At The Ambassadeurs
TO YVETTE GUILBERT
That was Yvette. The blithe Ambassadeurs
Glitters, this Sunday of the Fête des Fleurs;
Here are the flowers, too, living flowers that blow
A night or two before the odours go;
And all the flowers of all the city ways
Are laughing, with Yvette, this day of days.
Laugh, with Yvette? But I must first forget,
Before I laugh, that I have heard Yvette.
For the flowers fade before her: see, the light
Dies out of that poor cheek, and leaves it white;
And a chill shiver takes me as she sings
The pity of unpitied human things;
A woe beyond all weeping, tears that trace
The very wrinkles of the last grimace.
poem by Arthur Symons
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Poem
This poem is a gift
Free words
Under the stench of a barbed wire world
Flowers that live on
After the flowers have been blown from the graves
In the midst of war
These words are a gift
A balm for the poor hungry mouth
To feed on
After the nightmare of carnage
Of lines written in blood
On broken walls
Where fathers and their families lie
Still and swollen in unmarked plots
These words are a gift
They are free
Washing the wounds
Making speech live on
Even after so much darkness
They are the lightness
Bringing light
yvette smith june 12 2009
poem by Yvette Smith
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When You Are Gone
When you are gone I will live on
I will live on
When you are gone
I will not mourn or forget
How love was born
Much stronger still
Though you are gone
You still live on
In birds in clouds
In simple flowers
In bones and flesh
That carry you
Each day, each hour
And this is your power
Though you are gone
Much stronger now
You still live on
In words that echo in the air
In scent of showers
Fallen leaves
In all of these
And feeling sense
You presence, felt in present tense
I will not mourn
Nor wil I grieve
For you live on
Inside of me
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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House Of No Return
Tomorrow enter the house of no return
And you will find no memory of what has gone
The leaves blown in the gravel path
Where childish footprints played
The sun rolled out across the clouds
Into another day
Weeds grow now
Where once a soft emerald carpet flowed
And flowers crowned the air with scent
And fires burnt in Autumn evenings end
For what has gone
cannot return my friend
Except in ceasless rivers of eternity
I carry your heart in my mine
And once again you're here with me
yvette m smith nov 2008
poem by Yvette Smith
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These are the things we cannot possess
These are the things
We cannot possess
The earth in all its 'holiness'
The earth in all its 'bloody defiance'
The earth in all its secret violence
The earth in everchanging times
We cannot possess the earth
Less time
Reckless
Unsolved
Unseen
We can only grieve
And love
And laugh
And live
Letting go of all we thought we had
But never did
Knowing we have felt these things
Beneath are skin
Like a kiss
In a shimmering stream of light
And like a wound
In darkest night
They will flow on and on
With or without us, yet,
We cannot forget them
yvette smith sept 2008
poem by Yvette Smith
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Imagine
Imagine I am mourning
And all day
Wear the day like darkness
Returning to the map
The insidious streets
A body full of tears
Vibrant
And bright as a jewel
Such things shine
Always after rain
Imagine I was mourning
and the day was a white gown
And each sigh
Winging towards
Heaven
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
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A kiss
Kissed by the mist
Sunlight falling through trees
This is the gift of the day
In first dawning
Who can forget that first kiss?
Forever unfolding
The gift of a life
yvette m smith oct 08
poem by Yvette Smith
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You
You make me laugh
The way you smile with your critical eyes
And point with your finger of wisdom
In the direction of mecca?
Or Ambrosia
Or some other foreign God
So you bending your rod
Bow
Down
At the high temple of pure wisdom
You who understand
'nothing'
About being human
Distracted by dead writers
And
These broken lines
Keep you in detention
Held back in school
While the world goes racing by
Full of hot blood and fury
And the passion of being alive
[this is just a commentary]
yvette m smith may 09
poem by Yvette Smith
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The Poor
God is with the poor
But do the poor know God is with them?
As they look out from the crowd
Lost in their 'man made prison'
God is with the poor
But do the poor know God is with them?
As they look up to the proud
Who looks back with derision
And who can tell the poor that God is with them?
He who paints angel wings on ragged backs?
Makes hungry mouths sing for their supper
He who nothing lacks?
Who poorer still can say God is with us?
When homeless turn away from too much fuss
But God is with them
Is he with us?
And poorer still in having more
But never having too much
Who can say then God is with us?
yvette smith
poem by Yvette Smith
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Conundrum
I am not who I say I am
Who I say I am, is not, who I am
So who am I?
cue.....'Looks intently at the words and trys to read them, backwards! '
minus so...moving question mark back three spaces'
william shakespeare aka? yvette smith
circa march09
poem by Yvette Smith
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Don't Ever
Don't ever let me go,
Though I may fail you
And break you
And take you to places you don't want to go,
Take a moment to forget what love is
All the strange euphemisms
That one word takes
And the vows we never keep
And the dark places where love weeps
And let love speak
As if for the first time
When you were mine
For all of love
Is condensed into one heart one place
It is the soul at the bright centre
A world within a world
The human in the human race
yvette smith great poet of london town
april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
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The man who lost his soul
The man who lost his soul had a hole for a heart,
And so, wherever he went, there was a draught
Until one day he met his 'better half'
And feeling complete
He could thaw his sad frozen feet, at last
At the fire of love
And all loss was a thing of the past!
yvette m smith jan 09
poem by Yvette Smith
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Hardrive
Its a 'hardrive to success and to 'happiness'
A fingertip in space
Tapping at a 'human face'
Perfect
In digital harmony
Colour tone
And paste
Each pixel an atom
Finding its completion
Locked in space
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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My Fridge
My fridge has a life of it's own
It's own
Why don't I have a life of my own?
I, plug it in, [that is the fridge]
And still it has a life of it's own
As it whines and sings
It's broken sonatas
So 'postmodern' for a fridge!
I, on the other hand only moan
Sometimes I think it is haunted
Possessed by the ghost of a fridge long dead
Do fridges have souls? , they are too cold
Full of white glossed metal
How can a fridge really feel?
This is getting surreal
But at night all alone
I hear it weeping
Could it be speaking
In 'fridge morse code? '
Filling in the gaps
Between sleeping
And waking
Wondering if life is there for the taking
What it would be like to have a life of my own
yvette m smith great poetess of the uk
april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
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Radio Girl
Every morning she hung her sad same song
On the hum of the radio words
Mimicking
Her coffee mug
microphone under her chin, lip synch
Always late for work
Humming the same sad song
On the bus
Always arriving
As if she were somewhere else
[Visiting another life]
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Amen
They raised the oak
Then let it gently sink into the soft dark earth
Soon your roots would be rekindled
Some brought candles
Some burnt fires
But no one could interpret the silence
For a sign
Poets sat in bars
At the same chair
Where they were always seated
Copywriting the space
Possessing a certain look
That wasn't theirs, yet...
The midwife nearly always arrived late
And birth was just a second from another death
The children stood laughing at the gate
yvette smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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In Translation
Arriving with no intepretator
Leaving with signals and signs
On the elevator
In the pressed drudged crowds
Filled by the strangeness of infatuation
Your first arrival
Under the flash of a neon ray
Leaving with the wrong signs
In your back pocket
The price tags and the labels
As if heaven was an eternal shopping mall
And hell was a supermarket checkout queue
Missing the signs and the cues
Leaving in an unfamiliar way
Unexpected
The wisest words are always spoken by children
Before reading and learning
In translation!
yvette m smith march 09
aka yvette m smith
circa march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Light
It dazzles in a clear night
Made clearer still
By artificial rays
Making a path to guide us home
It is a beacon
A bright halo of hope
A candle of warmth and sentiment
It makes love sound heavenly
Makes our journey safe and full
As if it were a divine hand resting on our shoulders
Without it
The stars would dim and fade out
The sky fill with darkness
The lamp would retreat
Into formlessness
The sky would be lost to the darkness
There would be no sun
No moon
The soul would close up and die
Even noise or speech or sound
Would be senseless
detached and barren
All things living sleeping
Light
In the beginning there was light
All living things followed
And these were only the signs leading homewards
yvette smith april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Virus
A world rocked
Shaken
Broken
Dissoloution of words
Who washed them all away?
Today I awoke to find
A 'virus in my hardrive'
Is that a metaphor for greed?
That rots the healthy guts
Of every leviathan that sunk its teeth to deep,
Leaving so many poor Jonahs
Outside 'the belly of the whale'? ?
Now hollow
Spitting out a 'last dime'
For the homeless!
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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These words
These words will be gone tomorrow
They steal the numbers from the streets
Til every door looks the same
These words like candles will burn out
They steal the light from temporary souls
Soon, too soon
They will bury the love
Under the tongues of yesterdays softness
As if they never were, more
As if they hunger still
There is no promise
No everlasting
And every eternal door
Always looks the same
They look
Tomorrow we will walk away
As if, when these words were gone
We forget, yes we forget
Still, that they ever came
And yet, they carry on!
yvette m smith jan 09
poem by Yvette Smith
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Yes
Yes I have lied to you about love and truth
And all those things you hold so dear
Yes I have lyed with you
And in love
And in truth,
And told you every dream within my heart
And in this place I find our love still resting here
yvette m smith dec 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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