Old Gate Off Its Hinge
Old gate off its hinge.
Matted like a lapwing in the long blond grass.
What is there to distract me from?
I pass, but not as a predator.
I seek the high field at the end
of this narrow dark road at dusk.
I’m out for stars. I’m out for solitude.
Like these deep cuts in the road
my scars have taken me out for a walk
in the gathering darkness,
nothing to keep in
nothing to let out.
The sumac denuded.
The last of the asters ruined.
There’s a farmhouse back here
abandoned years ago
like an old book in the basement
under the covers of its collapsing roof.
And the ghosts of two children
hidden deep in the woods
from the authorities,
autistic prodigies
who could fix anything mechanical,
clocks, watches, small engines
anything the neighbours brought them
but their own hearts and minds
and that’s how they lived for years,
with nothing but their own estrangement for company,
fixing things the neighbours broke.
A cage. But with the door open.
A road. But nowhere to go.
A house. But no one to shelter.
A mind. But no one to know it.
The chassis of a rusting car.
A bear.
I get caught in the glare
of my own mental headlights
wary of making more noise than I should.
And then my eyes
adjust my fear to the darkness again
and I’m not sure I should be here at all
unworthy of the silence,
unknown to the trees at the side of the road,
no clockwork universe
to bring these backwoods geniuses
that even they could fix.
A fox on the path. A startled bird.
The barking of a farmyard dog
way off in the low-key distance.
Stars in the ripening twilight.
A clearing with maple saplings to say
here nature picked up where it left off
and broken shards of moonlight
still clinging to the windowframes
as if it had to break through its own ice
to draw water from a stream.
Perseus holding Medusa’s head
above a barn drunker than it looks
swaying from side to side
gaping through its doorless loft in shock
at what is happening to it.
Aldebaran in Taurus, the Pleiades,
Castor, Pollux, Auriga and the kids,
an airliner leaving Ottawa without a sound,
and something that sweeps over me
like the shadow of a thought
with an owl for an eyelid.
So little harmony
so much tension among the stars
and their conflicting myths of origin
in the chaos and confusion of creation
and yet around here
in the stillness and profusion of their radiance
blessed and hexed alike
they all seem fixed.
Here where the unknown breathes
and eternity doesn’t seem
like anybody’s business but its own.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Bless The Broken Road
I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream lead me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
I think about the years I spent just passing through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true
Every long lost dream lead me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
And now Im just rolling home
Into my lover's arms
This much I know is true,
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
song performed by by Rascal Flatts
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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September 1961
This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.
The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.
They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy
learning to live without words.
E. P. "It looks like dying"-Williams: "I can't
describe to you what has been
happening to me"-
H. D. "unable to speak."
The darkness
twists itself in the wind, the stars
are small, the horizon
ringed with confused urban light-haze.
They have told us
the road leads to the sea,
and given
the language into our hands.
We hear
our footsteps each time a truck
has dazzled past us and gone
leaving us new silence.
Ine can't reach
the sea on this endless
road to the sea unless
one turns aside at the end, it seems,
follows
the owl that silently glides above it
aslant, back and forth,
and away into deep woods.
But for usthe road
unfurls itself, we count the
words in our pockets, we wonder
how it will be without them, we don't
stop walking, we know
there is far to go, sometimes
we think the night wind carries
a smell of the sea...
poem by Denise Levertov
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Broken Road
The broken road
I set out on the narrow way
Many years ago,
Hoping I would find true love
Along the broken road.
I got lost a time or two,
Wiped my brow, kept pushing through
I couldnt see how every sign pointed straight to you.
Every long-lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were just northern stars,
Pointing me on my way, into your loving arms.
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you
I think about the years I spent
Id like to find the time I lost and give it back to you.
You just smile and take my hand; youve been there, you understand,
Its all part of a greater plan that is coming true.
Every longlost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were just falling stars,
Pointing me on my way, into your loving arms.
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you
song performed by by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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At the time...
A car pulled up, in front of a house, at four o'clock in the morning.
A man came out of the car, and stood in silence in the dark, dark dark.
Quiet as a mouse, a woman came out of the house, opened the gate and walked into a garbage bin, making a godawful clattering.
Drowsy neighbours, across the road, peeked out
from behind the nosy curtains of their boring bedroom.
But nothing happened, while the clouds moved on,
and the frail moonlight was well again.
Under a blanket of glittering stars, she handed him two suitcases
and he hurried 'round to open the boot but just then,
the toilet lights on the second floor came on.
The neighbours behind the curtains froze like statues.
Swiftly, the man and the woman crouched down behind the car.
In the quiet of the night, they could all hear the urine
gurgling long, loud and plenty into the toilet bowl.
Behind the car, the man and the woman started
groping and kissing and groping and kissing furiously.
The neighbours saw them do it by the light of the moon and stars.
When the toilet flushed, they quietly shut the boot,
tiptoed to the front, got into the car,
and the roar of the car engine died away.
The neighbours closed the curtains. Didn't say much.
Ate sandwiches and milk. Still couldn't sleep.
Started to make love loudly, as if to drown out forever
the drunken snoring beginning again
across the road.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
(1989)
poem by Simmon Tan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I Must Have Been Sleeping
'Where are you going, ' I heard her say
As the dream took me straight to the core,
We parked at the side of a very long road
And I got out the driver's door;
'I've never known that, ' I replied, and she sat
On her hands, with the pain of surprise,
'So what you've been saying has never been true! '
The tears rose up in her eyes!
'The road has been long, the road has been wide,
I never knew where I could turn.'
'I thought you were happy with me, ' she said;
There was nothing to say in return.
'I must have been sleeping for seventeen years, '
My voice sounded foreign and coarse,
But I couldn't handle the sighs and the lies,
Or the terrible sound of - 'divorce! '
I walked to the wood at the side of the road,
And followed the pathway around,
I couldn't look back now I'd made up my mind
Though I walked unfamiliar ground,
The clearing was quiet, the birds didn't sing,
A mountain rose up in my view,
I suddenly saw there was no going back
To the comfortable life that I knew.
I cast off my shackles and took a deep breath,
To breathe in both freedom and pride,
My strength was returning, and clearer my eye,
I walked with a bounce in my stride,
The years fell away, I was thirty again,
I stopped then, and sat on a stone,
For darkness was gathering there in the gloom
With that terrible feeling - alone!
I thought of the woman I'd left on the road,
Who'd always been faithful to me,
The tears that she'd shed for a love that was dead
Made me sad, and ashamed to be free,
I thought of the comfort she'd given me when
All my world started going insane,
She'd cooked and she'd cared, and she'd loved and she'd shared
And I'd given her nothing but pain.
I turned on the track, and I made my way back
But I couldn't see where I had been,
I stumbled through thickets and walked into trees
And I fell on my knees on the green.
'I am lost, I am lost, ' I cried into the night
Then I heard her voice, dim, by a tree
And woke to her stroking my face and my brow
As I cried… She was waiting for me!
9 March 2008
poem by David Lewis Paget
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Down This Road
(Michael Dulaney/Michael Lunn)
Down this road there's an old brick house
My mama cried the day that I moved out
And my first summer job was pumpin' gas and fixin' flats
But at Henry Walker's Texaco
Down this road, down this road
Down this road there's a maple tree
In a cotton field where Jenny first kissed me
And I can still remember the night she said good-bye
I stood there like a fool and watched her go
Down this road, down this road
And it goes on forever
And it goes by too fast
It'll take you anywhere you want to go
And every memory will bring you back
Down this road there's a small white church
Daddy lived his life by the preacher's word
He raised me right, I could always feel his love
Even when the angels called him home
Down this road
And it goes on forever
And it goes by too fast
It'll take you anywhere you want to go
And every memory will bring you back
Down this road
Down this road
Down this road
song performed by by Alabama
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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of Phobias
Are you that person whom when you walk,
to whom you talk and coming I am, independently?
Whereof the road where you are dark walking
and talking you passing by me in the park.
You by your thoughts then start changing.
And as for me, me for as when, you.
When you have occasion and strange is that,
what you feel a little slower you walk it is dark.
Worry naught of fear, fear of the darkness,
when as for you it is fear, fear of me, fear of the darkness.
Whether the night brings you fear of the darkness,
and fear of the darkness I am coming to soon, I am there waiting.
Someones fear, fear of it fixating upon you.
I whom always it is, must posses.
Someone shakes one finger deep under the wall.
Move the moon to one side, which do you wish it possesses?
You by my deepest, up to the neck darkest phobia.
Yonder over there and your neck it is tearing off the skin.
Lines inbetween which are felt when you cry out and the tears.
Just last night when you felt what you saw.
And the footsteps you heard, it is what it is, and you never thought. Something from the rear and you walking it was heard.
And it is done again and again to the smile on your face.
And your face is right there and for who to see but me.
Because early it you does, to see it for the second time.
It is secured, firmly wrapped around and you think that it is difficult.
Are you troubled with your heart beats the heart underneeth you?
Your fear of your fear, of the shadow it plays in the darkness.
And in your cave and it dances in it comes in from the rear.
Of the eye it is felt suddenly, penatratingly quick much to quick.
To be felt.
Your fear of me of the darkness and this fear of the darkness and fear of the darkness being that of it, will it come to you soon for you.
Someones, fear of fixing and as for me, whom it always it possesses.
Where someone walked out the road,
and to I, of that of whom you it posses and your always afraid.
Not of me, it's your darness you fear, open your eyes and it sees.
poem by Is It Poetry
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Roofs
(For Amelia Josephine Burr)
The road is wide and the stars are out
and the breath of the night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet.
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,
And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a human dwelling place.
I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to roam
All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home:
The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day
Will wander only until he finds another place to stay.
A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead;
Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.
He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high,
But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away the sky.
If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along.
And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,
Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes.
They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,
And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.
It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,
But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.
poem by Joyce Kilmer
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It's A Long Road
Well the road I see before me
Threatens pain at every bend, yeah
Well my needs are mine, I understand
And hope to calling friends
Well, good company, it may comfort me
But I don't want love to distract my heart from the way
Now your love it gave me sorrow
And a broken heart to mend, yeah
So I took me to this lonely road
My sweet hopes, to defend
Oh and why pretend, I won't look back
Even though the love of a happy man waits before
Well, the winter wind blows chilly
And the road is dark and gray
So take pity on a wanderer should you pass me on the way
Oh, I'm left alone without a home
Makes a man ask why he travels on
When hope is gone
It's a long road
It's a long road
It's a long road
It's a long road
Submitted by Michael Hack
song performed by by Supertramp
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hidden Jewels In The Ashes Skinless As Light
Hidden jewels in the ashes skinless as light.
It's a big place when you only see it through your eyes,
but see it through your heart, and even
your deepest tears are a wound shy
of the bell of silence that overturns the fountainmouths
of even the most efflorescent of the arts
so many paint on their windows so as not to see it.
It's crucial to be a sincere sword in any holy war,
but how rare it is to meet anyone with
the courage of their clarity to peer beyond that
and look up at the stars from a dark, open field
and see, despite the way the light shatters like chandeliers,
we're not living in a world of broken mirrors.
You can look into the eyes of the dragon
that weeps like rain. You can feel compassion
for flying reptiles and then you can kneel
at the end of the futon in front of the beaming window
and add your own ray of light as if your were humanizing
prismatic power mandalas through an antique kaleidoscope
by adding your eyes to the sand painting the next moment
is going to be erased at the zenith of fulfilment
and all the apple bloom like the circus tents
of the enlightened clouds and clowns,
are going to blow away, as if time weren't
just the younger sister of space, but a kind
of sad, lyrical wind as well that keeps
shedding our lifemasks like the petals
of the wild roses and the wings of the flying ants,
as autumn comes looking for the maple keys
that could unburden your heart and sweeten your sleep
like a windfall of the fruits of life that replace it all
with a better return journey than when you went into exile.
Mentored by suffering the improvised myths of our origin,
keeping our third eye on the twists and turns
of the washboard road we're driving home on,
not to be surprised about what's around the next bend
or the rock like a hidden chip on a soft shoulder
waiting to be knocked off, wondering if life
has just provided you the occasion
to love again as inexhaustibly as you once did,
as if someone's just uncovered you like a hidden housewell
or a buried telescope in a graveyard of famous constellations
with an afterlife of born again stars, you turn a corner,
bemused to be alive, as if you'd forgotten the feeling,
and your truly surprised, startled even, when you look to your left
that there's a field, half-returned to the bush, beyond a cedar rail fence
patched by lichens that look like the seas of the moon
eclipsing their wounds as if time really could heal all things,
and the last of the common mullein were flowering
out of an urgent dream just before dusk, and the light,
I swear the light was making making everything
glow like effulgent honey, as the leaves on the trees
were on the verge of burning, and the goldenrod
and the purple loosestrife stood out like complementary colours,
mutually enhancing hot spots on the wheel of birth and death,
and the star clusters of New England asters
and blue chicory blooming by the side of the road
like floral prototypes of the new starmaps as the night comes on,
each as original as the last, and you're mystically entranced
even in passage, of how reality, even in the midst
of its dissolution, can sometimes take your breath away
with the beauty that's immanent within us all revealed
spontaneously like a stranger at the open gate
swinging on its hinges of hello and good-bye
that I took as a sign this was always the right path to be on
after all these light years of driving through the dark on my own.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Enraptured By The All-Inclusive Mystic Specificity
Enraptured by the all-inclusive mystic specificity
of terrestrial things.
Appalled by the inhumanity of the way
humans can so easily inflict
what they fear the most
upon each other
as if there were some strange alien duty
in their reptilian cruelty,
some small nugget of the meteor that struck the earth
back in the late Triassic
that we've retained like an R-complex
savagely jealous of the rest of the brain.
I can get along without matter
as does most of the universe
and the eastern dawns of Asia do
but mind and form are a different issue.
When water thinks deeply
about what it might be
it's always a sea
with a small stream of consciousness running into it like me.
It's a way of picturing the inconceivable for a moment
when time wants to be seen
walking in a world of forms
it effaces like the meaning of dreams.
A provisional scaffolding of smoke
to climb up on and paint
the miraculous birth of water
before it became a saint.
I've sat around the old fires
of autumn ghosts on a distant hillside
and listened to the stories they tell
of how wild and free words were
to name things in the garden as they liked
until God discovered his voice.
And flowers and stars
were no longer mystic gestures
of existential glee
that expressed themselves spontaneously
as if the gene-pool of the fireflies
were always dreaming up
new myths to explain to the constellations
how they came to arise
over the event horizons
of our cosmic windowsills
after so many years of longing,
but a choice they're compelled to make
atom by atom
star by star
as if they were trying to say
something as enduring and meaningful
as an aqueduct flatlining
like a waterclock without a pulse to speak of.
The sun doesn't tell the wildflowers where to grow.
You can't dispel the mystery of being here at all
with the things you think you know.
Let go.
Let go.
Let go.
There's no freedom in a fist.
There's no captive in an open hand.
There's no way to get a grasp on space
without giving it your face.
You can look at life as if it were all absurd.
Credo ergo absurdum.
I believe because it's absurd
according to St. Jerome.
Or you can venture further from home than that
and explore life as if there were nothing to understand
because you already do
or you wouldn't be you
trying to give the word
to every new creation
as if the last thing you wrote
like hieroglyphics in quicksand
kept returning to where it began
like the pearls of wisdom
that come of all these
cosmic grains of the universe
that agitate the tongue of the absurd
into saying something crazy to the moon
she's never heard before.
All things are modes of expression
but the muse doesn't open her door
to the pimps of inspiration
who think she's a whore.
And it's a death worse than neglect
to turn your calling into a project
and build a palace of ice in the desert
to house your accomplishments
like snowflakes in a furnace.
Say what you must say
as if the words weren't your own
but the natural eloquence of the lifestream
saying the moonlight in passing.
Like a man on a long dark road
in an unknown country
who talks to himself
as if he weren't alone with everything
like a foreign language
that asks him his name
and he says it in a way
it can't forget
that water is wave
fire is flame
air is wind
earth is dirt
body is flesh
mind is form
and the seven sisters of the Pleiades
going down over the rooftops
of the abandoned farm
and the roses that have kept on growing
and the hills that have learned
to keep things to themselves
and the gate that hangs by one hinge
like last year
now there's nothing
to keep in or out
are all radically rooted
in what must disappear
in the now and here
of the mysterium tremendum
in order to become
you and I and us and them
looking for signs
of where we come from
to ratify our intellectual pursuits
though our original home
is the same long road
we've been walking for years
that still clings like starmud to our boots
that keep tracking us
like homeless silver thresholds
and the Milky Ways of garden snails
into the house of life.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Bright Side Of The Road
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
Well be lovers once again on the
Bright side of the road
Little darlin, come with me
Wont you help me share my load
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
Into this life were born
Baby sometimes we dont know why
And time seems to go by so fast
In the twinkling of an eye
Lets enjoy it while we can
Wont you help me sing my song
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
Well be lovers once again
On the bright side of the road
Well be lovers once again on the bright side of the road
song performed by by Van Morrison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Heart Beating In Time
Each day without fail
the road would visit the house
(it was the only house the road knew)
and the house too
would look forward to
the road’s visit.
Over the years they became
good friends.
Then one day the house died
from lack of people
and was torn down
until it was only
memory and rubble.
The road continued to visit it
but could only stare into empty space
at the place where the house
had been.
The road was lonely.
At night it talked to
the landscape and the stars
but life was never the same
again.
One day the road just up and died
from lack of use.
Now only the dream
of a memory exists
and the landscape and stars
talk to themselves
and try to remember
what it is...they have
forgot.
poem by Dónall Dempsey
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Heartbreak Road
I’m walking down this road called heartbreak,
which leads to a place called despair.
It’s a long and lonely road that I’m travelling
and I’ll find no comfort there.
It’s not a road I ever thought I’d be taking
and it’s not the way I’d choose to go,
but my failure to hold onto my loved one
has left me with self pity and sorrow.
This road has deep holes filled with sadness,
when I stumble, tears form in my eyes.
With loneliness and misery I walk in puddles
from the raindrops from the weeping skies.
My broken dreams and schemes accompany me
even though they weigh heavy on my mind.
Memories, happy and sad hinder my progress,
which makes new dawns so hard to find.
My heart has been emptied and shattered,
and I’ve only heartbreak road to walk.
It’s an endless one-way road of darkness
to which my troubled mind is fraught.
poem by Orlando Belo
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Seven Bridges Road
There are stars in the Southern sky
Southward as you go
There is moonlight and moss in the trees
Down the Seven Bridges Road
I have loved you like a baby
Like some lonesome child
I have loved you in a tame way
And I have loved you wild
Sometimes there is a part of me
Has to turn from here and go
Running like a child from these warm stars
Down the Seven Bridges Road
There are stars in the Southern sky
And if ever you decide you should go
There is a taste of time sweet as honey
Down the Seven Bridges Road
There are stars in the Southern sky
Southward as you go
There is moonlight and moss in the trees
Down the Seven Bridges Road
Down the Seven Bridges Road
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Quarter Moon In Sagittarius At the Autumn Equinox
Quarter moon in Sagittarius at the autumn equinox.
The ecliptic intersects the celestial equator
at the equinoctial colure. Sagitta. Arrow in Latin.
Toxos. In classical Greek. Attic dialect. As in
toxin. Or toxologist. Archaic word for archer.
I'm a little teapot short and stout. Here
is my handle. Here is my spout. Tip me over
and pour me out. Zen is the taste of tea.
And maybe those aren't stars, but flower arrangements
at a Chanoyu ceremony with raku tea bowls,
where even the cracks where the stars leaked out
are cherished like scars on the moon. The porous face
of someone pitted by smallpox. One stone
in a sand garden of stars raked into wavelengths.
If Zen is the taste of tea, then Islam must be
the flavour of coffee. The Christians have
their blood and wine. And the Jews drink deep
of the fountainmouths of their tears by the rivers of Babylon.
Suspiciously symmetrical thought for a heretic like me,
More that of an engineer than a seer watching stars.
A dog barks at sly shadows farms and forms away.
The leaves are brittle and tense. They scratch cold runes
like glacial striations on the wind in passing.
All the waterlilies have candled like parachutes.
The willows are using a lot more hairspray than they used to
and their supple tresses now sway like arthritic rivers
that stiffen up in the damp weather. But soon
you'll see the stars shining through the veils
of their branches, and the pathos of their ruined beauty
will be renewed by the mystery of a high priestess
that taught Medusa how to dance gracefully
like Algol in the hand of Perseus, in a radiant ballet
of whips and wavelengths. The river seems
more hermetically aloof, withdrawn, removed
from itself as if some deep insight preoccupied it
and even the longing of the nightbird's lyrics
seem coarsened by hunger in the predatory air.
As for me and my house, I come here alone
where I can turn a hovel of solitude into a palace
of water and wonder and sit until the silence
grows inhuman, and nothing of me remains
but the impersonality of the universe
that's traded its feathers in for sequins and scales again.
Warm ostrich boas of pampas grass
for sleeker gowns of snakeskin.
Revelation of the burlesque for something
more alluring and dangerous. And the darkness
a northern siren calling me to the rocks like a muse
to the occult grammar of her body language.
I am Hermes Trismegistus the Thrice-Blessed.
I am Thoth who brought the alphabet.
Who only a moment ago as old as the universe
was wholly unmanifest. A fountain asleep in its watershed.
A bird with its head under its wing. Not anything.
Not one. Not two. A wide-eyed, gaping, open-mouthed
zero of an awareness that had burned my identity away
by reaching out to the stars like a thief
torching his fingerprints off like like tiny labyrinths
with search warrants effaced like moths and maple leaves in a candle.
I was out of here like the constellation of the swan
going down over the eyelashes of the western treeline.
After defaulting to the sensuality of the dark all night
who wants to wake up beside the dawn, wincing in the light?
I was out of here like Auriga, the Charioteer.
I always reveled more in the role of guide to the dead
and messenger of the mystery and its eloquence,
master of the occult visionary sciences expressing themselves
as a physics of metaphors, not numbers, the intuitive logic
of synchronized happenings in a charged particle field,
not syntactically linear paradigms that strive fruitlessly
to make things perfectly clear, as if they'd rinsed
all the nectar of life out of them and the light that was left
were the direct result and residue of spiritual erosion.
The sun can boast of the number of sunflowers
it's got for followers all it wants.
When she appears, a thousand mirrors open
like the third eyes of observatories capstoned
on cold, lonely mountain tops with only one road down or up
and all the reflecting telescopes on clock drives turn their heads her way,
affixed to the mysterious trajectory of a new moon rising in the north
in the thirteenth house of a zodiac that baffles the starmaps
with a darkness that's brighter than any of their high hopes.
poem by Patrick White
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The Adventure Of A Timid Man
The Adventure of a Timid Man.
The narrow dirt road I followed today was nothing more than a bumpy track,
on both sides ugly trees and thorny, evergreen bushes I was trapped in
the wilderness of enraged nature. Sun and deep shadows, god knows what
lurked in them. Prickly silence, the noise of the scooter unnerved me,
switched off the clamour; opaque calm. As a child when we played cowboys
and Indians I was forever the redskin; trust me to side with losers.
Tractor tracks which meant the road was leading somewhere. I heard grunts
in the bushes maybe it was a boar and if it charged I had no defense, not even
a folding knife. Whistled a Dixie tune, spoke loudly, the echo of my fear ran
up and down the road. I drove on ignoring the imps that grabbed at my shirt
trying to hold me back. And there I saw it the asphalted main road, now I had
nothing to fear but cars and crazy drivers.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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A Camel's Dream
When he deserted me
I deserted water
When I deserted the water,
it lost its shine crying.
Trees were growing dark in their places
in the woods; that evening he came to take me
with him clearing the thick glow of the sunset hues
then came he to make a path a kind of road
At the end of the road
I became the back he can ride
deserting many things I so long have to long for
while I look at the village
through those green trees
with my deep eyes
I saw him waiving at me
to bid me goodbye.
I was already entering the desert
and a portion of his road became the whole
the entire road for me.
For the borders of the nation he ruled
were the horizons of the four directions,
the sand hills I walk on with him on my back
were always the initial spot I had departed.
Numerous mornings and evenings met
on the rooftops of the sandhills where the
next morning and the sun crossed.
Originally what he wanted from me
was some amount of water he could use,
always in the shape of the water
I obeyed him.
At the same speed as the sunlight speedy
falls on the ground, stars fell.
With the power of the star-falls
the water soaked itself down to the ground
and then to
the roots of the sands.
Whenever his forehead shined
with full of heavenly words
and thirstied,
I dug up the roots of the sands
where the water gathers and kept it
in my body.
When the sun rose,
everything except the sands were
under the power of the sun;
when the wind blew,
everything along with the sands were
under the windy flows.
There I took out the water from my body
and washed his dry face.
When he loved me
I had a large amount of waters.
When he was communicating with someone
in heavens,
I listened to the music the sands were making.
Many trees were there with no shadows,
and the worlds I look through those trees were
always moving forward.
Through those trees the wind blew.
The thicket-bushes were weeping
and there came about some animals
who loved the bushes, and the one
who rides on my back
lets things to be ruled ruled
lets things to die dead.
He stands the trees and the animals
that resemble each other on their spots
then he passes by.
In the mean time he took out the water
from my body numerous times
and drank it to cleanse his body.
His songs made the sand hills
create echoes to echo
to ring through the regions afar.
When he finally changed the desert into the sea,
at its open entrance
I began to grow old all alone.
Though I wanted to serve him on the sea
he walked away from me
onto the sea.
Many years have gone by
and come along and
for me not to serve him on the sea
meant to go back to the desert, and
the sea had turned into the desert back again.
At its entrance to the sea,
I could not become a small boat for him.
All day long, I was lonely;
all night long, lonesome for days.
When he left me, I deserted the water,
I deserted again the act of deserting
and by deserting it, I no longer was left
to exist.
poem by by unknown author (22 June 2003), translated by Sangnam Nam
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Down By The Side Of The Road
Her father was a failure
Her mother was a comfort
To a doctor and lawyer and indian chief.
The shirt ran out of buttons
He lost all his marbles at a baseball game
And they went on relief.
The bank took away their diplomas
They locked them up inside of the chest
And she moved away to oklahoma
And got a tattoo on the side of her breast
God-damn, my socks are still hard
From lying on the sofa on the night she was over in my backyard
Yeah, we was shooting the breeze out amongst the trees
When a shot rang low
And left her standing down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
Father have mercy, whoo whoo
Get her a nurse please
Shes almost alone
I saw her hand reaching out for the telephone
We rather see her locked up inside a home
Than see her standing down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
Headlights flashing on her skirt in the wind.
Yonder comes a truck it drove by two men.
Shotgun man leaned out and said do you want to take a ride?
Out in the pale moonlight light. light light lie lie lie lie
Too long in the hot sun
She couldve be miss wisconsin a long time ago
Spent to much time inside of the early show
Wed bought her a ticket but she didnt want to go
She was standing down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
Headlights flashing, caught a skirt in the wind.
Yonder comes a truck it drove by two men.
Shotgun man leaned out and said do you want to take a ride?
Out in through the pale moonlight
Her father was a failure
Her mother was a comfort
To a doctor and lawyer and indian chief.
The shirt made out of buttons
He lost all his marbles at a baseball game
And they went on relief.
The bank took away their diplomas
They locked them up inside of the chest
And she moved away to oklahoma
And got a tattoo on the side of her breast
God-damn, my thoughts are still hard.
From lying on the sofa on the night she was overi n my backyard
Yeah, we was shooting the breeze out amongst the trees
When a shot rang low
And left her standing down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
Down by the side of the road
song performed by by John Prine
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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O Pulchritudo
O Saint whose thousand shrines our feet have trod
And our eyes loved thy lamp's eternal beam,
Dim earthly radiance of the Unknown God,
Hope of the darkness, light of them that dream,
Far off, far off and faint, O glimmer on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.
O Word whose meaning every sense hath sought,
Voice of the teeming field and grassy mound,
Deep-whispering fountain of the wells of thought,
Will of the wind and soul of all sweet sound,
Far off, far off and faint, O murmur on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.
poem by Sir Henry Newbolt
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