The Poem thread

[marval]

Ah! Good old Shakespeare, he wrote so much.


Margaret

[intet_at_tabe]

Ah! Good old Shakespeare, he wrote so much.


Margaret

Ms. Margaret

The thing about sonnets are that they mostly always have 14 lines, so I smiled and felt lucky, when I first saw your sonnet from I guess: A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Shakespeare is the one for me, when it comes to orchestrating the English language, and of course we owe him as Danes for the Hamlet play from the Danish Castle of Kronborg.

Once many years ago, I bought the Collective Works of Shakespeare on a sales, one heavy book I promise you, but whenever I have one of these nights or days of more happiness and clear mindedness than mostly, I read Shakespeare. One has to go the extra mile, so to speak, to be courageous enough to really get into his language and storytelling to understand and fully comprehend the wealth of William Shakespeare.

[marval]

Yes Intet

Shakespeare is lovely but, plenty of it and language that takes time to get into.

I do think you need patience to read him.

But a Shakespeare play well done, is the best.


Margaret

[marval]

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!

Rudyard Kipling

[Contratrombone64]

Margaret - I've only seen two Shakespeare plays "live" (read plenty more of them): Love's Labour's Lost (funny, very funny, until the end when it turns quite tragic) and King Lear (gave me a healthy respect for my three sisters).

[intet_at_tabe]

"The Fat Budgie", from the collection of poetry entitled "A Spaniard In The Works.", by John Lennon.


I have a little budgie
He is my very pal
I take him walks in Britain
I hope I always shall.

I call my budgie Jeffrey
My grandads name's the same
I call him after grandad
Who had a feathered brain.

Some people don't like budgies
The little yellow brats
They eat them up for breakfast
Or give them to their cats.

My uncle ate a budgie
It was so fat and fair.
I cried and called him Ronnie
He didn't seem to care

Although his name was Arthur
It didn't mean a thing.
He went into a petshop
And ate up everything.

The doctors looked inside him,
To see what they could do,
But he had been too greedy
And died just like a zoo.

My Jeffrey chirps and twitters
When I walk into the room,
I make him scrambled egg on toast
And feed him with a spoon.

He sings like other budgies
But only when in trim
But most of all on Sunday
Thats when i plug him in.

He flies about the room sometimes
And sits upon my bed
And if he's really happy
He does it on my head.

He's on a diet now you know
From eating ear too much
They say if he gets fatter
He'll have to wear a crutch.

It would be funny wouldn't it
A budgie on a stick
Imagine all the people
Laughing til they're sick.

So that's my budgie Jeffrey
Fat and yellow too
I love him more than daddie
And I'm only thirty-two.

[intet_at_tabe]

Rudyard Kipling

Another great Indian/English storyteller and poet Ms. Margaret Of course his book The Jungle Book, which has been made into movies several times from the same story, take the prize IMHO in my book, but as we both know he wrote a lot of poetry as well. I always figured that the American movie Indiana Jones took some of the script from The Jungle Book.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, but educated in England at the United Services College, Westward Ho, Bideford. In 1882 he returned to India, where he worked for Anglo-Indian newspapers. His literary career began with Departmental Ditties (1886), but subsequently he became chiefly known as a writer of short stories. A prolific writer, he achieved fame quickly. Kipling was the poet of the British Empire and its yeoman, the common soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works, in particular Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888), collections of short stories with roughly and affectionately drawn soldier portraits. His Barrack Room Ballads (1892) were written for, as much as about, the common soldier. In 1894 appeared his Jungle Book, which became a children's classic all over the world. Kim (1901), the story of Kimball O'Hara and his adventures in the Himalayas, is perhaps his most felicitous work. Other works include The Second Jungle Book (1895), The Seven Seas (1896), Captains Courageous (1897), The Day's Work (1898), Stalky and Co. (1899), Just So Stories (1902), Trafficks and Discoveries (1904), Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debits and Credits (1926), Thy Servant a Dog (1930), and Limits and Renewals (1932). During the First World War Kipling wrote some propaganda books. His collected poems appeared in 1933.

Kipling was the recipient of many honorary degrees and other awards. In 1926 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, which only Scott, Meredith, and Hardy had been awarded before him.".

[intet_at_tabe]

Ms. Margaret

We have a Danish (rather had) a Danish writer like Edward Lear, very famous in Denmark, his name was Halfdan Rasmussen. He wrote the same way, most often for children, but adults loved the chatter as well, with lose drawings using the crayons of children, and his books always came out in huge sizes to give room for the drawings aswell, like books that contains maps of the world. I have read lullaby´s to my children at night from his books, like I have read the fairytales of H.C. Andersen.

.

Ms. Margaret

Remember I told you of the Danish poet and storyteller Halfdan Rasmussen. I found some info about him in the English language, in fact related to my favourite English Rock band PINK FLOYD, more specificly Roger Waters (el. bass and vocals). Here it is:

"Halfdan Rasmussen

Roger Waters and Halfdan Rasmussen did not know each other, but human rights issues were important to both of them. Halfdan Rasmussen were born in Copenhagen, Denmark January 29, 1915. He was a resistance fighter during the German occupation of Denmark in W.W.II and became a well known poet often writing about social issues and human rights. Halfdan Rasmussen was also loved for his nonsense verses written for children. Halfdan Rasmussen almost became a national-poet of Denmark. He died in 87 years old on 2nd March 2002.

In 1979 Amnesty International (Denmark) published a small book with poems about Human Rights (ISBN: 87-980852-2-0). Among the best were a small poem from Halfdan Rasmussen titled "Ikke Bødlen". The original text of "Ikke Bødlen" is printed below. You will find that my direct English translation almost to the word matches the first verse of Each Small Candle (further down the page).

In Danish


Ikke bødlen gør mig bange.
ikke hadet og torturen,
ikke dødens riffelgange eller skyggerne på muren.
Ikke nætterne,
når smertens sidste stjerne styrter ned,
men den nådesløse verdens blinde ligegyldighed.


Each Small Candle - The lyrics

The history of the song goes back to July 22 1999 when Roger Waters was heard to play a new acoustic song during tour-rehearsals in Milwaukee (WI). The song was finally performed on the last gig of the tour in Kemper Arena, Kansas, August 28 1999. It has been played all through the second leg of Roger Waters' US-tour in 2000 and appears on the live album and DVD. On the 2002 world tour the last encore is either Each Small Candle or Flickering Flame. Each Small Candle can also be heard on the recent release from Roger Waters:

Same poem in English

Not the torturer will scare me
Nor the body's final fall
Nor the barrels of death's rifles
Nor the shadows on the wall
Nor the night when to the ground
The last dim star of pain, is held
But the blind indifference
Of a merciless unfeeling world

Lying in the burnt out shell
Of some Albanian farm
An old Babushka
Holds a crying baby in her arms
A soldier from the other side
A man of heart and pride
Breaks ranks, lays down his rifle
And kneels by her side

He binds her wounds
He gives her food
And calms the crying child
She gives him absolution then
Across the great divide
He picks his way back through the broken
China of her life
And there at the kerb
The Samaritan Serb turns..
Turns and waves.. goodbye

And each small candle
Each small candle
Lights a corner of the dark...
Lights a corner of the dark
Each small candle
Each small candle
Lights a corner of the dark
Lights a corner of the dark

Each small candle lights a corner of the dark
When the wheel of pain stops turning
And the branding iron stops burning
When the children can be children
When the desperadoes weaken
When the sea rolls into greet them
When the natural law of science
Greets the humble and the mighty
And the billion candles burning
Lights the dark side of every human mind

And each small candle
Lights a corner of the dark...
Lyrics: ©1999 Roger Waters Music Overseas Limited
Administered by Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Inc.".

[marval]

Hi Intet

Thank you for that, very interesting to read about him.

A very emotional poem too.

Must look up more about him.

Thank you for sharing.

Yes Rudyard Kipling with the Jungle book, and I like the John Lennon poem.


Margaret

[marval]

Here's a cautionary story for those people who like sweets.

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin'.

When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My Mother, she told me no end,
"If you got a tooth, you got a friend"
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin'
And pokin' and fussin'
Didn't seem worth the time... I could bite!

If I'd known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fiIlin's
Injections and drillin's
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."

How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.

Pam Ayres

[Contratrombone64]

Judy - that peom was written just for you!! (and me)

[Hawk Henries]

If I might bore you with a couple more from the notes of my cd:

Old Growth

When the Earth was younger They stood as silent witness to all that was unfolding
They now stand, though less, as silent witness to all that is in decline
Sit with Them They will support
Touch Them and feel the energy of many lifetimes
Embrace Them and hear the wisdom of the time when all was unfolding


Compassion

Rain falling
Cold wet wind cutting through layers
They stood
Mother Child Grandmother Grandfather
Waiting to cross
Cold wet sad
Many speed by heater on singing talking on phone
Still waiting
Cold penetrating layer below skin
Who will stop?
Who will offer shelter?
Who will offer warmth?

[methodistgirl]

That was pretty.
judy tooley

[intet_at_tabe]

Here's a cautionary story for those people who like sweets.

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,

Pam Ayres

Ms. Margaret

Searching for Pam Ayres, on her biography, I found this little poem by David Axton:


Penguins Don't Play Beachball
(Jul 2001) by David Axton:



Penguins don't play beachball
It's something they can't be taught
Because the ball is much too big
And their arms are much too short.

But sliding on their tummies
Is a game they love to play
The fact that they've just fallen over
Is purely by the way.

'Cos balance is a problem
When your arms are incomplete
And it's very hard to walk on ice
When you cannot see your feet.

They even tried some skating once
But they hadn't got the knack
And nothing looks as silly as
A penguin on its back.

And that's the worst position,
Looking at the sky.
It always makes them feel so sad
Knowing they can't fly.".


Pam Ayres seems to be a very busy poet, 9 books released and she is known throughout the world, only I did not know of her. But now, when you introduced the "frigthening" poetry of: Carpe Denlum - Siege the teeth I will definately become more acquainted with Pam Ayres. I am sure she has written about other issues than the teeth.

Thank you.

[intet_at_tabe]

If I might bore you with a couple more from the notes of my cd:

Old Growth

When the Earth was younger They stood as silent witness to all that was unfolding
They now stand, though less, as silent witness to all that is in decline
Sit with Them They will support
Touch Them and feel the energy of many lifetimes
Embrace Them and hear the wisdom of the time when all was unfolding


Compassion

Rain falling
Cold wet wind cutting through layers
They stood
Mother Child Grandmother Grandfather
Waiting to cross
Cold wet sad
Many speed by heater on singing talking on phone
Still waiting
Cold penetrating layer below skin
Who will stop?
Who will offer shelter?
Who will offer warmth?

Hats off to Hawk

You seem to have it naturally in you - AWESOME!! Keep èm coming Hawk.