I love poetry. It is in the oxygen I breathe, and in the blood that courses through me. We have so many means now, with which to create, express and share, that our poetry can cross any boundary.
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this grey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I’ll crash my ship into an island, line my ceiling with its mast. I’ll become a collector of wine-bottle letters, line my eco-friendly walls with the glass.
I’ll grow a philosopher’s beard, expound on the sea. I’ll transcribe every scripture in a shell’s open mouth.
I’ll romanticize my death (in front of her of course) and die fighting a loose Lidia bull at 5 o’clock in white foam by the sea, or perhaps my death will be from anaphylactic shock, stung to death by the last roaming pack of Africanized bees.
Because surely I can’t go on living? Keep on walking the gravel track to my work?
I’ll have to find a pier; surely, I’ll have to mix and pour concrete, wait hours while it sets up, dries around my feet;
then I’ll slit each wrist with a pearl-handled blade, and fling my mer-tail to the sea—
then, surely,
surely, my last image will be of my own blood ribboning to nothing, unfolding in heavy blues of the sea—
Knock and it will be opened. Ah, said gentle Francis, fingering the keys of the kingdom in the pocket of his white cassock. That door is closed. There is, of course, a separate entrance for the so-precious ladies, around the back, near the shrine of the Madonna. But that massive bronze door, admittedly tarnished, is closed.
When we put out a call for Op-Ed poetry, we had no idea how many budding poets were out there. But by the time the Aug. 16 deadline rolled around, we'd gotten more than 1,500 submissions, many of them including multiple poems. There was even one, by E. Milton Wilson of Claremont, addressing the plight of the opinion editors: “The deadline nears. The poets have spoke. Editors wish about now it had all been a joke!”
When we put out a call for Op-Ed poetry, we had no idea how many budding poets were out there. But by the time the Aug. 16 deadline rolled around, we'd gotten more than 1,500 submissions, many of them including multiple poems. There was even one, by E. Milton Wilson of Claremont, addressing the plight of the opinion editors: “The deadline nears. The poets have spoke. Editors wish about now it had all been a joke!”
When we put out a call for Op-Ed poetry, we had no idea how many budding poets were out there. But by the time the Aug. 16 deadline rolled around, we'd gotten more than 1,500 submissions, many of them including multiple poems. There was even one, by E. Milton Wilson of Claremont, addressing the plight of the opinion editors: “The deadline nears. The poets have spoke. Editors wish about now it had all been a joke!”
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