Two In August
Two that could not have lived their single lives
As can some husbands and wives
Did something strange: they tensed their vocal cords
And attacked each other with silences and words
Like catapulted stones and arrowed knives.
Dawn was not yet; night is for loving or sleeping,
Sweet dreams or safekeeping;
Yet he of the wide brows that were used to laurel
And she, the famed for gentleness, must quarrel.
Furious both of them, and scared, and weeping.
How sleepers groan, twitch, wake to such a mood
Is not well understood,
Nor why two entities grown almost one
Should rend and murder trying to get undone,
With individual tigers in their blood.
She in terror fled from the marriage chamber
Circuiting the dark rooms like a string of amber
Round and round and back,
And would not light one lamp against the black,
And heard the clock that clanged: Remember, Remember.
And he must tread barefooted the dim lawn,
Soon he was up and gone;
High in the trees the night-mastered birds were crying
With fear upon their tongues, no singing nor flying
Which are their lovely attitudes by dawn.
Whether those bird-cries were of heaven or hell
There is no way to tell;
In the long ditch of darkness the man walked
Under the hackberry trees where the birds talked
With words too sad and strange to syllable.
poem by John Crowe Ransom
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Related quotes
A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.
quote by Washington Irving
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Atiogbe
Wives, submit to your own husbands,
For the husband is the head of the wife;
Husbands, love your wives!
And stop jumping from bed to bed;
For, i am Atiogbe in your city stidying various things,
And i have more things at hand to tell.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.
quote by Benjamin Franklin
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wives Are in Demand
Widows are jealous of wives.
Concubines are jealous of wives.
Bachelors seek for wives.
Husbands trust on wives.
(30.04.2011)
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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September Eleventh 911
September 11th will be a day many won’t forget
Unthinkable news were on the television set
That dreadful day changed many lives
Lives of children, parents, husbands and wives
One should live with peace and not with threat
poem by Ana Monnar
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All poets' wives have rotten lives Their husbands look at them like knives.
quote by Delmore Schwartz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced.
quote by Elinor Glyn
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Pillars of Truth-3
it's hard, so damned hard!
go to work everyday (if you're lucky)
and pound your head against the wall...
knowing there's no way in hell
you can make enough to survive!
house gone! car gone! savings gone!
no insurance, not enough food to eat!
husbands leave wives, cant do it anymore!
wives leave husbands, want a better life.
and it only gets worse!
the only thing that we have
that they cant take away
are the people that love us...
why in the hell would we throw that away?
poem by Eric Cockrell
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The Cuckoo
Cuckoos lead Bohemian lives,
They fail as husbands and as wives,
Therefore they cynically disparage
Everybody else's marriage.
poem by Ogden Nash
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You're living in paradise
I'm getting tired of hearing your silly complaints.
You're angry because your husband isn't a saint.
Your husband forgets and leaves the toilet seat up and you think this isn't very nice.
You think you have it bad but you're really living in paradise.
Your husband has a few flaws but in my eyes he's great.
When I tell you about some other husbands, he'll be a man who you 'll appreciate.
I've seen husbands who beat and raped their wives and some husbands who even threatened them with guns.
And you complain about the superficial things your husband has done.
Close to where I live, a man killed his wife and then set her on fire.
Be thankful that your life isn't so dire.
These poor women's lives have been completely destroyed.
And you have the nerve to complain because your husband goes out once a week with the boys.
Before you complain about your husband again, maybe you should think twice.
You think you have it bad but you're really living in paradise.
poem by Randy Johnson
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Noted By Us All
Adoption and adaptation,
And like the redemption of my muse;
But the righteous pleasures of things are now noted by us all in this life.
Wives should submit to their husbands,
Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies,
And do not grow weary of doing righteousness;
For, the righteous pleasures of things are now noted by us all in this life!
Do not be deceived,
For whatever you sow, that will you also reap;
So work with your hands to gain the status of your life,
For, there are laws all over the world!
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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We All
i believe that we all fall in love
Sometimes that love lasts forever
They may become our husbands or our wives
Or just a memory that never seems to fade
It lives in a placewe go to
Every now and then when life seems to be to much
To put back the smile that was once upon our faces
poem by David Kush
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Immortality
In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly:
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and life-span of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.
poem by Lisel Mueller
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Seeing What Others Cannot
Its been over three weeks now
that I’ve been in this state.
I don’t know the reason why
there’s nothing to it I can relate.
The day began like any other
until I got to the bus pick up place.
There was three other people waiting,
but I never bothered to look at a face.
As I waited, an uneasy feeling of anxiety
moved up from my feet to my head,
I noticed something strange and abnormal,
the man in front of me separated.
I couldn’t believe what my eyes were saying
and thought that I was becoming ill,
maybe I was stressed out, with work and all,
and it was time for a get-well pill.
But it was true I was actually seeing this,
the man’s inner-self stepped out.
It communicated with another of its kind
who just happened to be walking about.
Nervously, I again looked around me,
this was happening everywhere.
It was if the people’s spiritual selves
had a life of their own to share.
It was happening to little children,
to couples, husbands, and wives.
Their once unseen spiritual sides were
living completely different lives.
I can’t understand or explain this,
that’s why I’ve come here today.
You’ll probably think that I’m crazy,
and I ought to be locked away.
I can tell you that I don’t like this,
and I wish that I couldn’t see
all these separated inner-selves,
who can see, but ignore me.
I have tried to ask them questions,
but they just smile and walk away.
It’s as if they too don’t understand
and they’ve always lived this way.
Is it because the majority of people
can’t see, that a precedent is set.
What if I can actually see what I can see
and the majority isn’t ready to see just yet?
poem by Orlando Belo
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Canadian Polygamy Coming Around The Bend
How many wives should a man be allowed if they change the law,
Three, ten, a hundred and ten or will there be another flaw?
The appointed Supreme Court changed the laws and allowed abortions,
These appointees are quite capable of making more distortions.
Polygamy and religious freedom are now front and center,
Maybe they’ll come to a final conclusion this long winter,
Should a man be allowed a hundred wives or only one?
Come on, let’s face it, the man needs to have a lot of fun.
And the pro choice ladies who got their High Court abortion rights,
Don’t appear to me to be putting up much of a fight,
There’s something seriously wrong here that seems awfully strange,
In equal rights, a woman should have five husbands to arrange,
Nov 28th,2010
poem by James Bredin
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The people we lost in Aurora loved, and were loved. They were mothers and fathers; husbands and wives; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters; friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and dreams that were not yet fulfilled. And if there's anything to take away from this tragedy, it's a reminder that life is fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters in the end are not the small and trivial things which often consume our lives. It's how we choose to treat one another, and love one another. It's what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That's what matters. That's why we're here.
quote by Barack Obama
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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True Poet
She asked me if I was a poet?
I said ‘I Am.’
She asked me if I was a true poet?
I said that I was.
She asked me ‘What is a true poet?
I said ‘Someone who lives for poetry.’
Someone who has no choice
but to write evermore eternal poetry.
Someone who turns happiness
into moments of exquisite poetic joy.
Someone who turns tragedy
into intensified heightened transcendent expression.
Someone who watches a leaf fall
from rustic red golden autumn tree;
and has no choice but to fall
gliding, into rhythm of perpetual cyclic life.’
She asked me if you could be a poet
and not write a single poem.
I paused for a moment of contemplation
then Poetry said,
‘Your whole life could be but
a single poem;
the entire course of a whole life lived,
could be but a single impassioned poem.’
She paused overwhelmed then said,
‘You are a true poet.’
I paused to consider throughout
depths of a moment of eternal silence;
then said, ‘It is hard to live suffering,
the consequences, the isolation, of being a poet.’
She said ‘Can you live alone? ’
I said ‘I have lived alone,
sometimes I enjoyed living alone;
but that I enjoyed the companionship of friends.’
She said ‘Only honest people
can live alone.
She said ‘You remind me of Voltaire.’
‘Have you ever read Voltaire? ’
I said ‘No’
She said that I should.
I never did for I was too busy
living a precarious life;
and resolving the tensions, jarring elements,
of the late twentieth century;
with tolerance, amusement, insight,
or subtle or elaborate facets of truth.
Yet the last decade of the twentieth century
turned into frustrated anguish;
as I felt evermore with mounting certainty
the shape of events to come.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
‘Voltaire is the pen name of Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778) , the greatest of the writers and thinkers (philosophers) who lived in France in the 18th century, during the years leading up to the French evolution (1789-99) . He lived a long life and never stopped writing about the right of a person to be free and to think forhimself. He attacked the government for oppressing people’s lives. He also attacked the (French) Church which, he felt, did not allow freedom of faith. (Voltaire studied England's Constitutional Monarchy and its religious tolerance while in exile in England from 1726 to 1729.) He pointed out the weaknesses of the society in which he lived and helped to prepare the way for the upheaval of the French Revolution.’ Children’s Britannica P.224.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs.
quote by Pierre Schaeffer
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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They're equally good
Successful men make lousy husbands;
Successful women make lousy mothers.
Husbands and wives tending their families
Are equally successful people.
06.05.2012
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Cast Aside
When deadly gas invisibly
seeps from some hidden cavity
and overcomes hard working men
They will not see their home again.
This was the kind of tragedy
we used to see quite frequently.
But now King Coal no longer reigns
and miners wives don’t fear the pain.
Of losing men folk to the pit
What is the bloody use of it.
Another kind of tragedy
engulfs ex miners family.
They’re facing life upon the dole.
No longer need to win coal
There are no jobs he can obtain for
those to old to start again.
They gave their lives to old King coal
and spent their lives down yon dark hole.
Their wives now feel a different strain
but miner’s wives do not complain
The did not when their thoughts were filled
with fear of husbands being killed.
I think today their greatest fear
Is when their man gets too much beer
.
Because he’s well and truly bored
and spends more than they can afford.
If she complains he blacks her eye
and then the fur and feathers fly.
Recalling how things used to be
I clearly see the irony.
The cure is worse than the disease.
A tragedy which no one sees.
You will not read it in the press
nor see it on the evening news.
The lasting sense of hopelessness
of men who have nothing to lose.
16-Aug-08
http: // blog.my.space.com/poetic piers
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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