Poem – Wild Ass -Padraic Colum

The wild ass lounges, legs struck out 

In vagrom unconcern: 

The tombs o Achaemenian kings 

Are for those hooves to spurn. 
And all of rugged Tartary 

Lies with him on the ground, 

The Tartary that knows no awe, 

That has nor ban nor bound. 
The wild horse from the herd is plucked 

To bear a saddle’s weight; 

The boar is one keeps covert, and 

The wolf runs with a mate. 
But he’s the solitary of space, 

Curbless and unbeguiled; 

The only being that bears a heart 

Not recreant to the wild.

Poem – Tulips – Padraic Colum

An age being mathematical, these flowers 

Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized 

By men with wakened, speculative minds, 

And when with mathematics they explored 

The Macrocosm, and came at last to 

The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it 

Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light, 

The Tulips were the Light’s receptacles. 

The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips! 

No emblems they for us who no more dream 

Of mathematics burgeoning to light 

With Newton’s prism and Spinoza’s lens, 

Or berkeley’s ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire. 

In colored state and carven brilliancy 

We see them now, or, more illumined, 

In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit 

To go with vestments red on Pentecost.

Poem – The Poor Girl’s Meditation- Padraic Colum

I am  sitting here 

Since the moon rose in the night, 

Kindling a fire, 

And striving to keep it alight; 

The folk of the house are lying 

In slumber deep; 

The geese will be gabbling soon: 

The whole of the land is asleep. 
May I never leave this world 

Until my ill-luck is gone; 

Till I have cows and sheep, 

And the lad that I love for my own; 

I would not think it long, 

The night I would lie at his breast, 

And the daughters of spite, after that, 

Might say the thing they liked best. 
Love takes the place of hate, 

If a girl have beauty at all: 

On a bed that was narrow and high, 

A three-month I lay by the wall: 

When I bethought on the lad 

That I left on the brow of the hill, 

I wept from dark until dark, 

And my cheeks have the tear-tracks still. 
And, O young lad that I love, 

I am no mark for your scorn; 

All you can say of me is 

Undowered I was born: 

And if I’ve no fortune in hand, 

Nor cattle and sheep of my own, 

This I can say, O lad, 

I am fitted to lie my lone!

Poem – Snake – Padraic Colum

But, Snake, you must not come where we abide, 

For you would tempt us; we should hear you say: 
‘Oh, somewhere was a world was cold and spare, 

And voiceless; somewhere was a Being was not 
Engrossed with substance, with no fervencies 

Of love and hatred, and he made me, Snake! 
The wise Elohim, they who made the rest 

Of Creatures, made them ail-too manifold 
Mortised and rampired, jointed, vascular; 

And I was put an alien in their world, 
All head, all spine, all limb, all loin, 

Swift as a bird and single as a fish.’ 
Above you fruits unglanced at bend and glow, 

And, bare and voiceless, you do tempt us, Snake!

Poem – The Poet – Padraic Colum

‘The blackbird’s in the briar, 

The seagull’s on the ground- 

They are nests, and they’re more than nests,’ he said, 

‘They are tokens I have found. 
There, where the rain-dashed briar 

Marks an empty glade, 

The blackbird’s nest is seen,’ he said, 

‘Clay-rimmed, uncunningly made. 
By shore of the inland lake, 

Where surgeless water shoves, 

The seagulls have their nests,’ he said, 

‘As low as catties’ hooves.’ 
I heard a poet say it, 

The sojourner of a night; 

His head was up to the rafter, 

Where he stood in candles’ light. 
‘Your houses are like the seagulls’ 

Nests they are scattered and low; 

Like the blackbirds’ nests in briars,’ he said, 

‘Uncunningly made even so. 
But close to the ground are reared 

The wings that have widest sway, 

And the birds that sing best in the wood,’ he said, 

‘Were reared with breasts to the clay. 
You’ve wildness I’ve turned it to song; 

You’ve strength I’ve turned it to wings; 

The welkin’s for your conquest then, 

The wood to your music rings.’ 
I heard a poet say it, 

The sojourner of a night; 

His head was up to the rafter, 

Where he stood in candles’ light.

Poem – Composed During A Storm – William Wordsworth

One who was suffering tumult in his soul, 

Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer, 

Went forth–his course surrendering to the care 

Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl 

Insidiously, untimely thunders growl; 

While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers, tear 

The lingering remnant of their yellow hair, 

And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl 

As if the sun were not. He raised his eye 

Soul-smitten; for, that instant, did appear 

Large space (‘mid dreadful clouds) of purest sky, 

An azure disc–shield of Tranquillity; 

Invisible, unlooked-for, minister 

Of providential goodness ever nigh!

Poem – Expostulation And Reply – William Wordsworth

“Why, William, on that old grey stone, 

Thus for the length of half a day, 

Why, William, sit you thus alone, 

And dream your time away? 
“Where are your books?–that light bequeathed 

To Beings else forlorn and blind! 

Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed 

From dead men to their kind. 
“You look round on your Mother Earth, 

As if she for no purpose bore you; 

As if you were her first-born birth, 

And none had lived before you!” 
One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, 

When life was sweet, I knew not why, 

To me my good friend Matthew spake, 

And thus I made reply: 
“The eye–it cannot choose but see; 

We cannot bid the ear be still; 

Our bodies feel, where’er they be, 

Against or with our will. 
“Nor less I deem that there are Powers 

Which of themselves our minds impress; 

That we can feed this mind of ours 

In a wise passiveness. 
“Think you, ‘mid all this mighty sum 

Of things for ever speaking, 

That nothing of itself will come, 

But we must still be seeking? 
“–Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, 

Conversing as I may, 

I sit upon this old grey stone, 

And dream my time away,”

Poem – Your Hand – Paul Celan

Your hand full of hours, you came to me – and I said: 

‘Your hair is not brown.’ 

You lifted it, lightly, 

on to the balance of grief, 

it was heavier than I. 
They come to you on their ships, and make it their load,

then put it on sale in the markets of lust. 

You smile at me from the deep. 

I weep at you from the scale that’s still light. 

I weep: Your hair is not brown. 

They offer salt-waves of the sea, 

and you give them spume. 

You whisper: ‘They’re filling the world with me now, 

and for you I’m still a hollow way in the heart! 

You say: ‘Lay the leaf-work of years by you, it’s time, 

that you came here and kissed me. 

The leaf-work of years is brown, your hair is not brown.

Poem – Flower – Paul Celan

The stone. The stone in the air, which I followed. 

Your eye, as blind as the stone. 
We were 

hands, 

we baled the darkness empty, we found 

the word that ascended summer: 

flower. 
Flower – a blind man’s word. 

Your eye and mine: 

they see 

to water. 
Growth. 

Heart wall upon heart wall 

adds petals to it. 
One more word like this word, and the hammers 

will swing over open ground.

Poem – When You Lie – Paul Celan

When you lie 

in the Bed of lost Flag-Cloth, 

with blue-black Syllables, in Snow-Eyelash-Shadow, 

the Crane through Thought- 

showers, 

comes gliding, steely- 

you open for him. 
His beak ticks the Hour for you 

at every Mouth – at every 

bell-stroke, with red-hot Rope, a Silent- 

Millennium, 

Un-Pulse and Pulse 

mint each other to death, 

the Dollars, the Cents, 

rain hard through your Pores, 

in 

Second-Shapes 

you fly there and bar 

the Doors Yesterday and Tomorrow – phosphorescent, 

Forever-Teeth, 

buds the one, and buds the 

other breast, 

towards the Grasping, under 

the Thrusts –: so thick, 

so deeply 

strewn 

the starry 

Crane- 

Seed.

Poem – Homecoming – Paul Celan

Snowfall, denser and denser, 

dove-coloured as yesterday, 

snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping. 
White, stacked into distance. 

Above it, endless, 

the sleigh track of the lost. 
Below, hidden, 

presses up 

what so hurts the eyes, 

hill upon hill, 

invisible. 
On each, 

fetched home into its today, 

an I slipped away into dumbness: 

wooden, a post. 
There: a feeling, 

blown across by the ice wind 

attaching its dove- its snow- 

coloured cloth as a flag.

Poem – Night Ray – Paul Celan

Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: 

to her I send the coffin of lightest wood. 

Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; 

it wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: 

it talks as I do when I grant admittance to hearts. 

It knows a French song about love, I sang it in autumn 

when I stopped as a tourist in Lateland and wrote my letters 

to morning. 
A fine boat is that coffin carved in the coppice of feelings. 

I too drift in it downbloodstream, younger still than your eye. 

Now you are young as a bird dropped dead in March snow, 

now it comes to you, sings you its love song from France. 

You are light: you will sleep through my spring till it’s over. 

I am lighter: 

in front of strangers I sing.

Poem – Corona – Paul Celan

Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. 

From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: 

then time returns to the shell. 
In the mirror it’s Sunday, 

in dream there is room for sleeping, 

our mouths speak the truth. 
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one: 

we look at each other, 

we exchange dark words, 

we love each other like poppy and recollection, 

we sleep like wine in the conches, 

like the sea in the moon’s blood ray. 
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from 

the street: 

it is time they knew! 

It is time the stone made an effort to flower, 

time unrest had a beating heart. 

It is time it were time. 

It is time. 

Poem -On Monsieur’s Departure – Queen Elizabeth I

I grieve and dare not show my discontent, 

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, 

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, 

I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate. 

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned. 

Since from myself another self I turned. 
My care is like my shadow in the sun, 

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, 

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. 

His too familiar care doth make me rue it. 

No means I find to rid him from my breast, 

Till by the end of things it be supprest. 
Some gentler passion slide into my mind, 

For I am soft and made of melting snow; 

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. 

Let me or float or sink, be high or low. 

Or let me live with some more sweet content, 

Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Poems – Fog – Amy Clampitt

A vagueness comes over everything, 

as though proving color and contour 

alike dispensable: the lighthouse 

extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips 

drunk up like milk in the 

universal emulsion; houses 

reverting into the lost 

and forgotten; granite 

subsumed, a rumor 

in a mumble of ocean. 

Tactile 

definition, however, has not been 

totally banished: hanging 

tassel by tassel, panicled 

foxtail and needlegrass, 

dropseed, furred hawkweed, 

and last season’s rose-hips 

are vested in silenced 

chimes of the finest, 

clearest sea-crystal. 

Opacity 

opens up rooms, a showcase 

for the hueless moonflower 

corolla, as Georgia 

O’Keefe might have seen it, 

of foghorns; the nodding 

campanula of bell buoys; 

the ticking, linear 

filigree of bird voices.

Poems – Novel – Arthur Rimbaud

I. 
No one’s serious at seventeen. 

–On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade 

And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need 

–You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade. 

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights! 

Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;

The wind brings sounds–the town is near– 

And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . . 

II. 

–Over there, framed by a branch 

You can see a little patch of dark blue 

Stung by a sinister star that fades 

With faint quiverings, so small and white. . . 

June nights! Seventeen!–Drink it in. 

Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . . 

The mind wanders, you feel a kiss 

On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . . 

III. 

The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels 

–And when a young girl walks alluringly 

Through a streetlamp’s pale light, beneath the ominous shadow 

Of her father’s starched collar. . . 

Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping, 

She turns on a dime, eyes wide, 

Finding you too sweet to resist. . . 

–And cavatinas die on your lips. 

IV. 

You’re in love. Off the market till August. 

You’re in love.–Your sonnets make Her laugh. 

Your friends are gone, you’re bad news. 

–Then, one night, your beloved, writes. . .! 

That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés; 

You order beer or lemonade. . . 

–No one’s serious at seventeen 

When lindens line the promenade.

Poems – Love At First Sight

When first we touched,My heart flew high,

On gossamer wings through a cloudless sky.

They said it was built upon a lie.

They told me my feelings would surely fade.

Passion would flare and foes would be made.

Can you not put the pass behind?

True love can change a rivers course,

Or pierce the strongest vault with ease.

True love can turn coal into gold,

Or tame the tempest to a balmy breeze.

Quite some time has passed since then:

People no longer criticize,

For now they see that truth exists,

Where once there might have been only lies.

Still my feelings are the same today,

As they were on that very first,

For when we touch, my heart still flies, on gossamer wings through cloudless skies.

Poems – My True Love

I have a feeling

That I can comprehend

In my deepest thoughts your are

More than just a friend.
I wouldn’t want to

Rush us now

As love we explore

But there’s a growing love inside

That we just can’t ignore.
I love the times we

Spend together. We are comfortable

And free. I think of you when we are

Alone. I think of you and me.
We have a share

Secrets to uncover. There’s more

To life then we will both discover.

I love you always.
I’ll love you when you’re dumb,

I’ll love you when you’re smart,

I’ll love you anyway you are,

Right from the start.
I’ll love you if you’re tall

I’ll love you if you’re short,

I’ll love you if you’re pretty,

Or just an ugly dork.
I’ll love you if you’re toothless,

I’ll love you if you’re blind,

Anything that’s wrong with you,

To me you’ll be fine.
My heart is opening up now,

Unlike it used to do,

I see the pain that’s in your heart

And sometimes I feel it to.
I’ll love you tomorrow,

I’ll love you today,

I’ll love you forever,

And forever always.

Poem -When I Was Fair And Young – Queen Elizabeth I

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me. 

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be. 

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore: 
Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more. 

How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe, 

How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show, 

But I the prouder grew and still this spake therefore: 
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. 

Then spake fair Venus’ son, that proud victorious boy, 

Saying: You dainty dame, for that you be so coy, 

I will so pluck your plumes as you shall say no more: 
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. 

As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast 

That neither night nor day I could take any rest. 

Wherefore I did repent that I had said before: 

Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.

Moonlight – Victoria Sackville West

What time the meanest brick and stone 

Take on a beauty not their own, 

And past the flaw of builded wood 

Shines the intention whole and good, 

And all the little homes of man 

Rise to a dimmer, nobler span; 

When colour’s absence gives escape 

To the deeper spirit of the shape, 
— Then earth’s great architecture swells 

Among her mountains and her fells 

Under the moon to amplitude 

Massive and primitive and rude: 
— Then do the clouds like silver flags 

Stream out above the tattered crags, 

And black and silver all the coast 

Marshalls its hunched and rocky host, 

And headlands striding sombrely 

Buttress the land against the sea, 

— The darkened land, the brightening wave — 

And moonlight slants through Merlin’s cave.

Making Cider – Victoria Sackville West

I saw within the wheelwright’s shed 

The big round cartwheels, blue and red; 

A plough with blunted share; 

A blue tin jug; a broken chair; 

And paint in trial patchwork square 

Slapping up against the wall; 

The lumber of the wheelwright’s trade, 

And tools on benches neatly laid, 

The brace, the adze, the awl; 
And framed within the latticed-panes, 

Above the cluttered sill, 

Saw rooks upon the stubble hill 

Seeking forgotten grains; 
And all the air was sweet and shrill 

With juice of apples heaped in skips, 

Fermenting, rotten, soft and bruise, 

And all the yard was strewn with pips, 

Discarded pulp, and wrung-out ooze 

That ducks with rummaging flat bill 

Searched through beside the cider-press 

To gobble in their greediness. 
The young men strained upon the crank 

To wring the last reluctant inch. 

They laughed together, fair and frank, 

And threw their loins across the winch. 
A holiday from field and dung, 

From plough and harrow, scythe and spade, 

To dabble in another trade, 

The crush the pippins in the slats, 

And see that in the little vats 

An extra pint was wring; 

While round about the worthies stood 

Profuse in comment, praise or blame, 

Content the press should be of wood, 

Advising rum, decrying wheat, 

And black strong sugar makes it sweet, 

But still resolved, with maundering tongue, 

That cider could not be the same 

As once when they were young; 

But still the young contemptuous men 

Laughed kindly at their old conceit, 

And strained upon the crank again. 
Now barrels ranged in portly line 

Mature through winter’s sleep, 

Aping the leisured sloths of wine 

That dreams of Tiber or the Rhine, 

Mellowing slow and deep; 

But keen and cold the northern nights 

Sharpen the quiet yard. 

And sharp like no rich southern wine 

The tang of cider bites; 

For here the splintered stars and hard 

Hold England in a frosty guard. 

Orion and Pleiades 

Above the wheelwright’s shed. 

And Sirius resting on the trees 

While all the village snores abed.

Sailing Ships – Victoria Sackville West

Lying on Downs above the wrinkling bay 

I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day, 

The candid day; wind-shaven, brindled turf; 

Tall cliffs; and long sea-line of marbled surf 

From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore 

Lipping the bulwarks of the English shore, 

While many a lovely ship below sailed by 

On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely; 

And after each, oh, after each, my heart 

Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart, 

I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide 

That might befall their beauty and their pride; 
Shared first with them the blessed void repose 

Of oily days at sea, when only rose 

The porpoise’s slow wheel to break the sheen 

Of satin water indolently green, 

When for’ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes, 

Lay heaped on deck; slept; mumbled; smoked; threw dice; 

The sleepy summer days; the summer nights 

(The coast pricked out with rings of harbour-lights), 

The motionless nights, the vaulted nights of June 

When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon, 

And blocks go knocking, and the sheets go slapping, 

And lazy swells against the sides come lapping; 

And summer mornings off red Devon rocks, 

Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing cocks; 
Shared swifter days, when headlands into ken 

Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again, 

Old fangs along the battlemented coast; 

And followed still my ship, when winds were most 

Night-purified, and, lying steeply over, 

She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover, 

Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted, 

Her temper by the contest proved and whetted. 

Wild stars swept overhead; her lofty spars 

Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars 

As leaping out from narrow English ease 

She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas. 
Her captain then was I, I was her crew, 

The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew, 

The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,– 

Nay, I was more: I was her very sails 

Rounded before the wind, her eager keel, 

Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel, 

Her pennon stiffened like a swallow’s wing; 

Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, 

Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea 

She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, 

Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars 

On desert’s verge below the sunset bars, 

Or passed the girdle of the planet where 

The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, 

And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, 

Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, 

Down that long coast, and saw Magellan’s Clouds arise. 
And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound 

I watched, and wondered what they might have found, 

What alien ports enriched their teeming hold 

With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold? 

And thought how London clerks with paper-clips 

Had filed the bills of lading of those ships, 

Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea, 

But wrote down jettison and barratry, 

Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God, 

Having no vision of such wrath flung broad; 

Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen 

The classic dangers of sea-faring men; 

And wrote ‘Restraint of Princes,’ and ‘the Acts 

Of the King’s Enemies,’ as vacant facts, 

Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar 

Of angry nations foaming into war.

Poem – Woman’s Love – Valmiki

Woman’s Love’Dearly loved, devoted Sita! daughter of a royal line, 

Part we now, for years of wand’ring in the pathless woods is mine, 
For my father, promise-fettered, to Kaikeyi yields the sway, 

And she wills her son anointed,-fourteen years doth Rama stray, 
But before I leave thee, Sita, in the wilderness to rove, 

Yield me one more tender token of thy true and trustful love! 
Serve my crownéd brother, Sita, as a faithful, duteous dame, 

Tell him not of Rama’s virtues, tell him not of Rama’s claim, 
Since my royal father willeth,-Bharat shall be regent-heir, 

Serve him with a loyal duty, serve him with obeisance fair, 
Since my roval father willetb,-years of banishment be mine, 

Brave in sorrow and in suffering, woman’s brightest fame be thine 
Keep thy fasts and vigils, Sita, while thy Rama is away, 

Faith in Gods and faith in virtue on thy bosom hold their sway, 
In the early watch of morning to the Gods for blessings pray, 

To my father Dasa-ratha honour and obeisance pay, 
To my mother, Queen Kausalya, is thy dearest tendance due, 

Offer her thy consolation, be a daughter fond and true! 
Queen Kaikeyi and Sumitra equal love and honour claim, 

With a soothing soft endearment sweetly serve each royal dame, 
Cherish Bharat and Satrughna with a sister’s watchful love, 

And a mother’s true affection and a mother’s kindness prove! 
Listen, Sita, unto Bharat speak no heedless angry word, 

He is monarch of Kosala and of Raghu’s race is lord, 
Crownéd kings our willing service and our faithful duty own, 

Dearest song they disinherit, cherish strangers near the throne! 
Bharat’s will with deep devotion and with faultless faith obey, 

Truth and virtue on thy bosom ever hold their gentle sway, 
And to please each dear relation, gentle Sita, be it thine, 

Part we love! for years of wand’ring in the pathless woods is mine!’ 
Rama spake, and soft-eyed Sita, ever sweet in speech and word, 

Stirred by loving woman’s passion boldly answered thus her lord: 
‘Do I hear my husband rightly, are these words my Rama spake, 

And her banished lord and husband will the wedded wife forsake? 
Lightly I dismiss the counsel which my lord hath lightly said 

For it ill beseems a warrior and my husband’s princely grade; 
For the faithful woman follows where her wedded lord may lead, 

In the banishment of Rama, Sita’s exile is decreed, 
Sire nor son nor loving brother rules the wedded woman’s state, 

With her lord she falls or rises, with her consort courts her fate, 
If the righteous son of Raghu wends to forests dark and drear, 

Sita steps before her husband wild and thorny path to clear! 
Like the tasted refuse water cast thy timid thoughts aside, 

Take me to the pathless jungle, bid me by my lord abide, 
Car and steed and gilded palace, vain are these to woman’s life, 

Dearer is her husband’s shadow to the loved and loving wife! 
For my mother often taught me and my father often spake, 

That her home the wedded woman doth beside her husband make, 
As the shadow to the substance, to her lord is faithful wife, 

And she parts not from her consort till she parts with fleeting life! 
Therefore bid me seek the jungle and in pathless forests roam, 

Where the wild deer freely ranges and the tiger makes his home, 
Happier than in father’s mansions in the woods will Sita rove, 

Waste no thought on home or kindred, nestling in her husband’s love! 
World-renowned is Rama’s valour, fearless by her Rama’s side, 

Sita will still live and wander with a faithful woman’s pride, 
And the wild fruit she will gather from the fresh and fragrant wood, 

And the food by Rama tasted shall be Sita’s cherished food! 
Bid me seek the sylvan greenwoods, wooded hills and plateaus high, 

Limpid rills and crystal nullas as they softly ripple by, 
And where in the lake of lotus tuneful ducks their plumage lave, 

Let me with my loving Rama skim the cool translucent wave! 
Years will pass in happy union,-happiest lot to woman given,- 

Sita seeks not throne or empire, nor the brighter joys of heaven, 
Heaven conceals not brighter mansions in its sunny fields of pride, 

Where without her lord and husband faithful Sita would reside! 
Therefore let me seek the jungle where the jungle-rangers rove, 

Dearer than the royal palace, where I share my husband’s love, 
And my heart in sweet communion shall my Rama’s wishes share, 

And my wifely toil shall lighten Rama’s load of woe and care!’ 
Vainly gentle Rama pleaded dangers of the jungle life, 

Vainly spake of toil and trial to a true and tender wife!

Poem – Friends In Misfortune – Valmiki

Long and loud lamented Rama by his lonesome cottage door, 

Janasthana’s woodlands answered, Panchavati’s echoing shore, 
Long he searched in wood and jungle, mountain crest and pathless plain, 

Till he reached the Malya mountains stretching to the southern main. 
There Sugriva king of Vanars, Hanuman his henchman brave, 

Banished from their home and empire lived within the forest cave, 
To the exiled king Sugriva, Hanuman his purpose told, 

As he marked the pensive Rama wand’ring with his brother bold: 
‘Mark the sons of Dasa-ratha banished from their royal home, 

Duteous to their father’s mandate in these pathless forests roam, 
Great was monarch Dasa-ratha famed for sacrifice divine, 

Raja-suya, Aswa-medha, and for gift of gold and kine, 
By a monarch’s stainless duty people’s love the monarch won, 

By a woman’s false contrivance banished he his eldest son! 
True to duty, true to virtue, Rama passed his forest life, 

Till a false perfidious Raksha stole his fair and faithful wife, 
And the anguish-stricken husband seeks thy friendship and thy aid, 

Mutual sorrow blends your fortunes, be ye friends in mutual need! ‘ 
Bold Sugriva heard the counsel, and to righteous Rama hied, 

And the princes of Ayodhya with his greetings gratified: 
‘Well I know thee, righteous Rama, soul of piety and love, 

And thy duty to thy father and thy faith in God above, 
Fortune favours poor Sugriva, Rama courts his humble aid, 

In our deepest direst danger he our truest friendship made! 
Equal is our fateful fortune,-I have lost a queenly wife, 

Banished from, Kishkindha’s empire here I lead a forest life, 
Pledge of love and true alliance, Rama, take this proffered hand, 

Banded by a common sorrow we shall fall or stoutly stand.! ‘ 
Rama grasped the hand lie offered, and the tear was in his eye, 

And they swore undying friendship o’er the altar blazing high, 
Hanuman with fragrant blossoms sanctified the sacred rite, 

And the comrades linked by sorrow walked around the altar’s light, 
And their word and troth they plighted: ‘In our happiness and woe 

We are friends in thought and action, we will f ace our common foe! ‘ 
And they broke a leafy Sal tree, spread it underneath their feet, 

Rama and his friend Sugriva sat upon the common seat, 
And a branch of scented Chandan with its tender blossoms graced, 

Hanuman as seat of honour for the faithful Lakshman placed. 
‘Listen, Rama,’ spake Sugriva, ‘reft of kingdom, reft of wife, 

Fleeing to these rugged mountains I endure a forest life, 
For my tyrant brother Bali rules Kishkindha all alone, 

Forced my wife from my embraces, drove me from my father’s throne, 
Trembling in my fear and anguish I endure a life of woe, 

Render me my wife and empire from my brother and my foe! ‘ 
‘Not in vain they seek my succour,’ so the gallant Rama said, 

‘Who with love and offered friendship seek my counsel and my aid, 
Not in vain these glistening arrows in my ample quiver shine, 

Bali dies the death of tyrants, wife and empire shall be thine! 
Quick as INDRA’S forkéd lightning are these arrows feather-plumed, 

Deadly as the hissing serpent are these darts with points illumed, 
And this day shall not be ended ere it sees thy brotherfall, 

As by lurid lightning severed sinks the crest of mountain tall! ‘

Poem – I Have Become Very Hairy – Yehuda Amichai

I have become very hairy all over my body. 

I’m afraid they’ll start hunting me because of my fur. 
My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love — 

it looks like an air photo of a railway station. 
At night my body is open and awake under the blanket, 

like eyes under the blindfold of someone to be shot. 
Restless I shall wander about; 

hungry for life I’ll die. 
Yet I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed, 

and tranquil, like a full cemetery.

Poem – The First Rain – Yehuda Amichai

The first rain reminds me 

Of the rising summer dust. 

The rain doesn’t remember the rain of yesteryear. 

A year is a trained beast with no memories. 

Soon you will again wear your harnesses, 

Beautiful and embroidered, to hold 

Sheer stockings: you 

Mare and harnesser in one body. 
The white panic of soft flesh 

In the panic of a sudden vision 

Of ancient saints. 

बा आउनुभएको छैन – सिद्धिचरण श्रेष्ठ

पानी परिरहेछ,
हावा चलिरहेछ,
समयले अबेर ओढिसक्यो,
बत्ती बलिसक्यो,
भात पाकिसक्यो,
आमा कराउनुभइरहेछ-
बा आउनुभएको छैन ।

युग बदलिइसक्यो,
राणा ढलिसक्यो,
भन्दछ जन्जिर टुटिसक्यो
अझ पनि आजादी आएको छैन
प्रगति आएको छैन,
प्रजातन्त्र आएको छैन,
आमा कराउनुभइरहेछ-
बा आउनुभएको छैन ।

हाम्रो विचारको घुयँत्रोले
हाम्रो कल्पनाको वज्रले
अन्धकारको टाउको फुटिसक्यो
अझ पनि नयाँ बेहान आएको छैन
नयाँ युग आएको छैन
आमा कराउनुभइरहेछ-
‘बा आउनुभएको छैन ।’

प्रेम र विवाह – सिद्धिचरण श्रेष्ठ

पौडिरहेको माछा जस्तै
उडिरहेको चरा जस्तै,
दौडिरहेको समय जस्तै
उसले उसलाई देख्यो ।
पानीसँग गई उसले भन्यो-
“त्यो माछालाई समात्छु;”
आकाशसित गई जोड लगायो-
त्यो चरालाई पक्रन्छु;
महाकालसित गई बिन्ति चढायो-
समयलाई म रोक्छु ।
हुन्न कसैले पनि भनेनन्,
अनि ती दुवैको बिहे भयो ।

म बहुला होइन – सिद्धिचरण श्रेष्ठ

आमा तिनीहरूले जेसुकै भनून्,
म बहुला होइन ।

मैले गर्न नहुने केही गरेर हिँडेकै छैन,
बोल्न नहुने केही बोलेर हिँडेकै छैन ।

मेरो आँखा छ, त्यसैले हेर्न पाऊँ भन्छु;
पेट छ खान पाऊँ भन्छु,

नाङ्गो भएर कोही नहिँडोस् भन्छु;
आवाज कानले सुन्न पाओस् भन्छु;

बिचारलाई बोलीमा उतार्न पाओस् भन्छु;
यत्तिकैमा पनि तिनीहरू

मलाई बहुला भन्छन्,
आमा, म बहुला होइन ।

Poem – God Full Of Mercy – Yehuda Amichai

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead. 

If God was not full of mercy, 

Mercy would have been in the world, 

Not just in Him. 

I, who plucked flowers in the hills 

And looked down into all the valleys, 

I, who brought corpses down from the hills, 

Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy. 

I, who was King of Salt at the seashore, 

Who stood without a decision at my window, 

Who counted the steps of angels, 

Whose heart lifted weights of anguish 

In the horrible contests. 
I, who use only a small part 

Of the words in the dictionary. 
I, who must decipher riddles 

I don’t want to decipher, 

Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy 

There would be mercy in the world, 

Not just in Him. 

Poem – An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion – Yehuda Amichai

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion 

And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.

An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father 

Both in their temporary failure. 

Our two voices met above 

The Sultan’s Pool in the valley between us. 

Neither of us wants the boy or the goat 

To get caught in the wheels 

Of the “Had Gadya” machine. 
Afterward we found them among the bushes, 

And our voices came back inside us 

Laughing and crying. 
Searching for a goat or for a child has always been 

The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

Poem – God Has Pity On Kindergarten Children – Yehuda Amichai

God has pity on kindergarten children, 

He pities school children — less. 

But adults he pities not at all. 
He abandons them, 

And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours 

In the scorching sand 

To reach the dressing station, 

Streaming with blood. 
But perhaps 

He will have pity on those who love truly 

And take care of them 

And shade them 

Like a tree over the sleeper on the public bench. 
Perhaps even we will spend on them 

Our last pennies of kindness 

Inherited from mother, 
So that their own happiness will protect us 

Now and on other days.

Poem – You Mustn’t Show Weakness

You mustn’t show weakness

and you’ve got to have a tan.

But sometimes I feel like the thin veils

of Jewish women who faint

at weddings and on Yom Kippur.
You mustn’t show weakness

and you’ve got to make a list

of all the things you can load

in a baby carriage without a baby.
This is the way things stand now:

if I pull out the stopper

after pampering myself in the bath,

I’m afraid that all of Jerusalem, and with it the whole world,

will drain out into the huge darkness.
In the daytime I lay traps for my memories

and at night I work in the Balaam Mills,

turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse.
And don’t ever show weakness.

Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself

without anyone noticing. I’m like an ambulance

on two legs, hauling the patient

inside me to Last Aid

with the wailing of cry of a siren,

and people think it’s ordinary speech.

Poems – Nothing But Color – Ai Ogawa

I didn’t write Etsuko, 

I sliced her open. 

She was carmine inside 

like a sea bass 

and empty. 

No viscera, nothing but color. 

I love you like that, boy. 

I pull the kimono down around your shoulders 

and kiss you. 

Then you let it fall open. 

Each time, I cut you a little 

and when you leave, I take the piece, 

broil it, dip it in ginger sauce 

and eat it. It burns my mouth so. 

You laugh, holding me belly-down 

with your body. 

So much hurting to get to this moment, 

when I’m beneath you, 

wanting it to go on and to end. 
At midnight, you say see you tonight 

and I answer there won’t be any tonight, 

but you just smile, swing your sweater 

over your head and tie the sleeves around your neck. 

I hear you whistling long after you disappear 

down the subway steps, 

as I walk back home, my whole body tingling. 

I undress 

and put the bronze sword on my desk 

beside the crumpled sheet of rice paper. 

I smooth it open 

and read its single sentence: 

I meant to do it. 

No. It should be common and feminine 

like I can’t go on sharing him, 

or something to imply that. 

Or the truth: 

that I saw in myself 

the five signs of the decay of the angel 

and you were holding on, watching and free, 

that I decided to go out 

with the pungent odor 

of this cold and consuming passion in my nose: death. 

Now, I’ve said it. That vulgar word 

that drags us down to the worms, sightless, predestined. 

Goddamn you, boy. 

Nothing I said mattered to you; 

that bullshit about Etsuko or about killing myself. 

I tear the note, then burn it. 

The alarm clock goes off. 5:45 A.M. 

I take the sword and walk into the garden. 

I look up. The sun, the moon, 

two round teeth rock together 

and the light of one chews up the other. 

I stab myself in the belly, 

wait, then stab myself again. Again. 

It’s snowing. I’ll turn to ice, 

but I’ll burn anyone who touches me. 

I start pulling my guts out, 

those red silk cords, 

spiraling skyward, 

and I’m climbing them 

past the moon and the sun, 

past darkness 

into white. 

I mean to live.
 

Poems – Grandfather Says – Ai Ogawa

Grandfather Says”Sit in my hand.” 

I’m ten. 

I can’t see him, 

but I hear him breathing 

in the dark. 

It’s after dinner playtime. 

We’re outside, 

hidden by trees and shrubbery. 

He calls it hide-and-seek, 

but only my little sister seeks us 

as we hide 

and she can’t find us, 

as grandfather picks me up 

and rubs his hands between my legs. 

I only feel a vague stirring 

at the edge of my consciousness. 

I don’t know what it is, 

but I like it. 

It gives me pleasure 

that I can’t identify. 

It’s not like eating candy, 

but it’s just as bad, 

because I had to lie to grandmother 

when she asked, 

“What do you do out there?” 

“Where?” I answered. 

Then I said, “Oh, play hide-and-seek.” 

She looked hard at me, 

then she said, “That was the last time. 

I’m stopping that game.” 

So it ended and I forgot. 

Ten years passed, thirtyfive, 

when I began to reconstruct the past. 

When I asked myself 

why I was attracted to men who disgusted me 

I traveled back through time 

to the dark and heavy breathing part of my life 

I thought was gone, 

but it had only sunk from view 

into the quicksand of my mind. 

It was pulling me down 

and there I found grandfather waiting, 

his hand outstretched to lift me up, 

naked and wet 

where he rubbed me. 

“I’ll do anything for you,” he whispered, 

“but let you go.” 

And I cried, “Yes,” then “No.” 

“I don’t understand how you can do this to me. 

I’m only ten years old,” 

and he said, “That’s old enough to know.”

Poems – Conversation – Ai Ogawa

We smile at each other 

and I lean back against the wicker couch. 

How does it feel to be dead? I say. 

You touch my knees with your blue fingers. 

And when you open your mouth, 

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor 

and burns a hole through it. 

Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear. 

Did you ever, you start, 

wear a certain kind of dress 

and just by accident, 

so inconsequential you barely notice it, 

your fingers graze that dress 

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper, 

you see it too 

and you realize how that image 

is simply the extension of another image, 

that your own life 

is a chain of words 

that one day will snap. 

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands, 

and beginning to rise heavenward 

in their confirmation dresses, 

like white helium balloons, 

the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning, 

and above all that, 

that’s where I’m floating, 

and that’s what it’s like 

only ten times clearer, 

ten times more horrible. 

Could anyone alive survive it?

Poems – Passage For Allen Ginsberg – Ai Ogawa

 

Sunflowers beside the railroad tracks, 

sunflowers giving back the beauty God gave you 

to one lonely traveler 

who spies you from a train window 

as she passes on her way to another train station. 

She wonders if she were like you 

rooted to your bit of earth 

would she be happy, 

would she be satisfied 

to have the world glide past and not regret it? 

For a moment, she thinks so, 

then decides that, no, she never could 

and turns back to her book of poetry, 

remembering how hard it was to get here 

and that flowers have their places as people do 

and she cannot simply exchange hers for another, 

even though she wants it. 

That’s how it is. 

Her mother told her. 

Now she believes her, 

although she wishes she didn’t. 

At fifty-three, she feels the need 

to rebel against the inevitable winding down. 

She already feels it in her bones, 

feels artery deterioration, and imagines 

cancerous indications on medical charts 

she hopes will never be part of her life, 

as she turns back to the window 

to catch the last glimpse of the sunflowers 

that sent her thoughts on a journey 

from which she knows she will never return, 

only go on and on 

and then just go.

Poems – The Kiss – Sara Teasdale

I hoped that he would love me, 

And he has kissed my mouth, 

But I am like a stricken bird 

That cannot reach the south. 
For though I know he loves me, 

To-night my heart is sad; 

His kiss was not so wonderful 

As all the dreams I had.

Poem – A Dialogue Of Self And Soul – William Butler Yeats

i{My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair; 

Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, 

Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, 

Upon the breathless starlit air, 

‘Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; 

Fix every wandering thought upon 

That quarter where all thought is done: 

Who can distinguish darkness from the soul 

i{My Self}. The consecretes blade upon my knees 

Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was, 

Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass 

Unspotted by the centuries; 

That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn 

From some court-lady’s dress and round 

The wodden scabbard bound and wound 

Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn 

i{My Soul.} Why should the imagination of a man 

Long past his prime remember things that are 

Emblematical of love and war? 

Think of ancestral night that can, 

If but imagination scorn the earth 

And interllect is wandering 

To this and that and t’other thing, 

Deliver from the crime of death and birth. 

i{My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it 

Five hundred years ago, about it lie 

Flowers from I know not what embroidery — 

Heart’s purple — and all these I set 

For emblems of the day against the tower 

Emblematical of the night, 

And claim as by a soldier’s right 

A charter to commit the crime once more. 

i{My Soul.} Such fullness in that quarter overflows 

And falls into the basin of the mind 

That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, 

For intellect no longer knows 

i{Is} from the i{Ought,} or i{knower} from the i{Known — } 

That is to say, ascends to Heaven; 

Only the dead can be forgiven; 

But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone. 

i{My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop. 

What matter if the ditches are impure? 

What matter if I live it all once more? 

Endure that toil of growing up; 

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress 

Of boyhood changing into man; 

The unfinished man and his pain 

Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; 

The finished man among his enemies? — 

How in the name of Heaven can he escape 

That defiling and disfigured shape 

The mirror of malicious eyes 

Casts upon his eyes until at last 

He thinks that shape must be his shape? 

And what’s the good of an escape 

If honour find him in the wintry blast? 

I am content to live it all again 

And yet again, if it be life to pitch 

Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch, 

A blind man battering blind men; 

Or into that most fecund ditch of all, 

The folly that man does 

Or must suffer, if he woos 

A proud woman not kindred of his soul. 

I am content to follow to its source 

Every event in action or in thought; 

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! 

When such as I cast out remorse 

So great a sweetness flows into the breast 

We must laugh and we must sing, 

We are blest by everything, 

Everything we look upon is blest.

Poem – A Man Young And Old – William Butler Yeats

I 

First Love 
THOUGH nurtured like the sailing moon 

In beauty’s murderous brood, 

She walked awhile and blushed awhile 

And on my pathway stood 

Until I thought her body bore 

A heart of flesh and blood. 

But since I laid a hand thereon 

And found a heart of stone 

I have attempted many things 

And not a thing is done, 

For every hand is lunatic 

That travels on the moon. 

She smiled and that transfigured me 

And left me but a lout, 

Maundering here, and maundering there, 

Emptier of thought 

Than the heavenly circuit of its stars 

When the moon sails out. 
II 

Human Dignity 

Like the moon her kindness is, 

If kindness I may call 

What has no comprehension in’t, 

But is the same for all 

As though my sorrow were a scene 

Upon a painted wall. 

So like a bit of stone I lie 

Under a broken tree. 

I could recover if I shrieked 

My heart’s agony 

To passing bird, but I am dumb 

From human dignity. 
III 

The Mermaid 

A mermaid found a swimming lad, 

Picked him for her own, 

Pressed her body to his body, 

Laughed; and plunging down 

Forgot in cruel happiness 

That even lovers drown. 
IV 

The Death of the Hare 

I have pointed out the yelling pack, 

The hare leap to the wood, 

And when I pass a compliment 

Rejoice as lover should 

At the drooping of an eye, 

At the mantling of the blood. 

Then’ suddenly my heart is wrung 

By her distracted air 

And I remember wildness lost 

And after, swept from there, 

Am set down standing in the wood 

At the death of the hare. 
V 

The Empty Cup 

A crazy man that found a cup, 

When all but dead of thirst, 

Hardly dared to wet his mouth 

Imagining, moon-accursed, 

That another mouthful 

And his beating heart would burst. 

October last I found it too 

But found it dry as bone, 

And for that reason am I crazed 

And my sleep is gone. 
VI 

His Memories 

We should be hidden from their eyes, 

Being but holy shows 

And bodies broken like a thorn 

Whereon the bleak north blows, 

To think of buried Hector 

And that none living knows. 

The women take so little stock 

In what I do or say 

They’d sooner leave their cosseting 

To hear a jackass bray; 

My arms are like the twisted thorn 

And yet there beauty lay; 

The first of all the tribe lay there 

And did such pleasure take — 

She who had brought great Hector down 

And put all Troy to wreck — 

That she cried into this ear, 

‘Strike me if I shriek.’ 
VII 

The Friends of his Youth 

Laughter not time destroyed my voice 

And put that crack in it, 

And when the moon’s pot-bellied 

I get a laughing fit, 

For that old Madge comes down the lane, 

A stone upon her breast, 

And a cloak wrapped about the stone, 

And she can get no rest 

With singing hush and hush-a-bye; 

She that has been wild 

And barren as a breaking wave 

Thinks that the stone’s a child. 

And Peter that had great affairs 

And was a pushing man 

Shrieks, ‘I am King of the Peacocks,’ 

And perches on a stone; 

And then I laugh till tears run down 

And the heart thumps at my side, 

Remembering that her shriek was love 

And that he shrieks from pride. 
VIII 

Summer and Spring 

We sat under an old thorn-tree 

And talked away the night, 

Told all that had been said or done 

Since first we saw the light, 

And when we talked of growing up 

Knew that we’d halved a soul 

And fell the one in t’other’s arms 

That we might make it whole; 

Then peter had a murdering look, 

For it seemed that he and she 

Had spoken of their childish days 

Under that very tree. 

O what a bursting out there was, 

And what a blossoming, 

When we had all the summer-time 

And she had all the spring! 
IX 

The Secrets of the Old 

I have old women’s sectets now 

That had those of the young; 

Madge tells me what I dared not think 

When my blood was strong, 

And what had drowned a lover once 

Sounds like an old song. 

Though Margery is stricken dumb 

If thrown in Madge’s way, 

We three make up a solitude; 

For none alive to-day 

Can know the stories that we know 

Or say the things we say: 

How such a man pleased women most 

Of all that are gone, 

How such a pair loved many years 

And such a pair but one, 

Stories of the bed of straw 

Or the bed of down. 
X 

His Wildness 

O bid me mount and sail up there 

Amid the cloudy wrack, 

For peg and Meg and Paris’ love 

That had so straight a back, 

Are gone away, and some that stay 

Have changed their silk for sack. 

Were I but there and none to hear 

I’d have a peacock cry, 

For that is natural to a man 

That lives in memory, 

Being all alone I’d nurse a stone 

And sing it lullaby. 
XI 

From ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ 

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; 

Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; 

Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. 

Even from that delight memory treasures so, 

Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, 

As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know. 

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng, 

The bride is catried to the bridegroom’s chamber 

through torchlight and tumultuous song; 

I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long. 

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; 

Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have 

looked into the eye of day; 

The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Poem – When I Do Count The Clock That Tells The Time – William Shakespeare

Sonnet 12: 

When I do count the clock that tells the time, 

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 

When I behold the violet past prime, 

And sable curls all silvered o’er with white; 

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves 

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves 

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, 

Then of thy beauty do I question make 

That thou among the wastes of time must go, 

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake 

And die as fast as they see others grow; 

And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence 

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Poem – To Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old – William Shakespeare

Sonnet 104: 
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 

For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, 

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, 

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, 

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d, 

In process of the seasons have I seen, 

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d, 

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand, 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d; 

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: 

For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: 

Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Poem – From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase – William Shakespeare

Sonnet 1:

From fairest creatures we desire increase, 

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, 

But as the riper should by time decease, 

His tender heir might bear his memory; 

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, 

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, 

Making a famine where abundance lies, 

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. 

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament, 

And only herald to the gaudy spring, 

Within thine own bud buriest thy content, 

And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding. 

Pity the world, or else this glutton be: 

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Poem – Love Is Too Young To Know What Conscience Is – William Shakespeare

Sonnet 151:

 Love is too young to know what conscience is; 

Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? 

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, 

Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove. 

For thou betraying me, I do betray 

My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; 

My soul doth tell my body that he may 

Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason, 

But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee 

As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, 

He is contented thy poor drudge to be, 

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. 

No want of conscience hold it that I call, 

Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.

Poem – Where Spring, The Lord Of The Seasons – Kabir

Where Spring, the lord of the seasons, reigneth, 

there the Unstruck Music sounds of itself, 

There the streams of light flow in all directions; 

Few are the men who can cross to that shore! 
There, where millions of Krishnas stand with hands folded, 

Where millions of Vishnus bow their heads, 

Where millions of Brahmas are reading the Vedas, 

Where millions of Shivas are lost in contemplation, 

Where millions of Indras dwell in the sky, 

Where the demi-gods and the munis are unnumbered, 

Where millions of Saraswatis, Goddess of Music, play on the veena 

There is my Lord self-revealed: 

and the scent of sandal and flowers dwells in those deeps.

Poem – The Swan Flies Away – Kabir

The Swan Will Fly Away All Alone, 

Spectacle of the World Will Be a Mere Fair 

As the Leaf Falls from the Tree 

Is Difficult to Find 

Who Knows Where it Will Fall 

Once it is Struck with a Gust Of Wind 

When Life Span is Complete 

Then Listening to Orders, Following Others, Will Be Over 

The Messengers of Yama are Very Strong 

It’s an Entanglement with the Yama 

Servant Kabir Praises the Attributes of the Lord 

He Finds the Lord Soon 

Guru Will Go According to His Doings 

The Disciple According to His!

Poem – The Last Flight – Kabir

The Swan Will Fly Away All Alone, 

Spectacle of the World Will Be a Mere Fair 

As the Leaf Falls from the Tree 

Is Difficult to Find 

Who Knows Where it Will Fall 

Once it is Struck with a Gust Of Wind 

When Life Span is Complete 

Then Listening to Orders, Following Others, Will Be Over 

The Messengers of Yama are Very Strong 

It’s an Entanglement with the Yama 

Servant Kabir Praises the Attributes of the Lord 

He Finds the Lord Soon 

Guru Will Go According to His Doings 

The Disciple According to His 

Poem – The Seeker – Gautam Buddha

The SeekerRestraint in the eye is good, good is restraint in the ear,

in the nose restraint is good, good is restraint in the tongue. 

In the body restraint is good, good is restraint in speech, 

in thought restraint is good, good is restraint in all things. 

A Bhikshu, restrained in all things, is freed from all pain.
He who controls his hand, 

he who controls his feet, 

he who controls his speech, 

he who is well controlled, 

he who delights inwardly, 

who is collected, 

who is solitary and content, 

him they call Bhikshu. 
The Bhikshu who controls his mouth, 

who speaks wisely and calmly, 

who teaches the meaning and the law, 

his word is sweet. 
He who dwells in the law, 

delights in the law, 

meditates on the law, 

follows the law, 

that Bhikshu will never fall away from the true law. 
Let him not despise what he has received, nor ever envy others: 

a mendicant who envies others does not obtain peace of mind. 
A Bhikshu who, 

though he receives little, 

does not despise what he has received, 

even the gods will praise him, 

if his life is pure, 

and if he is not slothful. 
He who never identifies himself with name and form, 

and does not grieve over what is no more, 

he indeed is called a Bhikshu. 
The Bhikshu who acts with kindness, 

who is calm in the doctrine of Buddha, 

will reach the quiet place (Nirvana) , 

cessation of natural desires, and happiness. 
O Bhikshu, empty this boat! if emptied, it will go quickly;

having cut off passion and hatred thou wilt go to Nirvana. 
Cut off the five (senses) , leave the five, rise above the five. 

A Bhikshu, who has escaped from the five fetters, 

he is called Oghatinna, `saved from the flood.’ 
Meditate, O Bhikshu, and be not heedless! Do not direct thy 

thought to what gives pleasure that thou mayest not for thy 

heedlessness have to swallow the iron ball (in hell) , and that thou 

mayest not cry out when burning, `This is pain.’ 
Without knowledge there is no meditation, without meditation 

there is no knowledge: 

he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana. 
A Bhikshu who has entered his empty house, 

and whose mind is tranquil, 

feels a more than human delight when he sees the law clearly. 
As soon as he has considered the origin and destruction of the 

elements (khandha) of the body, he finds happiness and joy which 

belong to those who know the immortal (Nirvana) . 
And this is the beginning here for a wise Bhikshu: watchfulness 

over the senses, contentedness, restraint under the law; keep noble 

friends whose life is pure, and who are not slothful. 
Let him live in charity, let him be perfect in his duties; then 

in the fulness of delight he will make an end of suffering. 
As the Vassika plant sheds its withered flowers, men should shed 

passion and hatred, O ye Bhikshus! 
The Bhikshu whose body and tongue and mind are quieted, who is 

collected, and has rejected the baits of the world, he is called quiet. 
Rouse thyself by thyself, examine thyself by thyself, thus self- 

protected and attentive wilt thou live happily, O Bhikshu! 
For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; 

therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse. 
The Bhikshu, full of delight, who is calm in the doctrine of 

Buddha will reach the quiet place (Nirvana) , 

cessation of natural desires, and happiness. 
He who, even as a young Bhikshu, 

applies himself to the doctrine of Buddha, 

brightens up this world, 

like the moon when free from clouds.

Poem – The Wise – Gautam Buddha

If you see a wise person who shows you your faults, 

who shows what is to be avoided, 

follow that wise person 

as you would one who reveals hidden treasures; 

you will be better not worse for following that one. 

Let one admonish; let one teach; let one forbid the wrong; 

and one will be loved by the good and hated by the bad. 
Do not have wrong-doers for friends; 

do not have despicable people for friends; 

have virtuous people for friends; 

have for friends the best people. 
Whoever drinks in the truth 

lives happily with a serene mind. 

The wise are joyful in the truth 

revealed by the noble ones. 
Engineers of canals guide the water; 

fletchers make the arrow straight; 

carpenters shape the wood; 

the wise mould themselves. 
As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, 

so the wise are not shaken by blame and praise. 

As a deep lake is clear and calm, 

so the wise become tranquil after they listened to the truth. 
Good people walk on regardless of what happens to them. 

Good people do not babble on about their desires. 

Whether touched by happiness or by sorrow, 

the wise never appear elated or depressed. 
Whoever for one’s sake or for another’s, 

does not wish for a son or wealth or power, 

and if one does not wish for success by unfair means, 

that one certainly is virtuous, wise, and holy. 
Few are those people who reach the farther shore; 

the other people here run along this shore. 

But those who, when the truth has been taught to them,

follow the truth, will pass over the dominion of death, 

however difficult to cross. 
Leaving behind the path of darkness 

and following the path of light, 

let the wise person go from home to a homeless state, 

in retirement looking for enjoyment 

where enjoyment seemed difficult. 

Letting go of all pleasures, calling nothing one’s own, 

let the wise cleanse oneself 

from all the troubles of the mind. 
Those whose minds are well grounded 

in the elements of enlightenment, 

who without clinging to anything 

find joy in freedom from attachment, 

whose appetites have been conquered, 

and who are full of light, 

they are free in this world.

म तिम्रा अघी पर्न लायक् कहाँ छू – मोतीराम भट्ट

(शारदा मासिक अङ्क ११)
म तिम्रा अघी पर्न लायक् कहाँ छू,

त्यसैले अघी सर्न लायक् कहाँ छू ।
हुकुम हुन्छ तिम्रो त हाजिर छँदैछू,

बिना मर्जि आँट गर्न लायक् कहाँ छू।
अरूका ऊपर आँखिभौँ तानि हाने,

म जावो हरे ! मर्न लायक् कहाँ छू।
जहाँसम्म मन चल्छ लौ हुन्छ घुर्कुन्,

तिनै झैँ नजर् तर्न लायक कहाँ छू।
सहडमै छ मन् हर्न सक्नू हरीले,

सुनीस् मोति त्यो गर्न लायक् कहाँ छू।

दिनको पचास त के -मोतीराम भट्ट

दिनको पचास त के हजार पटक् कती समझाउनू

म गरीबको घरमा हरे तिमीले यसोरी नआउनू ।
रिसमा थियौ कि खुसी थियौ, म त केही जान्दिनँ के थियौ,

कि यसो थियौ, कि उसो थियौ मनमा कसोरी बुझाउनू ।
नत आ भनूँ, नत जा भनूँ म यसो भनूँ कि उसो भनूँ

तिनीको मिजाज म के भनूँ, कतिसम्म विन्ति चढाउनू ।
वय सोह्रको मन साठिको छ र पो गजब छ ति प्यारिको

मुखको खाव छ चन्द्रको, ननिको छ मिस्सि लगाउनू ।
मनसुब पुग्नू परै रहोस् दरसन् पनि छ कठिन जहाँ,

अब बाँचनेछु मता कहाँ तिनीलाई यति सुनाउनू ।
तिमि बिर्सि आलत क्यै जनी, मत संझदो छु अझै पनि,

मुख भित्र पान चपाउनू, अलि हाँसि हाँसि हँसाउनू ।
मणि हो भनूँ त न झल्कँने बिजुली भनूँ त न चंकने

आइना भनूँ त न टल्कने उपमा कसोरी जुराउनू ।
तिमि पर्खि पर्ख भनी भनी कन जानू, फेरि नआउनू,

खपि सक्नु छैन मलाइ ता, तिमिले यसोरि छकाउनू ।
सुन है सबै हरिको हुकुम् म हुकुम् भनूँ कि भनूँ जुलुम्

अघि जो भयो उत भै गयो तर फेरि मोति न लाउनू ।

मेरो स्थिति – तारानाथ शर्मा

चरर चरर गर्दै पीरले चिर्छ छाती

समय सुलुलु गर्दै चिप्लियो यो नजाती

घर र पर गरेरै देहले शक्ति त्याग्छ

नर भइकन मेरो जन्म नै व्यर्थ लाग्छ।

सकल हित स्वयंको स्वार्थको मार्ग फाल्दै

जनहितप्रति लाग्दै देशसेवा अँगाल्दै

अलिकति म केही राष्ट्रको लागि गर्छु

जति पनि म सक्छु ज्ञान बाँडेर मर्छु।

मुलुकहरु अरूका उक्लँदै गैरहेका

हिमचुलिमुनि बस्ने छौँ सबै नित्य भोका

अब त समय आयो हामिले उठ्नुपर्छ

दल र कलह छोडी एक भै मिल्नुपर्छ।

छल र कपट गर्ने दुष्टले भेद गर्छन्

तँतँ र मम गरेरै फोर्दछन् एकता झन्

पद र धनतिरै जो मस्त छन् चिन्नुपर्छ

अब त सब जनाले जाल यो बुझ्नुपर्छ।

Poem – Poems On Love – Rabindranath Tagore

Love adorns itself; 

it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty. 
Love does not claim possession, 

but gives freedom. 
Love is an endless mystery, 

for it has nothing else to explain it. 
Love’s gift cannot be given, 

it waits to be accepted.

Poem – The Kiss – Rabindranath Tagore

Lips’ language to lips’ ears. 

Two drinking each other’s heart, it seems. 

Two roving loves who have left home, 

pilgrims to the confluence of lips. 

Two waves rise by the law of love 

to break and die on two sets of lips. 

Two wild desires craving each other 

meet at last at the body’s limits. 

Love’s writing a song in dainty letters, 

layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips. 

Plucking flowers from two sets of lips 

perhaps to thread them into a chain later. 

This sweet union of lips 

is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.

कविता – जीवनको अँध्यारो सडकमा – भूपी शेरचन

भूपी शेरचन
१९३७ – १९९०
मुस्तांग नेपाल

जीवनको अँध्यारो सडकमा
जीवनको अँध्यारो सडकमा
सफलता
साइकलको डाइनमोबाट बल्ने बत्तीझैं लाग्छ
कि जबसम्म
गतिको पैडिलमाथि
मेरो खुट्टा चलिरहन्छ
मेरो पथमा यो बत्ती बलिरहन्छ
तर जसरी नै म थाक्छु
र मेरो खुट्टा रूक्छ
अन्धकार मेरो अगाडि आएर भुक्छ।

Poem – Maya – Rabindranath Tagore

That I should make much of myself and turn it on all sides, 

thus casting colored shadows on thy radiance 

—such is thy Maya. 
Thou settest a barrier in thine own being 

and then callest thy severed self in myriad notes. 

This thy self-separation has taken body in me. 
The poignant song is echoed through all the sky in many-coloued tears 

and smiles, alarms and hopes; waves rise up and sink again, 

dreams break and form. 

In me is thy own defeat of self. 
This screen that thou hast raised is painted with innumerable figures 

with the brush of the night and the day. 

Behind it thy seat is woven in wondrous mysteries of curves, 

casting away all barren lines of straightness. 
The great pageant of thee and me has overspread the sky. 

With the tune of thee and me all the air is vibrant, 

and all ages pass with the hiding and seeking of thee and me. 

Poem – Marah Milan (Death Wedding) – Rabindranath Tagore

Why do you speak so softly, Death, Death, 

Creep upon me, watch me so stealthily? 

This is not how a lover should behave. 

When evening flowers droop upon their tired 

Stems, when cattle are brought in from the fields 

After a whole day’s grazing, you, Death, 

Death, approach me with such gentle steps, 

Settle yourself immovably by my side. 

I cannot understand the things you say. 
Alas, will this be how you will take me, Death, 

Death? Like a thief, laying heavy sleep 

On my eyes as you descend to my heart? 

Will you thus let your tread be a slow beat 

In my sleep-numbed blood, your jingling ankle-bells 

A drowsy rumble in my ear? Will you, Death, 

Death, wrap me, finally, in your cold 

Arms and carry me away while I dream? 

I do not know why you thus come and go. 
Tell me, is this the way you wed, Death, 

Death? Unceremonially, with no 

Weight of sacrament or blessing or prayer? 

Will you come with your massy tawny hair 

Unkempt, unbound into a bright coil-crown? 

Will no one bear your victory-flag before 

Or after, will no torches glow like red 

Eyes along the river, Death, Death? 

Will earth not quake in terror at your step? 
When fierce-eyed Siva came to take his bride, 

Remember all the pomp and trappings, Death, 

Death: the flapping tiger-skins he wore; 

His roaring bull; the serpents hissing round 

His hair; the bom-bom sound as he slapped his cheeks;

The necklace of skulls swinging round his neck; 

The sudden raucous music as he blew 

His horn to announce his coming – was this not 

A better way of wedding, Death, Death? 
And as that deathly wedding-party’s din 

Grew nearer, Death, Death, tears of joy 

Filled Gauri’s eyes and the garments at her breast 

Quivered; her left eye fluttered and her heart 

Pounded; her body quailed with thrilled delight 

And her mind ran away with itself, Death, Death; 

Her mother wailed and smote her head at the thought 

Of receiving so wild a groom; and in his mind 

Her father agreed calamity had struck. 
Why must you always come like a thief, Death, 

Death, always silently, at night’s end, 

Leaving only tears? Come to me festively, 

Make the whole night ring with your triumph, blow 

Your victory-conch, dress me in blood-red robes, 

Grasp me by the hand and sweep me away! 

Pay no heed to what others may think, Death, 

Death, for I shall of my own free will 

Resort to you if you but take me gloriously. 
If I am immersed in work in my room 

When you arrive, Death, Death, then break 

My work, thrust my unreadiness aside. 

If I am sleeping, sinking all desires 

In the dreamy pleasure of my bed, or I lie 

With apathy gripping my heart and my eyes 

Flickering between sleep and waking, fill 

Your conch with your destructive breath and blow, 

Death, Death, and I shall run to you. 
I shall go to where your boat is moored, 

Death, Death, to the sea where the wind rolls 

Darkness towards me from infinity. 

I may see black clouds massing in the far 

North-east corner of the sky; fiery snakes 

Of lightning may rear up with their hoods raised, 

But I shall not flinch in unfounded fear – 

I shall pass silently, unswervingly 

Across that red storm-sea, Death, Death.

Poem – Lotus – Rabindranath Tagore

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, 

and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded. 
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my 

dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind. 
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to 

me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion. 
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this 

perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

कुर्सीको झगडा – तारानाथ शर्मा

कुर्सीको झगडा उठेर तगडा नेपाल नै रन्कियो

सारा  देशविकासको अब कुरा ठप्पै भयो थन्कियो

गाई कोरली भोग्न बृद्ध जब त्यो साँढे जमेरै बस्यो

ईर्ष्या, भेद र फूटको मुलुकमा सेना डटेरै पस्यो–१

कुर्सी, गाई दुवै म धान्दछु भनी अर्कै उठ्यो डुक्रियो

नाङ्गो भो सब राष्ट्र भाँडिन गई धाँजा पर्‍यो टुक्रियो

साझा यो फुलबारि मास्न कसिए हाम्रो बिजोकै गरी

बाँच्ने छैन स्वतन्त्रता मुलुक नै फुट्ने छ ऐनासरी–२

आशा उन्नतिको मरेर मनमा सारा स्वदेशीहरू

रुन्छन् आज नदेखि रक्षण यहाँ नेपालको आबरू

कामै छैन कतै परिश्रम गरी खाने, युवा तर्सिए

देशै छाडि पराइका मुलुकमा लागे बसाइँ सरे–३

छोरीलाई म इन्दिरासरहकी पार्छु भनी चम्किने

देशैको पद शीर्ष लिन्छु म भनी मैदानमा बम्किने

भ्रष्टाचार र घूस, चाकरिहरू सामन्तसाथै ढलून्

नेपाली स्थिति फेरिएर जनमा आशाहरू उर्लिऊन्–४

शिक्षा, स्वस्थ्य र काममाम सबले पाऊन् थियो चाहना

नेपालित्व रहोस् सधैँ भुवनमा कल्याणको कामना

हामी नै झगडा गरेर घरमा बाझ्यौँ भने चर्चरी

हुन्छौँ दास पराइको पगमुनि रुन्छौँ सधैँ धर्धरी–५

कुर्सी, शक्ति र द्रव्यतर्फ दलका सिद्धान्तको दुर्दशा

हाँस्ने छन् सब मित्र मस्तसितले देखेर हाम्रो दशा

बिर्सन्छन् जनता र राष्ट्र यिनले पाएर कुर्सी पनि

हामी एक थियौँ र त्रास छ कतै मेटिन्छ राष्ट्रै भनी–६

घाम उही हो – तारानाथ शर्मा

तिहारको यो सुन्दर पर्व विना टीका नै बित्न गयो

 गाईपूजा कसरी गर्नु?

स्मृति मात्र अब शेष भयो

लक्ष्मी सम्झेँ मैनवत्तीले सिँगार्न खोजेँ डेरामा

भैलो खेल्ने द्यौसी खेल्ने आउँदैनन् अब मेरामा

किन यस्तो यो खल्लो जीवन चाड दसैँ पनि गुजरिसक्यो

होली आउँछ सुटुक्क बित्छ मन नै मेरो खुमरिसक्यो

भित्र छ पीडा अन्धकारले बाहिर जति नै बिजुली बलोस्

नत सँगिनीहरु घरघर नाच्छन् नत मादलको ताल चलोस्

घाम उही हो बादल उस्तै तर चङ्गा छैनन् कतै पनि

शून्य छ सबतिर मन नै रित्तो समय बित्तछ व्यस्त बनी

शब्दकोश अब सक्छु भन्थेँ सामग्री सब उतै छुट्यो

लिन जान पनि कसरी जानु?

लथालिङ्ग भै घरै फुट्यो

दसैँ तिहारले सारा कष्ट बढारिदिन्थे प्रति वर्ष

अनि उत्साहले सालभरि नै मान्थ्यौँ हामी अति हर्ष

छेपाराकै कथा सरह यो जीवन गुज्रन लाग्दै छ

घरको माया जति गरे पनि आशा टाढा भाग्दै छ

Classic Poem – When Rising From The Bed Of Death – Joseph Addison

When rising from the bed of death, 

O’erwhelmed with guilt and fear, 

I see my Maker face to face, 

O how shall I appear? 
If yet, while pardon may be found, 

And mercy may be sought, 

My heart with inward horror shrinks, 

And trembles at the thought; 
When Thou, O Lord, shalt stand disclosed 

In majesty severe, 

And sit in judgment on my soul, 

O how shall I appear? 
But Thou hast told the troubled mind 

Who does her sins lament, 

The timely tribute of her tears 

Shall endless woe prevent. 
Then see the sorrow of my heart, 

Ere yet it be too late; 

And hear my Savior’s dying groans, 

To give those sorrows weight. 
For never shall my soul despair 

Her pardon to procure, 

Who knows Thine only Son has died 

To make her pardon sure.

Classic Poem – Hope – Joseph Addison

Our lives, discoloured with our present woes, 

May still grow white and shine with happier hours. 

So the pure limped stream, when foul with stains 

Of rushing torrents and descending rains, 

Works itself clear, and as it runs refines, 

till by degrees the floating mirror shines; 

Reflects each flower that on the border grows, 

And a new heaven in it’s fair bosom shows.

फूल र क्षण – गोपाल प्रसाद रिमाल

“फूल झर्दछ, फुल्दछ
फुल्दछ, झर्दछ”

तर त्यो फूल जसले

छाती थापी फक्रेथ्यो

त्यो थोपालाई तृप्ति दिने

जब जगमा अमृत झरेथ्यो

के त्यो फूल फुल्यो ?

“क्षण आउँछ, जान्छ

जान्छ, आउँछ”

तर त्यो क्षण जसलाई

भाग्यचक्रले विरही दिनमा

सात समुद्रपारिकी

परीलाई झैं ल्यायो

के त्यो क्षण आयो ?

स्वर्गयुगझैं अङ्कित स्मृतिमा

त्यो क्षण कृष्णयुगझैं फर्केन

अमृत–प्यालाझैं पाएको त्यो फूल

हलाहलझैं बारबार मिलेन !

यो के – गोपाल प्रसाद रिमाल

मेरी रानी, साँचो बोल, यो लागूजस्तो न्यानोपन
जे म तिम्रो काखमा पाउँछु;

यो सपना जो तिम्रो आँखामा म देख्दछु, यो के ?

तिमीनिर आइपुग्दा यो सन्चो लागेजस्तो

अथवा रगतमा बाढी आएजस्तो

मलाई जे हुन्छ, यो के ?

अनि आफूलाई च्यातचुत पारेर तिम्रो पाउमा

चढाइदिऊँ यसनिम्ति कि तिमी त्यसलाई लिएर जेसुकै गर;

अथवा म यस्तो हुँ कि

तिमीलाई हेर्दाहेर्दै म नहुँ भनेजस्तो

यो पागलपन, यो के ?

मेरी रानी, साँचो बोल, यो के ?

फेरि यिनै कुरा मात्र साँचा हैनन् कि

तिमीलाई देख्नेबित्तिकै म सास लिएजत्तिकै

सपना लिन लाग्दछु;

कि म आफुलाई बिर्सेर तिमीलाई सम्झन्छु

क म तिमीमा डुबेर

आफुनो अस्तित्व मेटाउन चाहन्छु

यी कुरा मात्र साँचा हैनन्,

अर्को कुरा पनि त्यत्तिकै सत्य छ–

म तिमीलाई कहिलेकाहीँ आफ्नो मुठ्ठीको माखोलाई भैmँ

एकदम मारी मेटिदिऊँ र ती सब कुरालाई

एकदम, खतम पारिदिऊँजस्तो लाग्दछ—

उकदम, एकैचोटि !

मेरी रानी, साँचो बोल, यो के ?

समय दगुरिरहेछ, पर्खनलाई बेला ज्यादै नै कम छ,

घाममा परेर ओइलाइहाल्ला भन्ने डरले

पूmल फुल्नेबित्तिकै टिप्न हतार भइहाल्छ,

हरेक हावाको झोकाले उछिनेर लुटिदिहाल्ला भन्ने डरले

हतपताउँदै फुल बटुल्नुपर्छ,

पोल्टामा सुखका सपनाहरु हालेर

हरेक पला दौडिरहेछ

गयो कि फर्कन जान्दैन,

जीवन बितिरहेछ ।

मेरी रानी, चाँडो भन, यो के ?

कवि हिर्दयमा – गोपाल प्रसाद रिमाल

मनव–वनमा कहिलेदेखि झर्न लाग्यो निर्झर

जसको इन्द्रधनुषले गर्दा जीवन भो सुन्दर–सुन्दर

यसको प्रवाहमा देखिन्छन् उज्वल फीँज र फोका

स्वच्छ निर्मल अनन्तजस्तै अणुअणुसम्म सादा

कलपनाको रङ्ग चढाई फुकिदिन्छु तिमीहरुलाई

जो उड्नेछन् सबको मनोगमनमा रुवाई हँसाई

सुख–दुःख रङ्गिन्छन् कहिले, मानव–जीवनका दुई रङ्ग

कहिले प्रेम–शशिको प्रकाशमा हृदयोदधिको जवार

कहिले पातपातमा टल्किरहने अनन्तताको शीत

विश्व–गीतमा नाचिरहेको सौन्दर्यको काखबीच

निर्झर पर्वत, वनहरुमा सौन्दर्यको जति छाप छ

मानव–आत्मामा उत्तिकै त्यै रमणीयताको भाग छ

मेरो प्रेमको कथा – गोपाल प्रसाद रिमाल

एउटी काली ठिटी थिइन्, बोल्नै सकिनन्

मेरो  रवाफ सहनै सकिनन् ।

म तिनको राजा थिएँ, तिनी मेरी हुन सकिनन्

ढोकेकी छोरी रहिछिन्, ढोकेसितै बोलिन् ।

तिनी जङ्गली युगकी रहिछिन्, बर्बरता तिनको धर्म रहेछ,

म मानिसको अगिल्तिर के टिक्थिन् ?

अर्की तिनीजस्तै नै बरु काली रहिछिन्

तिनले मलाई सपनामा पाइन् रे

किनभने बिपना बन्धन थियो

बिपनामा खेल मात्र थियो ।

यिनले मलाई बचाइन्, सपनामा पाउनेजस्तै

तिनले चाहिंँ मार्न खोजिन्, रगत पिइन्

बिपनामा नालायक ठहरिएजस्तै ।

कालीहरुको कथा आयो, गोयो ।

अब गोरीहरु छुत्ती खेल्दै छन्

म पनि खेल्दै छु ।

यस्तो प्रेम आखिर लीला न हो

लीलाले पनि मलाई अलमलाउन सकिनन् ।

लीलासित हरदम पाचुके नै छ ।

मलाई त प्रेम र क्रान्ति बराबर छ

सङ्क्रान्ति त महीनौंमहीनौं भइ नै रहेछ ।

मलाई त क्रान्तिसित खेल्ने बानी छ

त्यसैले क्रान्तिले मेरो छहारी सकार्नु छ ।

म त्यसैले जोडा छु, जोडा हुन्छु

क्रान्तिले मलाई नमस्कार गर्न बाँकी नै छ ।

मैले त क्रान्तिलाई सलामी दिसकेँ

क्रान्तिले मर्द भएर सलाम फर्काउन बाँकी नै छ ।

म त्यसैको प्यासो छु, त्यसैको प्रेमी छु

क्रान्तिले मलाई प्रेम गर्न बाँकी नै छ ।

म क्रान्तिको भोको छु

क्रान्तिले मेरो छाक टार्न बाँकी नै छ ।

गजल – के माग्छु र तिमी सित – प्रकाश सायमी

के माग्छु र तिमीसित घामपानी सिवाय

के नै दिन सक्छौ अनिँदो बिहानी सिवाय

मेरो कसम तिम्रा निम्ति कति जुठो भो

चोखो त क्यै छैन तिम्रो जवानी सिवाय

नबुझाउ पहेली मनको म बुझ्दिन खै

स्पष्ट त क्यै भएन उही बानी सिवाय

सपना देख्छु रंगीविरंगी मन त त्यै हो

बदल्छु सारा चीज त्यै सिरानी सिवाय

भित्ताको तस्वीरले रगतको रंग भन्छ

के नै भन्ला शहीदको कहानी सिवाय

यै जीवन काल कोठरी भो नानू

जिन्दगी क्यै हैन पुरानो बानी सिवाय

कविता – मोफसलमा – प्रकाश सायमी

कारिन्दाको कुर्सिमा छु

गृहस्थीको सपना छाउँछ टेबुल भरि

घरको पलङ्गमा छु

हाकिमको सपनाले तर्साउँछ रात भरि

यो मुलुकमा म बाहेक अरुको एक्लो छ ?

म सोध्छु- आफैलाई घरिघरि

निरुत्तर उभिन्छु

आफ्नै तस्विर अगाडि

ऐना भएर ।
छियाछिया भएर सजिन्छु

विधवाको सिउँदो भरि

यो मुलुकमा मभन्दा कमजोर को होला र ?

एउटा सिङ्गै गाउँ सुतेको छ मभित्र

र जतै म जान खोज्छु त्यो ब्युँझिन खोज्छ

र जतै म भाग्न खोज्छु त्यो पछ्याइरहन्छ

एउटा अर्को पनि गाउँ छ- मेरो आँखामा

जो भत्किनै लागेको छ

पूर्वमा घाम नफुटदै

यसको मन फाटिसक्छ

आवाजहरुको रङ्गीन जङ्गलमा

खोजिरहन्छ यो आफ्नै आवाज

विज्ञापनको भाषामा

अखबार खोजिरहेछ

आफ्नो आवश्यकता

एउटा अनुहार बोकेर आएको छ- चिठ्ठी

एउटा चिठ्ठी बोकेर आएको छ आमाको अनुहार

धेरै कुरा देखिन्छ- आमाको अनुहारमा…।
पहिरोमा डुब्दै गरेको गाउँ

सपनामा भत्किँदै गरेको गाउँ

एक्लो/दुर्बल/कमजोर

त्यो गाउँमा एउटा पहाड पनि छ

एक्लोपनको पहाड !
म त्यो गाउँमा अब पुग्न सक्दिन

एउटा गाउँ नै बोकेर आएको छ चिठ्ठी

एउटा चिठ्ठी बोकेर आएको छ- गाउँ ।

Roses Can Wound – Lascelles Abercrombie

Roses can wound, 

But not from having thorns they do most harm; 

Often the night gives, starry-sheen or moon’d, 

Deep in the soul alarm. 

And it hath been deep within my heart like fear, 

Girl, when you are near. 

The mist of sense, 

Wherein the soul goes shielded, can divide, 

And she must cringe and be ashamed, and wince, 

Not in appearance hide 

Of rose or girl from the blazing mastery 

Of bared Eternity.

The Stream’s Song – Lascelles Abercrombie

Make way, make way, 

You thwarting stones; 

Room for my play, 

Serious ones. 
Do you not fear, 

O rocks and boulders, 

To feel my laughter 

On your broad shoulders? 
So you not know 

My joy at length 

Will all wear out 

Your solemn strength? 
You will not for ever 

Cumber my play: 

With joy and son 

I clear my way. 
Your faith of rock 

Shall yield to me, 

And be carried away 

By the song of my glee. 
Crumble, crumble, 

Voiceless things; 

No faith can last 

That never sings. 
For the last hour 

To joy belongs: 

The steadfast perish, 

But not the songs. 
Yet for a while 

Thwart me, O boulders; 

I need for laugher 

Your serious shoulders. 
And when my singing 

Has razed your quite, 

I shall have lost 

Half my delight.

Hope And Despair – Lascelles Abercrombie

Said God, ‘You sisters, ere ye go 

Down among men, my work to do, 

I will on each a badge bestow: 

Hope I love best, and gold for her, 

Yet a silver glory for Despair, 

For she is my angel too.’ 

Then like a queen, Despair 

Put on the stars to wear. 

But Hope took ears of corn, and round 

Her temples in a wreath them bound.– 

Which think ye lookt the more fair?

गजल – म आपदमा तिमीसित हिँडे – प्रकाश सायमी

म आपदमा तिमीसित हिँडे

म सापटमा तिमीसित हिँडे

हिँड्नेहरु कहाँ कहाँ पुगे खै

म राहतमा तिमीसित हिँडे

नदीको वेगसरिको जवानी यो

म चाहतमा तिमीसित हिँडे

के नगद के बाँकी पिरतीमा

त्यै वापतमा तिमीसित हिँडे

घाउ दुखेसरिको पीडामा छुँ

म आहतमा तिमीसित हिँडे

कविता – जाँदाजाँदै – प्रकाश सायमी

जाँदाजाँदै आज फेरि मन उधारै रह्यो

ढोकैसम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो
छिचोलेरै पुगेको’थेँ कति आँखा बाधा थिए

चाहनाथ्यौ तिमी मेरो सपना पनि आधा थिए

खोलुँ भन्थेँ मनको ढोका सबै अपुरै रह्यो

ढोकासम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो
काँढामाथि टेक्नु पर्यो त्यो पनि त सहेकै’थेँ

दुनियाँ नै वैरी हुँदा तिम्रो आफ्नो भएकै’थेँ

कुन सिमाना कोर्यौ दैव ! बोली अधुरै रह्यो

ढोकैसम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो