Poetry

[Scepticalscribe]

I almost blush to admit that a thread in (yes) MR (what is on your mind?) has prompted this post; regrettably, this particular thread (here) has been neglected for too long, alas:

The Cat And The Moon: (W. B. Yeats)

THE CAT went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon
The creeping cat looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For wander and wail as he would
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass,
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

 

[lizkat]

^^^ One of the greatest cat poems ever.

"Alone, important and wise..." --->>> Yeats really knew a cat very well at some point.

 

[lizkat]

From Robert Lowell's 1967 poem Waking Early Sunday Morning

(these are the closing stanzas)

No weekends for the gods now. Wars​

flicker, earth licks its open sores,​

fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance​

assassinations, no advance.​

Only man thinning out his kind​

sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind​

swipe of the pruner and his knife​

busy about the tree of life …​

​

Pity the planet, all joy gone​

from this sweet volcanic cone;​

peace to our children when they fall​

in small war on the heels of small​

war —until the end of time​

to police the earth, a ghost​

orbiting forever lost​

in our monotonous sublime.​

--from Jonathan Galassi & Robyn Creswell (editors), The FSG Poetry Anthology. This anthology was constructed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; it includes some work from almost all of the poets whose writings FSG has published. It's arranged roughly in chronology by decade although by date of first FSG publication, so in a few cases --e.g, anthologies-- a poem might have been written earlier than arranged in this collection.

 

[lizkat]

Not everyone thinks of John Updike first as a poet. But, he was that.

Here from his Collected Poems, 1953-1993, one of his poems about Russia:

Poem for a Far Land​

-- by John Updike​

​

Russia, most feminine of lands,​

    Breeder of stupid masculinity,​

Only Jesus understands​

    Your interminable virginity.​

Raped, and raped, and raped again,​

    You rise snow-white, the utter same,​

With tender birches and ox-eyed men​

    Willing to perish for your name.​

Though astronauts distress the sky​

    That mothers your low, sad villages,​

Your vastness yearns in sympathy​

    Between what was and that which is.