/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12264693]

ITT: post your favorite short poems (that can fit in a single post, no epics)

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, ‘the scraggy wee shits’,
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,


Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.


‘Sure isn’t it better for them now?’ Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.


Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung


Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens’ necks.


Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown,
I just shrug, ‘Bloody pups’. It makes sense:


‘Prevention of cruelty’ talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural,
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

[Anonymous No.12264783]

>>12264693
Unerringly playful and whimsical tone for a poem about childhood trauma and animal abuse. How does Irish poetry manage to be so lyrical?

Here’s a one that stuff in the back of my mind for the past few months

The Fisherman Launch Audio in a New Window
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Although I can see him still—
The freckled man who goes
To a gray place on a hill
In gray Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies—
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped it would be
To write for my own race
And the reality:
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved—
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer—
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelve-month since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face
And gray Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark with froth,
And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream—
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, “Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”

How do I write for cold passion?

[Anonymous No.12264799]

>>12264783
>launch audio in new window
I need to proof read

[Anonymous No.12264830]

>>12264693
>>12264783
These aren't short.

This is a truly short one by Dowson,

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

[Anonymous No.12264949]

>>12264830
What I meant by short was anything that can be contained in a single post. So no Odyssey, Beowulf, Divine Comedy, etc.

Thanks for contributing though. Here's one from Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

The hour which might have been yet might not be,
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
His hours elect in choral consonancy.

But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
Together tread at last the immortal strand
With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
'I am your child: O parents, ye have come!

[Anonymous No.12265029]

By Federico Garcia Lorca

Ruina

Sin cncontrarse,
viajero por su propio torso blanco,
¡así iba al aire!

Pronto se vio que la luna
era una calavera de caballo
y el aire una manzana oscura.

Detrás de la ventana
con látigos y luces se sentía
la lucha de la arena con el agua.

Yo vi llegar las hierbas
y les eche un cordero que balaba
bajo sus dientecillos y lancetas.

Volaba dentro de una gota
la cáscara de pluma y celuloide
de la primer paloma.

Las nubes en manada
se quedaron dormidas contemplando
el duelo de las rocas con el alba.

Vienen las hierbas, hijo.
Ya suenan sus espadas de saliva
por el cielo vacío.

Mi mano, amor. ¡Las hierbas!
Por los cristales rotos de la casa
la sangre desató sus cabelleras.

Tú sólo y yo quedamos.
Prepara tu esqueleto para el aire.
Yo sólo y tú quedamos.

Prepara tu esqueleto.
Hay que buscar de prisa, amor, de prisa,
nuestro perfil sin sueño.

[Anonymous No.12265074]

In noon’s heat, in a dale of Dagestan,
With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
The deep wound still smoked on; my blood
Kept trickling drop by drop away.

On the dale’s sand alone I lay. The cliffs
Crowded around in ledges steep,
And the sun scorched their tawny tops
And scorched me – but I slept death’s sleep.

And in a dream I saw an evening feast
That in my native land with bright lights shone;
Among young women crowned with flowers,
A merry talk concerning me went on.

But in the merry talk not joining,
One of them sat there lost in thought,
And in a melancholy dream
Her young soul was immersed – God knows by what.

And of a dale in Dagestan she dreamt;
In that dale lay the corpse of one she knew;
Within his breast a smoking wound showed black,
And blood ran in a stream that colder grew.

[Anonymous No.12265243]

>>12264693

[Anonymous No.12265256]

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

[Anonymous No.12265781]

While the red spit of grapeshot
Whistles all day through the endlessness of the blue sky;
While scarlet or green, near the King who mocks them,
Whole battalions collapse in the fire;

While a terrible madness, crushes
And makes of a hundred thousand men a smoking heap;
-Poor dead men! in summer, in the grass, in your joy,
Nature! O you who made these men holy!.. -

-There is a God, who laughs at the damask cloths
Of the altars, at the incense, at the great golden chalices;
Who falls asleep in the lullaby of Hosannas,

And wakes up, when mothers, joined
In anguish, and weeping under their old black bonnets,
Give him a penny tied up in their handkerchiefs!

[Anonymous No.12265826]

>>12265029
Leí un libro suyo, pero la verdad es que aún onions muy ingenuo e imberbe para comprender su espíritu.

[Anonymous No.12265854]

>>12265826
aún onions

[Anonymous No.12265895]

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

[Anonymous No.12265945]

>>12264693
From a superb brazillian poet, Hilda Hilst:

Poems to the Men of our Time

Beloved life, my death is late.
What to tell him,
Propose a trip? Kings, ministers
And all of you, politicians,
What word beyond gold and darkness
Remains in your ears?
Beyond your GREED
What do you know
Of men's souls?
Gold, conquer, profit, deception
And our bones
And people's blood
And the life of men
Between your teeth.


Poemas aos Homens do nosso Tempo

Amada vida, minha morte demora.
Dizer que coisa ao homem,
Propor que viagem? Reis, ministros
E todos vós, políticos,
Que palavra além de ouro e treva
Fica em vossos ouvidos?
Além de vossa RAPACIDADE
O que sabeis
Da alma dos homens?
Ouro, conquista, lucro, logro
E os nossos ossos
E o sangue das gentes
E a vida dos homens
Entre os vossos dentes.

[Anonymous No.12266071]

>>12265854
Onions??

[Anonymous No.12266164]

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

[Anonymous No.12266169]

>>12264693
This nigga looks like someone photoshopped different hair onto Trump.

[Anonymous No.12266177]

>>12266071
It mean s o y

[Anonymous No.12266205]

>>12265945
sério anon, achei fraquíssimo. sempre tive a impressão de que ela fosse extremamente supervalorizada por ser apenas uma voz ativa dentre as poucas disponíveis.
tem alguma coleção de poemas pra eu poder checar e, quem sabe, mudar de opinião?

[Anonymous No.12266372]

>>12266205
Interessante você pensar isso anon, eu era da mesma forma até começar a ler as obras em prosa dela, estas que são, pelo menos em seu estilo de poder de escrita para descrever uma subjetividade desconexa (acho que melhor descrito como stream of conciousness?), um trabalho de gênio. Eu só comecei a ler seus poemas depois disto, então tenho um óbvio bias aqui mas sinceramente comecei a gostar muito com o tempo. Este poema que postei não me é especialmente bom, só me foi mais fácil de achar a tradução. Entre poemas que eu pessoalmente gosto diria que este é meu verdadeiro preferido:

Dez Chamamentos ao Amigo

I
Se te pareço noturna e imperfeita
Olha-me de novo.
Porque esta noite
Olhei-me a mim, como se tu me olhasses.
E era como se a água
Desejasse

Escapar de sua casa que é o rio
E deslizando apenas, nem tocar a margem.

Te olhei. E há um tempo
Entendo que sou terra. Há tanto tempo
Espero
Que o teu corpo de água mais fraterno
Se estenda sobre o meu. Pastor e nauta

Olha-me de novo. Com menos altivez.
E mais atento.

Este foi o primeiro em que nutri uma admiração pela poeta, é bem simples mas propõe o sentimento exposto (o amor que não pode ser compreendido, a quase mendicância por afeto inerente aos humanos, a liberdade extraída do amor simultânea à sua servidão e guia, até mesmo a autoconfiança) de uma forma tão concisa e bonita, principalmente a primeira estrofe: Como se a água desejasse é uma imagem tão onírica que já é por si só um grande poema, foi algo que, pelo menos para mim, conseguiu descrever um estado de existência perfeitamente.

Mas bem, isso tudo é o hype de um fanboy, então não precisa levar muito a sério. Se quer ver com seus próprios olhos, recomendaria a coleção Do Desejo, é bem curta então deve te dar uma boa, rápida ideia da escritora. Se ficou curioso pela sua prosa, então diria que A Obscena Senhora D é um início, mas tenha em mente que o estilo dela é bem 8 ou 80, são os delírios de uma velha em que nada acontece, não tem nenhuma história ou personagem, são escritos extremamente abstratos, se isso é sua praia então godspeed you

Also
>postando no /lit/ às 3 da manhã
Bom saber que eu não sou o único nesse estado

[Anonymous No.12266375]

Testamento

Manuel Bandeira

O que não tenho e desejo
É que melhor me enriquece.
Tive uns dinheiros — perdi-os…
Tive amores — esqueci-os.
Mas no maior desespero
Rezei: ganhei essa prece.

Vi terras da minha terra.
Por outras terras andei.
Mas o que ficou marcado
No meu olhar fatigado,
Foram terras que inventei.

Gosto muito de crianças:
Não tive um filho de meu.
Um filho!… Não foi de jeito…
Mas trago dentro do peito
Meu filho que não nasceu.

Criou-me, desde eu menino
Para arquiteto meu pai.
Foi-se-me um dia a saúde…
Fiz-me arquiteto? Não pude!
Sou poeta menor, perdoai!

Não faço versos de guerra.
Não faço porque não sei.
Mas num torpedo-suicida
Darei de bom grado a vida
Na luta em que não lutei!


This shit is pure, unadulterated peak /lit/ and I don't care what anybody has to say about it.

[Anonymous No.12266523]

>>12266372
esse já atuou diferentemente sobre mim. obrigado pelas recomendações, vi que grande parte das obras estão disponíveis no libgen.
btw: já são seis horas da manhã aqui, hahaha