Mo's Haven

Favorite Poems

IN BEAUTY MAY I WALK...(A Navajo Prayer)

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trailed marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION ~ Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

A DREAM PANG ~ Robert Frost

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
you shook your pensive head as who should say,
'I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray-
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.'

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

DE OCCULTA PHILOSOPHIA ~ Charles Simic

Evening sunlight,
Your humble servant
Seeks initiation
Into your occult ways.

Out of the late-summer sky,
Its deepening quiet,
You brought me a summons,
A small share in some large
And obscure knowledge.

Tell me something of your study
Of lengthening shadows,
The blazing windowpanes
Where the soul is turned into light--
Or don't just now.

You have the air of someone
Who prefers to dwell in solitude,
The one who enters, with gravity
Of mien and imposing severity,
A room suddenly rich in enigmas.

Oh supreme unknowable,
The seemingly inviolable reserve
Of your stratagems
Makes me quake at the thought
Of you finding me thus

Seated in a shadowy back room
At the edge of a village
Bloodied by the setting sun,
To tell me so much,
To tell me absolutely nothing.

Final lines from THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK ~ T.S. Eliot

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

EYES THAT LAST I SAW IN TEARS ~ T.S. Eliot

Eyes that last I saw in tears
Through division
Here in death's dream kingdom
The golden vision reappears
I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction

This is my affliction
Eyes I shall not see again
Eyes of decision
Eyes I shall not see unless
At the door of death's other kingdom
Where, as in this,
The eyes outlast a little while
A little while outlast the tears
And hold us in derision.

ACCIDENT IN THE SNOW ON THE WAY TO AMADEUS ~ Stephen Dunn

When we went into that spin on the turnpike
the calm I felt
was pure lucidity-- a sense of what was close

and couldn't stop, endless variations
amid snow-
covered cars;everything white, open

We'd been doing forty, a speed I'd recommend
for spinning
on a deserted frozen lake where joy

is feeling powerless, yet safe. The guard rail
stopped us. I think
we hit it twice, rocked, but didn't flip,

came to rest pointed towards the city
and Amadeus.
Soon we'd be considering more excellance

versus genius, God's unfair handling
of genes and gifts.
But for us God was good, or away and unjust

some other place. No longer in control
or under that illusion,
we drove towards Manhattan like dreamers

in a race for who could go slowest
in a slow world.
In the play, Mozart is a brilliant fool,

proof of nothing. Salieri a man we've met
or have been, corrupt
his work a small pleasure for everyone.

I was happy to be a witness, still for a while
and moved. Outside
the storm was neither better nor worse.

The streetlights were invisible, though their light
illuminated the snow,
seemed almost to bring it down.

BEETHOVEN ~ Baudelaire

Music often takes me like a sea
and I set out
under mist or a transparent sky
for my pale star;

I run before the wind as if I had
laid on full sail,
climbing the mountainous backs of the waves,
plummeting down

in darkness, eardrums throbbing as I feel
the coming wreck;
fair winds or foul - a raging storm

on the great deep
my cradle, and dead calm the looking-glass
of my despair!