OT: The Poetry Thread

[ti_boi]

Because poetry and bikes go so well together....Post your favorites here.... :beer:

[michael white]

can I list myself? or is that promoting?

[cadence90]

.
Canto XLV (With Usura) - Ezra Pound (http://reactor-core.org/usura.html).
.

[ti_boi]

can I list myself? or is that promoting?


You should..! I got the inspiration for this thread from spiderman's poem on the other (closed) thread....

Wow....listening to Pound read.......................................... :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

[BumbleBeeDave]

By Henry Charles Beeching
1859-1919

WITH lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:--
'O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

'Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!'

Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
'Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
Shall find wings waiting there.

[cadence90]

You should..! I got the inspiration for this thread from spiderman's poem on the other (closed) thread....

Wow....listening to Pound read.......................................... :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:
Yes, hearing him read is incredible.
Of course there are still anti-Pound sentiments in the US, because of his denunciations and "Fascist" stance, but what an amazing poet.
I actually met/"knew" him, as a child in Venice; he was friends with my mother. A very imposing figure, to a 10-year old....

I would also say that Theodore Roethke's "North American Sequence" and T. S. Eliot's (who Pound called il miglio fabbro ('the better craftsman' in Venetian)) "Journey of the Magi" as my other 2 lifelong favorites.

[michael white]

great choices above, though my favorite Eliot poem is the Quartets, which I read once a year or so. I have way too many favorites to list. Here's my latest book:

http://www.cstone.net/~poems/reentwhi.htm


btw the poem linked is probably not my favorite, but I believe there are very strong poems in this collection. Also the cover is a Rembrandt ink drawing.

[jhcakilmer]

Favorite cycling lyrics, kind of poetic.......

The day began with a rainbow in the sand
As I cycled into Kerry
Cattle grazing on a steep hillside
Looked well fed, well balanced
Close to the edge

Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles
Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles
Pedal on

I take a break, I close my eyes
And I'm happy as the dolphin
In a quiet spot talking to myself
Talking about the rain
Talking about the rain
All this rain

Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles
Pedal on

You see whenever I'm alone
I tend to brood
But when I'm out on my bike
It's a different mood
I leave my brain at home
Get up on the sattle
No hanging around
I don't diddle-daddle

I work my legs
I pump my thights
Take in the scenery passing me by
The Kerry mountains or the Wicklow hills
The antidote to my emotional ills
A motion built upon human toil
Nuclear free needs no oil
But it makes me hot, makes me hard
I never thought I could have come this far
Through miles of mountains, valleys, streams
This is the right stuff filling my dreams
So come on, get up on your bike
Ah go on, get up on your bike

Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles
Pedal on

Finally
With my face to that bitter wind
I bombed it into Killarney
Skin raw like a sushi dinner
And an appetite
That would eat the hind leg of the lamb of God
Even though you know
I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing
Then settle down for a quiet night
Think about what I've seen and done
And wonder

There's a reason for this
Now is the time
To speak of the problem troubling my mind
Sick of the traffic choking our towns
Freaking me out, bringing me down
Knock down houses, build more lanes
Once was a problem, now it's insane
My solution it's one that I like
It's Muddy
The Acoustic Motorbike
So come on, get up on your bike
Ah go on, get up on your bike

Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles
Pedal on

Ah go on
Ah go on
Get up on your bike
Get up on your bike

Fun song to listen and nice album, check it out...

http://www.rhapsody.com/luka-bloom/the-acoustic-motorbike

[false_Aest]

The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka (http://books.google.com/books?id=DwQlVoyHac8C&pg=PA855&lpg=PA855&dq=the+sweetness+of+bobby+hefka&source=bl&ots=Pi_-dfjRfc&sig=cnbNBU10n7NDnZ5GTLCecwTsJ9w&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result)

Philip Levine is the Bruce Springsteen of poetry.

[cadence90]

.... ..
.

[ti_boi]

Is anything central?
Orchards flung out on the land,
Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?
Are place names central?
Elm Grove, Adock Corner, Story Book Farm?
As they concur with a rush at eye level
Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough
Thank you, no more thank you.
And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness
The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,
Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.

These are connected to my version of America
But the juice is elsewhere.
This morning as I walked out of your room
After breakfast crosshatched with
Backward and forward glances, backward into light,
Forward into unfamiliar light,
Was it our doing, and was it
The material, the lumber of life, or of lives
We were measuring, counting?
A mood soon to be forgotten
In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow
In this morning that has seized us again?

I know that I braid too much my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.
Where then are the private turns of event
Destined to boom later like golden chimes
Released over a city from a highest tower?
The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,
And you instantly know what I mean?
What remote orchard reached by winding roads
Hides them? Where are these roots?

It is the lumps and trails
That tell us whether we shall be known
And wether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.
All the rest is waiting
For a letter that never arrives,
Day after day, the exasperation
Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,
The two envelope halves lying on a plate.
The message was wise, and seemingly
Dictated a long time ago.
Its truth is timeless, but its time has still
Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited
Steps that can be taken against danger
Now and in the future, in cool yards,
In quiet small houses in the country,
Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

--John Ashberry

[fiamme red]

.
Canto XLV (With Usura) - Ezra Pound (http://reactor-core.org/usura.html).
.That's a crazy, ungrammatical rant (e.g., what plural subject does "their" in the third line refer to), a long-winded farrago, not poetry (in my opinion).

Just curious, do you keep your money under the mattress? :rolleyes:

[spiderman]

The Herons of Elmwood


by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow





From Birds of Passage.


Warm and still is the summer night,
As here by the river's brink I wander;
White overhead are the stars, and white
The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;
Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass;
And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight
Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you.

Of the landscape lying so far below,
With its towns and rivers and desert places;
And the splendor of light above, and the glow
Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,
Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,
Though not by a sound was the silence broken;
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

-----------------------------------------

[dsteady]

Ti Boi,
Beautiful! Thanks for that!
It's been awhile since I've read Ashberry. What volume is it from?
daniel

[draper]

There are a number of poets that I always return to, Charles Simic, Carolyn Fourche, Miller Williams, T.R. Hummer.

This one by Gary Snyder helps me get out of bed.

WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN
In the high seat, before dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging in Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.



----------------------------------------------
Gary Snyder - Turtle Island 1974

I should write a variation:
In the Brooks saddle
when the bruised sky
fills with birds,
Speedplay pedals
click
20 miles of commuter trafic
across San Diego
to Point Loma Light house.
.................................................e tc..etc..............

(I guess this will spoil my status as a lurker)

[ti_boi]

Ti Boi,
Beautiful! Thanks for that!
It's been awhile since I've read Ashberry. What volume is it from?
daniel


That is from "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"...

It always spoke to me as well.

:cool:

[fiamme red]

http://www.bicyclinglife.com/NewsAndViews/BikePoetry.htm

MULGA BILL'S BICYCLE

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"

"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything as everybody knows,
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man that blows.
But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wildcat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel,
There's nothing walks or jumps, or runs, on axle, hoof, or wheel,
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold and girths and straps are tight:
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But 'ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver steak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.

It shaved a stump by half an inch, it dodged a big white-box:
The very wallaroos in fright went scrambling up the rocks,
The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground,
As Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, sat tight to every bound.
It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree,
It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be;
And then as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek
It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dean Man's Creek.

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that slowly swam ashore:
He said, "I've had some narrer shaves and lively rides before;
I've rode a wild bull round a yard to win a five-pound bet,
But this was the most awful ride that I've encountered yet.
I'll give that two-wheeled outlaw best; it's shaken all my nerve
To feel it whistle through the air and plunge and buck and swerve.
It's safe at rest in Dead Man's Creek, we'll leave it lying still;
A horse's back is good enough henceforth for Mulga Bill."

By A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

[fiamme red]

In memory of Ken Kifer (http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/):

With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes
I summon'd am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.

--Tom O'Bedlam's Song

[fiamme red]

To A Scorcher

'Arry, 'Arry Smith de Smith,
As wheelman you would win renown!
You are the country districts' pest,
You are the nuisance of the town:
You're wan and wild and dust-defiled;
You think you're awfully admired.
Though winner of a hundred "pots,"
Your fame is not to be desired.

'Arry, 'Arry Smith de Smith,
You whirl and whisk about the lands,
With shoulders bowed, with lowered pate,
And dull eyes fixed upon your hands.
Oh! take some interest in the scene,
Love birds that sing and flowers that blow:
Try not to be a mere machine,
And let the record-squelcher go!

-- Punch, September 22, 1894

[MattTuck]

Thanks to Louis posting in Flanders Fields in a previous thread, I've been feeling like poetry lately. What have you guys got? Felt like reviving this old thread rather than starting a new one.

Perhaps mine are too ciche.... whatever, I'm from New England, so Frost is in my veins. I'm adding In Flanders Fields also.

Maybe these are supposed to be poems about bikes...

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.




The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[bking]

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
--Donne

[Mr. Squirrel]

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels,
As they slowly amble round.
Down the street, somehow it feels,
That they turn without a sound.

Down the street, up the hill,
Perpetually rolling round.
Endlessly the ground they feel,
Ever silent, without a sound.

Big wheels, little wheels,
So many wheels to see.
My whole day they fairly steal,
To the world, they hold the key

I had a little nut-tree,
Nothing would it bear.
I searched in all its branches,
But not a nut was there.

"Oh, little tree," I begged,
"Give me just a few."
The little tree looked down at me
And whispered, "Nuts to you."


nuk nuk nuk!
mr. squirrel

[slidey]

Adam
Had 'em

-------------

Find it hard to follow anything longer :bike:

[veggieburger]

(the last 4 verses...but the whole thing is so incredible)

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

[echelon_john]

The Grant--Raymond Carver


It’s either this or bobcat hunting
with my friend Morris.
Trying to write a poem at six this
morning, or else running
behind the hounds with
a gun in my hands.
Heart jumping in its cage.
I’m 45 years old. No occupation.
Imagine the luxuriousness of this life.
Try and imagine.
May go with him if he goes
tomorrow. But may not.



Fear--Raymond Carver

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.


I've said that.

[MattTuck]

A poem I wrote. I have no formal training, as is painfully obvious when you read it... no formal rhyming structure, no iambic pentameter, just some rhymes describing a climb.



Academy Hill

The school atop gives name to the hill,
Not an alpine col, she’ll still give you your fill,
Hang a right beyond the old farm
Off Vermont one thirty two,

Ride past the paddocks and the church,
Beyond Union Village, the climb’s start does lurk,
Dive down toward the creek,
The other side you seek

Across the covered bridge, a New England cliché,
The dark tunnel’s end glows like the day,
Off smooth surface well worn, you’re back on asphalt,
The road kicks up now, what your legs say.

An old man and his dog, sit silently watching,
His face having seen many a Vermont spring,
They observe you with barely a change of expression,
As the gradient hits twenty percent on this first rude section

You push on the pedals, the road spirals up to the right,
You hug the edge of the pavement, hold your line tight,

Your legs get a break the hellish grade fades,
Pass a hillside graveyard and a weathered barn raised
A hundred and three years ago last May,
In two months, the field on your right will be hayed.

A gentle left hander, while still climbing shows,
A long straight away, but the attitude grows,
Last year’s best time quickly fades away,
As your legs search for power on this first fine spring day.

Slowly but surely, the grade flattens out,
An old brick farm house on the right standing stout,

A short downhill section, but the glide doesn’t last,
A tattered flag blows in the wind at full mast,
Up past an aging widowed Volvo,
In its shade lingers stubborn winter snow.

Up a quick hill, then a false flat,
The air gets a chill, and you know that
The climb’s almost done,
Almost time for a rest.

Your heart, lungs and legs don’t give up this fight,
A grand view of the valley unfolds on your right.

It you felt a duty to stop and gaze, I couldn’t say no,
But just a few more strong strokes, your legs musn’t slow,
Up this final ramp you go,
Riding next to an old stone wall row.

In the bright sun, the top is a fact,
Five hundred plus thirteen feet is the gain,
From that covered bridge,
Two point three miles back.

Thetford Academy stands guard at the crown,
A stark white school, looks she proudly down,
The school atop gives name to the hill,
Academy Hill, tallest point in town,

A better spring riding partner, I could not request,
For she is the climb that I love the best,
I know her turns, her secrets, her veins,
Academy Hill, that is her name.

[torquer]

I posted a link to this poem a few months back, but since the thread was about guns (and had obviously taken several detours by the time I posted), it may have gone a bit under the radar:

What Did I Love (Ellen Bass)

What did I love about killing the chickens? Let me start

with the drive to the farm as darkness

was sinking back into the earth.

The road damp and shinining like the snail’s silver

ribbon and the orchard

with its bony branches. I loved the yellow rubber

aprons and the way Janet knotted my broken strap.

And the stainless steel altars

we bleached, Brian sharpening

the knives, testing the edge of his thumbnail.

All eighty-eight Cornish

hens huddled in their crates. Wrapping my palms around

their white wings, lowering them into the tapered urn.

Some seemed unwitting as the world narrowed;

some cackled and fluttered; some struggled.

I gathered each one, tucked her bright feet,

drew her head through the kill cone’s sharp collar,

her keratin beak and the rumpled red vascular comb

that once kept her cool as she pecked in her mansion of grass.

I didn’t look into those stone eyes. I didn’t ask for forgiveness.

I slid the blade between the feathers

and made quick crescent cuts, severing

the arteries just under the jaw. Blood like liquor

pouring out of the bottle. When I see the nub of heart later,

it’s hard to believe such a small star could flare

like that. I lifted each body, bathing it in heated water

until the scaly membrane of the shanks

sloughed off under my thumb.

And after they were tossed in the large plucking drum

I loved the newly naked birds. Sundering

the heads and feet neatly at the joints, a poor

man’s riches for golden stock. Slitting a fissure

reaching into the chamber,

freeing the organs, the spill of intestines, blue-tinged gizzard,

the small purses of lungs, the royal hearts,

easing the floppy liver, carefully, from the green gall bladder,

its bitter bile. And the fascia unfurling

like a transparent fan. When I tug the esophagus

down through the neck, I love the suck and release

as it lets go. Then slicing off the anus with its gray pearl

of $hit. Over and over, my hands explore

each cave, learning to see with my fingertips. Like a traveller

in a foreign country, entering church after church.

In every one the same figures of the Madonna, Christ on the Cross,

which I’d always thought was gore

until Marie said to her it was tender,

the most tender image, every saint and political prisoner,

every jailed poet and burning monk.

But though I have all the time in the world

to think thoughts like this, I don’t.

I’m empty as I rinse each carcass,

and this is what I love most.

It’s like when the refrigerator turns off and you hear

the silence. As the sun rose higher

we shed our sweatshirts and moved the coolers into the shade,

but, other than that, no time passed.

I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t want to stop.

I was breathing from some bright reserve.

We twisted each pullet into plastic, iced and loaded them into cars.

I loved the truth. Even in just this one thing:

looking straight at the terrible,

one-sided accord we make with the living of this world.

At the end, we scoured the tables, hosed the dried blood,

the stain blossoming through the water.

I first saw the poem in The New Yorker magazine, but then found it at this site:
http://www.rurallyscrewed.com/14474/2013/02/05/what-did-i-love/
"enhanced" with photos. I suppose the pictures add something, but at the same time, maybe a case of TMI.

[monkeybanana86]

"Eggs" by Kay Ryan

We turn out
as tippy as
eggs. Legs
are an illusion.
We are held
as in a carton
if someone
loves us.
It's a pity
only loss
proves this.

[spiderman]

I'm pretty sure the first stanza is what happens when I get on the bike and leave my problems behind with a pedal stroke. The last I think about with my life falling to the ground like a vapor but one that is nonetheless pleasing beyond my own limited thought about the value of life...
The poem came to mind Sunday morning as my wife and I biked
Over to our nearby nature trail with the dobegirl where we met our daughter
For a walk through the misty woods and Lectio divina prayer on psalm 113.
Maybe I shouldn't have edited out the dog...

VII

Again I resume the long
Lesson: how small a thing
Can be pleasing, how little
In this hard world it takes
To satisfy the mind
And bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
The woods this morning is
Almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
Light, a few leaves fall
Of their own weight.

The sky
Is gray. It begins in mist
Almost at the ground
And rises forever. The trees
Rise in silence almost
Natural, but not quite,
Almost eternal, but
Not quite.

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
What has always been.
Here is what will always
Be. Even in me,
The Maker of all this
Returns in rest, even
To the slightest of His works,
A yellow leaf slowly
Falling, and is pleased.

Wendell Berry
Given

[schwa86]

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

[SpokeValley]

by henry charles beeching
1859-1919

with lifted feet, hands still,
i am poised, and down the hill
dart, with heedful mind;
the air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
till the heart with a mighty lift
makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:--
'o bird, see; see, bird, i fly.

'is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then i, though a boy
for a golden moment share
your feathery life in air!'

say, heart, is there aught like this
in a world that is full of bliss?
'tis more than skating, bound
steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, i float
awhile in my airy boat;
till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
my feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
must end in a vale; but still,
who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
shall find wings waiting there.

+1mm Wish I'd said that...

[chwupper]

One of Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes' for you francophiles/phones:

[gaucho753]

Ode to Bicycles

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn’t
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it’s needed,
when it’s light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

- Pablo Neruda, 1956

[dsb]

The Meditation

The road rises skyward, the gauntlet is thrown down…

Gravity makes measure, and the penalty assessed…

The toll is immediate, your energies to pay…

The heart quickens, and the breath marks time…

Cadence plays the rhythm, the rhythm of the climb…

The hand of God pulls you back, Archimedes gives you aide …

With force, each pedal stroke, propels you up the road…

The mind plays tricks, of the devilish kind…

To break your will, have you lessen the load…

Resolve is shown in every drop of sweat, this battle will be won…

The summit shall be gained, or all shall come undone…

The road plays the spoiler, tactics are employed…

More gradient the road doth have, steepness it’s ammunition…

The salvo fired, its mark attained, with goal of your contrition…

In defiance you stand, more force you wield, the battle will not be lost…

Perseverance it is, the conflict wages on, despite the mounting cost…

The heart quickens, and the breath marks time…

Cadence plays the rhythm, the rhythm of the climb…

The road winds on, and despite your fears…

A sight around the corner peers…

Joy abounds, the summit nears…

The top is made, the battle won…

Victory at last, victory at last…

This is the meditation…

The meditation of the climb…

” I hurt so bad it was like a meditation” – Andy Hampsten, 1988 Giro d’Italia, after the 18 kilometer hill climb time trial to Vetriolo…