The Christmas Of 1888
Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn,
The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn,
And on a wintry waste
Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown,
Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down,
The waning moon half-faced!
In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth,
What sign was there of the immortal birth?
What herald of the One?
Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came,
A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame,
Up rolled the round, bright sun!
And all was changed. From a transfigured world
The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled
Up the still air unblown.
In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn
O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born,
Break fairer than our own?
The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled
In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled
And sunset fair as they;
A sweet reminder of His holiest time,
A summer-miracle in our winter clime,
God gave a perfect day.
The near was blended with the old and far,
And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star
Seemed here, as there and then,--
Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm,
Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm,
Peace, and good-will to men!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Rainbow Silhouette
I saw a rainbow silhouette from the sky
I know the reason and its purpose why
God in His infinite goodness and love
Wanted to give this to me from above
My life has its own ups and downs
Gazing up to the sky, the rainbow silhouette covered me down
It's different colors, are colors of God's skin
Black, brown, yellow, red, white, everybody are His kin
I saw a rainbow silhouette again tonight
I can dream peacefully now and sleep tight.
What about you...? i hope so..
God bless you..
poem by Meggie Gultiano
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Long Thin Dawn
That long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
Ive seen the hills of frisco and the streets of montreal
In every town Ive been to Ive had someone to call
From winnipeg to edmonton, vancouver to st. paul
Ive had so many good friends I couldnt miss them all
And that long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
Last night I came to denver beneath the snow-capped ridge
I thought about my darlin as I stood beneath the bridge
And there were times I made her cry but I guess by now shes learned
That any time Ive wandered I always have returned
And that long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
Right now Im on a highway just east of omaha
Riding shotgun on the biggest rig you ever saw
With forty tons of pig iron and a trucker known as bill
All the way to windsor, weve got some miles to kill
And that long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
While climbin up a hillside, bill drops er down a gear
And the engine sings so sweetly tis music to my ear
I tell him how I long to be just like him if I can
Drivin like the restless wind across this precious land
Says bill the air is clean tonight as he puffs a big cigar
And if this rig keeps rollin, my boy youll travel far
But when you are a trucker youll come to realize
The only thing a man can do is watch the world go by
And that long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
That long thin dawn
That long thin dawn
Is comin on again
song performed by by Gordon Lightfoot
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Horses in the Snow
Their manes are a wintry white
Frosted with the glittering snow
There backs are dappled light
And shimmer with a frozen glow
Dark browns and golden tones
Contrast with the wonderland
From dark grays to deep roans
The muted colors of the land
Their manes and backs are white
Frosted with the falling snow
The horses dance through the light
Of the shining, shimmering snow
Horses In The Snow
Their manes are a wintry white
Frosted with the glittering snow
There backs are dappled light
And shimmer with a frozen glow
Dark browns and golden tones
Contrast with the wonderland
From dark grays to deep roans
The muted colors of the land
Their manes and backs are white
Frosted with the falling snow
The horses dance through the light
Of the shining, shimmering snow
poem by Horse Poet
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Broken Arrow
The lights turned on and the curtain fell down,
And when it was over it felt like a dream,
They stood at the stage door and begged for a scream,
The agents had paid for the black limousine
That waited outside in the rain.
Did you see them, did you see them?
Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quivered,
Brown skinned indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?
Eighteen years of american dream,
He saw that his brother had sworn on the wall.
He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall,
His mother had told him a trip was a fall,
And dont mention babies at all.
Did you see him, did you see him?
Did you see him in the river?
He were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quivered,
Brown skinned indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?
The streets were lined for the wedding parade,
The queen wore the white gloves, the county of song,
The black covered caisson her horses had drawn
Protected her king from the sun rays of dawn.
They married for peace and were gone.
Did you see them, did you see them?
Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quivered,
Brown skinned indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?
song performed by by Neil Young
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Godsend
On a distant highway
I catch the sun
Ascending
On its morning run.
Lazy clouds
That fail to fly.
Now
Yellow balloons
With pink bows
Of sky.
I see you standing
In flowered white.
At my journeys end.
You,
My poetic light.
My Godsend.
On a distant highway
I catch the moon.
Flying beams
That sing in tune.
Hillsides wear
Frosted coats.
Torchlight
Of aqua blue
Floats.
To light
Those fires in our heart.
I leave you standing
With petals white
At your feet.
Then must depart.
Driving through the night
Of no return.
You
My love,
My heart.
Will always burn.
A candle without end.
My Godsend.
poem by Kevin East
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The Winter's Come
Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn;
The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun;
That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn,
What a strange scene before us now does run--
Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun;
White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare;
The sycamore all withered in the sun.
No leaves are now upon the birch tree there:
All now is stript to the cold wintry air.
See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves--
And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue.
The winter chill on his cold bed receives
Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue.
Naked and bare the leafless trees repose.
Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare,
Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows;
That is not green, which was so through the year
Dark chill November draweth to a close.
Tis Winter, and I love to read indoors,
When the Moon hangs her crescent up on high;
While on the window shutters the wind roars,
And storms like furies pass remorseless by.
How pleasant on a feather bed to lie,
Or, sitting by the fire, in fancy soar
With Dante or with Milton to regions high,
Or read fresh volumes we've not seen before,
Or oer old Burton's Melancholy pore.
poem by John Clare
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The Little Girl With Curly Hair
there is this little girls with black curly hair
flat nose, thin eyelashes, wavy goatish eyelids,
sitting on a bamboo pole
(the common furniture there)
with bare hands and bare feet
staring at me,
for i am new here and i have a big tummy
and i am white skinned, and i have candied
inside my pockets, she knows that soon
i will throw all these candies in the air
for all the other children
but there is something strange about this
little brown girl with curly hair sitting all alone
on that bamboo chair
her father and mother were killed in the last rebellion.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I am a man of black and white
I am a man of black and white,
my name is written on the gates of the sky.
i am a man of black and white
my origin is united, yet two apart.
I speak the language of the whites,
but lost in the language of the blacks.
i am a man of black and white,
my resemblance is same with the blacks.
I am a man of black and white,
i was brought up in the land of the whites.
i am a man of black and white,
my home is in the south-east, in the abode of my black dad.
I am a man of black and white,
i love the aspirations of life.
i am a man of black and white,
although two apart, we are united as one.
poem by Randy Micheal
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I Am Your Delight
Thursday 2 October 2008
A white-frosted sea, the frosting
goes on and on, crests of white
everywhere, glistening rocks lining
the beach, white frosting on marine
blue – a sea too beautiful to leave;
how do we turn back to the inland
spot where we have to live?
Waves in long, parallel lines, bluish
white, whispering, Come back to me,
the sea’s bridal gown more resplendent
than before, the groom’s voice more re-
sonant, whispering Come to me, I am
your delight; a symphony of cascading
lace, communing with the sea
In a new dimension; the sun hiding
behind a cloud, the cold wind giving
me a chilly embrace, the white-frosted
sea beneath me in my eyrie of rocky
beach-house height, whispering beautifully,
I love you... Attired in a beautiful gown,
lacy white, I cannot turn away
The groom’s voice a whisper of enchanted
delight – a bridal sea bedecked with jewellery,
shimmering in beguiling shades of white, I
have never seen such a bride...
poem by Margaret Alice
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In Thin Air
On the last time youve got your new parachutes, or a new
bike or new clothes or something. Sometimes you got
something new you just, you cant wait to... to use it.
So were ... are gonna try a couple... At least one new song.
Yeh, we cant wait to try it out, so. Another for you.
There's a light, when my baby's in my arms
There's a light, when the window shades are drawn
Hesitate when I feel I may do harm to her
Wash it off cause this feeling we can share
And I know she's reached my heart in thin air.
Byzantine is reflected in our pond
There's a cloud, but the water remains calm
Reaching in the suns fingers clutch the dawn to pass
Even out, it's a precious thing to bear
And I know she's reached my heart in thin air
Yes, I know she's reached my heart in thin air
It's not in my past to presume
Love can keep on moving in both directions
How to be happy and true
Is the quest we're taking on together
Take it on, on, on, on, on
Take it on, on, on, on, on...
There's a light when my baby's in my arms
And I know she's reached my heart in thin air
And I know she's reached my heart in thin air
And I know she's reached my heart in thin air
Yes, I know she's reached my heart
song performed by by Pearl Jam
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Backward
A three-day-long rain from the east--
an terminable talking, talking
of no consequence--patter, patter, patter.
Hand in hand little winds
blow the thin streams aslant.
Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion.
A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves,
hurry from one place to another.
Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!--
An interminable talking, talking,
talking . . .it has happened before.
Backward, backward, backward.
poem by William Carlos Williams
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The Dark Day
A three-day-long rain from the east--
an terminable talking, talking
of no consequence--patter, patter, patter.
Hand in hand little winds
blow the thin streams aslant.
Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion.
A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves,
hurry from one place to another.
Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!--
An interminable talking, talking,
talking . . .it has happened before.
Backward, backward, backward.
poem by William Carlos Williams
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L’Apprenti Sorcier
Suddenly there came to me
The music of a mighty sea
That on a bare and iron shore
Thundered with a deeper roar
Than all the tides that leap and run
With us below the real sun:
Because the place was far away,
Above, beyond our homely day,
Neighbouring close the frozen clime
Where out of all the woods of time,
Amid the frightful seraphim
The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,
Revolving hate and misery
And wars and famines yet to be.
And in my dreams I stood alone
Upon a shelf of weedy stone,
And saw before my shrinking eyes
The dark, enormous breakers rise,
And hover and fall with deafening thunder
Of thwarted foam that echoed under
The ledge, through many a cavern drear,
With hollow sounds of wintry fear.
And through the waters waste and grey,
Thick-strown for many a league away,
Out of the toiling sea arose
Many a face and form of those
Thin, elemental people dear
Who live beyond our heavy sphere.
And all at once from far and near,
They all held out their arms to me,
Crying in their melody,
“Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill
Of all the cosmic good and ill,
Be as the Living ones that know
Enormous joy, enormous woe,
Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:
For all thy study hunted this,
On wings of magic to arise,
And wash from off thy filmed eyes
The cloud of cold mortality,
To find the real life and be
As are the children of the deep!
Be bold and dare the glorious leap,
Or to thy shame, go, slink again
Back to the narrow ways of men.”
So all these mocked me as I stood
Striving to wake because I feared the flood.
poem by Clive Staples Lewis
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Twilight
In early evening the cell flares up.
Thin shadows slide down the gray walls.
He who cries out in mutiny exhausts into a dream.
The brown stillness sweeps over like a gentle wave.
And often a frosted light fills the choked room.
Figures beckon you to the spiritless circle
where the dance of the heavy coats dissolves into silence,
where dawn breaks into a ringing of bells.
poem by Ernst Toller
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The Final Painting
The white cloud passed over the land
there is sea always round the land
the sky is blue always above the cloud
the cloud in the blue continues to move
- nothing is limited by the canvas or frame -
the white cloud can be pictured like any
other clouds or like a fist of wool
or a white fur rose
The white cloud passes a shadow across
the landscape and so there is a passing greyness
The grey and the white both envelop
the watcher until he too is drawn into the picture
It is all a journey from a room through a door
down stairs and out into the street
The cloud could possess the house
The watchers have a mutual confidence
with the approaching string of white clouds
It is beyond spoken words what they are
silently mouthing to the sky
There was no mystery in this - only the firm
outline of people in overcoats on a hillside
and the line of clouds above them
The sky is blue The cloud white with touches
of grey - the rest - the landscape below -
can be left to the imagination
The whole painting quietly dissolved itself
into its surrounding clouds
poem by Lee Harwood
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An Autumn Landscape
No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise
A ploughman urges his dull team,
A stooped gray figure with prone brow
That plunges bending to the plough
With strong, uneven steps. The stream
Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
Comes from far off; and crows in strings
Pass on the upper silences.
A flock of small gray goldfinches,
Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.
This day the season seems like one that heeds,
With fixed ear and lifted hand,
All moods that yet are known on earth,
All motions that have faintest birth,
If haply she may understand
The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Tree
Oh to be free of myself,
With nothing left to remember,
To have my heart as bare
As a tree in December;
Resting, as a tree rests
After its leaves are gone,
Waiting no more for a rain at night
Nor for the red at dawn;
But still, oh so still
While the winds come and go,
With no more fear of the hard frost
Or the bright burden of snow;
And heedless, heedless
If anyone pass and see
On the white page of the sky
Its thin black tracery.
poem by Sara Teasdale
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The Cold Night
It is cold. The white moon
is up among her scattered stars--
like the bare thighs of
the Police Sergeant's wife--among
her five children . . .
No answer. Pale shadows lie upon
the frosted grass. One answer:
It is midnight, it is still
and it is cold . . . !
White thights of the sky! a
new answer out of the depths of
my male belly: In April . . .
In April I shall see again--In April!
the round and perfects thighs
of the Police Sergeant's wife
perfect still after many babies.
Oya!
poem by William Carlos Williams
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The Grave
The grave that they dug him had flowers
Gathered from the hillsides in bright summer colors,
And the brown earth bleached white at the edge of his gravestone.
Hes gone.
When the wars of our nation did beckon,
A man barely twenty did answer the calling.
Proud of the trust that he placed in our nation,
Hes gone,
But eternity knows him, and it knows what weve done.
And the rain fell like pearls on the leaves of the flowers
Leaving brown, muddy clay where the earth had been dry.
And deep in the trench he waited for hours,
As he held to his rifle and prayed not to die.
But the silence of night was shattered by fire
As guns and grenades blasted sharp through the air.
And one after another his comrades were slaughtered.
In morgue of marines, alone standing there.
He crouched ever lower, ever lower with fear.
They cant let me die! the cant let me die here!
Ill cover myself with the mud and the earth.
Ill cover myself! I know Im not brave!
The earth! the earth! the earth is my grave.
The grave that they dug him had flowers
Gathered from the hillsides in bright summer colors,
And the brown earth bleached white at the edge of his gravestone.
Hes gone.
song performed by by Don McLean
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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