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Sasha's poetry corner
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artemisia



Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 875
Location: the world

PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting response, John. This is a short poem by Longfellow that is obviously about returning to a place from one�s past. It reminds me of (re)visiting places many years down the track that I lived as a child or talking to those who have had this experience. If you haven�t been back in years, a common response seems to be the sense of shock at how much smaller everything is in relation to the pictures in your head.

This poem maybe relates more to those who have years spent abroad and lost touch with �back home�, which has become, in some respects, like a foreign country:

Changed

From the outskirts of the town
Where of old the mile-stone stood.
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A Girl Sang a Song

A girl sang a song in the temple's chorus,
About men, tired in alien lands,
About the ships that left native shores,
And all who forgot their joy to the end.

Thus sang her clean voice, and flew up to the highness,
And sunbeams shined on her shoulder's white --
And everyone saw and heard from the darkness
The white and airy gown, singing in the light.

And all of them were sure, that joy would burst out:
The ships have arrived at their beach,
The people, in the land of the aliens tired,
Regaining their bearing, are happy and reach.

And sweet was her voice and the sun's beams around....
And only, by Caesar's Gates -- high on the vault,
The baby, versed into mysteries, mourned,
Because none of them will be ever returned.


Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 10:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Falling is Constant

The falling is the constant mate of fear,
And feel of emptiness is the feel of fright.
Who throws us the stones from the height --
And stones here refuse the dust to bear?

Once, striding in a monk�s unbending mode,
You pierced the yard from rim to other rim;
The cobble-stones and the coarse dream --
Have thirst for death and sadness of the broad-

Let Gothic shelter be in ruins turned
Where ceiling serves as a deceptive fable,
And in the heath the gaily logs don�t burn!

A few here for eternity were born;
But if your mind has only instant label
Your lot is awful and your home unstable!

Osip Mandelshtam
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Dazai



Joined: 11 Oct 2004
Posts: 74

PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice one:"The Falling is Constant'. Great poem Sasha.

I use this one to give the students an idea of my life outside the classroom (best used with advanced adults). It always prompts a lively discussion.

One day Shanghai caves in like the nose of a syphilitic
People start falling into the Huangpu river oozing with spit
The karaoke torture chambers live it up,
obscene to anthropomorphised cats
They throw off their undies, one last aeroplane

I come out of the metro at Lujiazui
and put on my head like a wig
the burnt out skyscrapers of lust
People in terror. The unchewed avarice
within my mouth wriggles its legs out

But I�ll not be condemned; I�ll not be that guy
My empty Qingdaos will be
(like the tools of prophets) treasured.
All those with caved in noses know it:
I�m � your Johnny

Your last judgement sends me down to Hengshan Lu!
I alone will be carried to burn paper like Tomb Sweeping Fest
by whores, I�m a thing of adoration
they will show as their vindication

And all over Pudong and Puxi
The burnouts and the save-the-worlders
know the clap ravaged phoenix will rise again

Dazai
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Qaaolchoura



Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Posts: 539
Location: 21 miles from the Syrian border

PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 7:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away.
Nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll.
How frugal is that chariot that bears the human soul.

~Emily Dickinson

(One of my all-time favorite poems ever.)
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2012 5:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No One Knew
(April 22, 1870)

It was a day like any other,
The same dull sky, the same drab street.
There was the usual angry pother
From the policeman on his beat.
Proud of his fine new miter's luster,
The archpriest strutted down the nave;
And the pub rocked with brawl and bluster,
Where scamps gulped down what fortune gave.
The market women buzzed and bickered
Like flies above the honeypots.
The burghers' wives bustled and dickered,
Eyeing the drapers' latest lots.
An awe-struck peasant stared and stuttered,
Regarding an official door
Where yellow rags of paper fluttered:
A dead ukase of months before.
The fireman ranged his tower, surveying
The roofs, like the chained bears one sees;
And soldiers shouldered arms, obeying
The drill sergeant's obscenities.
Slow carts in caravans went winding
Dockward, where floury stevedores moiled;
And, under convoy, in the blinding
Dust of the road, a student toiled,
And won some pity, thus forlorn,
From the drunk hand who poured his scorn
In curses on some pal and brother. . . .
Russia was aching with the thorn
And bearing her old cross, poor mother.
That day, a day like any other,
And not a soul knew that Lenin was born!

Demyan Bedny
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Улетай на крыльях ветра

Улетай на крыльях ветра
ты в край родной, родная песня наша,
туда, где мы тебя свободно пели,
где было так привольно нам с тобою.
Там, под знойным небом
негой воздух полон,
там под говор моря дремлют горы в облаках.
Там так ярко солнце светит,
Родные горы светом заливая,
В долинах пышно розы расцветают,
И соловьи поют в лесах зелёных;
И сладкий виноград растёт.
Там тебе привольней, песня�
Ты туда и улетай!


Fly away on wings of wind
To native lands, our native song,
To there, where we sang you freely,
Where we were so carefree with you.
There, under the hot sky,
With bliss the air is full,
There, to the murmur of the sea, mountains doze in the clouds.
There, the sun shines so brightly,
Bathing [our] native mountains in light.
In the meadows, roses bloom luxuriously,
And nightingales sing in the green forests;
And sweet grape grows.
There is more carefree for you, song�
And so fly away there!

A.Borodin, V.Stasov


Perhaps not the most poetic writing in the world, but listen to it sung.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBElYI8YQ10&feature=fvwrel
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What do posters feel about using poetry when sung in the class? Is it then the same as a pop song? Or should only the text be used? What could be done with this poem, for example?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXHqAGgG6YQ


Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,
Bid adieu to girlish days,
Happy Love is come to woo
Thee and woo thy girlish ways �
The zone that doth become thee fair,
The snood upon thy yellow hair.

When thou hast heard his name upon
The bugles of the cherubim
Begin thou softly to unzone
Thy girlish bosom unto him
And softly to undo the snood
That is the sign of maidenhood.


Chamber Music XI, James Joyce
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We are fleeting in this world, beneath the moon.
Life is an instant. Non-being is forever.
The Earth spins in the universe.
Men live and vanish...


Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear Sasha,

"Life is an instant. Non-being is forever. "

But isn't even just an instant a part of forever?

Regards,
John
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear Johnslat

You have made an interesting point - one which I feel unable to comment on...

However, I am intrigued by the notion of an aged, physically frail, though still steely and uncompromising Bolshevik leader writing poetry sketches such as the above. Makes you wonder...


Sasha
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sun Sep 30, 2012 6:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

За гремучую доблесть грядущих веков...

За гремучую доблесть грядущих веков,
За высокое племя людей
Я лишился и чаши на пире отцов,
И веселья, и чести своей.

Мне на плечи кидается век-волкодав,
Но не волк я по крови своей,
Запихай меня лучше, как шапку, в рукав
Жаркой шубы сибирских степей.

Чтоб не видеть ни труса, ни хлипкой грязцы,
Ни кровавых кровей в колесе,
Чтоб сияли всю ночь голубые песцы
Мне в своей первобытной красе,

Уведи меня в ночь, где течет Енисей
И сосна до звезды достает,
Потому что не волк я по крови своей
И меня только равный убьет.

O Мандельштам



For the thundering valour of ages to come...

For the thundering valour of ages to come,
For the lofty tribe of humankind,-
I'm deprived of a cup at my fathers' feast,
Of happiness, and of my honor.

The age's wolfhound leaps on my neck,
But by blood I'm no wolf:
Better push me, like a hat, into the sleeve
Of a hot fur coat of the Siberian steppe...

So that I don't see cowards or thin mud,
Or bloody bones in a wheel;
So the blue foxes can shine for me
In their primeval beauty all night long.

Take me into the night, where the Yenisei flows
And the pines reach to the stars,
For by blood I'm no wolf
And only an equal can kill me.

O Mandelshtam
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 8:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

To The Many

I -- am your voice, the warmth of your breath,
I -- am the reflection of your face,
The futile trembling of futile wings,
I am with you to the end, in any case.

That's why you so fervently love
Me in my weakness and in my sin;
That's why you impulsively gave
Me the best of your sons;


That's why you never even asked
Me for any word of him
And blackened my forever-deserted home
With fumes of praise.


And they say -- it's impossible to fuse more closely,
Impossible to love more abandonedly...

As the shadow from the body wants to part,
As the flesh from the soul wants to separate,
So I want now -- to be forgotten...

September 1922,
Anna Achmatova (1889-1966).
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Perilla



Joined: 09 Jul 2010
Posts: 792
Location: Hong Kong

PostPosted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning�s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Mary Frye, 1932

I love this poem, but it makes me weep.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, that's a powerful one, Perilla. Thanks for contributing this.
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