T.S. Eliot is perhaps best known for his works "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "The Waste Land" and "Four Quartets".

Or perhaps to more recent generations through the musical CATS by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which is based on Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats".

However, here is an amusing little poem which is less well known.

Well, I say poem, but it is more like prose, just divided up in lines.

It is a slight little thing, really only a whimsy - but it may amuse.

AUNT HELEN

Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet--
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees--
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

T.S. Eliot

I came across this in "Poems on the Underground" and immediately found it very poignant and moving.

MEMORY OF MY FATHER

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

That man I saw in Gardiner Street
Stumble on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.

And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London.
He too set me the riddle.

Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me
"I was once your father."

Patrick Kavanagh (1906/67)

After some time across the Atlantic with American Lady Poets, I am returning to England.

And specifically to Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) the West Country novelist, short story writer and poet who is perhaps best known for "The Mayor of Casterbridge", "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"and "Far From The Madding Crowd".

However, today I turn to his "Poems of 1912-13".

Hardy became estranged from his first wife Emma, who died in 1912.

Her death had a traumatic effect on him and he made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with her, and with their courtship.

"Without Ceremony" is about Emma's free-spirited, spontaneous nature, and alludes specifically to the last time she entertained guests.

She was very ill, and her guests stayed longer than they should have.

After finally retiring to her bed that night, Emma never recovered sufficiently to rise again.

A few days later she slipped into a coma, and shortly thereafter, she died.

Hardy, like most people in mourning, felt that he never had a chance to say good-bye to Emma.

At the time of Emma's sickness and death, their marriage was not what it used to be, and Hardy had wanted to visit happy memories with Emma before she died.

Unable to do this with Emma, however, Hardy did visit those happier times by traveling to places where Emma and he had visited before, and consequently, wrote of the feelings that he experienced.

WITHOUT CEREMONY

It was your way, my dear
To be gone without a word
When callers, friends or kin
Had left, and I hastened in
To rejoin you, as I inferred.

And when you'd a mind to career
Off anywhere - say to town -
You were all on a sudden gone
Before I had thought thereon,
Or noticed your trunks were down.

So, now that you disappear
For ever in that swift style,
Your meaning seems to me
Just as it used to be:
"Goodbye is not worthwhile!"

Thomas Hardy

Typical of her style - sweet, short, simple, reflective and intimate.

"DID YOU NEVER KNOW?"

Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me --
That your love would never lessen and never go?
You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,
You were too young to know.

Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it
Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year --
Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking,
I know your secret, my dear, my dear.

Sara Teasdale

Today I am returning to the American writer Katharine Lee Bates.

Well, here is one of her anti-war poems.

FODDER FOR CANNON

Bodies glad, erect,
Beautiful with youth,
Life's elect,
Nature's truth,
Marching host on host,
Those bright, unblemished ones,
Manhood's boast,
Feed them to the guns.

Hearts and brains that teem
With blessing for the race,
Thought and dream,
Vision, grace,
Oh, love's best and most,
Bridegrooms, brothers, sons,
Host on host
Feed them to the guns.

Katharine Lee Bates

I am staying with American Lady Poets and today I present a short poem by Phillis Wheatley, a black slave who was born in Senegal in 1753.

She was captured by slave traders and taken to America in 1761.

Purchased by John Wheatley, a tailor from Boston, Phillis was taught to read by one of Wheatley's daughters.

Phillis studied English, Latin and Greek and in 1767 began writing poetry. Her first poem, on the death of George Whitefield, was published in 1770.

When Phillis was eighteen she travelled to London and while there the Countess of Huntingdon helped her publish a collection of her work, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773).

After the death of John Wheatley and his wife, Phillis married John Peters, a free black man, who ran a small grocery store in Boston. The business was unsuccessful and Phillis was forced to find work as a servant.

She bore three children. All three died shortly after birth, and Phillis herself died on Deember 5 1784 within a few hours of her third delivery.

She maintained the dignity of black people who were badly treated.

This poem from the 18th century is a plea for tolerance, acceptance and respect.

A cry that has been heard many times over the following 300 years.

She must have been one of the first campaigners for Black Rights!

ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA

'T was mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew,
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Phillis Wheatley

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Biography (from Wikipedia):

Born and raised in Gardiner, Maine to a wealthy family, Edwin Arlington Robinson was the youngest of three sons and not groomed to take over the family business. Instead, he pursued poetry since childhood, joining the local poetry society as its youngest member. He attended Harvard, but his personal life was soon beset by a chain of tragedies that are reflected in his work. His father died, the family went bankrupt, one of his brothers became a morphine addict, and his mother contracted and eventually died from black diphtheria. Because of the highly infectious nature of the disease, the local mortician was unwilling to even tend to the body, forcing Robinson and his brothers to bury her themselves.

Shortly after, he met a woman, Emma Shepherd, with whom he fell deeply in love, but he was also convinced that marriage and familial responsibilities would hinder his work as a poet. Therefore, he introduced her to his eldest brother, who married her. Though this brother agreed to support Robinson via the family estate (and did provide a minimum monthly stipend for as long as he could with his bankrupt business), the relationship between the poet and his brother's wife was a source of tension between them. Later, his middle brother died, thought to be a suicide by overdose.

For several years, Robinson lived in poverty, continuing to write and publish with the help of his friends. His first break came in 1905, when President Teddy Roosevelt read one of Robinson's early works, Children of the Night. Roosevelt was so impressed by Robinson's book that he arranged a job for Robinson at a Custom House, so that he could continue writing. Unfortunately, this was the least fecund period in his creative career, and when he lost the president's patronage after Roosevelt term of office ended; his employers cracked down on Robinson until he eventually quit.

Soon after, he wrote The Town down the River, which was critically acclaimed. In 1911, he found a patroness in the person of the widow of composer Edward MacDowell and worked to improve his poetry even further. He also attempted writing plays, but these were not well-received. An anonymous patron, who began supporting him in 1916, ensured that Robinson was financially self-sufficient. He began work on his most famous and best-selling Arthurian trilogy, Merlin, Lancelot, and Tristram.

In 1922, Robinson received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems: He won it again in 1925 for The Man Who Died Twice and in 1928 for Tristram, the third part of his trilogy. With his new-found fame and fortune, he made a radical change in his lifestyle too, tending to himself and even starting to drink again, claiming that he was doing it to protest Prohibition. He published regularly until the day he died, in New York City in 1935.

Paul Simon wrote his own version of "Rchard Cory", which was recorded by Simon and Garfunkel on their second album, Sounds of Silence.

Here it is:

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,
With political connections to spread his wealth around.
Born into society, a banker's only child,
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

Today I remain with American Lady Poets and bring to you this poem by Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902–1981)

I particularly like this poem.

SECRET

I shall make a song like you hair . . .
Gold-woven with shadows green-tinged,
And I shall play with my song
As my fingers might play with your hair.
Deep in my heart
I shall play with my song of you,
Gently. . . .
I shall laugh
At its sensitive lustre . . .
I shall wrap my song in a blanket,
Blue like your eyes are blue
With tiny shots of silver.
I shall wrap it caressingly,
Tenderly. . . .
I shall sing a lullaby
To the song I have made
Of your hair and eyes . . .
And you will never know
That deep in my heart
I shelter a song for you
Secretly. . . .

Gwendolyn B. Bennett

Following my interest in Sara Teasdale, I have been looking at the work of other American women poets and today I go back to an earlier period in history and present a poem by Katharine Lee Bates (1825-1929), who wrote the words to one of the most famous and beloved songs in American History, "America The Beautiful".

The poem I have selected is entitled "America to England" and it was written at the time of the Second Boer War, when Britain was trying to extend its Empire in South Africa.

That was, of course, a disastrous war which cost around 75,000 lives — 22,000 British soldiers (7,792 battle casualties, the rest through disease), 6,000-7,000 Boer soldiers, 20,000-28,000 Boer civilians and perhaps 20,000 black Africans. The last of the Boers surrendered in May 1902 and the war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in the same month.

The Boers were given £3,000,000 in compensation and were promised eventual self-government. The Union of South Africa was established in 1910.

The treaty ended the existence of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State as Boer republics and placed them within the British Empire.

Here is a cartoon from the time:

The Transvaal and the Orange Free State are seen as virgins,
tied to a burning stake, which is lit by John Bull, the British
version of America’s Uncle Sam. All of Europe's powers seem
to be standing by, watching, but not helping.

So, on to the poem.

Is it a call to patriotism, or an ironic criticism?

AMERICA TO ENGLAND

1899

Who would trust England, let him lift his eyes
To Nelson, columned o'er Trafalgar Square,
Her hieroglyph of duty, written where
The roar of traffic hushes to the skies;
Or mark, while Paul's vast shadow softly lies
On Gordon's statued sleep, how praise and prayer
Flush through the frank young faces clustering there
To con that kindred rune of sacrifice.
O England, no bland cloud-ship in the blue,
But rough oak plunging on o'er perilous jars
Of reef and ice, our faith will follow you
The more for tempest roar that strains your spars
And splits your canvas, be your helm but true,
Your courses shapen by the eternal stars.

1900

The nightmare melts at last, and London wakes
To her old habit of victorious ease.
More men, and more, and more for over-seas,
More guns until the giant hammer breaks
That patriot folk whom even God forsakes.
Shall not Great England work her will on these,
The foolish little nations, and appease
An angry shame that in her memory aches?
But far beyond the fierce-contested flood,
The cannon-planted pass, the shell-torn town,
The last wild carnival of fire and blood,
Beware, beware that dim and awful Shade,
Armored with Milton's sword and Cromwell's frown,
Affronted Freedom, of her own betrayed!

Katharine Lee Bates

I am having the outside of my house painted and the weather forecast for this week is not at all good.

But there, we shall always have showers and sunshine in our lives.

We just have to take what God sends us.

Well, that is what Sarah Flower Adams (wonderful name) wrote.

She was an English poet and hymnist (1805-1848), but most of her work was not published until after her death.

She was an early feminist fighting for womens rights.

She was also a close friend of Shelley, and continued with the increasingly unfashionable ideals of romantic poetry.

Her hymn "Nearer, my God, to Thee" is supposed to have been played by the band on the RMS Titanic when it sank after hitting an iceberg on 14 April 1912.

HE SENDETH SUN, HE SENDETH SHOWER

He sendeth sun, he sendeth shower,
Alike they're needful for the flower:
And joys and tears alike are sent
To give the soul fit nourishment.
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!
Can loving children e'er reprove
With murmurs whom they trust and love?
Creator! I would ever be
A trusting, loving child to thee:
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!
Oh, ne'er will I at life repine:
Enough that thou hast made it mine.
When falls the shadow cold of death
I yet will sing, with parting breath,
As comes to me or shade or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!

Sarah Flower Adams

P.S. I am asking Him to send some sun. "Dear God, please make it soon"!

Today a break from Sara Teasdale. We shall return to her soon.

I am grateful to yesterday's Daily Telegraph for bringing to my attention that on May 25 it will be the 70th Anniversary of the visit of the American poet T.S. Eliot to Little Gidding.

The peaceful hamlet, in Cambridgeshire, and particularly the church below, inspired the following poem, from which I quote only an extract.

LITTLE GIDDING

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel.

Eliot, who died in 1965, did not write "Little Gidding" until 1941, while he was serving as an air raid warden in London.

At Midnight
by Sara Teasdale

Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.

Even love that I built my spirit's house for,
Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest,
And music and men's praise and even laughter
Are not so good as rest.

My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one --
My songs do not belong to me.

Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.

Sara Teasdale

Today, in contrast to yesterday, a very short poem from Sara Teasdale.

A poem of hope for all those who are saddened or distressed.

Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;

So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.

Sara Teasdale

Here is the longest Sara Teasdale poem that I have found.

Let me know what you think.

There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see,
The people on the street look up at us
All envious. We are a king and queen,
Our royal carriage is a motor bus,
We watch our subjects with a haughty joy. . . .
How still you are! Have you been hard at work
And are you tired to-night? It is so long
Since I have seen you -- four whole days, I think.
My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts
Like early flowers in an April meadow,
And I must give them to you, all of them,
Before they fade. The people I have met,
The play I saw, the trivial, shifting things
That loom too big or shrink too little, shadows
That hurry, gesturing along a wall,
Haunting or gay -- and yet they all grow real
And take their proper size here in my heart
When you have seen them. . . . There's the Plaza now,
A lake of light! To-night it almost seems
That all the lights are gathered in your eyes,
Drawn somehow toward you. See the open park
Lying below us with a million lamps
Scattered in wise disorder like the stars.
We look down on them as God must look down
On constellations floating under Him
Tangled in clouds. . . . Come, then, and let us walk
Since we have reached the park. It is our garden,
All black and blossomless this winter night,
But we bring April with us, you and I;
We set the whole world on the trail of spring.
I think that every path we ever took
Has marked our footprints in mysterious fire,
Delicate gold that only fairies see.
When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks
And come out on the drowsy park, they look
Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here
They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,
Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance
About it in a windy ring and make
A circle round it only they can cross
When they come back again!" . . . Look at the lake --
Do you remember how we watched the swans
That night in late October while they slept?
Swans must have stately dreams, I think. But now
The lake bears only thin reflected lights
That shake a little. How I long to take
One from the cold black water -- new-made gold
To give you in your hand! And see, and see,
There is a star, deep in the lake, a star!
Oh, dimmer than a pearl -- if you stoop down
Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . .

There was a new frail yellow moon to-night --
I wish you could have had it for a cup
With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . .

How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;
They have put shawls of fog around them, see!
What if the air should grow so dimly white
That we would lose our way along the paths
Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -- but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls
Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.
Walk on a little, let me stand here watching
To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .
I used to wonder how the park would be
If one night we could have it all alone --
No lovers with close arm-encircled waists
To whisper and break in upon our dreams.
And now we have it! Every wish comes true!
We are alone now in a fleecy world;
Even the stars have gone. We two alone!

Sara Teasdale

I am continuing my series of poems written by Sara Teasdale.

More tomorrow.

THE SANCTUARY

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

As dew leaves the cobweb lightly
Threaded with stars,
Scattering jewels on the fence
And the pasture bars;
As dawn leaves the dry grass bright
And the tangled weeds
Bearing a rainbow gem
On each of their seeds;
So has your love, my lover,
Fresh as the dawn,
Made me a shining road
To travel on,
Set every common sight
Of tree or stone
Delicately alight
For me alone.

Sara Teasdale

I AM HAVING A FEW DAYS AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER

BACK AFTER THE WEEKEND.

Today, more from Sarah Teasdale

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.

"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"
by Sara Teasdale

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Anonymous Computer Poem (Written in the time of "floppies")

Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) was one of the "Cavalier Poets", supporters of King Charles I. He was born at Whitton, near Twickenham - not very far from Walton-on-Thames, where I live.

The following poem is typical of his work.

I prithee spare me gentle boy,
Press me no more for that slight toy,
That foolish trifle of an heart;
I swear it will not do its part,
Though thou dost thine, employ'st thy pow'r and art.

For through long custom it has known
The little secrets, and is grown
Sullen and wise, will have its will,
And like old hawks pursues that still
That makes least sport, flies only where't can kill.

Some youth that has not made his story,
Will think perchance the pain's the glory,
And mannerly sit out love's feast;
I shall be carving of the best,
Rudely call for the last course 'fore the rest.

And oh when once that course is past,
How short a time the feast doth last;
Men rise away and scarce say grace,
Or civilly once thank the face
That did invite, but seek another place.

Sir John Suckling

P.S. He is credited with having invented the game of cribbage

Now dreams
Are not available
To the dreamers,
Nor songs
To the singers.

In some lands
Dark night
And cold steel
Prevail
But the dream
Will come back,
And the song
Break
Its jail.

Langstone Hughes

If you and I should chance to meet,
I guess you wouldn't care;
I'm sure you'd pass me in the street
As if I wasn't there;
You'd never look me in the face,
My modest mug to scan,
Because I'm just a commonplace
And Ordinary Man.

But then, it may be, you are too
A guy of every day,
Who does the job he's told to do
And takes the wife his pay;
Who makes a home and kids his care,
And works with pick or pen. . . .
Why, Pal, I guess we're just a pair
Of Ordinary Men.

We plug away and make no fuss,
Our feats are never crowned;
And yet it's common coves like us
Who make the world go round.
And as we steer a steady course
By God's predestined plan,
Hats off to that almighty Force:
THE ORDINARY MAN.

Robert W. Service

If you need to kiss it,
Kiss it.
If you need to kick it,
Kick it.
If you need to scream it,
Scream it.

But kiss it, kick it, scream it
Now.

If you need to leave it,
Leave it.
If you need to love it,
Love it.
If you need to hold it,
Hold it.

But leave it, love it, hold it
Now.

If you need to squeeze it,
Squeeze it.
If you need to spill it,
Spill it.
If you need to tell the world
You've got more to you
Than the world has as of yet
Allowed you to be,

Then be it, tell it, spill it,
Squeeze it out of each instantaneous moment.
Make the juice, the jive, the jazz, the jism,
The mysticism that ism you!

Grab at the moon!
And hold the stars hot inside your head.

'Cause now is all there ever was
And all there ever will be.

So kiss it, kick it, scream it
Now!

Marc Kelly Smith

(From: http://www.slampapi.com/new_site/poems/)

A diamond of a morning
Waked me an hour too soon;
Dawn had taken in the stars
And left the faint white moon.

O white moon, you are lonely,
It is the same with me,
But we have the world to roam over,
Only the lonely are free.

Sarah Teasdale

(I have now successfully uploaded audio to the following blog site: http://kendrive.blog.co.uk/ and if you go there you can hear me reading two of my own poems, "Words" and "Sometime Treasures".)