Great Poetry

I try as often as I can to memorize poems or quotes that mean something to me, or move me in some way. It's actually not that difficult to commit them to memory: just 15 mins or so usually does the trick, and it's actually very rewarding and good for the old grey cells.

He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven W.B Yeats

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.

That's one of the first I learned off by heart. Yeats was a legend.

Mirror in February

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of
opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed
-- my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy --
I towel my shaven jaw and
stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place
of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the
mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little
more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.
Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand
defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not
quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my
towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.
Thomas Kinsella.

Another Irishman. Beautiful stuff.

God rules, Jesus Follows all and Mary sits apon a great big rock shouting at the fools.
Toxics are air, the planet is dying, but do we care, no, not a flair.
Followers, leaders, but we're all human and such a small diamond in a massive atmosphere.
Religion is a rule and a sacrifice that will influence them all.