 20, 2009 - 11:25pm PT
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I keep going back to Yeats and Eliot. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" yield something new on every reading.
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Phil_B
Social climber
Hercules, CA
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Oct 20, 2009 - 11:25pm PT
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Here I sit brokenhearted
--the original version--
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MisterE
Trad climber
Canoga Bark! CA
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Oct 21, 2009 - 12:05am PT
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Breathe just right
and every cell
flops over
.................grinning.
-Ed Musante
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billygoat
climber
cruzville
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Oct 21, 2009 - 12:06am PT
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Mountains and Rivers Without End By Gary Snyder. I hardly ever go on a trip without it. Great to read out loud by the campfire or simply under the stars.
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MisterE
Trad climber
Canoga Bark! CA
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Oct 21, 2009 - 12:07am PT
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If I keep a green bough
in my heart
a singing bird
will come.
--Chinese proverb
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 21, 2009 - 12:53am PT
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Hey Dodo I agree.
And then there is this:
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance --
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence -- wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love -- oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
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Anastasia
Mountain climber
hanging from a crimp and crying for my mama.
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Oct 21, 2009 - 01:42am PT
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being alive is an act of dying
don't be afraid of loss
we are all in the act of travel
leaving it all behind
you ask me how I dare stand before you
exposing my inner self
with no shame over my own faults
baby I'm a shooting star
going to be gone before you are
need to share it before I'm gone
there is no shame that can be carried on
don't be afraid
all is passing
good and bad passes on
don't be afraid
We are going to the same place
it all passes on
---------
I was just inspired to write this for all of you.
Smiles,
AF
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FeelioBabar
Trad climber
One drink ahead of my past.
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Oct 21, 2009 - 02:14am PT
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roll the dice
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.
go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.
if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.
do it, do it, do it.
do it.
all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.
 Charles Bukowski
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 21, 2009 - 02:31am PT
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Hi Paul
Of course Wordsworth did himself no favours by writing the bloody awful 'Daffodils', though it did keep him in beer money for a while I suppose.
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 21, 2009 - 02:39am PT
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I also like another poet some on here may not have heard of, Gerard Manley Hopkins, I was introduced to him by both Joe Tasker and Tim Lewis, trainee Jesuit priests in their youth, sample here.
'O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with the steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.'
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Oct 21, 2009 - 02:47am PT
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My Father used to recite part of this when we'd be out freezin' our a$$es off out fishing.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
Where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'Round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold
Seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
That he'd "sooner live in hell".
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
Over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
Till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
To whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight
In our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
Were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
Won't refuse my last request."
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
Then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
Till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread
Of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
You'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to heed,
So I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
But God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
Of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
That was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
And I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
Because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you
To cremate those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
And the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,
In my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
While the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --
O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay
Seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
And the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
But I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
And it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
And a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
It was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
And I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry,
"Is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,
And I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
And I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared --
Such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
And I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like
To hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
And the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
Down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
Went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
Ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . .
Then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
In the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
And he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
You'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
It's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Robert Service
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 21, 2009 - 02:59am PT
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Return
A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
I will go down to the lovely Sur Rivers
And dip my arms in them up to my shoulders.
I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers
In the ocean wind over the river boulders.
I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,
That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks
so they cannot strike, hardly can fly.
Things are the hawk's food and noble is the mountain, Oh noble
Pico Blanco, steep sea-wave of marble.
Robinson Jeffers
I always enjoyed that one.
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susu
Trad climber
East Bay, CA
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Oct 21, 2009 - 03:10am PT
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First Song
By: Galway Kinnell
Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.
Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.
It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder’s ache
A boy’s hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 21, 2009 - 03:48am PT
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Hey Dodo,
One should never throw the baby out with the Daffodils if ya know what I mean. At his best Wordsworth is sublime. At his worst well...
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 21, 2009 - 04:21am PT
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I guess you gotta go with what pays the rent :-)
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BW
climber
Big Pine, CA
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Oct 21, 2009 - 11:13am PT
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A sackful of kittens
thrown into the ice creek
increases the cold
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Oct 21, 2009 - 11:28am PT
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Pufrock by T.S. Elliot.
"Let us go then you and I, when evening is spread out against the sky...." Those opening words have always been my call to action.
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shellon copeland
Social climber
reston, virginia
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Oct 21, 2009 - 01:30pm PT
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Good one Kandolian
have to be the hopeless optimist Dylan Thomas
Do not go gently into that Good Night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light...
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scuffy b
climber
Whuttiz that Monstrosicos Inferno?
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Oct 21, 2009 - 01:42pm PT
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Kublai Khan
The Second Coming
I Saw Myself
(Lew Welch)
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a
bell does
EDIT:
and, of course, Ozymandias
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 21, 2009 - 01:48pm PT
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Dylan did it all for sea cliff climbing
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Oct 21, 2009 - 03:10pm PT
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Mary Oliver
Knife
Something
just now
moved through my heart
like the thinnest of blades
as that red-tail pumped
once with its great wings
and flew above the gray, cracked
rock wall.
It wasn't
about the bird, it was
something about the way
stone stays
mute and put, whatever
goes flashing by.
Sometimes,
when I sit like this, quiet,
all the dreams of my blood
and all outrageous divisions of time
seem ready to leave,
to slide out of me.
Then, I imagine, I would never move.
By now
the hawk has flown five miles
at least,
dazzling whoever else has happened
to look up.
I was dazzled. But that
wasn't the knife.
It was the sheer, dense wall
of blind stone
without a pinch of hope
or a single unfulfilled desire
sponging up and reflecting,
so brilliantly,
as it has for centuries,
the sun's fire.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 21, 2009 - 04:21pm PT
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I always reckoned Shelley pretty much summed up human existence with this one:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
And Mojede beat me to one of my other favorites
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Oct 21, 2009 - 06:05pm PT
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I like the prescient apocalyptic vision.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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hooblie
climber
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Oct 21, 2009 - 07:59pm PT
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lest anyone think i'm a bon vivant, or doubt that i'm a jeffers fan, here's a haunting image, and a link
to an earlier post to a "words of..." thread, my cyber offering in the spirit of lynne's toast to the fallen.
The Purse-Seine
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea's night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.
I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.
Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers--or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls--or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life's end is death.
Robinson Jeffers
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=594562&msg=967231#msg967231
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Brian
climber
Cali
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Oct 21, 2009 - 09:11pm PT
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My "favorite" poem is as impossible to identify as my favorite climb, there are just too many choices, each with its own unique attraction. However, while I can't say this poem is my favorite, in a singular sense, I've been spending a good deal of time with it over the past few months (and I've posted it here once before).
“A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert (from Refusing Heaven)
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the
stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Brian
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susu
Trad climber
East Bay, CA
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Oct 22, 2009 - 02:01am PT
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somewhere i have never traveled
by e.e. cummings
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near.
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose.
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending.
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing.
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
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Dodo
Trad climber
Spain/UK
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Oct 22, 2009 - 04:05pm PT
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While doing a bit of research about Wordsworth for this thread, I came across this amazing faction that I have not proved one way or the other as yet. BUT, it seems there is a 'lost' manuscript by Wordsworth. Apparently he went to school and Uni with Fletcher Christian, he of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' fame, they grew up together in the English Lake District in a village called Hawkshead (I know it well).
It seems that the theory is that far from dying on Pitcairn Island, Fletcher Christian returned to England to prove his innocence and the only way he could be exonerated for the mutiny was to get proof that Bligh was buggering him and the third in command Peter Fletcher which was the only excuse for mutiny, otherwise it was punishable by death. Apparently he told the story to Wordsworth who wrote it all down in a hushed up manuscript. Not convinced yet but a good story nonetheless.
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hooblie
climber
"I used to care but, things have changed"
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Oct 22, 2009 - 04:22pm PT
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wow susu, new fav
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Dolomite
climber
Anchorage
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Oct 22, 2009 - 04:46pm PT
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Some days this one is my favorite:
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
-- James Wright
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Carolyn C
Trad climber
the long, long trailer
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Oct 22, 2009 - 06:51pm PT
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Another vote for "Ozymandias." I read it for the first time in high school senior English class.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 22, 2009 - 07:12pm PT
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Just a box of rain -
wind and water -
Believe it if you need it,
if you don't just pass it on
Sun and shower -
Wind and rain -
in and out the window
like a moth before a flame
And it's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare
But it's just a box of rain
or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long long time to be gone
and a short time to be there.
Rbt. Hunter
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L
climber
The Big Blue, of course
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Oct 22, 2009 - 07:13pm PT
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The Fish
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
by Elizabeth Bishop
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Gunks Guy
Trad climber
Rhinebeck, NY
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Oct 22, 2009 - 10:30pm PT
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DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
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MisterE
Trad climber
Canoga Bark! CA
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Oct 30, 2009 - 01:36am PT
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"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Oct 30, 2009 - 01:41am PT
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This is something I could spend hours on. I have a notebook
full of poems I have copied, which are my favorites from my
list of favorite poets. But I can't do it right now, too much
pain... at some point hope to return here.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Wilderness
by Carl Sandburg
THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of
blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I
nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping
satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew
waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the
first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under
the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide
curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the
baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among
the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in
the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and
the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something
else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is
going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the
world: I came from the wilderness.
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