Poetry deleted per administrator request
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farm house near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
By Robert Frost
P.S. Robert Frost is my favorite poet also; this poem brings a lot of memories prior to transition when my goal seemed so unreachable and endless....
tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Hi Cindi:
Yes, I have. I don't remember everything of it, but I know it starts with something like "Orion always comes up sideways...throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains..." Wow...this is indeed amazing....He (Frost) has a way of looking at things which seems to touch people's hearts in a very special way.........I wouldn't be surprised to know that he's inspired many people who are now in the kind of business you're in.
This is wonderful, Cindi....I'm lost for words...
tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Posted at: July 13, 2006, 08:25:01 PM
Hi Cindi:
It took me a few minutes (to find it) ...but here it is...I just had to post it so that everyone can read the Star-Splitter by Frost.
The Star-Splitter by Robert Frost
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And raising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming.
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
"What do you want with one of those blame things?"
I asked him well before hand. "Don't you get one!"
"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight", he said.
"I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it."
There where he moved the rocks he couldn't move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In littleton it may as well be me."
After such loose talk it was no surprise
When he did what he did and burned his house down.
Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on,
And he could wait--we'd see to him to-morrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers,
But what we miss we go to him and ask for
He promptly gives it back, that is if still
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad
About his telescope. Beyond the age
Of being given one's gift for Christmas,
He had to take the best way he knew how
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was
He took a strange thing to be roguish over.
Some sympathy was wasted on the house,
A good old-timer dating back along;
But a house isn't sentient; the house
Didn't feel anything. And if it did,
Why not regard it as a sacrifice,
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?
Out of a house and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad.
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.
We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night to-night
And a man with a smokey lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?
:'( :'(...this is beautiful, Cindi. I'm crying my eyes out, thank you.
tinkerbell :icon_chick:
From: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/stop.html
Quote from: Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
Mostly just the first part of the first stanza, but details.
One of my favorites: And I will just link it here (http://webpages.charter.net/dtech/ladyofmystery.html), because I had to get permission from Cheryl Helynck to post it.
Or if you have not read Susans: Echo's abound in the silence of the heart (http://webpages.charter.net/dtech/susans.html).
MY LITTLE ONE
My little one whose tongue is dumb,
whose fingers cannot hold to things,
who is so mercilessly young,
he leaps upon the instant things,
I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
He runs into the burning wood.
Follow, follow if you can!
He will come out grown to a man
and not remember whom he kissed,
who caught him by the slender wrist
and bound him by a tender yoke
which, understanding not, he broke.
By Tennessee Williams
tinkerbell :icon_chick:
P.S. another great one from one of the greatest!
There just must be something about Robert Frost... "The Road Not Taken" is the only poem I have ever memorized, and though that was when I was 13 I can still recite it in full to this day. Also love "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, and most poems by Ray Bradbury... most people don't know he writes poetry as well as sci-fi. Nobody would want to see my sad excuses for poetry, though; fiction is far more my forte (and some alliteration!).
Rafe
I have a few poems of my own also which I wrote prior to my transition (most of them, not all); the thing is that they are written in Spanish, and this is why I don't post them here. this one, however, I had to post; the words are simple and can be understood by anyone who has taken Spanish as a foreign language in highschool or college. Hopefully soon, I'll post the translations, for I'm trying to convey the exact meaning of the words so that the essence of the writing is not wasted because of some language barrier. ;)
UNA MUJER
Soy una mujer...madura, creo
Y sin embargo no escribo sobre mi
Escribo si vienes o te vas
Escribo si me amas o no
Soy una mujer...feliz, creo
Y me asusta la idea de estar sola
De no tenerte a mi lado
De que no ames como soy
Soy una mujer...inteligente, creo
Y he pasado mi vida esperando que llegues
Y aun no estas aqui
Soy una mujer...lo se
Y de hoy en adelante me amare a mi misma
Y cuando llegues a mi vida, te amare tambien
Porque...soy una mujer.
Tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Geez Tinkerbell,
I know that poem as the song "O Waly Waly. Till your post I had no idea who wrote it, or even what it was about other than it concerned the winter solistice - I thought it was one of those Celtic type songs where love and death are so particularly entwined and seem to strike a chord in ones soul.
It is one of those poems that makes a particularly powerful marriage with music, the Blake poem "Jerusalem" is another (a British unofficial anthem that one I reckon :) ).
I love poetry, it has a wonderful power.
Thanks for letting me know about Robert Frost :)
Rana
For Her
She is beautiful.
She is beautiful with make up on.
She is beautiful without it on.
She is beautiful right after running miles on the treadmill.
She is beautiful when she isn't smiling.
She is beautiful when she is smirking.
She is beautiful when she is smiling.
She is beautiful inside.
She is beautiful out.
Her hair is perfect.
Oh, she is beautiful.
Sometimes she isn't paying attention to me and I will stare at her;
She can feel me staring so she looks and I turn up a smirk,
Then full smile,
Then she follows;
I love making her smile.
I love your smile.
tinkerbell :icon_chick:
Posted at: July 29, 2006, 03:51:36 AM
Quote from: Rana on July 16, 2006, 06:34:40 AM
Geez Tinkerbell,
I know that poem as the song "O Waly Waly.
Rana
LOL, I never thought of it that way, but yes...you're absolutely right, Rana. Many of Robert Frost's poems have this
O WALY WALY flavor, if you know what I mean...
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi100.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fm37%2Frianmarze%2FI_Girl_by_woolfier.gif&hash=95e340ef6028ee668cf39b8ec1f2561d9de731b7)
tinkerbell
Hey Cindi, when are you coming back? I'm beginning to miss you dearly already.... :(
A poem I composed thinking about you and your saying "chin up and all of that"... ^-^.
TONIGHT
Tonight I am quite awake;
And as any other night I can't sleep.
My random thoughts run through the cold breeze
Like gazelles being chased by the most dangerous beast
That beast of fear of what January will bring
And the new life that this will mean.
As melancholy sinks in deep
Your kind words are needed indeed
To comfort my mind and heart
of the uncertainty that is breaking me apart
I wish January were now here
To finish what nature left undone
And to feel like those gazelles running
But without the dangerous beast near.
Robin :icon_chick:
P.S. Hurry back, I miss you and your posts!!!
Descending the mountain top
where I communed with God.
Winding and contorting
a rutted dusty path.
An all night drive
on starlit highways,
ignoring byways,
straight by my way,
has brought me home.
Now I am with those I love.
Time for bed.
--------------------------------------------
Tinkerbell, what a lovely write. I missed you too!