What is your favorite poem?

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

And done, we straight repent us of the sport:

Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,

Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

For lust will languish, and that heat decay.

But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

Let us together closely lie and kiss,

There is no labour, nor no shame in this;

This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never

Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

I like Robert Burns' conception of the same theme in "Green Grow the Rashes."

But among my favorite poems is Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which also carries the theme, but in a non-pastoral, sharply magnificent way.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Art fart shit tit

r4 is truly a member of the intelligentsia

Ozymandias by Shelley.

Here I sit, broken-hearted

Paid my dime

And only farted

Анна Ахматова -Гость (Anna Akhmatova - Guest)

Все как раньше: в окна столовой Бьется мелкий метельный снег, И сама я не стала новой, А ко мне приходил человек.

Я спросила: «Чего ты хочешь?» Он сказал: «Быть с тобой в аду». Я смеялась: «Ах, напророчишь Нам обоим, пожалуй беду».

Но, поднявши руку сухую, Он слегка потрогал цветы: «Расскажи, как тебя целуют, Расскажи, как целуешь ты».

И глаза, глядевшие тускло, Не сводил с моего кольца. Ни один не двинулся мускул Просветленно-злого лица.

О, я знаю: его отрада — Напряженно и страстно знать, Что ему ничего не надо, Что мне не в чем ему отказать.

Prufrock

I should read more Akhmatova r8

Dover Beach

So many refined ladies here.

Eat my ass or die

I, too, am fond of Russian poetry, like this one by Lermontov:

Без вас хочу сказать вам много, При вас я слушать вас хочу; Но молча вы глядите строго, И я в смущении молчу. Что ж делать?.. Речью неискусной Занять ваш ум мне не дано... Всё это было бы смешно, Когда бы не было так грустно...

Without you, I want to tell you a lot, With you, I want to listen to you; But silently you look on me sternly, And I am silent in embarrassment. What can I do?.. It is not given to me to occupy your mind with unskillful speech... All this would be funny, If it were not so sad...

September 1, 1939. W.H. Auden. The full poem is linked. This is my favorite verse:

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

The Fury Of Cocks by Anne Sexton

There they are

drooping over the breakfast plates,

angel-like,

folding in their sad wing,

animal sad,

and only the night before

there they were

playing the banjo.

Once more the day's light comes

with its immense sun,

its mother trucks,

its engines of amputation.

Whereas last night

the cock knew its way home,

as stiff as a hammer,

battering in with all

its awful power.

That theater.

Today it is tender,

a small bird,

as soft as a baby's hand.

She is the house.

He is the steeple.

When they fuck they are God.

When they break away they are God.

When they snore they are God.

In the morning they butter the toast.

They don't say much.

They are still God.

All the cocks of the world are God,

blooming, blooming, blooming

into the sweet blood of woman.

Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

The song of the open road by Walt Whitman.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.

Etc.

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

This Is Just To Say BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss’d me

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

In a Bellagio stall

Satin shoes turn to poo

There was a young man of Nantucket.

Who went down a well in a bucket;

The last words he spoke.

Before the rope broke,

Were, "Arsehole, you bugger, and suck it.

---Appearing in "The Pearl", 1879.

You're welcome.