Sundered Crags
With the sun obliquely gliding between your dusk
Raising its head to cast shadows over ivory tusks
Gnawing with stale porcelains and phantasms
At the bottom of the swelling sundered chasms
I ponder blindly on its clinging bite and dying graze:
"Can I fill in the gaps and caress the space? "
Between these sundered crags are four arctic seas
Calm with gargantuan serpents and deceitful harpies
Withholding fathoms and speculations of galaxies
Interlaced with a cordial invitation in garrulity
The penumbra of the aqueous mirror cannot conceal
From skyscraping crags no hands can reel
Unfathomable oceans, too dense to stifle
Can you cajole with the angry lips of a rifle
Where callow cesspools of undying pits
Is a goblet of fallen stars and potential fleets
I lunge in imperceptibly in its glacial skin
Purged with another wish, unknowing and asinine
Lofty towers, looming and faltering pensively
A treasure trove reverberating ballads mockingly
Stroke with safeguarding veil and clasp the dell
Divide the abysmal seas into laudable great parcels
Ineffable heights marred with profound depths,
A nativity to volition to consort these aloft clefts
Sundered crevasses, will you hold me?
And speak with me in language of contingencies
Salient oceans, will your tides take me?
Without caravels, or oars, or impulsivity
So will you seize my wish and build with me
Another yet impasse in a utopic society?
poem by Norman Santos
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Related quotes
The sun and seas a jolly cast?
The sun and seas a jolly cast
As is the sail tied to the mast
And those laggards anchored
Without a future or a past…
Who are they to sink then?
To the bottom of a glass
Without the lowly courage
To weigh anchor, outclass…
Them that is first and last
The oceans fleet of stars.
Who are they to sink then?
Lower than the rank of Czars.
…Should, they not sail the seas
That storm and rage.
Hold—strait the tiller, helmsman
Waves beat my breast a sage!
"God be their maiden-voyage
All in him find harbor.
Set sail loathsome, wreckage!
Oar thy soul to him thy savior".
poem by Mark Heathcote
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Genesis BK III
(ll. 135-143) The day departed, hasting over the dwellings of
earth. And after the gleaming light the Lord, our maker, thrust
on the first of evenings. Murky gloom pressed hard upon the
heels of day; God called it night. Our Lord sundered them, one
from the other; and ever since they follow out the will of God to
do it on the earth.
(ll. 143-153) Then came a second day, light after darkness. And
the Lord of life ordained a pleasant firmament amid the waters.
Our Lord sundered the seas and established the heavens. By His
word the King, Almighty God, raised them above the earth. The
waters were divided under the heavens by His holy might; the
waters were sundered from the waters, under the firmament.
(ll. 154-168) Then came hasting over the earth the third fair
morning. Not yet were the wide ways and spacious tracts useful
unto God, but the land lay covered by the deep. The Lord of
angels, by His word, commanded that the waters come together,
which now beneath the heavens hold their course and place
ordained. Then suddenly, wide-stretching under heaven, lay the
sea, as God gave bidding. The great deep was sundered from the
land. The Warden of life, the Lord of hosts, beheld the dry
ground far outspread. And the King of glory called it earth.
For the ocean-billows and the wide-flung sea He set a lawful path
and lettered them....
((LACUNA -- two to three leaves missing))
Sleep Pensively
Esoteric eyes
Of withering vines
Stifle to vie
Pardon from lies
That shatters a heart
In a slanderous art
To regress and thwart
These worlds apart.
Fold daintily,
Black orchid of serenity
Relinquish the drudgery
As you sleep pensively.
Arms of towers,
Catch all that saunters;
Vagabonds and chauffeurs
And the volition to smother
That seals the spaces
With fiendish laces
On the jagged creases
Of blighted faces.
Guard like a sentry
And loom over me
Lissome malady,
Come, sleep pensively.
Ebony crust,
Blearing a mirage of lust
From the bosom of the vast
Ocean of the past
Eviscerate the films
Of these synthetic whims
Wear it on the seams
Of your oppressed dreams.
Dream boldly
Of gnawing lilies
And in a faith too scrawny
Graze to sleep pensively.
poem by Norman Santos
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Liebestod
When I was bold, when I was bold-
And that's a hundred years!-
Oh, never I thought my breast could hold
The terrible weight of tears.
I said: "Now some be dolorous;
I hear them wail and sigh,
And if it be Love that play them thus,
Then never a love will I."
I said: "I see them rack and rue,
I see them wring and ache,
And little I'll crack my heart in two
With little the heart can break."
When I was gay, when I was gay-
It's ninety years and nine!-
Oh, never I thought that Death could lay
His terrible hand in mine.
I said: "He plies his trade among
The musty and infirm;
A body so hard and bright and young
Could never be meat for worm."
"I see him dull their eyes," I said,
"And still their rattling breath.
And how under God could I be dead
That never was meant for Death?"
But Love came by, to quench my sleep,
And here's my sundered heart;
And bitter's my woe, and black, and deep,
And little I guessed a part.
Yet this there is to cool my breast,
And this to ease my spell;
Now if I were Love's, like all the rest,
Then can I be Death's, as well.
And he shall have me, sworn and bound,
And I'll be done with Love.
And better I'll be below the ground
Than ever I'll be above.
poem by Dorothy Parker
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Across the Sea
THE confines of our being are not these
White limbs of sense. Our true selves broader are
And higher than the path of furthest star.
Beyond the reach of sense, each hears and sees
And feels. The root alone of giant trees
5
Touches the earth; their branches pierce to heaven.
"To-day," "Here," "There," are to the body given;
Our spirits watch among the eternities.
Dearest, our beings can mingle, and our lips
Kiss off the dark world-sadness from the soul;
10
Our hands can clasp, our eyes return love's gaze,
Tho' waste lands moan between, where crimson dips
The westering sun, and tho' wide oceans roll;
Tho' being so far, we breathe in different days.
poem by Frederick George Scott
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Sweet Echo Dell
"Three there were that left my cot;
Two are here, and one is not;
Why does Willie linger? Say, can you tell?"
"He was weary by the way;
When we came he could but stay
In the shady grove at Sweet Echo Dell."
Echo Dell! (Echo Dell!) Echo Dell! (Echo Dell!)
It was there we softly said "Farewell!" ("Farewell!")
And the towering granite crest
Nobly guards his place rest,
Near the lovely lake of Sweet Echo Dell.
"Is he laden well with gold?
Does he bring me wealth untold?
Why then does he linger? Say can you tell?"
"All his treasures are above;
All he sent you was his love,
With a whispered prayer from Sweet Echo Dell."
Coming homeward, does he sing
Like a lark upon the wing?
Why then does he linger? Say, can you tell?"
Naught is heard but rippling waves,
Warbling birds, and shouting braves;
Silent is his voice in Sweet Echo Dell."
"Is he coming by-and-by?
May I bless him ere I die?
Why then does he linger? Say, can you tell?"
"Mirrored in that mountain lake,
Heaven is near, and he will wake
Never elsewhere than in Sweet Echo Dell."
"Would you crush my only joy?
Surely I shall meet my boy;
When then does he linger? Say, can you tell?"
"Never will his weary feet
Travel more, yet may soon meet
When your soul floats over Sweet Echo Dell."
poem by Henry Clay Work
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If the foolish, call them "flowers"
168
If the foolish, call them "flowers"—
Need the wiser, tell?
If the Savants "Classify" them
It is just as well!
Those who read the "Revelations"
Must not criticize
Those who read the same Edition—
With beclouded Eyes!
Could we stand with that Old "Moses"—
"Canaan" denied—
Scan like him, the stately landscape
On the other side—
Doubtless, we should deem superfluous
Many Sciences,
Not pursued by learned Angels
In scholastic skies!
Low amid that glad Belles lettres
Grant that we may stand,
Stars, amid profound Galaxies—
At that grand "Right hand"!
poem by Emily Dickinson
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Fleur de Lis
In this unfettered free fall
To the ocean of sounds
A pensive monument stood
Like a sundered lamppost
Aglow in the stretching dusk
Its immaculate skin aloft
With a dainty willowing
Like praying hands up to heaven
Beseeching safeguard
From the inveigles of anarchism
Its angular bud pouts a lip
To forbid an unsolicited kiss
The suspended blossoming of petals
Uncurled with a redolence
Heralding the shift of vicissitude
That lost its radiance that burns
In the skewing of its burls
And as time mordantly flies
It unfurled a sleeping hope
Debilitating the darkness inside
Against the lifeless age of time
Its non committal invitation
Sent me floundering in meadows
Where a distraught venture lapsed
Only to festoon this barren land
Wistful lily, apprehensive lily,
Purge me from this malady.
poem by Norman Santos
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Looking Back and Away
Emotions swelling
like a storm taking form
Out of words,
cold tears worn
Vacant eyes watching dancing motes
a fictive space where spirits float
Profound reveries consuming me
and waking brings a hilt-deep agony
A cloudburst:
My spirit crumbles
and lamentations pour
I picture our finger interlaced
but yours are slipping out of place
and like an empty goblet I wished to fill
you sealed your lips and kept it real
poem by Norman Santos
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Over new; greens seas drip-fed
The poet is a lonely … (snail)
With elongated eyes espy.
Following a spiritual brail…
Questioning: what's a wry?
What; lucidity nears him by.
A non-apologetic; dreamer…
To him its do-or-die
With a silver trailing "stigma"
Over the high seas did Bligh.
Oh mutiny; he's not a rhymer…
{With a pirate, treasure scroll...}
With a bounty on his head:
His mutiny is that his soul—
And others might—never be fed.
By following him on… faith!
Over new; green seas drip-fed.
poem by Mark Heathcote
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The Goblet
ONCE I held a well-carved brimming goblet,--
In my two hands tightly clasp'd I held it,
Eagerly the sweet wine sipp'd I from it,
Seeking there to drown all care and sorrow.
Amor enter'd in, and found me sitting,
And he gently smiled in modest fashion,
Smiled as though the foolish one he pitied.
"Friend, I know a far more beauteous vessel,
One wherein to sink thy spirit wholly;
Say, what wilt thou give me, if I grant it,
And with other nectar fill it for thee?"
Oh, how kindly hath he kept his promise!
For to me, who long had yearn'd, he granted
Thee, my Lida, fill'd with soft affection.
When I clasp mine arms around thee fondly,
When I drink in love's long-hoarded balsam
From thy darling lips so true, so faithful,
Fill'd with bliss thus speak I to my spirit
"No! a vessel such as this, save Amor
Never god hath fashion'd or been lord of!
Such a form was ne'er produced by Vulcan
With his cunning, reason-gifted hammers!
On the leaf-crown'd mountains may Lyaeus
Bid his Fauns, the oldest and the wisest,
Pass the choicest clusters through the winepress,
And himself watch o'er the fermentation:
Such a draught no toil can e'er procure him!"
poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Self-Knowledge XVII
And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."
And he answered, saying:
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always know in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
poem by Khalil Gibran
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Hands On Deck
The tides resurrected
And mangled with the undulation
A salient limn on my vision
Where power engulfs power,
Water condenses water,
Paroxysm crashes paroxysm;
Willowing the bouffant steerage
To descry the eviscerating road
In the ocean's trifling ablution
That sifted the luster of the reflection
In the palm of the sea's moiré
Leaving me astray and demented in the vesper
Of my flustering resolution
This is a peripatetic sailing
In the chagrined tongue of contingency
Shooting sundered quasars blindly
In the raucous rocking of the sea
That debilitates my recalcitrant heart
Rectified like the stones ashore
Excoriated by the constant slathering
Of the frothing waves
Flowing, ebbing, erring, fading
Leaving a malignant sheen
To vex the firm gradients of a feint
To delude the fastidious weather
I brought a compass from Atlantis
To flounder in lubricious skates
In the transverse behest of the callow water,
A compass with a turgid hand
Pointing to the inflected horizon
Shrouding the inclement songs
Of the siren's harangue,
An opposing limn on my ears
Digressing the secret subterfuge
To subsist the slumbering pathos
And to moor the soul to the body
With the ersatz felicity
Of silent screaming breaths
Hands on deck, heart on gallows,
Soul pouncing in the trident tides,
Loneliness sitting in the dark
Preyed and devoured by your loneliness
To survive the ocean hunger,
Bleakly lone in the incarcerating capitulate
Where the soul drown inside the body
As the ship ferry me away
Far from your distant memories
Where are the winds that took me
In the belly of the sea
Gravid with honesty
And enigma?
Where are the intrepid cajoles;
A peremptory invitation
To coddle
The trifling desiccation?
Hands on deck,
Hold tight
In letting go.
poem by Norman Santos
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The Australian Slanguage
"Tis the everyday Australian
Has a language of his own,
Has a language, or a slanguage,
Which can simply stand alone.
And a "dickon pitch to kid us"
Is a synonym for "lie",
And to "nark it" means to stop it,
And to "nit it" means to fly.
And a bosom friend's a "cobber,"
And a horse a "prad" or "moke,"
While a casual acquaintance
Is a "joker" or a "bloke."
And his lady-love's his "donah"
or his "clinah" or his "tart"
Or his "little bit o' muslin,"
As it used to be his "bart."
And his naming of the coinage
Is a mystery to some,
With his "quid" and "half-a-caser"
And his "deener" and his "scrum".
And a "tin-back" is a party
Who's remarkable for luck,
And his food is called his "tucker"
Or his "panem" or his "chuck".
A policeman is a "johnny"
Or a "copman" or a "trap",
And a thing obtained on credit
Is invariably "strap".
A conviction"s known as "trouble",
And a gaol is called a "jug",
And a sharper is a "spieler"
And a simpleton's a "tug".
If he hits a man in fighting
That is what he calls a "plug",
If he borrows money from you
He will say he "bit your lug."
And to "shake it" is to steal it,
And to "strike it" is to beg;
And a jest is "poking borac",
And a jester "pulls your leg".
Things are "cronk" when they go wrongly
In the language of the "push",
But when things go as he wants 'em
He declares it is "all cush".
When he's bright he's got a "napper",
And he's "ratty" when he's daft,
And when looking for employment
He is "out o' blooming graft".
And his clothes he calls his "clobber"
Or his "togs", but what of that
When a "castor" or a "kady"
Is the name he gives his hat!
And our undiluted English
Is a fad to which we cling,
But the great Australian slanguage
Is a truly awful thing!
poem by William Thomas Goodge
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The Lost Friend
The people take the thing of course,
They marvel not to see
This strange, unnatural divorce
Betwixt delight and me.
I know the face of sorrow, and I know
Her voice with all its varied cadences;
Which way she turns and treads; how at her ease
Things fit her dreary largess to bestow.
Where sorrow long abides, some be that grow
To hold her dear, but I am not of these;
Joy is my friend, not sorrow; by strange seas,
In some far land we wandered, long ago.
O faith, long tried, that knows no faltering!
O vanished treasure of her hands and face!--
Beloved--to whose memory I cling,
Unmoved within my heart she holds her place.
And never shall I hail that other "friend,"
Who yet shall dog my footsteps to the end.
Sonnet V: Nothing But No
Nothing but "No," and "Aye," and "Aye," and "No"?
How falls it out so strangely you reply?
I tell ye, Fair, I'll not be answer'd so,
With this affirming "No," denying "Aye."
I say, "I love," you slightly answer "Aye";
I say, "You love," you pule me out a "No";
I say, "I die," you echo me an "Aye";
"Save me," I cry, you sigh me out a "No";
Must woe and I have nought but "No" and "Aye"?
No I am I, if I no more can have;
Answer no more, with silence make reply,
And let me take myself what I do crave.
Let "No" and "Aye" with I and you be so;
Then answer "No," and "Aye," and "Aye" and "No."
poem by Michael Drayton
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The Rowers
1899 -- When Germany proposed that England should help her in a naval demonstration to collect debts from Venezuela.
The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
And backed and threshed and ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
As they brought the war-boat round.
They had no heart for the rally and roar
That makes the whale-bath smoke --
When the great blades cleave and hold and leave
As one on the racing stroke.
They sang:--What reckoning do you keep,
And steer by what star,
If we come unscathed from the Southern deep
To be wrecked on a Baltic bar?
"Last night you swore our voyage was done,
But seaward still we go.
And you tell us now of a secret vow
You have made with an open foe!
"That we must lie off a lightless coast
And houl and back and veer
At the will of the breed that have wrought us most
For a year and a year and a year!
"There was never a shame in Christendie
They laid not to our door--
And you say we must take the winter sea
And sail with them once more?
"Look South! The gale is scarce o'erpast
That stripped and laid us down,
When we stood forth but they stood fast
And prayed to see us drown.
"Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold,
Our wounds are bleeding yet--
And you tell us now that our strength is sold
To help them press for a debt!
"'Neath all the flags of all mankind
That use upon the seas,
Was there no other fleet to find
That you strike bands with these?
"Of evil times that men can choose
On evil fate to fall,
What brooding Judgment let you loose
To pick the worst of all?
"In sight of peace--from the Narrow Seas
O'er half the world to run--
With a cheated crew, to league anew
With the Goth and the shameless Hun!"
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
"And all the phantom, Nature, stands--
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,--
A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII: 3. O Sorrow, cruel
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
"And all the phantom, Nature, stands--
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,--
A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Youth By The Brook
Beside the brook the boy reclined
And wove his flowery wreath,
And to the waves the wreath consigned--
The waves that danced beneath.
"So fleet mine hours," he sighed, "away
Like waves that restless flow:
And so my flowers of youth decay
Like those that float below."
"Ask not why I, alone on earth,
Am sad in life's young time;
To all the rest are hope and mirth
When spring renews its prime.
Alas! the music Nature makes,
In thousand songs of gladness--
While charming all around me, wakes
My heavy heart to sadness."
"Ah! vain to me the joys that break
From spring, voluptuous are;
For only one 't is mine to seek--
The near, yet ever far!
I stretch my arms, that shadow-shape
In fond embrace to hold;
Still doth the shade the clasp escape--
The heart is unconsoled!"
"Come forth, fair friend, come forth below,
And leave thy lofty hall,
The fairest flowers the spring can know
In thy dear lap shall fall!
Clear glides the brook in silver rolled,
Sweet carols fill the air;
The meanest hut hath space to hold
A happy loving pair!"
poem by Friedrich Schiller
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