Poetry

[onejayhawk]

The occasion is my 25th wedding anniversary. If you want Poe's "The Raven", Tennyson's "Ulysses" or ee cummings, start another thread.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, scene 5--a sonnet

ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.​

 

[Kyriakos]

Happy wedding anniversary

I don't think i have any particularly relevant poem to post, though.. Mostly read the dark stuff.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Are you asking for suggestions, or just indicating that this is the one you mean to use?

 

[Kyriakos]

Found one that i like:

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

 

[cybrxkhan]

I've always liked this one, from Ezra Pound. Technically it's a translation of one of Li Bai's poems, but I suppose it's a rather loose translation at that.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed
You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.


I find it cute, especially the beginning part, describing a bunch of silly little kids playing. The part where the narrator is fourteen and acting all shy reminds me vaguely of contemporary Asian girls acting cutesy, but that's unintentional I guess.

When I first came across this I thought that the poem suggested that the husband had been gone for years and was never coming back again (off to war or something), but I've recently realized that the husband just left the wife for a few months on a business trip or something (I seemed to have missed the very obvious "you have been gone five months" part), which makes it a little less poignant for me, but oh well, it's still cute.

 

[onejayhawk]

Arranged marriages. My wife had one of those. He died, leaving six children and no estate.

I would have married my wife for herself, but so many extra benefits.

I am too poor a poet to do it justice.

J

 

[cybrxkhan]

Arranged marriages. My wife had one of those. He died, leaving six children and no estate.

I would have married my wife for herself, but so many extra benefits.

I am too poor a poet to do it justice.

J

My point wasn't to bring up anything about arranged marriages, nor do I think it is even an important aspect of the poem (it ultimately came from 8th century China, at any rate, a very different world), I just thought it was a cute poem which still has some resonance with me. I would discuss more about the idea of arranged marriage (which tends to be a bit more complex than those of us raised in the West would think), but I believe that would be inappropriate here and I'm not in the mood. In any case, I'm sorry if I offended you or your wife or your relationship.

 

[onejayhawk]

My point wasn't to bring up anything about arranged marriages, nor do I think it is even an important aspect of the poem (it ultimately came from 8th century China, at any rate, a very different world), I just thought it was a cute poem which still has some resonance with me. I would discuss more about the idea of arranged marriage (which tends to be a bit more complex than those of us raised in the West would think), but I believe that would be inappropriate here and I'm not in the mood. In any case, I'm sorry if I offended you or your wife or your relationship.

I did not think it was. I was just commenting on why I love my wife.

J