teatime

[just to share, please share yours too!]

teatime

churned yellow
a spoon of sweet
pockets of air
mingle and meet

drops, crumbs
smooth velvet
creamy peaks
scooped and spatula-ed

flour and flower
sitting on tiers
just to say
for you, my dears

-Sophia Lim (aka seehwei)

[would love to hear if you have comments! :)]

The Antidiluvian Tomorrow

So many rainfalls

yet such a thirst,

So many shadows

why is there still some light?

So much pleasure

in this trivial plight,

I stand different in the sea of poppies

waking-up to a slightest of silence!

So little doubt

yet an abundance of faith,

I smile and say "Hi"!

to your silent examination,

Blisters of humanity

in the trivial hint of imperfection,

I rise early to see the bluest canvass

to meet the smile-"why such a fuss?"

So many imaginings

yet this colorless disgust.

-Hermano del Loco (yours truly)

LOST

Lost
is a puzzle
of stars
that breathes
like water
and chews
like stone

Alone
is a reminder
of how far
acceptance
is from
understanding

Fear
is a bird
that believes itself
into extinction

Desperation
the honest recognition
of a false truth

Hope
seeing who you really are
at your highest
is who you will become

Grace
the refinement of a
Soul though time

- Jewel

On the Go

I had to jump like a monkey
To grab the dangling handles overhead.
My sister, two years older, only had to tiptoe.
By the time I reached the handles
She was swinging from the bar
On which the handles hung.

We spun around the poles
Until we got dizzy and had to stop.

When the train went underground
We knelt on our seats,
Cupped our faces in our hands,
Stuck our foreheads on the glass,
And became a part of the whooshing darkness.
There were little blue lights that flashed by
And the game was to exclaim
Whenever we saw the sudden spark.

We mimicked the announcements
In English and Mandarin
Fumbled with Malay
And giggled over Tamil.

Mom laughed at us, with us.
Sometimes she told us to hush.
When she stood up and went
We followed.
In those days we knew not
The difference between going
And getting there.

The Months by Christina Rosetti

January cold desolate;
February all dripping wet;
March wind ranges;
April changes;
Birds sing in tune
To flowers of May,
And sunny June
Brings longest day;
In scorched July
The storm-clouds fly
Lightning torn;
August bears corn,
September fruit;
In rough October
Earth must disrobe her;
Stars fall and shoot
In keen November;
And night is long
And cold is strong
In bleak December.

Love Secret by William Blake

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.

Ode to Autumn

Seasons of mists and mellow

fruitfulness,

close bossom-friend of the maturing sun:

Conspiring with him how to load

and bless

With fruits the vines that round the

thatch-eves run.

-Keats

The Second Coming

Turning and turning 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...

-W.B.Yeats

Endymion

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will

keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health,

and quiet breathing.

John Keats

Childe Harold

There is a pleasure in the pathless

woods,

There is rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and the music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature

more,

From these our interviews, in which

I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What i cannot express, yet cannot

conceal

-Lord Byron

Garland

There was an old woman who lived in

a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't

know what to do;

She gave them broth without

any bread,

She whipped them all soundly and put

them to bed.

-Graham Gurton

Peter Piper

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled

pepper;

A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper

picked;

If Peter Piper picked a pickled

pepper,

Where's the peck of pickled pepper

Peter Piper picked?

-Anonymous

Untitled

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The lion beat the unicorn

All about the town

some gave them white bread,

And some gave then brown;

Some gave them plum cake,

And sent them out of town

-William King

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when i behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now i am a man;

So be it when i shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The child is the father of the man;

And i could wish wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety

-William Wordsworth

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose

Perfection of the life, or of the work,

And if it take the second must refuse

A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

When all the story's finished, what's the news?

In luck or out the toil has left its mark:

That old perplexity an empty purse,

Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse

-W.B. Yeats

Old Tom Again

Things out of perfection sail

And all their swelling canvas wear,

Nor shall the self-begotten fail

though fantastic men suppose

building-yard and stormy shore,

Winging-sheet and swaddling-clothes

-W.B Yeats

Sri

Asleep

Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.

Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking
Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars,
High-pillowed on calm pillows of God's making,
Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead,
And these winds' scimitars,
-Or whether yet his thin and sodden head
Confuses more and more with the low mould,
His hair being one with the grey grass
Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty-old,
Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!
He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold,
Than we who wake, and waking say Alas!

Rathiy

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Rathiy

Mobile

Those who walk within confines are men,
those who walk beyond are saints.

No confines for me, no confines
a closed fist is my boundary wall

I can go wherever I want
but in this man’s pocket

I can connect to anyone anywhere
but always under his thumb.

Even when he’s dead asleep
he’ll tuck me under his pillow
listening to the tick-tock-tick of his wristwatch.
The whole night through
quietly I’ll keep all his messages
coming from all over the world.

Those silent messages will glow
in my dark spaces
They’ll glow like the cats-eyes
of my  dream-memories:
   Mother’s ailments
   filed court cases
   all the office scuffles
   all the rush of unfinished kisses
   all the muffled calls
the faint quivers of many a held-in sob all flicker within me.
In me flutter the wounded wings of messenger-pigeons 
each feather yanked out  and flicked off one by one
once in a while, even a pat on the wing.
No matter how modern the world may be
the expression of love and hate are primordial.

I’m like the roads of old Baghdad
before the American bombings
Parallel to the modern malls
are the old souks and the meena  bazaar
glittering inside me
like archeological ruins dotting the heart of the metropolis.

 

Rathiy

Cinderella

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock

Rathiy

The Grammar Lesso

A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
of and with are prepositions. The's
an article, a can's a noun,
a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
A can can roll - or not. What isn't was
or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
is present tense. While words like our and us
are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.
Is is a helping verb. It helps because
filled isn't a full verb. Can's what our owns
in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."
See? There's almost nothing to it. Just
memorize these rules...or write them down!
A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.

Rathiy

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow sorrow for the lost Lenore
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
This it is, and nothing more,"

Presently my heart grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" -- here I opened wide the door;
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!"
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;
'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered not a feather then he fluttered
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never-nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet violet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore! 
Rathiy

The Effort

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
“What is the poet trying to say?”

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker’s third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows–the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

by Billy Collins

Sifter

When our English teacher gave
our first writing invitation of the year,
Become a kitchen implement
in 2 descriptive paragraphs, I did not think
butcher knife or frying pan,
I thought immediately
of soft flour showering through the little holes
of the sifter and the sifter’s pleasing circular
swishing sound, and wrote it down.
Rhoda became a teaspoon,
Roberto a funnel,
Jim a muffin tin
and Forrest a soup pot.
We read our paragraphs out loud.
Abby was a blender. Everyone laughed
and acted giddy but the more we thought about it,
we were all everything, in the whole kitchen,
drawers and drainers,
singing teapot and grapefruit spoon
with serrated edges, we were all the
empty cup, the tray.
This, said our teacher, is the beauty of metaphor.
It opens doors.
What I could not know then
was how being a sifter
would help me all year long.
When bad days came
I would close my eyes and feel them passing
through the tiny holes.
When good days came
I would try to contain them gently
the way flour remains
in the sifter until you turn the handle.
Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time
and no one ever knew.

By Naomi Shihab Nye

So Much Happiness

for Michael

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Christian Cemetery

These tombstones have been uprooted
Chipped madonnas and broken crosses
all weathered grey, are strewn on grass.
Never thought I would see them thus.
These stones that have been here so long
it seems the land was theirs for good-
but for the Urban Renewal Department
which needed that plot for a park.

My granny, though Catholic, was cremated
according to her wish. She knew
room in our affections was all
the space she needed. Or perhaps
she'd heard all about urbanization,
how her stone, had she been buried,
would wear away or be dislodged.
And so when she had to give up
what space she occupied, she left us
something that cannot be lost in stone
and therefore has no renewal.

Rathiy

To Anybody At All

I didn't want you cosy and neat and limited.
I didn't want you to be understandable,
Understood.
I wanted you to stay mad and limitless,
Neither bound to me nor bound to anyone else's or
your own preconceived idea of yourself.

- Margaret Tait

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“”from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

A good resource site for Drama

Hi guys, I found this great website which has invaluable ideas on teaching theatre in schools. Theatre is something that is largely seen as a part of a co-curricular activity in most schools. However, in reality I think that theatre is something that can be used to teach literary texts of any genre as well. Such experimentation can be done in the lower secondary level where there is more room to introduce “fun” lessons.  You will also enjoy the lessons as much as your students do!

This is the website: http://www.dramaresource.com/strategies

Hot Seating

There is a technique being introduced here known as hot-seating. I think this is a fairly good technique to utilise when teaching characterization. A student sits in the “hot seat” at the front of the class and pretends to be a character from the text. The rest of the class questions this character as if in an interview session. The student has to then answer these questions in a way in which he/she thinks that the character would respond. It will be great if the teacher could actually be the one in the hot seat as well.  Students will then learn to understand the characters needs and wants in a manner that is not possible if he/she just reads the text.

Conscience Alley

Closely associated with the technique of hot seating, the conscience alley activity brings the depth of the lesson one step further. In this technique, the participants pick a crucial moment in a text or scene where the character makes a decision that affects the plot. Participants then throw out suggestions at the protagonist on what he/she could have done. By doing so, students develop their critical thinking skills and are able to analyse the text from different vantage points. They will also be able to understand the choices made by the characters and its significance to plot.

Forum Theatre

In the forum theatre activity, students are required to actually freeze a moment of oppression and step in to change this moment. They empower the characters and themselves in this manner by introducing an element of change. It once again aids their understanding of the texts or performance and develops critical thinking skills

As is evident from my review of the techniques, it is clear that alot of these activities effectively break the fourth wall. There is a link established between the fictional world and the students' realities. Thus, it paves the way for a sense of involvement with the texts. This would spur their interest in the text and the subject

Rathiy

Touched by an Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

– Maya Angelou

Psalm 42

Psa. 42:1    As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

Psa. 42:5    Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
6 O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.

Psa. 42:9    I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
11 Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,



Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

- William Blake

Boats by Cyril Wong

You and your photographs of boats;
that repeated metaphor for departure,

or simply the possibility of a voyage?
What you cannot tell me you tell me

with a vessel and its single passenger,
eyes fixed on some skylit conclusion.

Set apart and starkly upon a canvas
of tractable waves, brought to still

by the trigger-click of your camera,
like the sound a key makes when it

releases the lock. Your heart became
that lock; these images how you have

always articulated distance, a withdrawal.
Darling, there are just as many ways

of saying goodbye as there are ways
of letting you go. The boat is narrow

like the width of my heart after
impossible loss, cruel resignation;

this heart you ride in. Love, if this is how
you choose to leave me let me let you.

The Flea

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

– John Donne

The Aeolian Harp by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

My pensive Sara ! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown
With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love !)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddenning round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite ! How exquisite the scents
Snatch'd from yon bean-field ! and the world so hush'd !
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.

And that simplest Lute,
Plac'd length-ways in the clasping casement, hark !
How by the desultory breeze caress'd,
Like some coy maid half-yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong ! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Faery-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing !
O ! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where--
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd ;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

i carry your heart with me - e.e.cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

The Second Coming

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?

– William Butler Yeats

Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.  I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love.  Here.  It will blind you with tears  like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief.  I am trying to be truthful.  Not a cute card or a kissogram.  I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are.  Take it. Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, if you like.  Lethal. Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife. 

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

- William Blake

The Clod & the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

- William Blake

Carnal Knowledge - Thom Gunn

Drummer Hodge - Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --
Fresh from his Wessex home --
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Merlion - Alfian Sa'at

"I wish it had paws," you said,
"It's quite grotesque the way it is,
you know, limbless; can you
imagine it writhing in the water,
like some post-Chernobyl nightmare?
I mean, how does it move? Like a
torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself
against the currents, gnashing with frustration,
its furious mane bleached
the colour of a drowned sun?
But take a second look at it,
how it is poised so terrestrially,
marooned on this rough shore,
as if unsure of its rightful
harbour. Could it be that,
having taken to this unaccustomed limpidity,
it has decided to abandon the seaweed-haunted
depths for land? Perhaps it is even ashamed
(But what a bold front!)
to have been a creature of the sea; look at how
it tries to purge itself of its aquatic ancestry,
in this ceaseless torrent of denial, draining
the body of rivers of histories, lymphatic memories.
What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx.
What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed
with self-knowledge and how its own jaws
clamp open in self-doubt, still
surprised after all these years."

"Yet...what brand new sun can dry
the iridescent slime from the scales
and what fresh rain wash the sting of salt
from those chalk-blind eyes?"

A pause.

"And why does it keep spewing that way?
I mean, you know, I mean..."

"I know exactly what you mean," I said,
Eyeing the blond highlights in your black hair
And your blue lenses the shadow of a foreign sky.
It spews continually if only to ruffle
its own reflection in the water; such reminders
will only scare a creature so eager to reinvent itself."

Another pause.

"Yes," you finally replied, in that acquired accent of yours,
"Well, yes, but I still do wish it had paws."

If - Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Ghazal of love (For Lucy) by Alfian Sa'at

Inside this body another one is leaning.
Under these eyes another pair is gazing.

A universe simpler than the design of a seed.
One star rules its galaxy, in its sky only one constant bird.

How often have the flowers mocked him with their petals.
O foolish collector of glances and whispers!

Only in my dreams does his fet touch the ground.
When I smile for no reason, it is he who etches the dimples.

Always by the window or with a cheek on a pillow.
When a breeze passes through the body his soul is transparent.

What will you do, Alfian, when he opens the door?
When he surrenders the key into the hands of the beloved?

I heard a fly buzz when I died by Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

Missing by Alfian Sa'at

He go to school.
Never come back.
I make police report.
Newspaper, Crime Watch.
They even put his picture,
He and the other boy,
On poster, with reward
From fast-food restaurant.

I ask from the RC man:
Can I have it from the
Lift lobby noticeboard.
He give me and also say sorry.
I have it in my bedroom.
Every morning with half-
Open eyes I remind myself
My son: the one on the left.

Got calls come in once.
Say they saw him in
Penang, selling videos.
Or in Bangkok, begging.
Child prostitute they say.
Sometimes no voice at all.
Hello? Hello? Who is this?
I am your son. Then hang up.

So many things to remember.
His school is still there.
I walk to it sometimes;
Pretend I am him.
Praying come kidnap me
Take me away now.
Got one artist try to draw
My son's grown-up face.

I ask him draw one
For every year. He say cannot.
Got one time I was on TV.
Crying, with schoolbag on my lap.
Keep saying, good boy, always help me
Do housework. Now I say let me
Do the housework. Let me wake up
To the mess he left behind.

falling-leaf poem by e.e. cummings

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

Roses by George Eliot

You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed

I am part of a lost generation
and I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
“Happiness comes from within.”
is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.

[NB: this is a palindrome poem - read last line up to first line]

A Time to Talk by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

The Way Ahead by Edwin Thumboo

We were to speak, to chat,
Involve our several minds on how
To frame a City.
We were asked, judiciously, to talk of beauty
In a town, how the town would change,
Turn supple, rugged, yet acceptable.

There were the four of us,
A Professor, much travelled and artistic,
A Senior Civil Servant who knew the way ahead,
The Town Planner and I; I?
The average man, the man-in-the-street,
Feeling nervous, struggling to free
Practicalities from dreams,
Leaving a small remainder hopefully sensible.

The Professor favoured China-town, not surprisingly.
His thinking was crowded, bred by city living.
The teeming interchange of word and gesture,
The odour of ordinary lives,
Intimacies overdone or underdone,
Privacy come to grief, private grief made public,
Were seen as energies of a proper order,
As breaking the loneliness of man.
It had the right perspective, he said,
In the middle of tourist China-town.
The flats were fine, but parcelled out too neatly.

The Town Planner took a different view.
Intricacies of change were based on principles;
A flat in the sun was to be had by everyone,
A spaciousness, part of the better deal,
Politics, economics, the re-deployment of custom,
Clan and tribe. Impulses of a national kind
Gave common rights. There has been talk of heritage.
There should be change, a reaching for the sky,
Brightening the City’s eye, clearing the patches
From the shoulders of her hills,
For regiments of flats.

What could I say? Or think?

A city is the people’s heart,
Beautiful, ugly, depending on the way it beats.
A City smiles the way its people smile.
When you spit, that is the city too.
A City is for people, for living,
For walking between shadows of tall buildings
That leave some room, for living.
And though we rush to work, appointments,
Too many other ends, there must be time to pause,
Loosen the grip of each working day,
To make amends, to hear the inner self
And keep our spirits solvent.
A City should be the reception we give ourselves,
What we prepare for our posterity.

The City is what we make it,
You and I. We are the City.
For better or for worse.

Killers

I am singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:

Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.

And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing
and killing.

I never forget them day or night:
They beat on my head for memory of them;
They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
To their homes and women, dreams and games.

I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines
Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,

Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of killing.
Sixteen million men.

                                                                Carl Sandburg

Rinita

Nothing Gold Can Stay

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. 

                               -Robert Frost

Rinita

Excerpt from Goblin Market

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtain'd bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipp'd with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gaz'd in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
Not a bat flapp'd to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Lock'd together in one nest. 


                                                         -

Christina Rossetti

Rinita

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.




                                                               -William Wordsworth


Rinita

We are Seven

I met a little cottage Girl: 
She was eight years old, she said; 
Her hair was thick with many a curl 
That clustered round her head. 

She had a rustic, woodland air, 
And she was wildly clad: 
Her eyes were fair, and very fair; 
--Her beauty made me glad. 

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid, 
How many may you be?" 
"How many? Seven in all," she said 
And wondering looked at me. 

"And where are they? I pray you tell." 
She answered, "Seven are we; 
And two of us at Conway dwell, 
And two are gone to sea. 

"Two of us in the church-yard lie, 
My sister and my brother; 
And, in the church-yard cottage, I 
Dwell near them with my mother." 

"You say that two at Conway dwell, 
And two are gone to sea, 
Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell, 
Sweet Maid, how this may be." 

Then did the little Maid reply, 
"Seven boys and girls are we; 
Two of us in the church-yard lie, 
Beneath the church-yard tree." 

"You run about, my little Maid, 
Your limbs they are alive; 
If two are in the church-yard laid, 
Then ye are only five." 

"Their graves are green, they may be seen," 
The little Maid replied, 
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, 
And they are side by side. 

"My stockings there I often knit, 
My kerchief there I hem; 
And there upon the ground I sit, 
And sing a song to them. 

"And often after sunset, Sir, 
When it is light and fair, 
I take my little porringer, 
And eat my supper there. 

"The first that died was sister Jane; 
In bed she moaning lay, 
Till God released her of her pain; 
And then she went away. 

"So in the church-yard she was laid; 
And, when the grass was dry, 
Together round her grave we played, 
My brother John and I. 

"And when the ground was white with snow, 
And I could run and slide, 
My brother John was forced to go, 
And he lies by her side." 

"How many are you, then," said I, 
"If they two are in heaven?" 
Quick was the little Maid's reply, 
"O Master! we are seven." 

"But they are dead; those two are dead! 
Their spirits are in heaven!" 
'Twas throwing words away; for still 
The little Maid would have her will, 
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

                                                                            -William Wordsworth


Rinita