Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CONo9aHpj_1/

 You are not the others

The writings left behind by those whom
Your fears implore won’t have to save you;
You are not the others and you see yourself
Now at the center of the labyrinth woven
By your own steps. The agonies of Jesus or
Socrates will not save you, nor will the
Strength of Golden Siddhartha who,
At the end of the day, accepted death
In the garden. The word written
By your hand or the verb spoken
By your lips, these too are dust. Fate has no pity,
And God’s night is infinite.
Your matter is time, ceaseless
Time. You are each solitary moment.

Jorge Luis Borges

 Poem in Spanish

Rainer Maria Rilke

Poetry speaks to the soul, and this man speaks with the voice of my soul. Gone for 90 years now, and yet, his voice still echoes through space and time, the message resonating like the haunting song of a bird in the twilight.

You Who Never Arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

 

 

T.S. Eliot: Circe's Palace

Around her fountain which flows
With the voice of men in pain,
Are flowers that no man knows.
Their petals are fanged and red
With hideous streak and stain.
They sprang from the limbs of the dead.--
We shall not come here again.

Panthers rise from their lairs

In the forest which thickens below,

Along the garden stairs

The sluggish python lies;

The peacock's walk, stately and slow

And they look at us with the eyes

Of men whom we knew long ago.

Taken from http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html

Beautiful poem...

I came across it while looking for something else, and it's such a beautiful poem, albeit sad. I particularly like the two last stanzas.

W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues

(Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Poetry

The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,

(This is the end of every song man sings!)

The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,

Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;

And health and hope have gone the way of love

Into the drear oblivion of lost things,

Ghosts go along with us until the end;

This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.

With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait

For the dropt curtain and the closing gate:

This is the end of all the songs man sings.

Ernest Dowson

Dregs

1899

Picture taken from here: http://adalheit.deviantart.com/art/Face-au-vent-255445053

My favourite poem by Charles Baudelaire

I could not find a single translation that I liked and therefore used the best parts of three different translations. Talking about about being picky and hard to please.

Conversation (Causerie)

You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!

But sadness rises in me like the sea,

And as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips

The burning memory of its bitter slime.

— Your hand may stroke my breast, but not console.

What it seeks there is but a hole, deep caverned

By women's claws and fangs, and ransacked whole.

Seek not my heart, on which the beasts have ravened.

My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;

They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!

— A perfume swims around your naked breast!...

O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you want it still!*

You with hot eyes that flash in fiery feasts,

Burn up these meagre scraps spared by the beasts!

  *it refers to the heart, that still desires beauty...

Translations I used:

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

— James McGowan, The Flowers of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

 

More Baudelaire at fleursdumal.org/