Category Archives: Poetry

בַּקַּיִץ הַזֶּה שֶׁל שִׂנְאָה קְרוּעַת־עֵינַיִם לִרְוָחָה
וְאַהֲבַה עִוֶּרֶת אֲנִי מַתְחִיל שׁוּב לְהַאֲמִין
בְּכָל הדְּבָרִים הקְּטַנִּים אֲשֶׁר יְמַלְּאוּ
אֶת בּוֹרוֹת הַפְּגָזִים׃ אֲדָמָה וּקְצָת עֵשֶׂב
אוּלַי אַחַר הַגְּשָׁמִים רֶמֶשׂ קָטָן לְמִינֵהוּ
אֲנִי חוֹשֵׁב עַל יְלָדִים גְּדֵלִים חֶצְיָם בְּמוּסַר אֲבִיהֶם
וְחֶצְיָם בְּתוֹרַת מִלְחָמָה
הדְּמָעוֹת חוֹדְרוֹת עַכְשָׁו אֶל תּוֹךְ עֵינַי מִבַּחוּץ
וְאָזְנַי מַמְצִיאוֹת יוֹם יוֹם קוֹל צַעֲדֵי מְבַשֵּׂר

In this summer of wide-open-eyed hatred
and blind love, I’m beginning to believe again
in all the little things that will fill
the holes left by the shells: soil, a bit of grass,
perhaps, after the rains, small insects of every kind.
I think of children growing up half in the ethics of their fathers
and half in the science of war.
The tears now penetrate into my eyes from the outside
and my ears invent, every day, the footsteps of
the messenger of good tidings.

Yehuda Amichai, From Jerusalem 1967, 7

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem in this summer of wide-open-eyed hatred. May such seeds bear miraculous fruit in the coming months.

O you who were born on a bed of sorrow and reared in the lap of misfortune and brought to manhood in the houses of oppression, you who eat your crust of bread with a sigh and drink of your clouded water with tears and weeping.

O soldier who is sentenced by man’s cruel law to forsake his mate and his little ones and kin to go out of the field of death for the sake of greed in its guise of duty.

And you, poet, who sojourn in the land of your birth, unknown among those who know you, satisfied with a morsel and fragments of ink and paper.

O captive, cast into the darkness for a small wrong made big by those who match evil with evil; banished by them that seek doing good by way of corruption.

And you, unfortunate woman, on whom God did bestow beauty; upon whom the eyes of the young men of the age fell, who pursued you and tempted you and conquered your poverty with gold. To them you did yield and were left as prey trembling in the hold of misery and shame.

You, my beloved weak, are the martyrs of men’s law. You are in despair, and your despairing is the fruit of the iniquity of the strong and the ruler’s deceit and the rich man’s oppressing, and the selfishness of the lustful.

Despair not. For beyond the wrongs of the world, beyond matter and clouds and air, beyond all things is a Power that is justice and mercy and love and compassion.

You are as flowers that grow in the shade. Gentle breezes shall pass and bear your needs to the sunlight, and you shall live there a pleasant life.

You are like to naked trees bowed under heavy winter snows. But soon will spring come to clothe you with fresh green leaves.

Truth shall tear aside the veil of tears that conceals your smile. And I will greet you, my brothers, and humble your oppressors.

Gibran Kahlil Gibran, from A Tear and a Smile

The poet of Lebanon speaks across the years, encouraging the descendants of his people, his friends, in a time of great trial. May beauteous Lebanon someday be freed of its troubles.

At the round earths imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
‘Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou’hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood.

John Donne, 1633

I would be ignorant as the dawn
That has looked down
On that old queen measuring a town
With the pin of a brooch,
Or on the withered men that saw
From their pedantic Babylon
The careless planets in their courses,
The stars fade out where the moon comes,
And took their tablets and did sums;
I would be as ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

William Butler Yeats, 1919

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all the complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

William Butler Yeats, 1930

A voice said ‘Follow, follow’ : and I rose
       And followed far into the dreamy night,
       Turning my back upon the pleasant light.
It led me where the bluest water flows,
And would not let me drink : where the corn grows
       I dared not pause, but went uncheered by sight
       Or touch : until at length in evil plight
It left me, wearied out with many woes.
Some time I sat as one bereft of sense :
       But soon another voice from very far
              Called, ‘Follow, follow’ : and I rose again.
       Now on my night has dawned a blessed star :
              Kind and steady hands my sinking steps sustain,
And will not leave me till I shall go hence.

Christina Rossetti
12 April 1849

                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
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the
        living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

T. S. Eliot. Little Gidding, ll. 39-53, from Four Quartets (Harvest/Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1943/1971).

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
     I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
     Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
          Up vistaed hopes I sped;
          And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
     From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
          But with unhurrying chase,
          And unperturbèd pace,
     Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
          They beat—and a Voice beat
          More instant than the Feet—
     “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

Continue reading “The Hound of Heaven”

When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
           Contract into a span.

           So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
           Rest in the bottome lay.

           For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
           So both should losers be.

           Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
           May tosse him to my breast.

George Herbert, 1633