Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness. . .
Still Breathing To still think words still on the page though still are breath unseen or read still latent breath read silently when lips are still when said aloud or recorded are still still— still blows my mind! |
I know one person that,
in the face of this title, recalls the first bag of dope; Thank god it's not me. |
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters Wishing I could experience the same much more often! |
The vertigo of standing,
Planless, at the start of my career, My future a shimmering dazzle of the possible, My present, the town before me An egg for the cracking. Hold that moment of wild indecision Not for long. But hard. |
Adrian, Wonderful! Euphoric!
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Ralph, same here. Shivers up the back of the neck. It's almost all I search for in poetry -- at the very least it has to be present in order for something to come from a poem and into me. Euphoria, if that be the right word, is always in the company of beauty.
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Quote:
I did not understand 'sires'... Ah, you used the word 'maenad'! ... I enjoy it, it's uncommon. I always want to ask... is AMANDA DE CADENET A DECADENT MAENAD? ;) |
By sheer euphoria-inducing good luck, I have an old poem that just fits here.
SUDDEN EUPHORIA OF A MIDDLE-AGED SOUTHERNER Youth gone and beauty never having come nor money either, where’s it springing from, this sudden joy? Fine weather and the slope of green lawn to the bayou, snow-white shape of heron fishing on the bank, it part of it. The rest is books and art, good health, two cats, a marriage going strong for twenty years, a friendship just as long, plus writing and the love of what I write. Summing up joys, I savor my delight: this is as close as I will ever get to the mystic’s peak of holy self-forget- fulness, the warrior in his savage bliss, the lover’s ecstasy. I’ll call it this: a sense of living in a world well-planned. Is this contentment? Yes. Well I’ll be damned. |
Here
by Grace Paley Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that’s who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that’s my old man across the yard he’s talking to the meter reader he’s telling him the world’s sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute ... I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips |
Gail, Roger -- such rich poems of euphoria! Both are mining the same rare contentment that comes through aging gracefully.
Gail, the ever-so-light touch of southern charm in your poem is sumptuous. The convergence of the contentment you speak of -- both the gratefulness of simple things and the acceptance of one's place in the world -- produces euphoria of the highest degree, I think. Roger, Here is where I want to find myself one fine day - sans heavy breasts and big skirt ;) But oh, the place she calls "here" is paradise, however fleeting. The final lines are breathtaking. |
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