Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms ;
And I fear, I fear, My Master dear !
We shall have a deadly storm.
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
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I
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O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
......
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
......
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
......
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
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I C E : Ode to Self
few Hearts can fancy dress their
nakedness in icicle Presence
fewer minds will slip into cemetery’s dusk
soul appears, no hectic heady harkening
glancing what is needed or already seeded
Insight measures wisdom, not cerebral chancing
silence answers chaos, no questions
......
Primeval palm! Survivor over Earth eons -
yet still enduring in this faddish age.
So majestic in maturity you are
that one cannot contemplate your seedling stage.
Brandish your sophisticated stalwart trunk,
resplendent in solid confidence,
firmly pedestaled on solid root ball
propagating nutrition-seeking filaments.
......
At Penny Lane,
among Strawberry Fields,
which swished in global excitement
and superbly choreographed words,
came a voice deep and long —
a voice we will hear time after time —
the voice of John
a protest of Lennon.
We call her Oma.
She’s a simple, old, haggard wooden bridge
In my neighbourhood,
On the shaved navel of the forest, heavy and solemn,
With the colour of an aged, wizened python,
Spotted here and there and striped there and then.
So ramshackle, but friendly, cosy to the naked feet,
With that royal smell of wood-cellar combined with
The health of ancient wine.
Nothing more . . . .
......
Upon the desk, a silent stage, it lies,
A realm of keys, where thoughts take flight.
Each button, firm and cold as winter's ice,
Bears tales of dreams, of endless night.
It sings no song, yet music flows,
A symphony of clacking sounds.
The stage is set, the actors poised,
In this grand play of written bounds.
......