PDA

Դիտել ողջ տարբերակը : Անգլո-ամերիկյան գրականության նմուշներ` բնագրով



Philosopher
03.06.2007, 22:30
Անգլերենն այսօր դառնում է առաջին օտար լեզու, որն, ինչպես ռուսերենը խորհրդային տարիներին, տալիս է մեծ մշակույթի հետ առավել սերտորեն կապվելու, այն նորովի, չմիջնորդավորված ընկալելու, նրանով սեփական մշակույթը սնելու հնարավորություն: Ցավոք, այսօր անգլերենը առավել հաճախ օգտագործվում է բացառապես մասնագիտական գրականություն յուրացնելու համար, մինչդեռ անգլիական խոսքի արվեստը մի վիթխարի մշակույթ է, աշխարհի, իրականության, մարդկային ապրումների ընկալման մի անկորնչելի գանձարան: Այս թեմայում տեղադրենք անգլո-ամերիկյան, նաև, եթե ցանկանում եք, ագլալեզու այլ գրականությունների լավագույն նմուշները` բնագրով:

Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.


Edgar Allan Poe

The Bells

I
Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III
Hear the loud alarum bells-
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now- now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
Of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV
Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells-
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Philosopher
03.06.2007, 23:05
Walt Whitman

A Woman Waits For Me

A WOMAN waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.
Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth,
These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of
itself.
Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his
sex, 10
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that
are warm-blooded and sufficient for me;
I see that they understand me, and do not deny me;
I see that they are worthy of me--I will be the robust husband of
those women.
They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear, wellpossess'd
of themselves. 20
I draw you close to me, you women!
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for
others' sakes;
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
It is I, you women--I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable--but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States--I
press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually--I listen to no entreaties, 30
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated
within me.
Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new
artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
immortality, I plant so lovingly now. 40

Philosopher
03.06.2007, 23:14
Walt Whitman

All Is Truth

O ME, man of slack faith so long!
Standing aloof--denying portions so long;
Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth;
Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none,
but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon
itself,
Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the earth
does.
(This is curious, and may not be realized immediately--But it must be
realized;
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
And that the universe does.)
Where has fail'd a perfect return, indifferent of lies or the truth?
Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?
or in the meat and blood? 10
Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see
that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return--And that what are called
lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded
it,
And that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as
space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but
that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am,
And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.

Սահակ
04.06.2007, 05:29
John New­ton

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

1779

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 11:58
Allen Ginsberg

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade
of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the
same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled
steel roots of trees of machinery.
The only water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks,
no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and
hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a
man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my
visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes greasy Sandwiches, dead baby
carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank,
condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the
razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the
smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out
of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy
head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke
pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that
eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial
worse-than-dirt--industrial--modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden
crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots
below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the
guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty
tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the
cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs &
sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you standing before me in the sunset, all your
glory in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet
natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset
shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the
heavens of your railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your
skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive?
the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive,
we're all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied
on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly
tincan evening sitdown vision.

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 12:31
Allen Ginsberg

An Eastern Ballad

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.

Allen Ginsberg

Song

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human -
looks out of the heart
burning with purity -
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love -
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
- cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy
- must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye -

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 13:40
Գինսբերգի ամենափայլուն գործերից մեկը, որտեղ նրա հումանիզմը, նույնիսկ կարելի է ասել` հեղափոխական հումանիզմը ստանում է իր կատարյալ դրսևորումը:

Allen Ginsberg

September on Jessore Road

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road-long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage

Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!"

Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare—

Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?

How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams—

Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come tast the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they've killed?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory pain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 16:53
Գինսբերգի քաղաքական պոեզիայի լավագույն նմուշներից մեկը. ԱՄՆ-ի նշանավոր պոետ Գինսբերգից կարելի է սովորել և' այն, թե ինչպես լինել հակաամերիկանիստ, և' այն, թե ինչի համար կարելի է սիրել այդ երկիրը:

Allen Ginsberg

America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen
are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist
Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere
you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

dvgray
04.06.2007, 20:10
Լավն էր, շնորհակալություն::hands

:oy...դու ինձ, ես քեզ :):


I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/ams.html
;)

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 21:56
Allen Ginsberg

Death & Fame

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in
Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother
96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sisterin-
law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters
their grandchildren,
companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each
other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand
day retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he
loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly
arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my
skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then
sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my
stomach
shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth
& fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commingling
with flesh and youthful blood of 1997
and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender
and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,
my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick,
tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged
chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a
pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his
walk-up flat,
seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him
again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made
sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock
star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical conductors,
unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trumpeters,
bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger
fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin autoharp
pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India,
Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massachusets
surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty
sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American
provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate bibliophiles,
sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved
him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me
from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my
studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photography
aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural
historians come to witness the historic funeral
Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autographhunters,
distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased
who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 21:58
Allen Ginsberg

Father Death Blues

Hey Father Death, I'm flying home
Hey poor man, you're all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

Father Death, Don't cry any more
Mama's there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest

Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body's gone
Father Death I'm coming home

Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues

Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we'll work it through

Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 22:07
Ուիթմենի այս բանաստեղծությունը, որը նվիրված է Աբրահամ Լինկոլնին, ողբ է մեծ քաղաքական գործչի, իսկ առավել լայն առումով` ռոմանտիկ ու ազատասեր ԱՄՆ-ի համար, որը եթե ոչ մեռավ, ապա սկսեց մեռնել Լինկոլնի մահով:

Walt Whitman

O Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 22:44
Պատմության ընկալումն ու բեկումը կենդանի, ապագային միտված մարդու հոգում, որն իր մեջ կարող է ներառել բոլոր ժամանակներն ու բոլոր ցեղերին` մարդկային գոյության միասնական հոսքը...

Walt Whitman

With Antecedents

WITH antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,--with laws, artizanship, wars and
journeys;
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the sale of slaves--with enthusiasts--with the troubadour, the
crusader, and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent;
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there; 10
With the fading religions and priests;
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present
shores;
With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these
years;
You and Me arrived--America arrived, and making this year;
This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.
O but it is not the years--it is I--it is You;
We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents;
We are the skald, the oracle, the monk, and the knight--we easily
include them, and more;
We stand amid time, beginningless and endless--we stand amid evil and
good;
All swings around us--there is as much darkness as light; 20
The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us;
Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.
As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement days,)
I have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all;
I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true--I reject no
part.
Have I forgotten any part?
Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.
I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god;
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without
exception; 30
I assert that all past days were what they should have been;
And that they could no-how have been better than they were,
And that to-day is what it should be--and that America is,
And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.
In the name of These States, and in your and my name, the Past,
And in the name of These States, and in your and my name, the Present
time.
I know that the past was great, and the future will be great,
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,
(For the sake of him I typify--for the common average man's sake--
your sake, if you are he)
And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the
centre of all days, all races, 40
And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come of races
and days, or ever will come.

Philosopher
04.06.2007, 22:56
George Gordon Byron

Prometheus

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Philosopher
05.06.2007, 07:33
Ուիթմենի հայտնի "Խոտի տերևներ" ("Leaves of Grass") ժողովածուի կոնցեպտուալ բանաստեղծություններից է: Զուգահեռներ կան Գինսբերգի "Արևածաղկի սուտրայի" ("Sunflower Sutra") (http://www.akumb.am/showpost.php?p=302009&postcount=5) հետ: Մարդկային հավասարության, մարդու բնականության ու մարդու պաշտամունքի երգեր են երկուսն էլ:

Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

Philosopher
05.06.2007, 07:36
Edgar Allan Poe

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you-
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother- my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

Philosopher
05.06.2007, 08:47
Թոմաս Սթըրնզ Էլիոտի "Ամայի երկիրը" ("The Waste Land") պոեմը արևմտյան քաղաքակրթության ճգնաժամի ամենահանճարեղ բանաստեղծական ընդհանրացումներից է: Այն, ինչպես բնորոշ է Էլիոտի գործերին, բավականին բարդ տեքստային ու գաղափարական կառույց ունի, անգլերեն տեքստին ժամանակ առ ժամանակ խառնվում են այլ լեզուներով բառեր, արտահայտություններ: Այս պոեմը կարծես արևմտյան քաղաքակարթության կոլեկտիվ անգիտակցականի ընդհանրական հոսքը լինի, որի մեջ ձուլվում են եվրոպական քաղաքակրթաստեղծ ազգերի հոգեբանությունն, ապրումները` 20-րդ դարի կտրվածքում, և նրանց միասնական ընթացքը դեպի ամայի երկիր, դեպի անհայտություն...

Thomas Stearns Eliot

THE WASTE LAND



Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
_Sibylla ti theleis_; respondebat illa: _apothanein thelo_.



I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30

_Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?_

'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'




-- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
_Od' und leer das Meer._

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, 60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up tbe hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

Line 42 Od'] Oed' -- Editor.



'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur! -- mon semblable, -- mon frère!'


II. A GAME OF CHESS

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 80
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid -- troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended 90
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still, 110



'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing. 120
'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag --
It's so elegant
So intelligent 130
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?'
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said --
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, 140
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,



And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 150
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 160
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You ARE a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot --
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

Philosopher
05.06.2007, 08:50
The Waste Land


III. THE FIRE SERMON

THE river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180
Departed, have left no addresses.

Line 161 ALRIGHT. This spelling occurs also in
the Hogarth Press edition -- Editor.



By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter 200
They wash their feet in soda water
_Et, O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!_

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see



At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest --
I too awaited the expected guest. 230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.



O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide

Red sails 270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars 280
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia 290
Wallala leialala

'Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'



'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised "a new start".
I made no comment. What should I resent?'
'On Margate Sands. 300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.'

la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
0 Lord Thou pluckest me out
0 Lord Thou pluckest 310

burning


IV. DEATH BY WATER

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Philosopher
05.06.2007, 08:50
The Waste Land

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

AFTER the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains



He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience 330

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring 350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together 360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-- But who is that on the other side of you?



What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings 380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one. 390
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
D A 400
DATTA: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender



Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
D A 410
DAYADHVAM: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
D A
DAMYATA: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded 420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

_Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon_ -- O swallow swallow
_Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie_
These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

Shauri
05.06.2007, 12:36
The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe) :love

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 07:57
Edgar Allan Poe

Ulalume

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere-
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir-
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
There were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll-
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole-
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere-
Our memories were treacherous and sere-
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year-
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber-
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to morn-
As the star-dials hinted of morn-
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn-
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said- "She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs-
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion,
To point us the path to the skies-
To the Lethean peace of the skies-
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said- "Sadly this star I mistrust-
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-
Oh, hasten!- oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!- let us fly!- for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust-
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust-
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied- "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night:-
See!- it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright-
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom-
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb-
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said- "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied- "Ulalume- Ulalume-
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere-
As the leaves that were withering and sere-
And I cried- "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed- I journeyed down here-
That I brought a dread burden down here-
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber-
This misty mid region of Weir-
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 08:42
Edgar Allan Poe

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 09:03
Edgar Allan Poe

Bridal Ballad

The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satin and jewels grand
Are all at my command,
And I am happy now.

And my lord he loves me well;
But, when first he breathed his vow,
I felt my bosom swell-
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.

But he spoke to re-assure me,
And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the church-yard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D'Elormie,
"Oh, I am happy now!"

And thus the words were spoken,
And this the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Here is a ring, as token
That I am happy now!

Would God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how!
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken,-
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now.

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 10:21
Allen Ginsberg

Hum Bom!

Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb'd them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?

What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb you!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb you!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb? You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

Whydja bomb?
We didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
We didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn't wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn't wanna bomb!

Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?

Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don't wanna bomb!
We don't wanna
we don't wanna
we don't wanna bomb!

Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!

They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!

Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?

Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!

Saddam's still there building a bomb!
Saddam's still there building a bomb!
Saddam's still there building a bomb!
Saddam's still there building a bomb!

Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job

Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Ginsberg says Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job.

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 10:44
Allen Ginsberg

On the Conduct of the World Seeking Beauty Against Government

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,
like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, like what we imagine
Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs
before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round
The Tree of Knowledge? What would Roque Dalton joke about lately
teeth chattering like a machine gun as he dabated mass tactics
with his Companeros? Necessary to kill the Yanquis with big bomb
Yes but don’t do it by yourself, better consult your mother
to get the Correct Line of Thought, if not consult Rimbaud once he got his leg cut off
or Lenin after his second stroke sending a message thru Mrs Krupskaya
to the rude Georgian, & just before his deathly fit when the Cheka aides
outside
his door looked in coldly assuring him his affairs were in good hands no need to move -
What sickness at the
pit of his stomach moved up to
his brain?
What thought Khlebnikov on the hungry train exposing his stomach to the
sun?
Or Mayakovsky before the bullet hit his brain, what sharp propaganda for
action
on the Bureaucratic Battlefield in the Ministry of Collective Agriculture in
Ukraine?
What Slogan for Futurist architects or epic hymn for masses of Communist
Party Card holders in Futurity
on the conduct of the world seeking beauty against Government?

Philosopher
06.06.2007, 22:04
Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Philosopher
07.06.2007, 07:36
James Joyce

At That Hour

At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?

When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.

James Joyce

Gentle Lady, Do Not Sing

Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love;
Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.
Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how
In the grave all love shall sleep:
Love is aweary now.


James Joyce

My Dove, My Beautiful One

My dove, my beautiful one,
Arise, arise!
The night-dew lies
Upon my lips and eyes.
The odorous winds are weaving
A music of sighs:
Arise, arise,
My dove, my beautiful one!
I wait by the cedar tree,
My sister, my love,
White breast of the dove,
My breast shall be your bed.
The pale dew lies
Like a veil on my head.
My fair one, my fair dove,
Arise, arise!

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 11:49
Ուիթմենի` "Երգ իմ մասին" ("Song of Myself") բանաստեղծություն-պոեմը մարդու` իր մասին երգած լավագույն երգն է թերևս: Ուիթմենը այստեղ իդեալականացնում, պաշտամունքի սեղանին է դնում իրեն` մարդուն` իրական մարդուն, յուրաքանչյուրի մեջ ապրող մարդուն, որը կարող է լինել ու դառնալ բնության մեծագույն հրաշալիքը: Ուիթմենը հավատում է դրան, հավատում է մարդուն, հավատում է մարդկային կյանքին: Ուիթմենի մարդերգությունը համաշխարհային գրականության մեծագույն արժեքներից է:

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself


1
I celebrate myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes--the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume--it has no taste of the distillation--it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever--I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; I am mad for it
to be in contact with me.

2
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air
through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark- color'd sea-rocks,
and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice, words loos'd to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting
the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun--(there are millions of suns left)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of
the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance--always substance and increase, always
sex;
Always a knit of identity--always distinction--always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail--learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the
beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery, here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my Soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age;
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent,
and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean;
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the
rest.
I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing:
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels, swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me;
People I meet--the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I live in, or the
nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of money, or
depressions or exaltations;
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am;
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary;
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments--I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you, my Soul--the other I am must not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass--loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want--not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript
heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the
argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and
lovers;
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap'd stones, elder, mullen and poke-weed.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 11:53
6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and
say, Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; It may be you are from old
people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps;
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their
laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward--nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd
between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good;
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth;
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself;
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
Every kind for itself and its own--for me mine, male and female;
For me those that have been boys, and that love women;
For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings to be slighted;
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid--for me mothers, and the mothers of
mothers;
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears;
For me children, and the begetters of children.
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded;
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no;
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill;
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bed-room;
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair--I note where the pistol has fallen.
The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders;
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod
horses on the granite floor;
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs;
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside, borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall;
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star, quickly working his passage to the
centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes;
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sun-struck, or in fits;
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to babes;
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here--what howls restrain'd by
decorum;
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with
convex lips;
I mind them or the show or resonance of them--I come, and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged;
The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.
I am there--I help--I came stretch'd atop of the load;
I felt its soft jolts--one leg reclined on the other;
I jump from the cross-beams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt,
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee;
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game;
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves, with my dog and gun by my side.
The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails--she cuts the sparkle and scud;
My eyes settle the land--I bend at her prow, or shout joyously from the deck.
The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me;
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and had a good time:
(You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.)
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west-- the bride was a red
girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking--they had
moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper--he was drest mostly in skins--his luxuriant beard and
curls protected his neck--he held his bride by the hand;
She had long eyelashes--her head was bare--her coarse straight locks descended upon
her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.
The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside; I heard his motions crackling
the twigs of the woodpile;
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water, and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd feet,
And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him some coarse clean
clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd north;
(I had him sit next me at table--my fire-lock lean'd in the corner.)

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore;
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly:
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank;
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you;
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather;
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair:
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs--their white bellies bulge to the sun--they do not
ask who seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the
market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuffle and break-down.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil;
Each has his main-sledge--they are all out--(there is a great heat in the fire.)
From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their movements;
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms;
Over-hand the hammers swing--over-hand so slow--over-hand so sure:
They do not hasten--each man hits in his place.

13
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses--the block swags underneath on its
tied-over chain;
The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard--steady and tall he stands, pois'd on
one leg on the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding--he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his
forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache--falls on the black of his polish'd and
perfect limbs.
I behold the picturesque giant, and love him--and I do not stop there;
I go with the team also.
In me the caresser of life wherever moving--backward as well as forward slueing;
To niches aside and junior bending.
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade! what is that you
express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day- long ramble;
They rise together--they slowly circle around.
I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else;
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me;
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 11:55
14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night;
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close;
I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.)
The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the
prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings;
I see in them and myself the same old law.
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections;
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
I am enamour'd of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the
drivers of horses;
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me;
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns;
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me;
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will;
Scattering it freely forever.

15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft;
The carpenter dresses his plank--the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending
lisp;
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner;
The pilot seizes the king-pin--he heaves down with a strong arm;
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat--lance and harpoon are ready;
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches;
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar;
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel;
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-day loafe, and looks at the oats
and rye;
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand--the drunkard nods by the bar-room
stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves--the policeman travels his beat-- the gate-keeper
marks who pass;
The young fellow drives the express-wagon--(I love him, though I do not know him)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young--some lean on their rifles, some sit
on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee;
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle;
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow
to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret, and harks to the musical rain;
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron;
The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth, is offering moccasins and bead-bags for
sale;
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways;
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shore-going
passengers;
The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and
stops now and then for the knots;
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a week ago borne her first child;
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine, or in the factory or mill;
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are
advancing;
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer--the reporter's lead
flies swiftly over the note-book--the sign-painter is lettering with red and gold;
The canal boy trots on the tow-path--the book-keeper counts at his desk--the
shoemaker waxes his thread;
The conductor beats time for the band, and all the performers follow him;
The child is baptized--the convert is making his first professions;
The regatta is spread on the bay--the race is begun--how the white sails sparkle!
The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that would stray;
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd
cent)
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly;
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips;
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck;
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other;
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the Great Secretaries;
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold;
The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle;
As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives notice by the jingling of loose
change;
The floor-men are laying the floor--the tinners are tinning the roof--the masons are
calling for mortar;
In single file, each shouldering his hod, pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd is gather'd--it is the Fourth of
Seventh-month--(What salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the
winter-grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface;
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe;
Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cottonwood or pekan- trees;
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river, or through those drain'd by the
Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansaw;
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them;
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport;
The city sleeps, and the country sleeps;
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time;
The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them;
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.

16
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise;
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine;
One of the Great Nation, the nation of many nations, the smallest the same, and the
largest the same;
A southerner soon as a northerner--a planter nonchalant and hospitable, down by the
Oconee I live;
A Yankee, bound by my own way, ready for trade, my joints the
limberest joints on earth, and the sternest joints on earth;
A Kentuckian, walking the vale of the Elkhorn, in my deer-skin
leggings--a Louisianian or Georgian;
A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts--a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush, or with fishermen off
Newfoundland;
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking;
At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch;
Comrade of Californians--comrade of free north-westerners, (loving their big
proportions)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen--comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to
drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest;
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
I resist anything better than my own diversity;
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place;
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.)

17
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands--they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe.

18
With music strong I come--with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only--I play great marches for conquer'd and
slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall--battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
I beat and pound for the dead;
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea! And to all generals that lost
engagements! and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 12:01
19
This is the meal equally set--this is the meat for natural hunger;
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous--I make appointments with all;
I will not have a single person slighted or left away;
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited;
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited--the venerealee is invited:
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
This is the press of a bashful hand--this is the float and odor of hair;
This is the touch of my lips to yours--this is the murmur of yearning;
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face;
This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well, I have--for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock
has.
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstart, twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
This hour I tell things in confidence;
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you?
All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own;
Else it were time lost listening to me.
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and filth;
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape, and
tears.
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids--conformity goes to the
fourth-remov'd;
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.
Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsell'd with doctors, and
calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
In all people I see myself--none more, and not one a barleycorn less;
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
And I know I am solid and sound; To me the converging objects of the universe
perpetually flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)
I exist as I am--that is enough;
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content;
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.

21
I am the poet of the Body;
And I am the poet of the Soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me;
The first I graft and increase upon myself--the latter I translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man;
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man;
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride;
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough;
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?
It is a trifle--they will more than arrive there, every one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.
Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees;
Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains, misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth! rich, apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable, passionate love!

22
You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean;
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers;
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together--I undress--hurry me out of sight of the land;
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse;
Dash me with amorous wet--I can repay you.
Sea of stretch'd ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea! I am integral with you--I too
am of one phase, and of all phases.
Partaker of influx and efflux I--extoller of hate and conciliation;
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others' arms.
I am he attesting sympathy;
(Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports them?)
I am not the poet of goodness only--I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
Washes and razors for foofoos--for me freckles and a bristling beard.
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me--I stand indifferent;
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait;
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified?
I find one side a balance, and the antipodal side a balance;
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine;
Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and early start.
This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
There is no better than it and now.
What behaved well in the past, or behaves well to-day, is not such a wonder;
The wonder is, always and always, how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

23
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern--the word En-Masse.
A word of the faith that never balks;
Here or henceforward, it is all the same to me--I accept Time, absolutely.
It alone is without flaw--it rounds and completes all;
That mystic, baffling wonder I love, alone completes all.
I accept reality, and dare not question it;
Materialism first and last imbuing.
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop, mixt with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer--this the chemist--this made a grammar of the old
cartouches;
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas;
This is the geologist--this works with the scalpel--and this is a mathematician.
Gentlemen! to you the first honors always:
Your facts are useful and real--and yet they are not my dwelling;
(I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.)
Less the reminders of properties told, my words;
And more the reminders, they, of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully
equipt,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives, and them that plot and conspire.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 12:04
24
Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy and sensual, eating, drinking and breeding;
No sentimentalist--no stander above men and women, or apart from them;
No more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me;
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging--through me the current and index.
I speak the pass-word primeval--I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same
terms.
Through me many long dumb voices;
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves;
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform'd persons;
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs;
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars--and of wombs, and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon;
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices;
Voice of sexes and lusts--voices veil'd, and I remove the veil;
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth;
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart;
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites;
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body, or
any part of it.
Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.
Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life.
Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you!
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.
Root of wash'd sweet flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it
shall be you!
Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall be you!
Sun so generous, it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it shall be you!
Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! loving lounger in my winding paths! it
shall be you!
Hands I have taken--face I have kiss'd--mortal I have ever touch'd! it shall be you.
I dote on myself--there is that lot of me, and all so luscious;
Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy.
O I am wonderful!
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish;
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.
That I walk up my stoop! I pause to consider if it really be;
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows;
The air tastes good to my palate.
Hefts of the moving world, at innocent gambols, silently rising,
freshly exuding, Scooting obliquely high and low.
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs;
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The earth by the sky staid with--the daily close of their junction;
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head;
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

25
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
We also ascend, dazzling and tremendous as the sun;
We found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach;
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision--it is unequal to measure itself;
It provokes me forever;
It says sarcastically, Walt, you contain enough--why don't you let it out, then?
Come now, I will not be tantalized--you conceive too much of articulation.
Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost;
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams;
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts--it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
Happiness--which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day.
My final merit I refuse you--I refuse putting from me what I really am;
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me;
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
Writing and talk do not prove me;
I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in my face;
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

26
I think I will do nothing now but listen,
To accrue what I hear into myself--to let sounds contribute toward me.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks
cooking my meals;
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice;
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following;
Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city--sounds of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them--the loud laugh of work- people at their
meals;
The angry base of disjointed friendship--the faint tones of the sick;
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence;
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves--the refrain of the
anchor-lifters;
The ring of alarm-bells--the cry of fire--the whirr of swift- streaking engines and
hose-carts, with premonitory tinkles, and color'd lights;
The steam-whistle--the solid roll of the train of approaching cars; The slow-march
play'd at the head of the association, marching two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse--the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)
I hear the violoncello ('tis the young man's heart's complaint)
I hear the key'd cornet--it glides quickly in through my ears;
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
I hear the chorus--it is a grand opera;
Ah, this indeed is music! This suits me. A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me;
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
I hear the train'd soprano--(what work, with hers, is this?)
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies;
It wrenches such ardors from me, I did not know I possess'd them;
It sails me--I dab with bare feet--they are lick'd by the indolent waves;
I am exposed, cut by bitter and angry hail--I lose my breath,
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death;
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call being.

27
To be, in any form--what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither)
If nothing lay more develop'd, the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell;
I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass or stop;
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy;
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

28
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself;
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture- fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me;
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger;
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
The sentries desert every other part of me;
They have left me helpless to a red marauder;
They all come to the headland, to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly--I have lost my wits--I and nobody else am the greatest traitor;
I went myself first to the headland--my own hands carried me there.
You villian touch! what are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

29
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath'd, hooded, sharp-tooth'd touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
Parting, track'd by arriving--perpetual payment of perpetual loan;
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Sprouts take and accumulate--stand by the curb prolific and vital:
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 12:07
30
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it;
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon;
The insignificant is as big to me as any;
(What is less or more than a touch?)
Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so;
Only what nobody denies is so.
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her iron
tea-kettle and baking shortcake.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness;
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach;
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones;
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low;
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky;
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs;
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods;
In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador;
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

32
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied--not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me, and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself--they evince them plainly in their possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens:
Did I pass that way huge times ago, and negligently drop them?
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers;
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness--ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
His nostrils dilate, as my heels embrace him;
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, as we race around and return.
I but use you a moment, then I resign you, stallion;
Why do I need your paces, when I myself out-gallop them?
Even, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 12:09
33
O swift wind! O space and time! now I see it is true, what I guessed at;
What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass;
What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning.
My ties and ballasts leave me--I travel--I sail--my elbows rest in the sea-gaps;
I skirt the sierras--my palms cover continents;
I am afoot with my vision.
By the city's quadrangular houses--in log huts--camping with lumbermen;
Along the ruts of the turnpike--along the dry gulch and rivulet bed;
Weeding my onion-patch, or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips-- crossing
savannas--trailing in forests;
Prospecting--gold-digging--girdling the trees of a new purchase;
Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand--hauling my boat down the shallow river;
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead--where the buck turns furiously
at the hunter;
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock--where the otter is feeding on
fish;
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou;
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey--where the beaver pats the mud
with his paddle-shaped tail;
Over the growing sugar--over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant--over the rice in its low
moist field;
Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the
gutters;
Over the western persimmon--over the long-leav'd corn--over the delicate blue-flower
flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest;
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs;
Walking the path worn in the grass, and beat through the leaves of the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot;
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve--where the great gold- bug drops
through the dark;
Where flails keep time on the barn floor;
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow;
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides;
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen--where andirons straddle the
hearth-slab--where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash--where the press is whirling its cylinders;
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs;
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself, and looking
composedly down)
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose--where the heat hatches pale-green eggs
in the dented sand;
Where the she-whale swims with her calf, and never forsakes it;
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke;
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water;
Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck--where the dead are corrupting below;
Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments;
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island;
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
Upon a door-step--upon the horse-block of hard wood outside;
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball;
At he-festivals, with blackguard jibes, ironical license, bull- dances, drinking, laughter;
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a
straw;
At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find;
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings:
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps;
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard--where the dry-stalks are scattered--where
the brood-cow waits in the hovel;
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work--where the stud to the mare--where
the cock is treading the hen;
Where the heifers browse--where geese nip their food with short jerks;
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie;
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near;
Where the humming-bird shimmers--where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving
and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh;
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden, half hid by the high weeds;
Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out;
Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery;
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds
upon small crabs;
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well;
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves;
Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs; Through the
gymnasium--through the curtain'd saloon--through the office or public hall;
Pleas'd with the native, and pleas'd with the foreign--pleas'd with the new and old;
Pleas'd with women, the homely as well as the handsome;
Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously;
Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the white-wash'd church;
Pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any
preacher--impress'd seriously at the camp-meeting:
Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon-- flatting the flesh of
my nose on the thick plate-glass;
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the clouds,
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle:
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek'd bush-boy--(behind me he rides at the
drape of the day)
Far from the settlements, studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital, reaching lemonade to a feverish patient;
Nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, examining with a candle:
Voyaging to every port, to dicker and adventure;
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any;
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while;
Walking the old hills of Judea, with the beautiful gentle God by my side;
Speeding through space--speeding through heaven and the stars;
Speeding amid the seven satellites, and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty
thousand miles;
Speeding with tail'd meteors--throwing fire-balls like the rest;
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly;
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing;
I tread day and night such roads.
And look at quintillions ripen'd, and look at quintillions green.
I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul;
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
I help myself to material and immaterial;
No guard can shut me off, nor law prevent me.
I anchor my ship for a little while only;
My messengers continually cruise away, or bring their returns to me.
I go hunting polar furs and the seal--leaping chasms with a pike- pointed staff--clinging
to topples of brittle and blue.
I ascend to the foretruck;
I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest;
We sail the arctic sea--it is plenty light enough;
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty;
The enormous masses of ice pass me, and I pass them--the scenery is plain in all
directions;
The white-topt mountains show in the distance--I fling out my fancies toward them;
(We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged;
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment--we pass with still feet and caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd city;
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.)
I am a free companion--I bivouac by invading watchfires.
I turn the bridegroom out of bed, and stay with the bride myself;
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs;
They fetch my man's body up, dripping and drown'd.
I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam- ship, and Death
chasing it up and down the storm;
How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and
faithful of nights,

Philosopher
08.06.2007, 12:11
And chalk'd in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you:
How he follow'd with them, and tack'd with them--and would not give it up;
How he saved the drifting company at last:
How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared
graves;
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp- lipp'd unshaved
men:
All this I swallow--it tastes good--I like it well--it becomes mine;
I am the man--I suffer'd--I was there.
The disdain and calmness of olden martyrs;
The mother, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on;
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover'd with
sweat;
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck--the murderous buckshot and the
bullets;
All these I feel, or am.
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen;
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin;
I fall on the weeds and stones;
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whip- stocks.
Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded person;
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken;
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris;
Heat and smoke I inspired--I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades;
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have clear'd the beams away--they tenderly lift me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt--the pervading hush is for my sake;
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy;
White and beautiful are the faces around me--the heads are bared of their fire-caps;
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
Distant and dead resuscitate;
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me--I am the clock myself.
I am an old artillerist--I tell of my fort's bombardment;
I am there again.
Again the long roll of the drummers;
Again the attacking cannon, mortars;
Again, to my listening ears, the cannon responsive.
I take part--I see and hear the whole;
The cries, curses, roar--the plaudits for well-aim'd shots;
The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip;
Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs;
The fall of grenades through the rent roof--the fan-shaped explosion;
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general--he furiously waves with his hand;
He gasps through the clot, Mind not me--mind--the entrenchments.

34
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth;
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo)
'Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.
Retreating, they had form'd in a hollow square, with their baggage for breastworks;
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the
price they took in advance;
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone;
They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their
arms, and march'd back prisoners of war.
They were the glory of the race of rangers;
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,
Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads, and massacred--it was
beautiful early summer;
The work commenced about five o'clock, and was over by eight.
None obey'd the command to kneel;
Some made a mad and helpless rush--some stood stark and straight;
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart--the living and dead lay together;
The maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt--the newcomers saw them there; Some,
half-kill'd, attempted to crawl away;
These were despatch'd with bayonets, or batter'd with the blunts of muskets;
A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more came to release him;
The three were all torn, and cover'd with the boy's blood.
At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies:
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

35
Would you hear of an old-fashion'd sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the story as my grandmother's father, the sailor, told it to me.
Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you, (said he)
His was the surly English pluck--and there is no tougher or truer,
and never was, and never will be;
Along the lower'd eve he came, horribly raking us.
We closed with him--the yards entangled--the cannon touch'd;
My captain lash'd fast with his own hands.
We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water;
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around,
and blowing up overhead.
Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark;
Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water
reported;
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the afterhold, to give them a
chance for themselves.
The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,
They see so many strange faces, they do not know whom to trust.
Our frigate takes fire;
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck, and the fighting is done?
Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
Only three guns are in use;
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's mainmast;
Two, well served with grape and canister, silence his musketry and clear his decks.
The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top;
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
Not a moment's cease;
The leaks gain fast on the pumps--the fire eats toward the powder- magazine.
One of the pumps has been shot away--it is generally thought we are sinking.
Serene stands the little captain;
He is not hurried--his voice is neither high nor low;
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon, they surrender to us.

36
Stretch'd and still lies the midnight;
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness;
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking--preparations to pass to the one we have
conquer'd;
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white
as a sheet;
Near by, the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin;
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl'd whiskers;
The flames, spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below;
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty;
Formless stacks of bodies, and bodies by themselves--dabs of flesh upon the masts
and spars,
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore,
death-messages given in charge to survivors,
The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering
groan;
These so--these irretrievable.

37
O Christ! This is mastering me!
In at the conquer'd doors they crowd. I am possess'd.
I embody all presences outlaw'

Philosopher
11.06.2007, 13:32
George Gordon Byron

Dream, The

I
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past -they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power -
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not -what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows -Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? -What are they?
Creations of the mind? -The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep -for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing -the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself -but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young -yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects; -he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously -his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother -but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race. -It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not -and why?
Time taught him a deep answer -when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

III
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake; -he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere
With a convulsion -then rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew -
For quickly comes such knowledge -that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

IV
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Glad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

V
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better: in her home,
A thousand leagues from his, -her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,
Daughters and sons of Beauty, -but behold!
Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be? -she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be? -she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind -a spectre of the past.

VI
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned. -I saw him stand
Before an altar -with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood; -as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then -
As in that hour -a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced -and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been -
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?

VII
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love; -Oh! she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!

VIII
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret. -Be it so.

IX
My dream is past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality -the one
To end in madness -both in misery.

Philosopher
11.06.2007, 13:49
George Gordon Byron

Euthanasia

When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!

No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

But silent let me sink to earth,
With no officious mourners near:
I would not mar one hour of mirth,
Nor startle friendship with a tear.

Yet Love, if Love in such an hour
Could nobly check its useless sighs,
Might then exert its latest power
In her who lives, and him who dies.

'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last
Thy features still serene to see:
Forgetful of its struggles past,
E’en Pain itself should smile on thee.

But vain the wish?for Beauty still
Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath;
And women's tears, produced at will,
Deceive in life, unman in death.

Then lonely be my latest hour,
Without regret, without a groan;
For thousands Death hath ceas’d to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.

Ay, but to die, and go,' alas!
Where all have gone, and all must go!
To be the nothing that I was
Ere born to life and living woe!

Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.

Philosopher
11.06.2007, 14:09
Thomas Stearns Eliot

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her
laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were
only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I
was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary
recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her
throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An
elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly
spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying: 'If the lady and gentleman
wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...' I
decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be
stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might
be collected, and I concentrated my attention with
careful subtlety to this end.

Philosopher
14.06.2007, 22:04
Allen Ginsberg

Feb 29, 1958

Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I read him Corso Creeley Kerouac
advised Burroughs Olson Huncke
the bearded lady in the Zoo, the
intelligent puma in Mexico City
6 chorus boys from Zanzibar
who chanted in wornout polygot
Swahili, and the rippling rythyms
of Ma Rainey and Vachel Lindsay.
On the Isle of the Queen
we had a long evening's conversation
Then he tucked me in my long
red underwear under a silken
blanket by the fire on the sofa
gave me English Hottie
and went off sadly to his bed,
Saying ah Ginsberg I am glad
to have met a fine young man like you.
At last, I woke ashamed of myself.
Is he that good and kind? Am I that great?
What's my motive dreaming his
manna? What English Department
would that impress? What failure
to be perfect prophet's made up here?
I dream of my kindness to T.S. Eliot
wanting to be a historical poet
and share in his finance of Imageryoverambitious
dream of eccentric boy.
God forbid my evil dreams come true.
Last nite I dreamed of Allen Ginsberg.
T.S. Eliot would've been ashamed of me.

Ծով
14.06.2007, 22:26
Մերսի…:)
Hysteria-ն շատ տպավորիչ էր…բայց աչքերս ցավում են, copy անեմ, բոլորն էլ կկարդամ…
համել, չեմ թաքցնի, որ բառարան ամեն դեպքում պետք կգա…:)

Philosopher
14.06.2007, 22:31
Allen Ginsberg

Footnote to Howl

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady
holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion!
Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations
holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!

Philosopher
22.06.2007, 09:28
David R. Williamsի "Twilight in the Spaces Between" վեպը կարդացի պատահաբար, բայց արդյունքում հասկացա, որ այն գուցե առավել կարևոր բան կարող է ասել ժամանակակից մարդուն Մարդու, նրա պրոբլեմի մասին, քան դասական գրականության շատ նմուշներ: Այստեղ մարդկային միայնակ, լքված կեցությունն է` իր գոյաբանական ապրումների ու տվայտանքների մեջ, մարդկային էքզիստենցիալ կեցությունը` իր դրամատիզմով, իր անսահման մարդկայնությամբ, իր անսահման միայնակությամբ, մեկուսացվածությամբ: ԱՄՆ-ի ամենախիստ ու ամենադաժան բանտերից մեկի կալանավորների նամակների ձևով գրված այս վեպը իմ կարդացած ամենահավաստի ու ամենաճշմարտացի գործերից է` մարդու, իրական մարդու, հակասական մարդու, բարդ ու պարզ մարդու, ցածր ու բարձր մարդու մասին:
Էպիստոլյար ժանրով գրված այս վեպը այնքան ճշմարտացի է ու դաժանորեն իրական, որ բանտային պայմանները վեր են ածվում գեղարվեստական պայմանականության, այս բանտը մարդկային կյանքն է, աշխարհը և նրանում` մարդիկ: Իսկապես, չկա ավելի ցածր բան, քան մարդը, ու չկա ավելի բարձր բան, քան մարդը: Այս ցածրի ու բարձրի մասին է այս վեպը, այս ցածրի ու բարձրի կակաֆոնիայով է շնչում նրա յուրաքանչյուր տողը, որը, ի վերջո, դառնում է սիմֆոնիա, մարդկային, ամբողջական մարդկայինի սիմֆոնիա... Ecce Homo. Տեսեք մարդուն:

David R. Williams

Twilight in the Spaces Between


Հատվածներ

Entry. Andrea Ramsey’s Dreambook (Undated)

“There are no futures. There are only streams of endless possibilities that collapse into one present as we rush head long into them. But even the present is an illusion, slipping from our grasp as we reach for it, becoming the past. It is only the past that truly exists. The past that scars our minds with memory. With reverberations that dictate our lives. With traces that haunt our eyes till death”.

North Dakota, Winter, Now

Dear Mother
This is the last time I shall write you. You know the reasons why and so there is no need for me to repeat them here. I never was much for writing anyway. I will not call, as you know I abhor that obnoxious symbol of modernity they call the telephone. I will not email, as you have no computer. I am not really writing this. They do not let me have pencils…
“Super Max”, the U.S. Maximum Facility at Bottineau, North Dakota, is considered to be the most
secure prison in the world. It is the “end of the line” for America’s most heinous criminals; criminals whose deeds are the fuel that drives lurid, true crime paperbacks and tabloid cover stories, crimes that open nightly news programs, images that will infect the minds of the morbid for decades to come.
…it is quiet and cool in my cell. I lie on my cot and close my eyes and I dream that I am with you, that I am holding you. That I am kissing your sweet, sweet face. Kissing away your tears. Kissing away your sorrow. Kissing away your fears. Protecting you as I have always done and always will. I miss Papa. Has he wandered far this time? He will come back. He always does. I miss the stern Niobe. I miss the twins. But most of all, I miss the little one, our darkling sparrow. So frail, so bone thin, so lost in her own shadows. Especially now that I am not there. And of course I miss the woman I would make my wife…
Super Max is a one hundred and sixty million dollar, state-of-the-art, high-tech fortress of steel,
concrete, and barbed wire. Those who come here, come for life. Even death does not bring freedom. The prison has its own cemetery and that is where its dead are buried. A measure that prevents thrill-seekers from turning their graves into shrines, and souvenir hunters from digging up the remains. For there are those who consider the inmates of Super Max, to be gods. Or the
flesh and blood incarnations of Satan himself.
…Time is very different here mother. In Twilight the winters are mild and calm. Here, the wind howls so loudly I can hear it through the thick walls. It sounds like a chorus of the damned, pleading for salvation. Here, it is neither day nor night. Here, a single light shines down from a caged recess high above me. The level of the light never changes. It never goes out.
There is no clock. There is no calendar. I measure time in weekly sessions. Outside my door I can hear the sound of guards walking. Most often alone, but sometimes in pairs. When they walk in pairs, I know that when they return, they will have become a trio. Usually they are accompanied only by silence. But sometimes, depending on who they are escorting, there is idle chatter or strange babbling, like a preacher speaking in tongues. At times there is cursing. Rarely, but it does happen, there is scuffling and screaming. When the two pairs stop outside my door I listen to the
locks being released and mark off another week. Another week away from you and those I love and must protect.
At Super Max, inmates are confined to their cells for a minimum of 22 hours of every day. They are allowed one half hour personal time to shower and shave with a cream hair remover, half an hour to exercise or take a book from the library, one hour to dictate letters to loved ones. They are not allowed to write, they are not allowed to have pens, pencils or even crayons - a Crayola through the eardrum is as lethal as a screwdriver, and really, all in all, more satisfying.
You asked, again, if you could visit. Mother, your health would not withstand the trip. It is too far and too dismal. I could not tolerate seeing you, without being able to touch you. I could not tolerate you seeing me in restraints. I could not tolerate having you watch them lead me away, as they did that day in the courtroom. Nobody comes here to visit, Mother. No one save the lawyers and the psychologists ever make the journey. You would sink into misery the moment your
kind eyes beheld what they have done to the earth around the prison. I only saw it once, when they brought me in, but it is still clearly etched in my mind. They take you down a long dirt road that rambles through mile after mile of desolate flat lands. Not a single tree stands. There is no grass. There are no shrubs. There is only dead earth, sprayed every month with a deforestation chemical first used in Vietnam and perfected since…
Driving toward Super Max, even before the prisonitself is visible, one can see the 25-foot fences
crowned with twisted loops of razor wire that move in a slow spiral, encasing the prison in a framework nautilus shell. They see five guard towers and the guards with their high-powered rifles, outfitted with night vision scopes. They see the walls of Super Max reinforced with seven layers of steel and cement. To enter, one must pass through a series of detectors. Hands are stamped with a secret code in ultraviolet dye. Retinas are scanned. No one goes anywhere without
an armed guard at their side. Not even the lawyers are left alone with their clients. They are assigned guards whom congress has granted authority to be present throughout, ordered to hear nothing and remember less.
…Mother, how much more can I tell you about her? I know that you will love her when you meet her. I have tried to describe her to you before, but words fail beyond what I have already written. She reminds me so much of you. She is tall and slender and beautiful. Her eyes are kind and her skin is soft. But underneath there is a core of steel that would break, long before it would
bend. You will understand when you meet her. And again, when you do, you will love her as I love her…
There are 142 cells in Super Max. Each cell measures six feet wide by eight feet long by twelve
feet high. Furnishings are stark. There is a cot. There is no sink or toilet. If the inmate of a cell wishes to urinate or defecate, he must call a guard and wait. If said inmate decides not to wait, he can use the drain in the center of the floor. The cell will not be cleaned for 24 hours.
Every cell in Super Max is occupied.
Clive Euxideos existed in cell 47. It was his world and had been for nearly five years. The walls
bore the markings of previous inmates, but not of him. Clive did not make his mark on walls. Clive made his mark on flesh. He has been, it could be said, a model prisoner. He takes his daily shower and shave. He uses his exercise time. He eats his meals peacefully and returns the plastic trays without incident. He makes the weekly walk to and from his session without trouble. He only speaks when spoken to, and as he is seldom spoken to outside of session, he seldom speaks.
Clive believes that it is good, not to have to speak. It is good to be locked up for 22 hours of every day. The solitude gives him time to think.
And think he does.
He thinks about the world outside the walls. He thinks of his family. He thinks about the worthless
flotsam of society that walks the land and how they should not. Clive sees himself as an avenging angel, scouring the dark lands without, granting life to those who deserve it, taking life from those who do not. To date, Clive has taken life from many who did not deserve that precious gift. They had been doctors and lawyers, trailer park trash and street corner scum. In no case had he stalked them. There was no need. They found him. They found him in bars and night clubs. They found him through television news broadcasts and newspaper headlines. They found him in movie theatres and concert halls. He’d rid the world of a lawyer who’d secured the release of a child molester, a doctor who’d gotten away with a hit and run that killed a young boy, a crackdealing
pimp who’d used a pipe to cave in the right side of one his whore’s faces and the woman refused to testify against him. He’d also taken out a man whose pasley tie clashed with his chocolate brown suit and a woman whose constant cell phone yammering through a screening of “The Bicycle Thief” marked her as a philistine of the most loutish order.

Philosopher
22.06.2007, 09:29
(շարունակություն)
…I remember little things. I remember what the garden use to be. I see an enormous turquoise sky holding three small clouds. I see you and Niobe, in the garden, bent happily to your work in the early springtime rose beds. You both wear large, floppy hats that protect your skin from the sun. The early March wind tries relentlessly, but unsuccessfully to tear those hats from your heads and carry them away. The beds are barren but you and Niobe know what promise the early shoots hold. Soon those shoots will become highly scented bushes in colors running from white, to all shades of pink, to a dark velvet ruby. In the height of summer, some of the blooms will be as wide as a dinner plate, and wouldn’t you love to sup off them if you only could? I watch from the veranda as you and Niobe root out the ants, and dig the dirt, and add the mulch, and then a thick layer of cypress around the base of the bushes. You then trim off the dead wood and prick your fingers on a thorn saved from the year before and do your dance. How I love to watch you dance….
Before he was captured, Clive visited the Hall of Records in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Clive did not know that he was going to be captured. In fact, he highly doubted it. But Clive was not one to leave anything to chance, and as he was passing through North Dakota anyway, he figured why not. If he was captured, he would eventually be imprisoned at Super Max. Of that he had no doubt. He made eye contact with the cops manning the metal detector and remarked on the weather. He stopped at the information booth and asked the ancient woman who’d spent most of her adult life working there, where the public records department was. She directed him up
a wide marble staircase and down a long narrow hall with cracked walls, to a vaulted room filled with row upon row of wooden file cabinets. The room felt of age and smelled of water damage. There, Clive requested a copy of the floor plans for the Super Max. A copy of the blueprints for every structure built in North Dakota is on file in the hall of records. Clive paid the copying fee and took the blueprints with him to study and memorize. One interesting thing about Clive
Euxideos is that he had a knack for remembering. He was able to take a “snapshot” of anything he saw or read and then later, could call that snapshot back up at whim, projecting it onto the big screen television mounted inside his skull. Then he would sit back (in the easy chair that was his brain) and study the snapshot at his leisure.
After careful study of the Super Max blueprint, Clive realized that, contrary to popular belief, the
facility was not escape proof. The penitentiary design experts had not thought of everything. There were at least two possible escape routes. One was very nasty, but offered the greatest chance for success. The other was less nasty, and really, less risky at least in terms of injury, but the potential for success was also far less. Clive, never one to avoid nastiness, decided upon the former.
I have nothing left to write. Nothing happens here. Nothing changes. I have my memories and I embrace them, awake or asleep. I listen.
And so it was that one night, deep into a North Dakota winter, with the world outside being ravaged by a howling snowstorm, Clive Euxideos escaped from the escape proof U.S. Maximum Facility at Bottineau, North Dakota and vanished into the swirling night.
In closing Mother, I only ask that you look to the garden when the wind changes.. Our garden, once so carefully tended and lush and fragrant, now fallow and dark. The garden with the fountain that once bubbled gaily, that now stands dry as the bones of the one it took. Look to the garden when the wind changes mother, and call my name.

Yours Eternally,
Clive

CactuSoul
22.06.2007, 17:15
David R. Williams

Twilight in the Spaces Between


Գիտեմ՝ կզարմանաս (գուցե նաև կնեղանաս;)), բայց կարդացի…
Իրոք որ. հրաշալի գործ էր:roll. պարզ, առանց բարձրագոչ բառերի, առանց չափազանցությունների, բայց միևնույն ժամանակ ինչքա՜ն բան էր պարունակում իր մեջ… Երազանքներ, սեր, հիշողություններ… Իսկական, մարդկային, անկեղծ մտորումներ… Մի ամբողջ կյանք…
Շնորհակալություն:love…

Philosopher
25.06.2007, 21:15
James Joyce

Be Not Sad

Be not sad because all men
Prefer a lying clamour before you:
Sweetheart, be at peace again -- -
Can they dishonour you?

They are sadder than all tears;
Their lives ascend as a continual sigh.
Proudly answer to their tears:
As they deny, deny.

James Joyce

Dear Heart, Why Will You Use Me So?

Dear heart, why will you use me so?
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,
Still are you beautiful -- - but O,
How is your beauty raimented!

Through the clear mirror of your eyes,
Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss,
Desolate winds assail with cries
The shadowy garden where love is.

And soon shall love dissolved be
When over us the wild winds blow -- -
But you, dear love, too dear to me,
Alas! why will you use me so?

James Joyce

Gentle Lady, Do Not Sing

Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love;
Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.

Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how
In the grave all love shall sleep:
Love is aweary now.

Philosopher
26.06.2007, 08:24
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I Arise from Dreams of Thee

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me -- who knows how? --
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream, --
The champak odors fall
Like sweet thoughts in a dream,
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fall!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale,
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My Heart beats loud and fast
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

impression
08.10.2007, 23:57
Mad Girl's Love Song
By Sylvia Plath
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

You're
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fool's Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

The Hanging Man
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

StrangeLittleGirl
22.10.2007, 20:05
Ես ուղղակի չէի կարող էս ամեն ինչով ձեզ հետ չկիսվել… Մի՛ խորացեք, ուղղակի գեղեցկությունը տեսեք
Հատված Հեմինգուեյի "A Moveable Feast"-ից.
With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

Շինարար
26.09.2009, 00:58
Այս բանաստեղծության հայերեն թարգմանությունը տեղադրել եմ « Արտասահմանյան հեղինակների հայերեն թարգմանություններ» թեմայում, իսկ այստեղ բնագիրը՝

Edgar Lee Masters

Silence

I HAVE known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities—
We cannot speak.

A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would he deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.

There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of a deep peace of mind,
And the silence of an embittered friendship,
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech,
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.

There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blesséd Jesus"—
Revealing in two words all sorrow, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.

And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.

Շինարար
11.10.2009, 01:24
Portrait of a Young Girl Raped at a Suburban Party

And after this quick bash in the dark
You will rise and go
Thinking of how empty you have grown
And of whether all the evening's care in front of mirrors
And the younger boys disowned
Led simply to this.

Confined to what you are expected to be
By what you are
Out in the frozen garden
You shiver and vomit -
Frightened, drunk among trees,
You wonder at how those acts that called for tenderness
Were far from tender.

Now you have left your titterings about love
And your childishness behind you
Yet still far from being old
You spew up among flowers
And in the warm stale rooms
The party continues.

It seems you saw some use in moving away
From that group of drunken lives
Yet already ten minutes pregnant
In twenty thousand you might remember
This party
This dull Saturday night
When planets rolled out of your eyes
And splashed down in suburban grasses.

Brian Patten

Թարգմանությունը՝ «Արտասահմանյան հեղինակների հայերեն թարգմանություններ» թեմայում:

CactuSoul
24.11.2010, 20:58
I Am Not Yours
by Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

CactuSoul
24.11.2010, 21:00
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.

CactuSoul
24.11.2010, 21:10
Happiness
by Raymond Carver

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.

Էլիզե
24.11.2010, 22:51
The Joke
/Robert L. Stevenson/

They walked in the lane together,
The sky was covered with stars,
They reached the gate in silence,
He lifted down the bars.

She neither smiled nor thanked him
Because she knew not how
For he was just a farmer's boy
And she- the farmers COW!





Just a JOKE :pardon :))

Kna
25.11.2010, 11:59
A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Kna
25.11.2010, 12:08
I know why the caged bird sings
by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

StrangeLittleGirl
27.11.2010, 14:50
Սրա երգն էլ կա

"Lady Weeping at the Crossroads" - by W H Auden

Lady, weeping at the crossroads,
Would you meet your love
In twilight with his greyhounds,
And the hawk upon his glove?

Bribe the bird then on the branches,
Bribe them to be dumb,
Stare the hot sun out of heaven
That the night may come.

Starless are the nights of travel,
Bleak the winter wind;
Run with terror all before you
And regret behind.

Run until you hear the ocean's
Everlasting cry;
Deep though it may be and bitter
You must drink it dry,

Wear out patience in the lowest
Dungeons of the sea,
Searching through the stranded shipwrecks
For the golden key,

Push on to the world's end, pay the
Dread guard with a kiss
Cross the rotten bridge that totters
Over the abyss.

There stands the deserted castle
Ready to explore;
Enter, climb the marble staircase,
Open the locked door.

Cross the silent empty ballroom
Doubt and anger past;
Blow the cobwebs from the mirror,
See yourself at last.

Put your hand behind the wainscot,
You have done your part;
Find the penknife there and plunge it
Into your false heart.

Դավիթ
07.07.2011, 19:02
Life is Fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

Langston Hughes

Դավիթ
07.07.2011, 19:35
Because I could not stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the School, where Children strove
At recess in the ring
We passed the fields of gazing grain
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us
The dews drew quivering and chill
For only Gossamer, my gown
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the GROUND
The roof was scarcely visible
The cornice in the ground.

Since then 'tis centuries and yet
Feels shorter than the DAY
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Դավիթ
08.07.2011, 00:41
Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Դավիթ
08.07.2011, 10:49
There is another sky
by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

Դավիթ
08.07.2011, 10:56
I Knew A Woman
by Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Դավիթ
08.07.2011, 13:27
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

StrangeLittleGirl
21.07.2011, 09:52
There is another sky
by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

Չգիտեմ՝ էս թեմայում քննարկումներ կարելի էր, թե չէ, բայց կմեռնեմ, եթե չարտահայտվեմ էս մեկի մասին:

Ուրեմն, Դիքինսոնի մասին գիրք էի կարդում, ձեռի հետ սկսեցի նրա գործերից էլ կարդալ: Նենց մի տեսակ դուրս չեկավ: Ոչ նրա տարօրինակ կենսագրությունը, ոչ էլ ստեղծագործությունները: Բայց այ էս մեկն իրոք հավեսն էր: :)

Դավիթ
21.07.2011, 12:40
Դե միայնակ կյանք է ունեցել և գրեթե իր բոլոր պոեզիան կապված է եղել մահի կամ մենակության հետ: Երևի թե ուրիշ կերպ չեր կարող լինել կին բանաստեղծի համար մեկ ու կես դար առաջ, պուրիտանական Ամհերստում, իր յուրահատուկ տարօրինակություններով լի: Իսկ ինչ գիրք էր իր մասին, արժի կարդալ?

StrangeLittleGirl
21.07.2011, 13:27
Դե միայնակ կյանք է ունեցել և գրեթե իր բոլոր պոեզիան կապված է եղել մահի կամ մենակության հետ: Երևի թե ուրիշ կերպ չեր կարող լինել կին բանաստեղծի համար մեկ ու կես դար առաջ, պուրիտանական Ամհերստում, իր յուրահատուկ տարօրինակություններով լի: Իսկ ինչ գիրք էր իր մասին, արժի կարդալ?

Կոչվում է «Սպիտակ հագուստով կինը»:

Էդ միայնությունն էլ ինքն էր ընտրել, ինքն էր որոշել սենյակից դուրս չգալ: Դե հա, մահվան մասին շատ-շատ ա գրել, բայց էդպես դուրս չի էկել:

Դավիթ
21.07.2011, 14:02
Դե ինքը սկսեց սպիտակ զգեստներ հագնել իր կյանքի վերջին 15 տարիներին: Ընդհանրապես, կա միտք, որ նա էպիլեպտիկ է եղել կյանքի վերջին տարիներին: Նաև, մեծանալով հզոր և կրոնական ընտանիքում, նա միշտ իրեն զգացել է լքված կամ անտեսված, իր կարելի է ասել` վաղ ֆեմինիզմի համար:

"The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life, proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period..."

Երբեմն, միայնակությունը օգնում է ստեղծագործողին գտնել իր ասելիքը: :)

Դավիթ
21.07.2011, 14:21
Ի դեպ, սիրո մասին էլ վատ չեր գրում:

In Vain

I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down,
You could not.

And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus',
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.

They'd judge us-how?
For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,

Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.

And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.

And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.

So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!

StrangeLittleGirl
21.07.2011, 15:00
Դե ինքը սկսեց սպիտակ զգեստներ հագնել իր կյանքի վերջին 15 տարիներին: Ընդհանրապես, կա միտք, որ նա էպիլեպտիկ է եղել կյանքի վերջին տարիներին: Նաև, մեծանալով հզոր և կրոնական ընտանիքում, նա միշտ իրեն զգացել է լքված կամ անտեսված, իր կարելի է ասել` վաղ ֆեմինիզմի համար:

"The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life, proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period..."

Երբեմն, միայնակությունը օգնում է ստեղծագործողին գտնել իր ասելիքը: :)

Հա, ես նրա մոտ հոգեկան հիվանդություն էի փնտրում, չէի կարողանում գտնել:

Եթե քույրը չլիներ, էս կինը գնալու էր, կորեր: Կարծեմ կտակի մեջ գրել էր, որ իր բոլոր գրածներն այրեն, չէ՞:

Դավիթ
21.07.2011, 15:28
Այո: Այդպես էլ արեց քույրը:

Ցվետաեվաին կարդալուց, մի փոքր Դիքինսոն է հիշեցնում:

StrangeLittleGirl
04.04.2013, 23:02
Did This Happen To Your Mother?
Did Your Sister Throw Up A Lot?

by Alice Walker

I love a man who is not worth

my love.

Did this happen to your mother?

Did your grandmother wake up

for no good reason

in the middle of the night?



I thought that love could be controlled.

It cannot.

Only behaviour can be controlled.

By biting your tongue purple

rather than speak.

Mauling your lips.

Obliterating his number

too thoroughly

to be able to phone.



Love has made me sick.



Did your sister throw up a lot?

Did your cousin complain

of a painful knot

in her back?

Did your aunt always

seem to have something else

troubling her mind?



I thought love would adapt itself

to my needs.

But needs grow too fast;

they come up like weeds.

Through cracks in the conversation.

Through silences in the dark.

Through everything you thought was concrete.



Such needful love has to be chopped out

or forced to wilt back,

poisoned by disapproval

from its own soil.



This is bad news, for the conservationist.



My hand shakes before this killing.

My stomach sits jumpy in my chest.

My chest is the Grand Canyon

sprawled empty

over the world.



Whoever he is, he is not worth all this.



And I will never

unclench my teeth long enough

to tell him so.

StrangeLittleGirl
02.12.2014, 18:35
Elm
By Sylvia Plath

For Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.