Poet's Corner

[George Costanza]

The Female of the Species
by Rudyard Kipling

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

 

[George Costanza]

A Poem by Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant
Lieutenant, Bushveldt Carbineers

In prison cell I sadly sit -
A damned crestfallen chappy!
And own to you I feel a bit-
A little bit - unhappy!

It really ain't the place nor time
To reel off rhyming diction-
But yet we'll write a final rhyme
While waiting cru-ci-fixion!

No matteer what 'end' they decide-
Quicklime? or 'b'iling ile? sir!
We'll do our best when crucified
To finish off in style, sir!

But we bequeath a parting tip
For sound advice as such men
As come across in transport ship
To polish off the Dutchmen!

If you encounter any Boers
You really must not loot 'em,
And if you wish to leave these shores
For pity's sake don't shoot 'em!

And if you'd earn a D.S.O.-
Why every British sinner
Should know the proper way to go
Is: 'Ask the Boer to dinner'!

Let's toss a bumper down our throat
Before we pass to Heaven,
And toast: 'the trim-set petticoat
We leave behind in Devon.'

(Shortly thereafter, he was executed by firing squad.)

From "Breaker Morant," the movie.

 

[midcan5]

'What The Doctor Said'

"He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong."

Raymond Carver

 

[JW Frogen]

Carver

Was a great writer.

A great alcoholic too.

Still a great writer.

And not a bad man.

I love the him on many levels.

Chekov would love him too.

They have the same aesthetic DNA.

 

[pAr]

Admirant Vénus, affublé de tristes yeux,
Nul ne sait s'il était le plus heureux des dieux;
Mais il était celui faisant le plus d'affaires:
Hadès, dieu des enfers!

 

[midcan5]

Carver
Was a great writer.
A great alcoholic too.
Still a great writer.
And not a bad man.
I love the him on many levels.
Chekov would love him too.
They have the same aesthetic DNA.

Agreed, here is a favorite that I cannot find on usmb even though I believe I posted it.

'Happiness'

"So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it."

Raymond Carver

Admirant Vénus, affublé de tristes yeux,
Nul ne sait s'il était le plus heureux des dieux;
Mais il était celui faisant le plus d'affaires:
Hadès, dieu des enfers!

"Admiring Venus, decked out with sad eyes,
No one knows if it was the happiest of gods
But he was the one doing the most business:
Hades, god of the underworld!"

from google translator -

 

[pAr]

"Admiring Venus, decked out with sad eyes,
No one knows if it was the happiest of gods
But he was the one doing the most business:
Hades, god of the underworld!"

from google translator -

Thanks for the translation. Let me just make it rhymes a little

Admiring Venus, his eyes filled with sadness,
No one knows if he was the happiest god;
But he was the one doing the most business:
Hades, god of the underworld!

 

[midcan5]

'You Can Have It'


"My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it."

Philip Levine

 

[midcan5]

'Drinking While Driving'

"It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen. "

Raymond Carver


PS My 225 post in this thread and we actually are over twenty thousand views for poems. Great! Get out there and buy a few books too.

 

[midcan5]

'The Best Time Of The Day'

"Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever."

Raymond Carver

 

[midcan5]

"if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)
have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

—from "if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have"
by E. E. Cummings

It's like watching your mother sleep,
minutes after you have been conceived,

and her closed eyes say it's all right
to wake alone....

—from "Harbor Lights" by Mark Doty

My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

—from "My Mother Would Be a Falconress" by Robert Duncan

Green sap of Spring in the young wood-a-stir
Will celebrate the Mountain Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her

—from "The White Goddess" by Robert Graves

If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole...

—from "Mother o' Mine" by Rudyard Kipling

Like those old pear-shaped Russian dolls that open
at the middle to reveal another and another, down
to the pea-sized, irreducible minim,
may we carry our mothers forth in our bellies.

—from "The Envelope" by Maxine Kumin

Oh, if instead she'd left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

—from "The courage that my mother had" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am a tree
Strong limbed and deeply rooted
My fruit is bittersweet
I am your mother

—from "Trees" by Walter Dean Myers

I lie here now as I once lay
in the crook of her arm, her creature,
and I feel her looking down onto me the way the
maker of a sword gazes at his face in the
steel of the blade

—from "Why My Mother Made Me" by Sharon Olds

The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother"...

—from "To My Mother" by Edgar Allan Poe

I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

—from "I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone"
by Rainer Maria Rilke

To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,

—from "Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome"
by Christina Rossetti

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.

—from "To My Mother" by Christina Rossetti

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.

—"Home," from "Poems Done on a Late Night Car"
by Carl Sandburg

Today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

—from "For My Mother" by May Sarton


A woman is her mother
That's the main thing.

—from "Housewife" by Anne Sexton

They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.

—from "Lineage" by Margaret Walker

Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.

—from "Delicate Cluster" by Walt Whitman

Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice
is unfolded,
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all
sympathy

—from "Unfolded Out of the Folds" by Walt Whitman

Ma, hear me now, tell me your story
again and again.

—from "From a Heart of Rice Straw" by Nellie Wong

My mother dandled me and sang,
‘How young it is, how young!'
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.

—from "The Player Queen" by W. B. Yeats

O what to me my mother's care,
The house where I was safe and warm;
The shadowy blossom of my hair
Will hide us from the bitter storm.

—from "The Heart of the Woman" by W. B. Yeats"



From Poets.org

 

[goldcatt]

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and sharing a life.
And you learn that love doesn’t mean possession,
and company doesn’t mean security,
and loneliness is universal.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open,
with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build your hopes on today
as the future has a way of falling apart in mid-flight
because tomorrow’s ground can be too uncertain for plans,
yet each step taken in a new direction creates a path
toward the promise of a brighter dawn.
And you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much,
so you plant your own garden and nourish your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that love, true love,
always has joys and sorrows
seems ever present,
yet is never quite the same
becoming more than love and less than love
so difficult to define.
And you learn that through it all
you really can endure
that you really are strong
that you do have value
and you learn and grow
with every goodbye you learn.

Comes the Dawn by Joy Whitman

 

[midcan5]

'Picking Up'

"During the depression
my mother, teetotaler,
but thrifty to a fault,
surprised my father and me
when she cobbled up a still,
kept it on a shelf behind the kitchen stove,
and salvaged a crate of too-ripe pears
by making brandy, pouring it into Mason jars,
and storing them on the cellar stairs.

When my father found a better job at last,
and movers came one day to move our stuff,
"A shame to have this go to waste," we heard my mother say,
offering them the brandy, which they polished off.
They soon grew happy at their work,
hanging a chamber pot and her Sunday dress
on outside panels of their battered truck
and speeding off into the dusk
before she could protest.

We closed the house, cranked the Model-A, and started out,
following over stony mountain ruts,
but soon were stopping now and then
when headlights showed familiar shapes
lying in the road or ditch: first
the chamber pot and dress; next,
a chair, a bucket, and a box of sheets.
But drunk with hope, we praised our luck,
sang "Bringing in the Sheaves"
as we collected what the truck had dropped."

Evelyn Duncan

 

[Colin]

She whispered "will it hurt me?"
"Of course not" answered he
"It's a very simple process,
You can rely on me."

She said "I'm very frightened,
I've not had this before.
My friend has had it five times
And said it can be sore."

It was growing rather painful
Tears formed in her eyes
It was hurting quite a bit now
It must have been a size.

"Calm yourself" he whispered
"His face filled with a grin
"Try and open wider
So I can get it in."

"It's coming now" he whispered
"I know" she cried in bliss
Feeling it deep within her now
She said "I am glad I'm having this."

And with a final effort
She gave a frightened shout
He gripped it in anguish
And quickly pulled it out.

She lay back quite contented
Sighed and gave a smile
She said "I'm glad I came now
You made it worth my while."

Now if you read this carefully
The dentist you will find
Is not what you imagined
It's just your dirty mind!!

 

[Colin]

Last night I held a lovely hand,
A hand so small and neat,

I thought my heart would burst with joy,
So wildly did it beat.

No other hand unto my heart
Could greater pleasure bring

Than the dear one that I held last night--
Four aces and a king.

 

[Sky Dancer]

The Indigo Bunting

I go to the door often.
Night and summer. Crickets
lift their cries.
I know you are out.
You are driving
late through the summer night.

I do not know what will happen.
I have no claim on you.
I am one star
you have as guide; others
love you, the night
so dark over the Azores.

You have been working outdoors,
gone all week. I feel you
in this lamp lit
so late. As I reach for it
I feel myself
driving through the night.

I love a firmness in you
that disdains the trivial
and regains the difficult.
You become part then
of the firmness of night,
the granite holding up walls.

There were women in Egypt who
supported with their firmness the stars
as they revolved,
hardly aware
of the passage from night
to day and back to night.

I love you where you go
through the night, not swerving,
clear as the indigo
bunting in her flight,
passing over two
thousand miles of ocean.

Robert Bly

 

[Colin]

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

 

[midcan5]

'Green Shade'

[Nara Deer Park]


"With my head on his spotted back

and his head on the grass—a little bored

with the quiet motion of life

and a cluster of mosquitoes making

hot black dunes in the air—we slept

with the smell of his fur engulfing us.

It was as if my dominant functions were gazing

and dreaming in a field of semiwild deer.

It was as if I could dream what I wanted,

and what I wanted was to long for nothing—

no facts, no reasons—never to say again,

"I want to be like him," and to lie instead

in the hollow deep grass—without esteem or riches—

gazing into the big, lacquer black eyes of a deer."

Henri Cole

 

[midcan5]

'False Documents'

"They ran the numbers twice for you
giving you the benefit of the doubt
but you knew the computer at the other
end of the officer’s PDA would not find
your brown number in its little black index.
You drove exactly one mile per hour below the speed
limit. You buckled your baby into his car seat according
to instructions. You signaled for exactly three seconds
before you turned left. You wanted to hide the Subway wrappers,
the empty box of Orbitz gum. Evidence of Big Macs.
You wanted to drink the Mountain Dew before it turned toxic
in the hot Phoenix sun as you asked, doesn’t this green
sludge make me American enough? But you didn’t
move because you knew the officer would have taken
that for gun-finding or drug-hiding or some other supposed
Mexican sport. You with your hands at ten and two
wondered how long the bus ride the officer would take you
on would last and whether they would provide any water.
You wondered, as the officer put hand to holster,
how dangerous it would be to down that Mountain
Dew then and there, in the wide-open American air."

Nicole Walker

 

[midcan5]

'First Gestures'

"Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release."

Julia Spicher Kasdorf