Calling all poets and students of literature. URGENT request for poem to read at tonight's

[coalition_unwilling]

General Assembly (GA) of Occupy Los Angeles (OLA).

Folks, many of you know that OLA faces the threat of forcible eviction, possibly commencing as early as 12:01 (PST) Monday morning. In practical terms, tonight's GA may be the last on the City Hall steps in the short term.

I would like to read a poem to the GA as an invocation of sorts but cannot decide which to read. I've had a couple ideas this morning:

Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night
Shakespeare's "Once More Unto the Breach" (from Henry V) http://www.liebreich.com/LDC/HTML/Opinion/Iraq/Breach.html

I am beside myself with sadness and rage that it has come to this and so I retreat to poetry to find consolation.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for a poem that may commemorate the final GA of OLA at City Hall? If so, could you please reply with title, link to text and a brief explanation of why you think it appropriate? Poem should be readable in 1-2 minuts max, so Shelley's "Mask of Anarchy" (the 92-stanza version), while a propos, is probably not suitable.

Thanks everyone for your consideration.

Charles

On edit: Also possibly Shakespeare's "Saint Crispin's Day" (from Henry V) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_more_unto_the_breach,_dear_friends,_once_more#Synopsis

Thanks for the recs - at times like this, DU shows how big its heart is.

[coalition_unwilling]

1. Self kick for increased visibility - n/t

[Leftist Agitator]

2. Here's one.

A Code Poem For The French Resistance

The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have,
Yet death will be but a pause,
For the peace of my years in the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

-Leo Marks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Marks

[coalition_unwilling]

4. That is positively beautiful and I am vaulting it over

the Thomas and Shakespeare suggestions I had initially.

Thank you so much.

[MjolnirTime]

3. Anonymous 20th Century poem

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

[coalition_unwilling]

5. Hah! That's a good one. I had a strong feeling of 'deja vu'

when reading those lyrics and thought if I would just put some fresh strings on my guitar and start randomly strumming, I might remember where I had heard it before.

Thanks again. Much appreciated.

[prairierose]

17. This "anonymous" poem is by Bob Dylan...he first recorded it...

in 1963.

[postulater]

30. I've been recalling lyrics from that Anonymous daily

for the last several months now.

Something is happening.

[riverwalker]

6. Bobby Sands: The Rhythm of Time

For you whippersnappers: He was an IRA activist in the 70's who died at age 27 in prison from a hunger strike. He wrote poems in prison on pieces of toilet paper.


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

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-rhythm-of-time/

[coalition_unwilling]

7. That is one hell of a poem. It seems very a propos to the matter

at hand. Thank you for the suggestion.

[H2O Man]

53. Outstanding.

My wife's late second-cousin was a friend & associate of Bobby Sands.

[lunatica]

8. I have no poem but I do have encouragement

Dear coalition_unwilling, I think you have the perfect name for what you're doing. How prescient of you. My encouragement is that you are part of a movement that flows like a river. Sometimes the waters are rough and sometimes they are calm. For a while now you have gathered as single drops of water meeting up and swelling into a force of nature responding to your innate drive to fulfill your purpose. Recently you have been going over a rough patch with obstructions in your way which are trying to stop your response to the call of the great ocean of awareness on a global scale. You went around and over the obstructions which in the end only gave you more strength because they tried to contain you. Now you are passing the rapids and have gained speed and strength which can run very deep and very calm with ever more drops having been added to create the greatest of rivers. Your journey is far from done and you will have calm times and tumultous times and rapid times and slow times, but nothing will stop you. Your destiny is already written in the laws of Nature. Your work will happen even as you gather soil that you erode from the banks to eventually take it with you to its new home, the great ocean of awareness, of consciousness.

We are the 99% and we are a Force of Nature.

[coalition_unwilling]

9. You have no poem???? Au contraire, you just wrote a

beautiful prose poem complete with a water metaphor\conceit.

Beautiful. Thanks for your contribution

[lunatica]

10. You and the OWS have given me an inspiration I thought I would never feel again

I thank you for doing the hard work. The reason Occupy works is because it is fluid, like that river. It adapts as it goes but it never stops.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. The feeling is mutual. I have not felt this inspired and moved in

a long time, if ever.

[woo me with science]

12. I Am The People, The Mob, by Carl Sandburg

I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB
BY
Carl Sandburg

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.


.

[coalition_unwilling]

13. Wow. That is powerful beyond description. Gives new meaning

to Shelley's aphorism that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

[Nevernose]

14. Not to be critical

But I would skip the Henry V quotes. He was a bloodthirsty war criminal (at least in that third play) and those quotes glorify violence.

Someone here posted the lyrics to Woodie Guthrie's Pretty Boy Floyd the other day, though it could still be misconstrued as advocating crime (but at least not violence). Woodie says things plain, though, and he reminds people of California. You might also look up a passage from Grapes of Wrath. Both of those guys say "CAlifornia" and "the Man wants to evict us" to me.

[coalition_unwilling]

15. The Henry V ideas were mine and mine only and came from

my rage. There have been some wonderful suggestions since then that have blown the Henry V ideas out of the water.

Check out, for example, the poems upthread from Leo Marks or Carl Sandburg. Both have postively blown me away and reaffirmed me in my feeling that DU positively rocks.

I'll try to check out the Woody Guthrie lyrics later today. Thanks for the suggestion.

On edit:

"Be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition"

If you could see all the homeless and societal castoffs at Occupy Los Angeles, you would understand why Henry's St. Crispin's Day speech so resonates with me. Just substitute 'Los Angeles' for 'England' and 'Eviction Day' for 'St. Crispin's Day'.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

But I take your point.

[enlightenment]

28. I also see the point of using the St. Crispin Day speech -

or, alternately, a partial reading/paraphrase of the Declaration of Arbroath - which predates the Declaration of Independence by several centuries (TJ was undoubtedly familiar with the piece).

http://www.constitution.org/scot/arbroath.htm

. . . Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

[kestrel91316]

16. K&R

[WinkyDink]

18. I've always been a fan of Langston Hughes. How about "Let America Be America Again"?

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

[coalition_unwilling]

20. Reaching for the Kleenex again. Thank you so much. So much good

poetry, so little time.

Truly the "boogie woogie rhythm of a dream deferred." (I just love saying that line out loud and in my head :)

[Greybnk48]

22. Never mind. I vote for this one. n/t

[BrendaBrick]

27. Chills!

[Nay]

31. You beat me to it, Winkydink. Hughes' poem gets my vote as well. nt

[LWolf]

19. I found one.

I'm sure enjoying reading all the poems suggested in this thread. I'm getting chills, imagining you reading them at OLA.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other


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 prevail 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 dyke.

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.

- William Stafford

[coalition_unwilling]

26. At this rate, I shall have to order a case of Kleenex to carry me

through to GA tonight.

In terms of pure poetics, Stafford's poem may be the absolute best of all those offered so far.

Thank you so much for reminding me of how stunningly powerful a short, simple poem can be.

[LWolf]

29. You're welcome, of course. nt

[Greybnk48]

21. Invictus, by William Ernest Henley

I particularly like the phrase "my head is bloody, but unbowed."

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

[lunatica]

24. This always gives me waves of goosebumps

and I can literally feel a swelling in my chest.

It's so perfect!

[WillyT]

23. Do Lyrics Count ??? - Because These Are Spot On With The 99% Raising Awareness...

"Everybody Knows" - Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

:hi:

:kick: & Rec !!!

[coalition_unwilling]

25. Do lyrics count? Is the Pope not Catholic? Does a bear not shit

in the woods?

"Lyrics" and "Poetry" are well-nigh synonymous, imo. Wordsworth and Coleridge actually published "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798.

So, hell yeah!

The Cohen lyrics are a great suggestion, btw.

[gkhouston]

32. Here's one.

Lies (by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated from Russian)

Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God's in his heaven
and all's well with the world is wrong.
The young people know what you mean. The young are people.
Tell them the difficulties can't be counted,
and let them see not only what will be
but see with clarity these present times.
Say obstacles exist they must encounter
sorrow happens, hardship happens.
The hell with it. Who never knew
the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize,
it will repeat itself, increase,
and afterward our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave.

[coalition_unwilling]

33. I have not had much exposure to Yevtushenko's

work. But the cadences of this poetic 'voice' remind me of the short, declarative cadences of the "People's Mic".

I like these line: "Say obstacles exist they must encounter\sorrow happens, hardship happens.\The hell with it. Who never knew\the price of happiness will not be happy."

Thank you for broadening my cultural horizons today and for the suggestion.

[Lyric]

34. Tony Hoagland - "America"

America
By Tony Hoagland

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

[coalition_unwilling]

36. OMG, reaching for the Kleenex yet again. Unbelievably strong

poem - the dream of seeing his father gush money rather than blood after the narrator stabs him is an image that will be with me for a long time.

Until OWS, I felt like I had been floating in a pleasure boat upon this river, or maybe living in my own private Xanadu-esqu pleasure dome.

Thanks for the suggestion. This one capture the spirit of Occupy in all its multifarious babble streams.

[Lyric]

35. Or if you want something more revolutionary: William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916"

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

[coalition_unwilling]

37. "Terrible beauty" perfectly captures the

OLA experience in a single phrase.

Going for the Kleenex yet again over "And what if excess of love\Bewildered them till they died?"

Thank you for showing us why we have the phrase, "Oldie, but goodie."

[Brigid]

38. You beat me to it.

It's perfect. Another vote for this one.

[woo me with science]

39. Kick. nt

[RSillsbee]

40. Julius Ceaser Act5 Scene 1

Oh, that a man might know
The end of this day’s business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.—

And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius!
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.

[coalition_unwilling]

43. Wow, I've read that play many times over the years and for some

reason that particular passage has not stuck with me. But it was and is so a propos. Thank you :)

[RSillsbee]

51. I first heard it in a movie called "Uncommon Valor" in 1983

And it stuck w/ me. I actually said it to my gunner the night My unit invaded Iraq in 1991. I thought it sounded all dramatic and heroic , he looked at me and said "what in THEEE fuck are talkin' about dumbass?" "Get your ass up on that .50".

Real life is never as cool as movies

[Sabriel]

41. Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

The Occupy movement might as well be about death...the death of what the U.S. used to stand for:



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.

[coalition_unwilling]

42. UPDATE: Thanks for rounding out my OP with a poem I had suggested in

the OP :) Gave the thread a nice sense of closure. I thought of Thomas' poem as an elegy for the Occupy movement (OLA being the last large standing encampment in the U.S.). But I see your point as well about it being elegiac for an America we all once thought we knew.

FWIW, I shadow-moderated the GA on Sunday night. There is sort of an informal understanding among us that people who administer the GA should not also address the GA (for obvious conflict of interest and transparency reasons). Long and short, I did not read a poem to the GA last night. If I had, I was going to read Tony Hoagland's "America" (text upthread), after close consultation with my wife Alma. Any of the poems referenced in this thread would have been appropriate.

The camp still stands this morning! All the LAPD's stutting and fretting was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I shall have more to write about that later today in a new thread. Thanks to all who participated here - it made my day! And I learned of several poems (the Stafford, Code Poem and Yvetushenko ones come to mind) that I had not known previously. So you have enriched me in ways I never could have -- but in hindsight, should have -- predicted.

:loveya:

[Sabriel]

52. I appreciate your gentle reminder that I apparently can't read an OP!

I totally missed that you had already suggested "Do Not Go...."

Argh.

[JNelson6563]

44. I always find Casey at Bat goes over well.

Just sayin'.

[Fire Walk With Me]

48. Strangely, today, there IS joy in Mudville.

[Fire Walk With Me]

45. Kick!

[babydollhead]

46. Mary Oliver Wild Geese

Mary Oliver
Wild Geese



You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

[JFN1]

47. How about someone not so famous?

I always liked this one:

The Cycles That Be

Throughout time, I have existed
A phantom, a spirit...

Haunting the world
in ephemral fashion
entering slyly
on the wings
of thought...

Do you Know
where the phantom dwells?
Echoes of harmonies
yet unrealized...

Ask me not
where the phantom dwells
for you cannot wish to Know
that which you already
possess...

-- D.J. Dupree

[Fire Walk With Me]

49. Not poetry but that timely quote from Buckminster Fuller:

Which is poetic in its own right:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

[Motown_Johnny]

50. Would you consider a Bible quote?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%203&version=NKJV

^snip^

Ecclesiastes 3



1 To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:
2 A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
3 A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
4 A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones,
And a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to gain,
And a time to lose;
A time to keep,
And a time to throw away;
7 A time to tear,
And a time to sew;
A time to keep silence,
And a time to speak;
8 A time to love,
And a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace.


9 What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? 10 I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
12 I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, 13 and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God.