Everybody ought to have a poem, penned by another's hand, that speaks for them.
And just because I'm a chronic overachiever, I'll give you two. So, do share-- what are your signature poems?
Alone, I whet my soul against the keen
Unwrinkled sky, with its long stretching blue
I polish it with sunlight and pale dew
And damascene it with young, blowing leaves
Into the handle of my life I set
Sprays of migonette,
And periwinkle,
Twisted into sheaves.
The colours laugh and twinkle
Twined bands of roadways, liquid in the seen
Of street lamps and the ruby shine of cabs
Glisten for my delight all down its length;
And there are sudden sparks
Of morning ripplings over tree-fluttered pools
My soul is fretted full of gleams and darks
Pulsing and still.
Smooth-edged, untarnished, girded in my soul
I walk the world.
But in its narrow alleys,
The low-hung, dust-thick valleys
Where the mob shuffles its empty tread
My soul is blunted against dullard wits
Smeared with sick juices
Nicked impotent for other than low uses
Its arabesques and sparkling subtlties
Crusted to grey, and all its changing surfaces
Spread with unpalpitant monotonies.
I re-create myself upon the polished sky
A honing stop above converging roofs
The patterns show again, like buried proofs
Of old, lost empires bursting on the eye
In hieroglyphed and graven spleandour
The whirling winds brush past my head
And prodigal once more, a reckless spender
Of disregarded beauty, a defender
Of undesired faiths,
I walk the world.
--Amy Lowell, La Vie de Boheme.
They say that women change; tis so: but you
Are ever constant in your changefulness,
Like that still thread of falling river, one
From source to last embrace in the still pool
Ever-renewed and ever-moving on,
From first to last a myriad of water-drops
Are you-- and I love you for it-- for you are the force
That moves and holds the form.
-- R.H. Ash, Ask to Embla, XIII
(A.S. Byatt, Possession)
And just because I'm a chronic overachiever, I'll give you two. So, do share-- what are your signature poems?
Alone, I whet my soul against the keen
Unwrinkled sky, with its long stretching blue
I polish it with sunlight and pale dew
And damascene it with young, blowing leaves
Into the handle of my life I set
Sprays of migonette,
And periwinkle,
Twisted into sheaves.
The colours laugh and twinkle
Twined bands of roadways, liquid in the seen
Of street lamps and the ruby shine of cabs
Glisten for my delight all down its length;
And there are sudden sparks
Of morning ripplings over tree-fluttered pools
My soul is fretted full of gleams and darks
Pulsing and still.
Smooth-edged, untarnished, girded in my soul
I walk the world.
But in its narrow alleys,
The low-hung, dust-thick valleys
Where the mob shuffles its empty tread
My soul is blunted against dullard wits
Smeared with sick juices
Nicked impotent for other than low uses
Its arabesques and sparkling subtlties
Crusted to grey, and all its changing surfaces
Spread with unpalpitant monotonies.
I re-create myself upon the polished sky
A honing stop above converging roofs
The patterns show again, like buried proofs
Of old, lost empires bursting on the eye
In hieroglyphed and graven spleandour
The whirling winds brush past my head
And prodigal once more, a reckless spender
Of disregarded beauty, a defender
Of undesired faiths,
I walk the world.
--Amy Lowell, La Vie de Boheme.
They say that women change; tis so: but you
Are ever constant in your changefulness,
Like that still thread of falling river, one
From source to last embrace in the still pool
Ever-renewed and ever-moving on,
From first to last a myriad of water-drops
Are you-- and I love you for it-- for you are the force
That moves and holds the form.
-- R.H. Ash, Ask to Embla, XIII
(A.S. Byatt, Possession)