Proms Poetry Competition (and your favourite musical poetry)

[eighthobstruction]

Could end up like the closing scene of Thelema and Louise........geddit....??

[Serial_Apologist]

Never saw it. Two plus two always comes to five for me. Anyway, anything with Brad Pitt is off-topic with me.

[Anna]

Oh, I don't expect the poster has ever heard of The Great Beast, more likely just googled 'poems about the seasons' and cut and pasted whatever came up.

Which is always why I am a little wary of people posting yards of poetry in a gushing manner - there is no knowing whether they actually have read them or whether Mr. Google has suggested them is there?

[eighthobstruction]

Well, I hope someone gets it !!.... [my joke, that is]

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I hope someone gets it !!....

Can't wait to find out - a real cliff-hanger this, isn't it!

[doversoul1]

Well, I hope someone gets it !!.... [my joke, that is]

Is this something to do with it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Thelema

Anna: I’ve just consulted Mr Google. Got quite lost after a few lines.

[eighthobstruction]

Similar....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema

[Serial_Apologist]

In Crowley's case all this esoteric nonsense was just an excuse for having his end away with as many women he assumed his male right to, regardless of (the) consequences. It is held among some of those who knew or worked with the British jazz/rock figure Graham Bond, who committed suicide by jumping in front of a tube train, that he believed himself to be one of Crowley's illegitimate children, being born in Basildon, where one understands Crowley domiciled around the time, and that this was a major contributer to his descent into occultism and drug addiction, feeling it in his "karma". Well done doversoul and eighthobstruction for making the connections.

[cavatina]

As a contrast to all the excitement of the concert this evening, here are two restful poems full of quiet intensity...strange how they seem to flow beautifully together, despite being written centuries apart. Enjoy!

MOON, FLOWERS, MAN
Su Tung P'o

I raise my cup and invite
The moon to come down from the
Sky. I hope she will accept
Me. I raise my cup and ask
The branches, heavy with flowers,
To drink with me. I wish them
Long life and promise never
To pick them. In company
With the moon and the flowers,
I get drunk, and none of us
Ever worries about good
Or bad. How many people
Can comprehend our joy? I
Have wine and moon and flowers.


SONNET XVII
Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

[cavatina]

Is anyone else in the mood for a little more overheated Symbolist and Decadent poetry? Well, after all that glorious music tonight, I certainly am.


MOONDRUNK
Otto Erich Hartleben

The wine we drink through the eyes
The moon pours down at night in waves,
And a flood tide overflows
The silent horizon.

Longings beyond number, gruesome sweet frissons,
Swim through the flood.
The wine we drink through the eyes
The moon pours down at night in waves.

The poet, slave to devotion,
Drunk on the sacred liquor,
Enraptured, turns his face to Heaven
And staggering sucks and slurps
The wine we drink through the eyes.


YOU LIKE A FLAME
Stefan George

You like a flame, unflawed and slender,
You flower sprung from crown and spear,
You like the morning, light and tender,
You like a spring, withdrawn and clear.

Companion me in sunny meadows,
Encompass me in evening haze,
And where I go, you shine through shadows,
You cool of wind, you breath of blaze.

You are my thought and my desire,
The air I breathe with you is blent,
From every draught I drink your fire,
And you I kiss in every scent.

You like the morning, light and tender,
You flower sprung from crown and spear,
You like a flame, unflawed and slender,
You like a spring, withdrawn and clear.


NIGHT
Renée Vivien

The light, in throes of agony, dies at your knee,
Come, o you whose guarded face, so lovely to see,
Carries dejection from years heavy and jaded:
Come, with your deadly welts turning pale, in distress,
With no other scent in the long folds of your robe
Than the breath of flowers which have long since faded.

Come, with your unrouged lips that ignite my desires,
Without rings, - neither rubies, opals, nor sapphires
Dishonoring your fingers, milky as the moon, -
And from your eyes put mirrored reflections to flight
For it is here: the simple, chaste hour of the night
When hues can oppress, and luxury importune.

Yield up all your chagrin to eternal delight,
Exhale in a profound cry your suffering blight,
All those events of the past, so cruel and senseless,
Leave them to death, to the distance and to silence.
In the dream which to strife gives such sweet condolence;
To the ancient fever of speech: forgetfulness.

I will kiss your hands and your divine naked feet;
Our hearts will cry out for the neglect that they meet,
Will decry the vile words and base gestures anew...
These flights will linger in peaceful security
You will join your hands in their mystic purity,
And, in the soul-filled shadows, I will adore you.

[cavatina]

Good evening, all! Walking home tonight in the cool breeze, something in the air turned my thoughts toward classical Chinese poetry...here are a few beautifully gentle and evocative poems from Ouyang Xiu, an 11th-century statesman and Renaissance man...hope you like them. Enjoy!

THE RAIN HAS PASSED
Ouyang Xiu

Deep in spring, the rain's passed- West Lake is good.
A hundred grasses vie in beauty,
Confusion of butterflies, clamour of bees,
The clear day hurries the blossom to burst forth in the warmth.

Oars in lilies, a painted barge moving without haste.
I think I see a band of sprites-
Light reflected in the ripples,
The high wind carries music over the broad water.


WHO CAN EXPLAIN WHY WE LOVE IT
Ouyang Xiu

Who can explain why we love it- West Lake is good.
The beautiful scene is without time,
Flying canopies chase each other,
Greedy to be among the flowers, drunk, with a jade cup.

Who can know I'm idle here, leaning on the rail.
Fragrant grass in slanting rays,
Fine mist on distant water,
One white egret flying from the Immortal Isle.


AFTER THE LOTUS FLOWERS HAVE OPENED
Ouyang Xiu

After the lotus flowers have opened- West Lake is good.
Come for a while and bring some wine,
There's no need for flags and pennants,
Before and behind, red curtains and green canopies follow.

The painted boat is punted in to where the flowers are thick.
Fragrance floats round golden cups,
Mist and rain are so, so fine,
In a snatch of pipes and song I drunkenly return.


ON THE PURE BRIGHTNESS FESTIVAL
Ouyang Xiu

On the Pure Brightness festival- West Lake is good.
Everywhere flowers abound,
Why does anyone need to speak?
Green willows and red wheels of decorated carriages passing.

As sun sets the visitors start to move off together.
Drunk or sober, making a noise,
The road bends, the dyke slants,
All the way to the city gate, everything is flowers.


HEAVEN'S ASPECT
Ouyang Xiu

Heaven's aspect, the water's colour- West Lake is good.
Creatures in the clouds all fresh,
Gulls and egrets idly sleep,
I follow my habit as of old, listen to pipes and strings.

The wind is clear, the moon is white, the night is almost perfect.
One piece of beautiful land,
Who would crave a steed or phoenix?
One man on his boat is just like an immortal.

[cavatina]

A few more highly evocative Symbolist and Decadent poems to keep you warm this evening:

VIRGIN YOUTH
D.H. Lawrence

Now and again
All my body springs alive,
And the life that is polarised in my eyes,
That quivers between my eyes and mouth,
Flies like a wild thing across my body,
Leaving my eyes half empty, and clamorous,
Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,
Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts
Into urgent, passionate waves,
And my soft, slumbering belly
Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,
Gathers itself fiercely together;
And my docile, fluent arms
Knotting themselves with wild strength
To clasp what they have never clasped.
Then I tremble, and go trembling
Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,
Till it has spent itself,
And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,
Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,
Back from my beautiful, lonely body
Tired and unsatisfied.


from AT NIGHT
Francis Saltus

Scarce a sigh
Beats the dead hours out; scarce a melody
Of measured pulses quickened with the blood
Of that desire which pours its deadly flood
Through soul and shaken body; scarce a thought
But sense through spirit most divinely wrought
To perfect feeling; only through the lips
Electric ardour kindles, flashes, slips
Through all the circle to her lips again
And thence, unwavering, flies to mine, to drain
All pleasure in one draught.

No whispered sigh,
No change of breast, love's posture perfectly
Once gained, we change no more. The fever grows
Hotter or cooler, as the night wind blows
Fresh gusts of passion on the outer gate.

But we, in waves of frenzy, concentrate
Our thirsty mouths on that hot drinking cup
Whence we may never suck the nectar up
Too often or too hard; fresh fire invades
Our furious veins, and the unquiet shades
Of night make noises in the darkened room.

Yet, did I raise my head, throughout the gloom
I might behold thine eyes as red as fire,
A tigress maddened with supreme desire.
White arms that clasp me, fervent breast that glides
An eager snake, about my breast and sides,
And white teeth keen to bite, red tongue that tires,
And lips ensanguine with unfed desires,
Hot breath and hands, dishevelled hair and head,
Thy fevered mouth like snakes' mouths crimson red,
A very beast of prey; and I like thee,
Fiery, unweary, as thou art of me.


LOVE AND SLEEP
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said--
I wist not what, saving one word--Delight.

And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to my eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.


.

[cavatina]

Well, today they announced the poetry competition winners in the pre-Prom talk...they aren't online yet, but I'll be glad to get them up for you as soon as possible. Meanwhile, here are a few more for you that match my mood this evening:


THE DIVANI SHAMSI TABRIZ, XIII
Rumi

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.
Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.


AT THE PIANO
Baron Emanuel Von Bodman

Thy hands still lie on the piano keys.
Thy gaze a distance nigh before thee sweeps,
And still, as though the walls lay open, sees
Stars shimmering over dark abysmal deeps.

Thou hear'st me not as I behind thee glide.
Still drink thy ears the song that vanished all.
I bend and let a soft kiss fall
On thy soft hair that shivering shrinks aside.

Thou leanest back thy hair upon my kiss,
Once more rings out the starry bright abyss,
And all the joy and sorrow that we feel
Thy hands to both of us reveal.


SECOND APRIL
Edna St Vincent Millay

Into the golden vessel of great song
Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast
Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;
Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue
Of all the world: the churning blood, the long
shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed
Sharply together upon the escaping guest,
The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.

Longing alone is singer to the lute;
Let still on nettles in the open sigh
The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute
As any man, and love be far and high,
That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit
Found on the ground by every passer-by.


THE SLEEPING ONE
Paul Valery

What secrets in my heart burns my young friend,
Soul by the soft mask inhaling a flower?
of what vain foods his naïve heat
makes this radiance of a woman sleeping?

Blow, dreams, silence, invincible lull,
You triumph, O more powerful peace than a tear,
When of this full sleep the deep wave and the extent
Conspire on the breast of such an enemy.

Sleeping, gilded heap of shadows and of abandonments,
Your fearsome rest is loaded with such gifts,

O doe with long languor with a cluster,
What despite the soul leaves, occupied to the hells,
Your form to the pure stomach that a fluid arm drapes,
Watches; your form watches, and my eyes are opened.


.

[cavatina]

Tonight, I thought I'd share a few delicately lyrical poems of Joseph von Eichendorff, one of the greatest German Romantic poets of all...


NIGHT

I wander through the quiet night;
the moon floats so secretly and gently,
often out from a dark cover of clouds.
And here and there in the valley
a nightingale awakens
but then all is gray and still again.

O wonderful night song
from distant parts - the rushing of a stream
and the soft shuddering in the dark trees
confuse my thoughts.
My clamorous singing here
is only like a cry from my dreams.
My singing is a cry,
only a cry from my dreams.


EVENING

When men's loud joys fall silent,
The earth rustles as if in dreams,
Wondrously, with all its trees,
What the heart has hardly known:
Times long past, gentle griefs;
And there sweep soft shudders
Like lightning through the breast.


WHEN THE SUN SHONE

When the sun shone amicably,
As in the midday, lukewarm and blue,
I would take my mandolin,
And would cross the glorious meadow.

At night, my beloved slowly awakened,
and listened at the window,
she clandestinely wished to me, to her,
and to us, a good night.


from BEAUTIFUL LAND

The treetops rustle and shiver
as if at this hour
about the half-sunken walls
the old gods are making their rounds.

Here, behind the myrtle trees,
in secretly darkening splendor,
what do you say so murmuringly, as if in a dream,
to me, fantastic night?


NIGHT OF THE MOON

It was as though the sky
had silently kissed the earth,
so that it now had to dream of sky
in shimmers of flowers.

The air went through the fields,
the corn-ears leaned heavy down
the woods swished softly—
so clear with stars was the night

And my soul stretched
its wings out wide,
flew through the silent lands
as though it were flying home.

[cavatina]

Good evening, all! Still no sign of the poetry competition winners on the Proms website...I'll try to hunt them down for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I hope you like these...I certainly do.


SIGH
Stéphane Mallarmé

Towards your brow my soul oh gentle sister,
where there dreams
An autumn strewn with ruddy streaks
And towards the wandering sky of your
angelic eye
Climbs upward, as in a melancholy garden,
Faithful, a white spray of water sighing
towards the sky!
Towards a sky softened by pure and
pale October
That reflects its infinite languor in great
formal pools
And deigns, on the stagnant water where the
tawny agony
Of the leaves wanders with the wind and hollows
out a frigid furrow,
To be drawn away by the tall beam of the
yellow sun.


AUTUMNAL
Ernest Dawson

Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer’s loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.

Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time’s deceit.

Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.


I CRAVE YOUR MOUTH...
Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


COME TO THE PARK THEY SAY IS DEAD
Stefan George

Come to the park they say is dead, and view
The shimmer of the smiling shores beyond,
The stainless clouds with unexpected blue
Diffuse a light on motley path and pond.
The tender grey, the burning yellow seize
Of birch and boxwood, mellow is the breeze.
Not wholly do the tardy roses wane,
So kiss and gather them and wreathe the chain.

The purple on the twists of wilding vine,
The last of asters you shall not forget,
And what of living verdure lingers yet,
Around the autumn vision lightly twine.


from IN EXCELSIS
Amy Lowell

You -- you --
Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;
Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;
Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.

The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from a rising sun;
It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.

As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.
Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,
Your words are bees about a pear-tree,
Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples.
I drink your lips,
I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.
My mouth is open,
As a new jar I am empty and open.
Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,
Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.


A HARMONY
Oscar Wilde

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.