GOSPEL NOBLE TRUTHS

Born in this world        Sit you sit down
You got to suffer        Breathe when you breathe
Everything changes        Lie Down you lie down
You got no soul        Walk where you walk

Try to be gay        Talk when you talk
Ignorant happy        Cry when you cry
You get the blues        Lie down you lie down
You eat jellyroll        Die when you die

There is one Way        Look when you look
You take the high road        Hear what you hear
In your big Wheel        Taste what you taste here
8 steps you fly        Smell what you smell

Look at the View        Touch what you touch
Right to horizon        Think what you think
Talk to the sky        Let go let it go slow
Act like you talk        Earth Heaven & Hell

Work like the sun        Die when you die
Shine in your heaven        Die when you die
See what you done        Lie down you lie down
Come down & walk        Die when you die

New York Subway, October 17, 1975

  — Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997), American poet

Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about it until well past half-way through the day … but still, in honour of:

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres
        to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor
        hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

  — Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), American poet and essayist.

  — Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian poet, novelist and singer-songwriter.

Isolation

When your lips see my lips they bring
That sorrowful and outcast thing
My heart home from its wandering.

Then ere your lips have loosed their hold,
I feel my heart’s heat growing cold,
And my heart shivers and grows old.

When your lips leave my lips, again
I feel the old doubt and the old pain
Tight about me like a chain.

After the pain, after the doubt,
A lonely darkness winds about
My soul like death, and shuts you out.

  — Arthur Symons (1865 - 1945), Welsh poet and critic.

Refugee

Loneliness terrific beats on my heart,
Bending the bitter broken boughs of pain.
Stunned by the onslaught that tears the sky apart
I stand with unprotected head against the rain.

Loneliness terrific turns to panic and to fear.
I hear my footsteps on the stairs of yesteryear,
Where are you? Oh, where are you?
Once so dear.

  — Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), African-American poet, novelist and playwright.

We Have Lost Even

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

  — Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973), Chilean writer and Communist politician.
     Translation by W.S. Merwin

My Downfall

My downfall: those pink articulate lips
Divinely flavoured portals to a mouth
Where soul dissolves … eyes darting
Beneath black brows, snares for the heart,
And the milk-white breasts, well shaped,
The twin rosebuds, fair beyond other flowers.

To itemize thus — is this to cast dogs a bone?
The poet’s pen — secret as reeds of Midas?

  — Dioskorides (3rd Century BC), translated by Peter Whigham.

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Leaning into the Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

  — Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973), Chilean writer and Communist politician.
     Translation by W.S. Merwin