• MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    I couldn’t call either a favorite, but there are two that have stuck with me my whole life. Edit to fix formatting.

    The Second Coming — W. B. Yeats (1919)

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    It feels as relevant to our time as it was for WW1.


    Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — Dylan Thomas

    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
    Because their words had forked no lightning they
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
    And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,
    Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  • rmuk@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    Sorry if this was already posted, but I didn’t see it:

    There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale

    There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

    And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

    Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

    And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

    Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;

    And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

    There’s also a short story by Ray Bradbury with the same title that quotes the poem.

    • ApollosArrow@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      These are what I came to post. This has always stayed on my mind. Given what is going on in the world, the fact that the short story takes place in 2026 is very timely…

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I have the short story as read by Leonard Nimoy. it’s one of my most favorite Bradbury tales read by one of the best narrators of my childhood.

      I’m happy I downloaded it, as it seems to not be found on YouTube anymore…

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    First they came https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came


    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist

    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist

    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist

    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew

    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me

  • fdnomad@programming.dev
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    4 days ago

    The View from Halfway Down by Alison Tafel?

    The weak breeze whispers nothing. The water screams sublime. His feet shift, teeter-totter; Deep breath, stand back - it’s time.

    Toes untouch the overpass, Soon he’s water bound. Eyes lock shut, but peek to see The view from halfway down.

    A little wind, a summer sun, A river rich and regal. A flood of fond endorphins Brings a calm that knows no equal.

    You’re flying now; you see things Much more clear than from the ground. It’s all okay – it would be, Were you not now halfway down.

    Thrash to break from gravity; What now could slow the drop? All I’d give for toes to touch The safety back at top.

    But this is it. The deed is done. Silence drowns the sound. Before I leaped, I should have seen The view from halfway down.

    I really should have thought about The view from halfway down.

    I wish I could have known about The view from halfway down.

  • ramasses@social.ozymandias.club
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    5 days ago

    Look at my instance name

    Ozymandias by Percy Bysh Shelby

    I met a traveller from an antique land,

    Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

    Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

    Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

    And on the pedestal, these words appear:

    My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

    Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

    Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  • traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    Two Headed Calf makes me cri every tim

    Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature,

    they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

    But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother.

    It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass.

    And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

  • HailSeitan@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

    They may not mean to, but they do.

    They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

    But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,

    Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

    Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

    Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

  • raldone01@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    The Clock Man by Shel Silverstein

    “How much will you pay for an extra day?” The clock man asked the child.

    “Not one penny,” the answer came.

    “For my days are as many as my smiles.”

    “How much will you pay for an extra day?” He asked when the child was grown.

    “Maybe a dollar or maybe less, for I’ve plenty of days of my own.”

    “How much will you pay for an extra day?” He asked when the time came to die.

    “All of the pearls in all of the seas, and all of the stars in the sky.”

  • zabadoh@ani.social
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    5 days ago

    Marie Howe, New York State’s Poet Laureate:

    Practicing By Marie Howe

    I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,
    a song for what we did on the floor in the basement

    of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:
    That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other’s mouths

    how to move our tongues to make somebody moan. We called it practicing, and
    one was the boy, and we paired off—maybe six or eight girls—and turned out

    the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses, and lifted our
    nightgowns or let the straps drop, and, Now you be the boy:

    concrete floor, sleeping bag or couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.
    Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes

    instead of windows. Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that spun,
    plush carpeting. We kissed each other’s throats.

    We sucked each other’s breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it upstairs
    outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was

    practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still lost
    in someone’s hair . . . and we grew up and hardly mentioned who

    the first kiss really was—a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizer we’d
    shared in the bathroom. I want to write a song

    for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire,
    just before we’d made ourselves stop.

  • ProfessorScience@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Even though Yates himself called it “the way to lose a lady”, I still like Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

    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.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    6 days ago

    A girlfriend came in built me a bed scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor scrubbed the walls vacuumed, cleaned the toilet, the bathtub, scrubbed the bathroom floor and cut my toenails and my hair. Then all on the same day the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet and the toilet and the gas man fixed the heater and the phone man fixed the phone.

    Now I sit in all this perfection.

    It is quiet. I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends. I felt better when everything was in disorder. It will take me some months to get back to normal: I can’t even find a roach to commune with. I have lost my rythm. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I have been robbed of my filth.

    -c. bukowski

  • VirtigoMommy@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    A poem my brother wrote

    Nothing changes, and it changes all at once. Nothing moves, nothing exists. Nothing is important, so we should learn nothing, we should study nothing, get close to nothing, be kind to nothing. We must come to understand nothing so well that we could maybe even see nothing in ourselves. Because nothing matters, nothing is important, and I think that’s something.

  • Fondots@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    This Is Just To Say
    By William Carlos Williams

    I have eaten
    the plums
    that were in
    the icebox

    and which
    you were probably
    saving
    for breakfast

    Forgive me
    they were delicious
    so sweet
    and so cold

    Besides that, I have a book of poetry that I’m not going to share, but I will share the story of why I own it.

    I work in 911 dispatch. We have a frequent caller, she actually doesn’t live in our area, but her mother and father do. This is what I’ve pieced together about them.

    Her father is in a nursing home. She calls frequently for police or EMS to go out for him alleging all kinds of abuse and mistreatment. This isn’t a particularly nice nursing home, but cops have been there multiple times and haven’t found any issues with her father.

    She’s very uncooperative with us when she calls, refuses to answer basically any questions, and when we or the police try to call her back to tell her the outcome or to get more information she basically never answers the phone.

    A few times she has actually shown up at the nursing home, caused a scene, and had to be escorted off the premises. One time her father was hospitalized for something (not sure what, but I didn’t see any calls for us that would have matched up with him, so it probably wasn’t something too serious if they took the time to arrange non emergency transport) and she showed up at the hospital, was escorted out, and spent the next day or two pretty much camped out at some nearby fast food places)

    Her mother has dementia, and is a frequent caller herself, she calls to complain about her caretakers and sometimes even gets into fights with them.

    I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that the father checked himself into the nursing home to get away from his wife and daughter.

    They both occasionally call for well-being checks on each other. The daughter usually because she took her mother’s insane ramblings at face value, and the mother usually because she hasn’t heard from the daughter in a while (or at least doesn’t remember hearing from her) and because of some vague concerns that she can never really explain, things like “I’m worried because of everything happening in [city where daughter lives]” but she can’t tell me what’s supposedly happening there and when I looked up the local news there I couldn’t find anything particularly noteworthy.

    I’ve given the mother the direct phone number to the dispatch center that covers her daughter’s home multiple times (sometimes multiple times in the same night) so she can reach them directly, but she always calls 911 instead so I have to transfer her every time.

    During one such transfer, she was rambling about her daughter, and she mentions that her daughter is a writer.

    I of course had to search out what she had written.

    At first, all I could find was some mentions of her contributing to some magazines and such, but couldn’t actually find any of her actual writing, but digging a little deeper I was able to find some stuff she did in college. A bunch of poetry, and it was all terrible and weird. I’d pull it up to share with my coworkers occasionally when she was blowing up our phones.

    Then one day I went to do that and saw that she had written a book. I got a copy for myself and as Christmas presents for a couple of my favorite coworkers. It’s more of the same insane, rambling, nonsensical poetry.