Philippine Poetry

[Lili]

somewhere i have never travelled
-- e. e. cummings



somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose


or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

[Lili]

Originally Posted by charitorae

Yeah, or like this:

I remember he and I were in a park.

Originally Posted by sugarboy

I remember he and I were in a park.
Right here, he placed
His arm around me
And in a single moment,
As the breeze caught up the autumn leaves
In a gentle whirlwind,
To suspend whatever lifeless ochre scraps
Were laying on the soil of October.
A once inanimate heart
Swirled to the tune of eternity
Only to begin a beat
In unison with his.

But as I try to look back,
There was no he to remember.
No name to recall.
So tell me then
Why is his portion of the bench
Still warm
To this very day.
?

Dreamt by Cha
Poetry by Sugarboy

[Matteo]

My favorite.

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
____________________________

Lili wants us to have photos to go along with the poem.
But this is my road not taken:

[Lili]

Yes that is a very jolting story and picture, Matt. Unique take on The Road not Taken.

Here, probably for Chot and Mike and Andy (and those who have experienced love lost):

This is poetry by one of the greatest post modern poets, Pablo Neruda's "tonight I can write...".



Just click the link: (I couldn't figure out how to play the video directly.)
http://www.bolt.com/alegnanozit/audio/870657

Tonight I Can Write...
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her. and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like the one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing,

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

--Pablo Neruda
translated by W.S. Merwin

[kunoL8]

THE LOVING ONE ONCE MORE.

WHY do I o'er my paper once more bend?
Ask not too closely, dearest one, I pray
For, to speak truth, I've nothing now to say;
Yet to thy hands at length 'twill come, dear friend.
Since I can come not with it, what I send
My undivided heart shall now convey,
With all its joys, hopes, pleasures, pains, to-day:
All this hath no beginning, hath no end.
Henceforward I may ne'er to thee confide
How, far as thought, wish, fancy, will, can reach,
My faithful heart with thine is surely blended.
Thus stood I once enraptured by thy side,
Gazed on thee, and said nought. What need of speech?
My very being in itself was ended.

- Goethe

[sugarboy]

Originally Posted by Lili

somewhere i have never travelled
-- e. e. cummings



somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose


or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

this is really beautiful @lili.

@ashley, sana ma-dig up natin yung poem that i wrote with your picture serving as the visual peg. yung may..."there is no us" . can you help me find that?

[charitorae]

PAGBATI SA PAGSINTA by Joi Barrios
Nakatindig kong babatiin ang pagsinta.
Hindi nakahimlay at nahihimbing
na kailangang gisingin ng halik,
hindi nakaupo't naghihintay
na para bang ang kanyang pagdating
ang kabuuan ng buhay,
hindi nakatingkayad o lumilipad
na nakikipaglaro sa hangin at pangarap.
Nakatayo ako't sumasayad
ang paa sa lupa,
pagkat lagi't lagi,
nakayapak ako kung umibig.

WELCOMING LOVE by Joi Barrios
I shall welcome love standing,
not laying down and sleeping,
waiting for the magical kiss to wake me,
nor sitting expectantly
as though his coming creates my life's meaning;
not on tiptoe, nor in flight,
playing with the wind, dreaming --
but standing, my feet touching ground,
for always,
I love on bare feet.


lol okay this picture isn't very fitting, but it's funny no?

[Lili]

Ang laki naman ng paa niya.

[kiretoce]

You do know what they say about big feet!

[Matteo]

big penis or big shoes?

[Lili]

Eh, that is a woman with the big feet. (Read the poem.) Kaya pala parang may-gel yung hair nung guy!

[Matteo]

bastos si lili! i like it hehehehe

in other news, i like the poems here.

[ramvingar]

Originally Posted by Lili

Yes that is a very jolting story and picture, Matt. Unique take on The Road not Taken.

Here, probably for Chot and Mike and Andy (and those who have experienced love lost):

This is poetry by one of the greatest post modern poets, Pablo Neruda's "tonight I can write...".



Just click the link: (I couldn't figure out how to play the video directly.)
http://www.bolt.com/alegnanozit/audio/870657

Tonight I Can Write...
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her. and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like the one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

She same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing,

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

translated by W.S. Merwin

Waaaaaah!

Will post poem and pic later when I have more time. hehe

Hello Kimber!

[Lili]

^ I thought about you when I read and heard that poem, Chot.

Thought Chot --- there's a rhyme.

[ramvingar]

this one is quite literal as the picture is of the actual painting that served as the inspiration for the poem. This poem won me my first elocution contest

The Man with a Hoe by Edwin Markham, and L'homme � la houe by Jean-Fran�ois Millet

In 1899 an American schoolteacher, Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), who used the penname Edwin Markham, was inspired by an 1863 painting to write a poem. The painting was "L'homme � la houe" by the French artist, Jean-Fran�ois Millet (1814-1875); the poem was "The Man with a Hoe".

The poem quickly became as famous as the painting. Both continue to be moving testimonies to what the too prevalent inhumanity of humanity can cause.

The Man with a Hoe

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

Return to the Ronald Wyllys Webpage.

[ramvingar]

Originally Posted by Lili

^ I thought about you when I read and heard that poem, Chot.

Thought Chot --- there's a rhyme.

Why me? Hehe! Coz I'm a sentimental slop, that's why!

[Lili]

^ Hey, I did an elocution of that, too. And won. We'll do a challenge at the meet then, Chot.

[[dx]]

uy, i love this thread..hehe, thanks lili..wow, chot's contribution transported me back to high school, kakamiss..

[[dx]]

Another favorite from Pablo Neruda

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

[Lili]

Heart-rending lahat. Ganda . More please.