En.Citatepedia^®.ro

He Did Not Become an Immortal

HE DID NOT BECOME AN IMMORTAL

He did not become great
He did not understand the universe to the end
He did not even make a small work
A few deeply needed
He did not succeed
He lived a life
For a dream he did not realize
And now in his old age
Poor and quiet
He wonders
What his failure will mean
For his own children
And whether he will go to the end
A burden
And nothing else.

He is an old man
Writing another poem
An old man who has written
So many unread poems

What can he do but write another?
How much will he suffer
Before he gets out of it all?

poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem I Am Writing Now

The poem I am writing now
does not know if it will be finished
it does not even know if it will be a poem -
it is slowly appearing line by line
and making its own meaning on the page-

Is it worth anything?
will anyone care?
I don't know -

The poem I am writing now
is just these lines
and these lines like all lines
are only small words
in a vast universe
that has long lived
and will probably longer live
without them.

Why then write these words now?

The poem I am writing now is saying,
'I am here now'.

But why should this mean anything to anyone else?

The poem I have written here
is not the poem I would have posted here
It is only the poem I am finishing now
a poem without great love or belief in itself.

The poem I am writing now
is written.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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All I Can Do Now Is Write Another Poem

All I can do now is write another poem-

The poems are small,
And do not require the long hours and long years
Of the books-

Like the world as a whole
I seem to have a shorter attention span
And less patience-

A poem can be written and given a name
In minutes not years-

Though some would say a great poem
Takes the travail of years of waiting
And years of work-

But I did not say
‘All I can do now is write another great poem'
Perhaps I have in all the years of the nights never written one-

I can write the poems I write
My kinds of poems
In a fairly short time-

All I can do now
Is write another of my kind of poems-

Whether they be worth anything,
Or not.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Are Days No Poem Can Be Written

THERE ARE DAYS NO POEM CAN BE WRITTEN

There are days no poem can be written
Grief and worry frighten the poem away
Yet the poem lives hidden
For our darkest moments our loneliest fears
Too need their poetry.

Poetry is a way of saying all we need to say
It is our deepest feeling most deeply expressed
It is all we are
The whole of our being
In words.

When a poet dies
Words die
When I will die
All I am will no longer be able to write
One more poem.

How afraid I am in the night
And how dark in the early morning before I rise
But now that I am here
Writing this
A bit of hope begins in me
And I can dream that
When I walk out the door
a few minutes from now
A new day will begin.

How many days I have left
How many poems to write
I do not know.

It is not light yet
And the darkness is still here
But I will feel the morning again
This morning
Thank G-d
You have given me so many poems.
A few small words
help me believe
I truly am alive.
.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Perhaps My Poems Have Already Been Written

PERHAPS MY POEMS HAVE ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN

Perhaps my poems have already been written
Perhaps it is all now senseless repetition
Perhaps I should just stop
And go on if I can to some other form of writing
God gives us what we have
We strive to go beyond ourselves
We can to a certain point
But then we have done what we have done
We can live a million years more
And write a million more poems
But what we have to write
Is done
Perhaps my poems have already been written
And small and poor and awkward as they are
Less than the truest poetry
They are what I have and am
Good-bye myself
I cannot go home.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Don't Have A Dream Today

I DON’T HAVE A DREAM TODAY

I don’t have a dream today
Is a Poem a dream anymore?
One poem? ten poems?
Even a real poem?
Without a dream
The person can’t live
What is my dream now?
Where am I now?
So I write and write
As I have all my life
And it is so small a part
Of everything that is
Even in my own life-
I don’t have a dream today
And yet writing these lines
Somehow makes me begin to feel
A bit better.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Few Poems Are Remembered

FEW POEMS ARE REMEMBERED

Few poems are remembered -
Few poems are ever really known-
Few poems are chosen -
Few poems make us want to return to them again and again-

Out of thousands written every day
Perhaps one poem in a decade
Perhaps less.

This is not the poem.

One can write a lifetime
Without ever writing one such poem.

Most of us never write the poem
And most of us are not remembered either.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Poem Can Be Written Anywhere, Anytime

A poem can be written anywhere, anytime-
A poem can be written too early in the morning
While waiting in Talpiot for ‘Rami Levi Supermarket’ to open-
It can be written in one’s head in a frozen Army barracks in Beit El
Or in a small room on Rav Berlin St on an old Smith- Corona
In the first happy years of one’s marriage-
It can be written for years from Haganah St. in French Hill
In the family years and the lonely ones
It can be written walking by the sea in Tel Aviv
With small children in hand-
It can be written on the same shore years later when one’s life has been broken
By Love’s desertion-
It can be written in old age on Rehov Shahal in Givat Mordechai
As one takes joy from the birth of one’s first grandchild-

A poem can be written anywhere anytime-

I have been writing my poems in Israel
For more than half a lifetime-

May those too
Who come after me
Read and Write Poetry here.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem I Would Write Now-Can Be Written In Seconds

THE POEM I WOULD WRITE NOW/ CAN BE WRITTEN IN SECONDS

The poem I would write now
Can be written in seconds -
A small poem
Easy to remember
A poem which will give hope and happiness
To others-
Who also write poetry
And dream of their own poems
As I do of mine.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written

The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Small Time

small time, you call it small time
writing
is small time, there is no money
in writing, like a
politician, look at him, he does not
write, someone writes for him
and he gets the prize
the money
the pot
the jackpot
and look at you
you keep on writing
and writing
and writing

oh la la
poems, fit for a woman
her limited mind
her gullibility
her passion for words and words and words
her imagination

and look at you
poor man, poor, poor, poor
what you give
to this world, what are you giving to this world

it is not even a flower
just a poem for her, and you claim that you are winning her heart?

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Poem I Did Not Write Today

THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE TODAY

The poem I did not write today
Will never be written.
No one knows what it is
Or where it is
'How it can be? ' is another question
No one can answer.

The poem I did not write today
Never went away
It is always here with me and with you
It is the same simple poem
Written over and over again
In our everyday minds.

It is the poem of love of life
The poem of happiness
The poem of belief in God
And in the goodness in the world to come
It is the poem which believes too that poetry will help save the world.

It is the good poem
The happy poem
The poem I did not write today
Is the poem my life is writing now and always
And with you it says
‘What a miracle it is that we are here
reading and writing
and loving life as we do’.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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A poem for you...

I write a poem for you today,
to get a place in your heart for ever
A poem that could tell you my love for you
I write my poem with emotion and affection
for you to understand my deep thoughts for you
A poem to love and a poem to understand its soul
A poem to enjoy and a poem to understand its happiness
A poem to think and a poem to understand its way of life
A poem to learn and a poem to understand its content
A poem to sing and a poem to understand its melody
A poem to cry and a poem to understand its sorrow
There are poems I have written but this is specially for you
The poem could tell you how important you are for me
There are words comes out freely from my mind to write poem
but there are no words to find my love for you
Those words can not missed as I miss your love today
Let me have all those words put in to my heart and
say I love to write a love poem for you

Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka

Copyright ©2004 Ravi Sathasivam

poem by Ravi Sathasivam
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I Wrote My Last Romantic Love Poem A Long Time Ago

I wrote my last romantic love poem a long time ago-
Now I write quieter poems
Poems of the pleasure of the old-
A walk in the morning
A sudden turn of sunlight on a cold cold day
A small kindness I may do
Or someone may do for me
Poems of love for my family
And of sadness at the sickness of my friends
Quiet poems
That do not know the wildness of passion
The bitterness of love disappointed
The up and down motions
Of when she does and when she doesn’t
And all her yeses and nos-
I write quiet poems
And I live happily in them
And I sometimes think with sadness
Of the great passion there was once-
But I am old now
And happy and quiet in small things
Grandchildren, among the best of them.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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This Is A Poem Written To Escape Doing Something Else

THIS IS A POEM WRITTEN TO ESCAPE DOING SOMETHING ELSE

This is a poem written to escape doing something else
Perhaps in a way all my poems have been written to escape doing something else
Some lifetime work I never wanted to do?
Some hard business task?
Some duty of life I felt myself not up to yet?
Some meeting some personal confrontation?

But this poem
A small poem indeed
Is written because I fear the longer work I have to do
Will not be alright-

But then don't I also fear this poem too and all the poems
Will not be alright?

All my life I have been escaping into poetry-

Why in my old age how in my old age
Should I
Change this now?

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Soap

you wish i were true
to every word i wrote in my poems
like sadness
that i must be sad when my poems
talk about sadness

like separation and disgust and pain
that i must suffer
with the poems i write that i must have despair
and pain too
and disgust
for every word of disgust written in every word
in every line

how cruel of you
how cruel of truth
how can i justify my death when i speak only of death
and in the very poem
where i write the word
death

there is soap
there is this box of untruths in pandora and when i open it
they must spread and you may refuse to believe
me again

but it would be very cruel of you
to make these poems
all these poems be my life my only life
and lived
and day by day lived in accordance with the
mouths of these poems

empathy
is the word, it is like i am putting my feet in another person's
shoes

then i write, and i could have written about this word: happiness
joy, bliss
ecstasy, light, and amazing glory

i choose not to,
i think, i have too much of it, and i do not share it for now
there is no necessity
and i cannot really help

with so much loneliness and sadness out there
with them i stretch my hands to hold them and feel them
and they all become

myself. it is not soap then, and there are no bubbles in the skies
there is no child playing amazed by the bubbles that burst and by the
bubbles that

are so abundant.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I Will Have Written Only One

I WILL HAVE WRITTEN ONLY ONE

I wrote another poem today
The poem that I wrote yesterday
Tomorrow I will write a poem
Whose meaning will not be unknown.

Again and again I continue to write
The single poem of my only life
When all my poems and writing are done
I will have written only one.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Only Poem at the End of the Universe

The only poem at the end of the universe
That will be heard is God’s Poem.

Why then write and write
What will in the end be forever unheard?

We are here now
And we write poems now
Because writing poems
Is what we can do.

Beyond this
‘The lone and level sands stretch far away’.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Can A Poem Be Written

CAN A POEM BE WRITTEN

Can a Poem be written
In Anger Frustration Fear Disappointment?
Can it be written
In Failure?
Can a Poem be written
When no light shines
And the middle of the night is longer
Than life itself?

Can a Poem be written now
When old afraid sad angry foolish failure me
Cannot even dream?

poem by Shalom Freedman
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This Poem Is Not A Dream

THIS POEM IS NOT A DREAM

This poem is not a dream
It comes from where so many true poems come
From the other side of the mind
When it does not know peace -
From the waking desire
The hunger that is not satisfied
The lonely life and the lonely mind-
It comes from the search for love
And the love itself – the joy of love-
And from the memory of what we most deeply know when we are ourselves in love of another-
This poem is not a dream-
It comes from the waking world and the waking words-
The hard truths the bitter small things
The disappointments and rejections
The endless small humiliations which Time and Chance make of us all-
This poem comes from where we are most human
With the pain of those closest to us-
And our longing to save them and be loved forever by them-
The dream is not the poem
Life in its all its endless difficulties is the poem
And this poem too
Does not say half of all the hurt I have suffered in this one small day alone.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Proclamation

How many poems
must one write to be a poet?
None. An entire lifetime...
may be but a prostrate patterned poem.

How many poems must be
written to realize a great poet?
Only one. A single great
poem proclaims great poet.

poem by Terence George Craddock
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