Monday, November 29, 2010

What is Loss?


What is loss?

I resent
What loss represents
I resent
What great loss presents

So what’s the fuss about loss?


Waiting!

Debating!
Contemplating!

What is loss?

Something you care about
Taken away from you by force
Creating total unforgivable chaos

Thinking!

Blinking!
Seeking!

What is loss

It is a minus instead of a plus
Hence the unmistakable fuss
Death and sickness build up great grief
Loss brings despair instead of relief
And in loss itself I have no belief

I resent

What loss represents
I resent
What great loss presents

Loss! An inequitable cause

Thrown on you without a toss
So you become very cross
Because in your life you realize, you are never the only boss!


Sylvia Chidi

Monday, November 22, 2010

She was too kind


[She was too kind, wooed too persistently]

Samuel Butler (1805-1932)

She was too kind, wooed too persistently, Wrote moving letters to me day by day; The more she wrote, the more unmoved was I, The more she gave, the less could I repay. Therefore I grieve, not that I was not loved, But that, being loved, I could not love again. I liked, but like and love are far removed; Hard though I tried to love I tried in vain. For she was plain and lame and fat and short, Forty and over-kind. Hence it befell That though I loved her in a certain sort, Yet did I love too wisely but not well. Ah! had she been more beauteous or less kind She might have found me of another mind.

ii

And now, though twenty years are come and gone,
That little lame lady's face is with me still;
Never a day but what, on every one,
She dwells with me, as dwell she ever will.
She said she wished I knew not wrong from right;
It was not that; I knew, and would have chosen
Wrong if I could, but, in my own despite,
Power to choose wrong in my chilled veins was frozen.
'Tis said that if a woman woo, no man
Should leave her till she have prevailed; and, true,
A man will yield for pity, if he can,
But if the flesh rebels what can he do?
I could not. Hence I grieve my whole life long
The wrong I did, in that I did no wrong.

iii

Had I been some young sailor, continent
Perforce three weeks and then well plied with wine,
I might in time have tried to yield consent
And almost (though I doubt it) made her mine.
Or had it been but once and never again,
Come what come might, she should have had her way;
But yielding once were yielding twice, and then
I had been hers for ever and a day.
Or had she only been content to crave
A marriage of true minds, her wish was granted;
My mind was hers, I was her willing slave
In all things else except the one she wanted:
And here, alas! at any rate to me
She was an all too, too impossible she.


Be Still My Soul


Be still, my soul, be still
by Alfred Edward Housman

BE still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,—call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry

I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,

I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;

All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation—
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Vicouac On a Mountain Side


Vicouac On A Mountain Side
by Walt Whitman


I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting;
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of
summer;
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising
high;
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily
seen;
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the
mountain;
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized flickering;
And over all, the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,
breaking out, the eternal stars.

Friday, November 05, 2010

The Deep-Sea Cables






The Deep-Sea Cables
by Rudyard Kipling

The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar --
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.

Here in the womb of the world -- here on the tie-ribs of earth

Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat --
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth --
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.

They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time;

Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun.
Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime,
And a new Word runs between: whispering, "Let us be one!"