Sonnets 08: And You As Well Must Die, Beloved Dust
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.
poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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And you as well must die, belovèd dust
And you as well must die, belovèd dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,this wonder fled,
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how belovèd above all else that dies.
poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Hey There Beloved
Hey there beloved why are you walking away from me?
Hey there beloved don't you know all those gifts are from me?
Hey there beloved I carried you through your storms
Hey there beloved come back to me
Hey there beloved don't you know I'm waiting with open arms
Hey there beloved I wish you were not blind but could turn back and see
Hey there beloved don't you notice my art?
Hey there beloved my love for you is in every night sky
Hey there beloved look for my love in the sunset
Hey there beloved, the sun is for you
Hey there beloved the coolness of clouds is for your enjoyment
Hey there beloved I love you
Hey there beloved You can walk away
Hey there beloved it makes me cry when you chase other lovers, but
Hey there beloved I'll let you go because I want you to choose me
Hey there beloved I want you to learn to love me
Hey there beloved don't go to them
Hey there beloved they cannot fill you up
Hey there beloved, I'll never give up on you
Hey there beloved I'm full of tears
Hey there beloved I made you for so much more
Hey there beloved you don't have to dress like that
Hey there beloved they don't really love you
Hey there beloved you're more than just a body
Hey there beloved you don't have to try to be something you're not
Hey there beloved I still love you
Hey there beloved you don't have to earn my love
Hey there beloved those things won't satisfy you
Hey there beloved heed my voice that path will destroy you
Hey there beloved you're broken, but
Hey there beloved my heart breaks for you
Hey there beloved can't you see the brokenness?
Hey there beloved why do you ignore me
Hey there beloved.... I love you with all that I am
Hey there beloved, that's everything there is
Hey there beloved I love you with my entire being
Hey there beloved that's grander than the universe itself
Hey there beloved you've strayed so far away
Hey there beloved I'll always call you back
Hey there beloved I'll always be waiting
Hey there beloved I still love y-
Hey there beloved h--
Hey there be-----
Hey--------
H--------
______ ______________
poem by David Knox
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In the Spirit of Rumi
I said to My Beloved
I love You
May I know You?
My Beloved said
I am unknown
I said to My Beloved
Still, I love You
May I see You?
My Beloved said
I am formless
I said to My Beloved
Still, I love You
Might I lose You?
My Beloved said
I am eternal
I said to My Beloved
Still, I love You
Might You leave me?
My Beloved said
I am always present
I said to My Beloved
I love You
My Beloved said
I am love itself
I said, O My Beloved
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Dead Man, Dead Man
Uttering idle words from a reprobate mind,
Clinging to strange promises, dying on the vine,
Never bein able to separate the good from the bad,
Ooh, I cant stand it, I cant stand it,
Its makin me feel so sad.
Dead man, dead man,
When will you arise?
Cobwebs in your mind,
Dust upon your eyes.
Satan got you by the heel, theres a birds nest in your hair.
Do you have any faith at all? do you have any love to share?
The way that you hold your head, cursin God with every move,
Ooh, I cant stand it, I cant stand it,
What are you tryin to prove?
Dead man, dead man,
When will you arise?
Cobwebs in your mind,
Dust upon your eyes.
The glamour and the bright lights and the politics of sin,
The ghetto that you build for me is the one you end up in,
The race of the engine that overrules your heart,
Ooh, I cant stand it, I cant stand it,
Pretending that youre so smart.
Dead man, dead man,
When will you arise?
Cobwebs in your mind,
Dust upon your eyes.
What are you tryin to overpower me with, the doctrine or the gun?
My back is already to the wall, where can I run?
The tuxedo that youre wearin, the flower in your lapel,
Ooh, I cant stand it, I cant stand it,
You wanna take me down to hell.
Dead man, dead man,
When will you arise?
Cobwebs in your mind,
Dust upon your eyes.
song performed by by Bob Dylan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
poem by Robert Frost
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In the spirit of Rumi - 25
I said to My Beloved
Tell me the measure of truth
My Beloved said
Tell me first what you know of truth
‘One and one make two,
- as You and I’
My Beloved said
Tell me more of truth
‘Love draws me to You
as the white moth to the candle’s flame’
My Beloved said
Tell me more of truth
‘Love makes You and me
into one single perfect love’
My Beloved said
This is the measure of truth
which is immeasurable:
the greater the truth
the less it can be measured;
the greater the truth
the deeper it may be experienced;
this is its measure: its experience.
Truth has no other measure,
for only love can measure truth.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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A Song for my Wife
my wife, my beloved wife...
my best friend forever
though it is not our anniversary,
yet there is nothing to celebrate,
I love you so much
I love you every day
until we die together
do you know until now,
we had the best family,
i had two beautiful daughters
my dear wife,
every time i wake up in the morning,
i always see your beautiful eyes
i love the warmth of you body
when ever you sleep in my arms
i feel your love so tender,
o my wife, my beloved wife
thought our marriage is not perfect
all I wish is to grow old with you.
poem by Rey Benipayo
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In the spirit of Rumi - 10
I said to My Beloved
You have given me all Your love;
I have given You all my love;
what more can I give to You?
My Beloved said
If you love Me, then show your love
by seeing, knowing, all
that happens to you in your short life
as gifts from Me..
all events, all acts, all thoughts,
all seeming accidents, all illnesses,
all that arises from your meetings with others,
all their words to you –
see them all as Me
I said to My Beloved,
O My Beloved, my love is great
yet my will is weak;
I love You as I love life itself -
help me in this!
My Beloved said
It will not be easy; for
this will be the measure of your love for Me…
My help is this:
every time you see Me in some passing moment,
in some passing event in your life
be it harsh, or seem unfair— yes,
especially in this, my fiercely loving love -
you will know My love for you
as you have never known My love
for you so great, so pure
I said to My Beloved
This hard and lovely thing, O My Beloved,
will be the measure of my love for You.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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What If I Fell In Love?
what if i fell in love with a leaf,
became the tree that nurtured?
became the sun, the rain, and the wind,
and the turning of the seasons...
what if i fell in love with the lock
on the knob of the door to eternity?
what if you were the only key?
whose hands would make the turn?
what if i fell in love with shadows,
etched by the blade of hungry light?
whose face, whose form, whose scent...
whose imprint on my soul?
what if i fell in love facing death,
and you were my last breath?
would you breathe into me rivers...
rivers and trees, and stone laid paths.
what if i fell in love despite of...
despite of wars, poverty, and anguish?
would you restore hope to the hopeless?
and build a fire to warm the night...
what if i fell in love again,
and we met like strangers for the first time?
would your hand fit into mine?
could we find passion stolen by loss?
what if i fell in love because i have to,
because i want to, because i need to?
because life demands to be lived,
and time is but a moment!
what if i fell in love with a leaf...
what sound would it make when it fell?
would the world be strong enough to go on?
would the sun ever rise again?
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Don Rafael
'I would not have,' he said,
'Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead.
'Music and flowers and light,
And choric dances to guitar and flute,
Be these around me when my lips are mute,
Mine eyes are sealed from sight.
'So let me lie one day,
One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed,
In cerements of silken tissue swathed,
Smothered 'neath flowers of May.
'One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life-a gilded vapor-shall exhale,
Brief as a sigh-and cease.
'But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,
Bring many a dark-eyed maid
'From the bright, sea-kissed town;
My beautiful, beloved enemies,
Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze,
Each in her festal gown.
'All those through whom I learned
The sweet of folly and the pains of love,
My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove,
For whom, poor moth, I burned.
'Loves of a day, and hour,
Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year,
Though each be strange to each, to me all dear
As to the bee the flower.
'Around me they shall move
In languid contra dances, and shall shed
Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead,
But quick to flash back love.
'Something not alien quite
To tender ruth, perchance their breast shall fill,
Seeing him that was so mobile grown so still,
The fiery-veined so white.
'And when the dance is o'er,
The pinched guitar, the smitten tambourine,
Have ceased their rhythmic beat,-oh, friends of mine,
On my rich bier, then pour
'The garlands that ye wear,
The happy rose that on your bosom breathes,
The fresh-culled clusters and the dewy wreaths
That crown your fragrant hair.
'Though blind, I still shall see,
Though dead, shall feel your presence and shall know,
I who was beauty's life-long slave, shall so
Win her in death to me.
'Thanks, sisters, and farewell!
Back to your joys. My brother shall make room
For my tried sword upon the high-piled bloom,
And fire the pinnacle.
'My soul, pure flame, shall leap
To meet its parent essence once again
My body dust and ashes shall remain,
Tired heart and brain shall sleep.
'Life has one gate alone,
Obscure, beset with peril and fierce pain.
Large death has many portals to his fane,
Why choose we to make moan?
'Why dwell with worms and clay
When we may soar through air on wings of flame,
Dissolve to small, white dust our perfect frame,
And never know decay?
'A brother's pious hand
The pure, fire-winnowed ashes shall inurn,
And lay them in the orange grove where burn
Globed suns that scent the land.
'The leaf shall be more green,
Even for my dust-more snowy-soft the flower,
More juicy-sweet the fruit's live pulp-the bower
Richer that I have been.
'For I would not,' he said,
'Tears and the black pall and the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead.'
poem by Emma Lazarus
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Death by Beauty
Beauty is the source of all things in day,
but then Death comes to take our sight away.
Beauty is the sower of love and peace,
then Death comes a knocking so it can reap.
Beauty 's in the eye of the beholder,
but Death comes when all that mess is over.
Most think that all hope has run astray,
when death makes true beauty fade away;
but I am here to tell you the truth,
that beauty will always be in you.
Beauty is such a magical thing;
It happens when the soul laughs and sings.
Death is such a horrible sight.
Death makes moods colder than dry ice.
The world can always devour
a beautiful flawless flower.
so, The price you pay for beauty's sin
is the kiss of Death upon your chin.
poem by Wesley Garrett
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Serata di Fiesta
Here in a city made for love
I wander loveless and alone,
Longing for the unknown,
Desiring one thing only, and above
Desire in love with love.
The beauty of the starlight dies
Over the city, as a flower
Droops, an unheeded hour;
Ah! barren beauty, when no lovelier eyes
Behold it as it dies.
I wander loveless and alone,
Alone with memory: she sings
Of other wanderings;
Even London half-divine, had I but known
What 'tis to be alone.
Had I but known! Could I but know
If here, or here, for surely here
The answer waits my ear,
Some lips my lips, some hands my hands; but oh,
Could these, could I, but know!
We seek each other, can I doubt?
For man is man, and woman kind,
And he who seeks shall find,
World without end; but how to ravel out
The inextricable doubt?
I am a shipwrecked sailor, lost
For lack of water on the sea:
Water, but none for me;
Water, but I, thirsting and fever-tossed,
In much abundance lost.
poem by Arthur Symons
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The End of Love
WHO shall forget till his last hour be come,--
Until the useful service of the dust
Hath drawn the emptying cerements in and in;--
Until the Earth hath eaten love and lust,
Mirth, Beauty, and their kin . . .
Who shall forget that hour
That night unstarred, that day ungarlanded;
Where fell the petals of that fadeless flower?
When every word was said
That long had bared frustrate and savage teeth,
Leashed in the perishable thong of days,
And whipped to words of praise!
When every ill, and each ingratitude,
Each joy misnamed,
Each deed misunderstood,
Was flogged into the daylight, halt, and maimed,
Out of its bier, to bear the day's disgust--
Out of its decent bed
To beat Love's tortured head
Into the troubled and uncertain dust.
Who can forget the naked hour profane,
When Love fled from us, shrieking through the dark,
His torch blown backward by the hurricane
Licking his dreadful features with its tongue,
While his mouth spat a curse at every spark,
And a scourged menace flung?
Thou wert that dreadful thing!
O Beautiful, O Rare, O Breath of rose,
O Spirit as impalpable as Spring!
How have I held thee, then? Too long, too close?
For it was thou, was thou, who left me thus,
With each sweet thing, with all the lovely host
That turning stared at us,
And, shuddering, gave up their frailest ghost!
Oh! to remember! Oh! to hear the tune
That Love first sang to us, that happy day;
When over us was furled his radiant wing.
Oh! for that one May moment. Not to lose
Its greenest leaf, or miss its singlest spray
So that this hour by that forgotten day
Might be all buried by the buds of Spring
That soft winds beat,--not bruise,--
To make a bridal bed for June
From the pale shroud of May.
O Love, O Love! There was not any need
For thee to die, for me to be bereft,
Our garden to be left
To nettle and to weed,--
To whips of rain when the chid wind was wroth.
Surely by some word, some sigh, had saved us both?
Could everything be lost,
All torn and tossed
Between thy speech and mine? Could all our vows,
And all our lovely life be laid so low,
And God fall on His face within the house
At first marauder's blow?
Yea, it was so:
And all of pride and pleasure, peace and power,
All Life's rich fruit and flower,
Died, as least darnel dies, in that dread hour.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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In the spirit of Rumi - 7
‘My Beloved,
what can I give you of myself,
that I have not given? ’
My Beloved said
‘O my dearest one,
in all places, at all times,
remember Me.’
‘O My Beloved,
how can I not do that? ’
* * *
In tears, I returned to My Beloved
and said
‘O my dearest one,
a week has passed, and the world
pressed hard upon me…
‘The next day, I remembered You
three times each hour;
the second day, I remembered You
but once an hour;
on the third day, I remembered You
in some hours, once; some twice;
some not at all… and so it went…
But O My Beloved,
each morning as I woke
I remembered through my tears
how I had forgotten You…’
My Beloved said
‘In the remembering of the forgetting
there was a feast of sweetest honey for Me,
hiding like a new young bride
laughing with her bridegroom,
laughing with her eyes on Him,
in the silken tent of love.’
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Life Has A Great Customer!
Life is having one great customer,
The Lord in disguise in every life,
Blessed is the lotus, which blooms in mudfilled lake,
Golden petals lotus, in trifle suffered hearts,
May it be an Einstein,
or may a Gibran,
Such births take place in this pool,
Filled with so many problems!
Yet the love is so great,
I love my beloved more than my life,
This life is his,
This life is for him,
Every moment I die and reborn in him,
Every sound of rustling leaves,
My beloved's call,
With every wind the fragrance of beloved cometh,
Every moving cloud shows,
Different face of my beloved,
With every raise and fall of a wave,
My beloved shows up,
In every golden rays of the Morning Sun is my beloved's procession,
Rooster calling, wake up see the glories procession of beloved,
Birds singing praise of the beloved,
In dewdrops his world shineth,
Everyday if one rooster or bird gone,
It take the rebirth to sing his glory,
Every dew dropp evaporated appear next morning,
So am I to die every moment,
To this world I am dead,
Ever living and sleeping in beloved's heart,
Whenever I want my eyes to fill his glory,
I come out of his heart,
Stand aside, and look at my beloved's beautiful face!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
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Nest Of Straw
if i make you a nest of straw,
and a firepit of mud...
and we make love in the moonlight,
in perfect rhythm with the wind,
will the silence know your name?
and when you arise with the dawn,
and step to the edge
to try your wings...
will you look back
just for an instant?
will you leave a tear
on a budding leaf?
and if by faith i believe,
in spite of, despite of....
and give you the body of my soul...
will you leave a marker by my grave?
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Flower is only leaves.
Flowers, you are leaves,
A modification in evolution.
Love, you are lust,
A hypocritical purity.
Flowers are modified leaves.
So is love of lust, believe.
But one difference.
When you see flower, leaf is lost.
When you see leaf, flower is not lost.
Love hides lust but not vice versa.
19.05.2001, Pmdi
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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A Fallen Leaf
A trusting little leaf of green,
A bold audacious frost;
A rendezvous, a kiss or two,
And youth for ever lost.
Ah, me!
The bitter, bitter cost.
A flaunting patch of vivid red,
That quivers in the sun;
A windy gust, a grave of dust,
The little race is run.
Ah, me!
Were that the only one.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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How Do I Love You My Beloved
How do I love you my beloved
Since the day My eyes met with your's
They never stopped watching your roads
How do I love you if you ever knew!
How do I love your pure sense, .
The touch of your hand how a beautiful sense..
Your voice my sweetness full of care
While you talk my soul arise to air
The thougts of wise man and attic
I love all those and byond
I love you with eternal love
That will never die
Till the heart gets apart the body
Promise that you'll stay the only soul in the body
But stay there till the soul leaves the world
poem by Sossi Khachadourian
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The Shortest Moment That The Butterfly Tries To Speak
how many flutters of its wings is its lifetime?
not a hundred, this butterfly with blue shaking lines on its wings
some dots of black on the lower tip
some flaps of dust as you hold it.
we love to see it freely hovering from one flower to another
blending with its colors, it is not trying to hide anything
beautiful, it is showing itself, beautiful butterfly,
how gentle, soft to our hearts as we watch it
there is no sound of its wings and its graceful feeding on the nectars
then it rests on a leaf. we leave it there.
the wind last night was strong.
we see the leaf where it stayed on the pebbled ground.
there are no wings. there is no trace where the blue butterfly is.
how many flutters did that butterfly make?
such a brief moment, yet so beautiful
that is the message of the life of its lost wings.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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