Poetry menu: the new poetry blog is now reality!

Dear readers,

you must have been very loyal to still be checking my page after about ten years, and we have reached the number of comments that I required in order to be able to continue my work.

I am therefore extremely excited to present you with:

POETRY.MENU 

An advertisement-free, print-friendly, beauty-oriented website updated weekly with amazing poetry in english and from the world.

Soon I will setup an amateur version of the site where I will publish your poems for free.

Thank you for following me up to this point, and see you there!

 

Long life to the Poetry blog!

Hello everyone,

it’s amazing that after almost 8 years since I stopped writing on my poetry blog (this one) it keeps generating followers and traffic. I am thinking of starting again my publication of world poems (eventually including the works of you readers) but I want to make sure that YOU are still interested in it.

So please, leave me a comment on this post. Once we reach a number of -say- 25 comments, I’ll start publishing a selection of poems in the usual, simple way (text and associated / inspirational picture). To get it faster, use the share links under this post to invite your social friends!

Thank you for your support!

Aldo

Robert Lee Frost – Once By The Pacific

 

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last *Put out the Light* was spoken.

Emily Dickinson – A light exists in Spring

 

 

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human naturefeels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Emily Dickinson – Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ‘t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

Katherine Mansfield – Camomile Tea

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.

Judith Wright – The Old Prison

The rows of cells are unroofed,
a flute for the wind’s mouth,
who comes with a breath of ice
from the blue caves of the south.

O dark and fierce day:
the wind like an angry bee
hunts for the black honey
in the pits of the hollow sea.

Waves of shadow wash
the empty shell bone-bare,
and like a bone it sings
a bitter song of air.

Who built and laboured here?
The wind and the sea say
-Their cold nest is broken
and they are blown away-

They did not breed nor love,
each in his cell alone
cried as the wind now cries
through this flute of stone.

Leonard Okema – Acholi Land!

 

Acholiland oh acholiland,
The once happy mother of proud warriors,
To you we wail,
For redemption from the fangs of terror,
The terror that bleeds us white,
The terror that siphons your blood 
that runs in our veins,

Lambs without a shepherd we remain,
Driven away from you into the darkness,
Mama we yearn for an end to our misgivings,
Oh! Acholiland,

Do you hear us when we call out to you?
When our cries run our voices frail,
When wantons hunt us, your children down,
The harmony you taught us is no more,
Your children have learnt the little art of 
unleashing terror,

Unfortunately on your very siblings,
Pain is all we feel and grim is what we see,
Blood is what we pay for being your children,
Oh! Mother, spread your wings and redeem 
us, to rise and shine again.

Jorge Carrera Andrade – Nothing

In bookstores there are no books,
in books no words,
in words no essence:
there are only husks.

In museums and waiting rooms
are painted canvases and fetishes.
In the Academy there are only recordings
of the wildest dances.

In mouths there is only smoke,
in the eyes only distance.
There is a drum in each ear.
A Sahara yawns in the mind.

Nothing frees us from the desert.
Nothing saves us from the drum.
Painted books shed their pages,
becoming husks of Nothing.

Robert Lee Frost – The Rose Family

 

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But now the theory goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose–
But were always a rose.