Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage 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.

Sunflower Sutra - Allen Ginsberg

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays
obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.

El viejo monje me dice desde el umbral - Lucian Blaga

Joven, tú que vas por la hierba de mi convento,
¿queda mucho aún para que se pongo el sol?
Quiero entregar mi alma
junto con las serpientes aplastadas en las madrugadas
por los palos de los pastores.
¿No me contorsioné yo también como ellas
en el polvo?
¿No me retorcí yo también como ellas bajo el sol?
Mi vida ha sido todo lo que quieras,
alguna vez fiera,
otra vez flor,
otra vez campana que riñe con el cielo.

Hoy me callo y el hueco de la tumba
suena en mis oídos como una campana de arcilla.
Espero en el umbral la frescura del fin.
¿Queda mucho aún? Ven, joven,
toma tierra en las manos
y pónmela encima como agua y vino.
Bautízame con tierra.

La sombra del mundo pasa sobre mi alma.

Celos y muerte de Booz - Gilberto Owen

Y sólo sé que no soy yo,
el durmiente que sueña un cedro Huguiano, lo que sueñas,
y pues que he nacido de muerte natural, desesperado,
paso ya, frenesí tardío, tardía voz sin ton ni son.

Me miro con tus ojos y me veo alejarme,
y separar las aguas del Mar Rojo de nuestros cuerpos mal fundidos
para la huida infame,
y sufro que me tiñe de azules la distancia,
y quisiera gritarme desde tu boca: "No te vayas."

Destrencemos los dedos y sus promesas no cumplidas.
Te cambio por tu sombra y te dejo como sin pies sin ella
y no podrás correr al amor de tu edad que he suplantado.
Te cambio por tu sueño para irme a dormir con el cadáver leal de tu alegría.
Te cedo mi lámpara vieja por la tuya de luz de plata virgen
para desear frustradas canciones inaudibles.

Ya me hundo a buscarme en un te amé que quiso ser te amo,
donde se desenrolla un caracol atónito al descubrir el fondo salobre de sus ecos,
y los confesonarios desenredan mis arrepentimientos mentirosos.
Ya me voy con mi muerte de música a otra parte.
Ya no me vivo en ti. Mi noche es alta y mía.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers - Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

El poeta a su amada - César Vallejo

Amada, en esta noche tú te has crucificado
sobre los dos maderos curvados de mi beso;
y tu pena me ha dicho que Jesús ha llorado,
y que hay un viernes santo más dulce que ese beso.

En esta noche clara que tanto me has mirado,
la Muerte ha estado alegre y ha cantado en su hueso.
En esta noche de setiembre se ha oficiado
mi segunda caída y el más humano beso.

Amada, moriremos los dos juntos, muy juntos;
se irá secando a pausas nuestra excelsa amargura;
y habrán tocado a sombra nuestros labios difuntos.

Y ya no habrá reproches en tus ojos benditos;
ni volveré a ofenderte. Y en una sepultura
los dos nos dormiremos, como dos hermanitos

Skin - Philip Larkin

Obedient daily dress,
You cannot always keep
That unfakable young surface.
You must learn your lines -
Anger, amusement, sleep;
Those few forbidding signs

Of the continuous coarse
Sand-laden wind, time;
You must thicken, work loose
Into an old bag
Carrying a soiled name.
Parch then; be roughened; sag;

And pardon me, that
I Could find, when you were new,
No brash festivity
To wear you at, such as
Clothes are entitled to
Till the fashion changes.

My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Ah, que tú escapes - José Lezama Lima

Ah, que tú escapes en el instante
en el que ya habías alcanzado tu definición mejor.
Ah, mi amiga, que tú no quieras creer
las preguntas de esa estrella recién cortada,
que va mojando sus puntas en otra estrella enemiga.
Ah, si pudiera ser cierto que a la hora del baño,
cuando en una misma agua discursiva
se bañan el inmóvil paisaje y los animales más finos:
antílopes, serpientes de pasos breves, de pasos vaporados,
parecen entre sueños, sin ansias levantar
los más extensos cabellos y el agua más recordada.
Ah, mi amiga, sin el puro mármol de los adioses
hubieras dejado la estatua que nos podía acompañar,
pues el viento, el viento gracioso,
se extiende como un gato para dejarse definir.

Safo de Lesbos

De veras quisiera estar muerta.
Al dejarme, vertiste muchas lágrimas,
y decías: ‘¡Ay, qué pena tan grande, Safo,
créeme, dejarte me pesa’.
Y yo te contesté: ‘¡Ve en paz y recuérdame!’.
Pues sabes el ansia con que te he amado.
Y cuánto gozamos. A mi lado,
muchas coronas de violetas y rosas
te ceñiste al cuerpo, y alrededor
de tu cuello suave, muchas guirnaldas
entretejidas que hicimos con flores.
Y con un perfume precioso y propio
de una reina, frotabas tu cuerpo.
Y en blandas camas pudiste saciar tu deseo.

Francesca - Ezra Pound

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
IN ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

Requiem - Robert Louis Stevenson

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

 And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

 And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

This is just to say - William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold