Poems affecting my soul

Ranavolana

Old Alpha
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Jan 15, 2015
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Homeless as Spinas took my peds
Society
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Avatar Name
Louise Ranavolana Brooks
know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
 
Did the Huns write Poetry

Well they did, beautifully. Once I came across a poem that had been translated to English.
I don't know who wrote it or maybe more importantly the poetic genius who translated it.

But it was hauntingly beautiful, the sense of freedom & wonder of a horseman riding swiftly over a vast plain beneath a vast sky.
I never kept a record, of the poem nor where I read it and never been able to go back & find it again.
 
Everlastingly grinding away at Rexa- bloody- telms reminds me of this

TUMBA-BLOODY-RUMBA​

He asked for work at muster-time,
We tried him as a rider,
We tried him out as the rouseabout,
And as the cook’s off-sider,
He had sailed the seven seas,
He’d been up in Alaska,
He’d been in every western state
From Texas to Nebraska.

He said he’d shorn a sheep or two,
And cut a bit of lumber,
And waged war on the kangaroo,
At Tumba-bloody-rumba.

We had him in the shearing shed,
We put him on the stacker,
We tried him digging rabbits out,
He wasn’t worth a cracker,
He had a shop in Singapore,
He owned a pearling lugger,
He was a champ at baccarat,
Australian rules and rugger.

He never showed his aptitude,
On work he was allotted,
But showed his skill upon the drinks,
And cigarettes he botted,
He said he’d climbed the Materhorn,
He’d been a union leader,
And years ago in Adelaide
He was a pigeon breeder.

We tried him cutting fencing posts,
We tried to find his caper,
Until that happy pay-day when
He got his piece of paper.
I wonder what he’s doing now,
Perhaps back on the lumber,
Or shooting kanga-bloody-roos,
At Tumba-bloody-rumba.
 
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I shot 42 Rexa-bloody-Telums before my patience & peds gave out, must be a sign

Poems back from a time when men were men, and women were somewhat like men are now :(

I was down the Riverina, knockin' 'round the towns a bit,
And occasionally resting with a schooner in me mitt,
And on one of these occasions, when the bar was pretty full
And the local blokes were arguin' assorted kind of bull,
I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way.
It's only in Australia you would hear a joker say:

"Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven't seen ya fer a week,
And yer mate was lookin' for ya when ya come in from the creek.
'E was lookin' up at Ryan's, and around at bloody Joe's,
And even at the Royal, where 'e bloody NEVER goes".

And the other bloke says "Seen 'im? Owed 'im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did -
Could've used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos."

Now the bar was pretty quiet, and everybody heard
The peculiar integration of this adjectival word,
But no-one there was laughing, and me - I wasn't game,
So I just sits back and lets them think I spoke the bloody same.

Then someone else was interested to know just what he got,
How many kanga-bloody-roos he went and bloody shot,
And the shooting bloke says "Things are crook -
the drought's too bloody tough.
I got forty-two by seven, and that's good e-bloody-nough."

And, as this polite rejoinder seemed to satisfy the mob,
Everyone stopped listening and got on with the job,
Which was drinkin' beer, and arguin', and talkin' of the heat,
Of boggin' in the bitumen in the middle of the street,
But as for me, I'm here to say the interesting piece of news
Was Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga bloody-roos.
 
Change of Pace

Revelation


Machines of death from East to West
Drone through the darkened sky;
Machines of death from West to East
Through the same darkness fly

They pass; and on the foredoomed towns
Loosen their slaughtering load;
They see no faces in the stone;
They hear no cries of blood

They leave a ruin; and they meet
A ruin on return;
The mourners on the alien street
At their own doorways mourn.
 
Just bloody well remember. What did all that suffering & courage gain. Look around, was it all worth it.

The next war (Osbert Sitwell)​

The long war had ended.
Its miseries had grown faded.
Deaf men became difficult to talk to,
Heroes became bores.
Those alchemists
Who had converted blood into gold
Had grown elderly.
But they held a meeting,
Saying,
“We think perhaps we ought
To put up tombs
Or erect altars
To those brave lads
Who were so willingly burnt,
Or blinded,
Or maimed.
Who lost all likeness to a living thing,
Or were blown to bleeding patches of flesh
For our sakes.
It would look well.
Or we might even educate the children.”
But the richest of these wizards
Coughed gently;

And he said:
“I have always been to the front
In private enterprise,
I yield in public spirit
To no man.
I think yours is a very good idea,
A capital idea,
And not too costly . . .
But it seems to me
That the cause for which we fought
Is again endangered.
What more fitting memorial for the fallen
Than that their children
Should fall for the same cause?”

Rushing eagerly into the street,
The kindly old gentlemen cried
To the young:
“Will you sacrifice
Through your lethargy
What your fathers died to gain?
The world must be made safe for the young!”
And the children
Went . . .
 
You should get an Opera Singer to TextToSpeech those...
 
It would not work, Gilbert & Sullivan is the closest for the Australian poems and I think would just have a silly effect. The others no - it would border on offensive, and also would not work for blank verse.

However having said that, "Jerusalem" and "I Vow to Thee My Country" were originally poems that were set to music and make amazing anthems (thou I Vow to Thee was made from the poem "The Two Fatherlands". If the original verses were kept & not changed for political correctness, THEN, I "Vow to Thee..." would have been amazingly powerful.
 
It would not work, Gilbert & Sullivan is the closest for the Australian poems and I think would just have a silly effect. The others no - it would border on offensive, and also would not work for blank verse.

However having said that, "Jerusalem" and "I Vow to Thee My Country" were originally poems that were set to music and make amazing anthems (thou I Vow to Thee was made from the poem "The Two Fatherlands". If the original verses were kept & not changed for political correctness, THEN, I "Vow to Thee..." would have been amazingly powerful.
Wonderful writing and nicely explained there.
 
All my own work.
It is about EU specifically Arkadia & please do not psychoanalyse me here :(

A Young Mandnana tarries
He has a tryst with me
Beneath the entwined branches of a darkling Moonleaf tree
We could have met as friends or lovers yet
But no du nort du sud
I crave his strength and savagery
He hungers for my blood.
 
There once were two cats from Kilkenny
And each thought there was one cat to many
So they fought and they bit
And they scratched and they hit
Till except for their nails
and the tips of their tails
Instead of two cats
there weren't any
 
Sometimes in the homes of the elderly,
Among the shabby, cherished possessions
You will find a framed photograph
Of a young man in quaint uniform.

Slouch-hatted, posing with a full gaze.
‘My brother Jim. He went to the war …’
And something in the aged voice conveys
The unspoken ‘and didn’t come home’ …

The minds wherein he is enshrined
As son, brother, neighbour, friend, grow fewer.
Those brief, sliding minutes on the wharf
Have become sixty years.

Now in a musty room somewhere,
An old person makes a cup of tea
And a not-yet anonymous soldier
Stares out of the photograph.
 
Peter Kocan his amazing poems demonstrate the link between his genius & instability :(

DYLAN & CAITLIN

The poignant photograph is one
Of them reclining in the sun —
Their intimacy showing through,
Unposed, unglamorous, but true.

Yet with a tension in it all,
As if they had agreed to call
This little truce in passion’s war
Beside the heron-priested shore.

Forever, as the moments pass,
Their shadows rest upon the grass.
These two remain forever caught
In pensive attitudes of thought.

And just before the camera’s blink
She might’ve said, “How strange to think
Our pictured selves will never know
What happens when we rise and go.”

“They’ll seem to know,” he might’ve said,
“For everything that lies ahead
Will cast its retrospective ray
Upon these phantoms of today.”

— Bereft of colour, motion, sound,
Their world is burgeoning around,
The teeming year of Fifty-Three
Whose end he wouldn’t live to see.
 

THE FATHERS​

A little boy bewildered
I made my way alone.
The world was full of fathers
But none of them my own.

So it was no man’s duty
To teach me what he knew,
To help me or defend me
Or guide me as I grew.

But then I learned of heroes
Long gone into the grave;
The legends of the loyal,
The sagas of the brave.

Through history they laboured
For me the friendless waif,
To see that I’d be happy,
To see that I’d be safe.

And in their stern example,
And in their sad renown,
I found the patrimony
That they had handed down.

Those dead men who befriended
A child they didn’t know
Were my heroic fathers
Long centuries ago.
 
Margaret Emma Henley (4 September 1888 – 11 February 1894) was the daughter of William Ernest Henley and his wife Anna Henley (née Boyle). Margaret's friendship with J. M. Barrie, whom she called "fwendy" (i.e., "friendy"), was the inspiration for the character Wendy Darling in Barrie's play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) and its novelisation Peter and Wendy (1911). She may also have served as the inspiration for Margaret Dearth, the protagonist's "dream-child" in Barrie's 1917 play Dear Brutus, and for Margaret, Wendy Darling's granddaughter, in Peter Pan.[1] Margaret died at the age of five of cerebral meningitis.[2] She was buried at the country estate of her father's friend, Henry Cust, in Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire.[3][4] She was an only child.

NAME​

The name ‘Wendy’ was invented by a little girl who died at the age of six.

Margaret Henley never knew
Her singular achievement,
So little time there was between
The birth and the bereavement.

She never knew how wide and far
Her baby-talk would carry,
The future of the funny name
She told to J.M. Barrie.

She said her special word and then
Departed, never knowing
How many little girls would bear
The name she was bestowing.

She only added to the world
One unique and harmless touch.
How many glittering careers
Contributed as much?
 
By Rudyard Kipling
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk--
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control--
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf--
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
 
When the shearing sheds are silent, and the stock camps fallen quiet
When the gidgee coals no longer glow across the outback night
And the bush is forced to hang a sign, 'gone broke and won't be back’
And spirits fear to find a way beyond the beaten track
When harvesters stand derelict upon the wind-swept plains
And brave hearts pin their hopes no more on chance of loving rains
When a hundred outback settlements are ghost towns overnight
When we've lost the drive and heart we had to once more see us right
When 'Pioneer' means a stereo and 'Digger' some backhoe
And the 'Outback' is behind the house. there's nowhere else to go
And 'Anzac' is a biscuit brand and probably foreign owned
And education really means brainwashed and neatly cloned
When you have to bake a loaf of bread to make a decent crust
And our heritage once enshrined in gold is crumbling to dust
And old folk pay their camping fees on land for which they fought
And fishing is a great escape; this is until you're caught
When you see our kids with Yankee caps and resentment in their eyes
And the soaring crime and hopeless hearts is no longer a surprise
When the name of RM Williams is a yuppie clothing brand
And not a product of our heritage that grew off the land
When offering a hand makes people think you'll amputate
And two dogs’ meeting in the street is what you call a ‘Mate'
When 'Political Correctness' has replaced all common sense
When you're forced to see it their way, there's no sitting on the fence
Yes, one day you might find yourself an outcast in this land
Perhaps your heart will tell you then, ' I should have made a stand’
Just go and ask the farmers that should remove all doubt
Then join the swelling ranks who say, ' Don't sell Australia out!’
Please keep this going - Australia is in real trouble!
Author credit- Chris Long
Far North Queensland
 
I Feel our best days are behind us

CLANCY OF THE OVERFLOW

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow".

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".
 
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