Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice
There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball,
Frozen hard, its white
identical with the untrodden white
of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face—
Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s
Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced,
Weary, immodbile. Black water traced, behind it,
An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes
Fell and fell. Silence
Deepened, deepened. The short day
Suspended itself, endless.
I believe the earth
exists, and
in each minim mote
of its dust the holy
glow of thy candle.
Thou
unknown I know,
thou spirit,
giver,
lover of making, of the
wrought letter,
wrought flower,
iron, deed, dream.
Dust of the earth,
help thou my
unbelief. Drift
gray become gold, in the beam of
vision. I believe with
doubt. I doubt and
interrupt my doubt with belief. Be,
beloved, threatened world.
Each minim
mote.
Not the poisonous
luminescence forced
out of its privacy,
The sacred lock of its cell
broken. No,
the ordinary glow
of common dust in ancient sunlight.
Be, that I may believe. Amen.
“Come into Animal Presence”
by Denise Levertov
Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
as the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm bush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings,
in white star silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.
After I had cut off my hands
and grown new ones
something my former hands had longed for
came and asked to be rocked.
After my plucked out eyes
had withered, and new ones grown
something my former eyes had wept for
came asking to be pitied.
August, 1969
Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
And–
Where was I going?
Where was I going I can’t
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I’m
to stand still now?
The ache of marriage:
thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth
We look for communion
and are turned away, beloved
each and each
It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside it
two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.
The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.
The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.
A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily
moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.
Each minute the last minute.
Not the moon. A flower
on the other side of the water.
The water sweeps past in flood,
dragging a whole tree by the hair,
a barn, a bridge. The flower
sings on the far bank.
Not a flower, a bird calling
hidden among the darkest trees, music
over the water, making a silence
out of the brown folds of the river's cloak.
The moon. No, a young man walking
under the trees. There are lanterns
among the leaves.
Tender, wise, merry,
his face is awake with its own light,
I see it across the water as if close up.
A jester. The music rings from his bells,
gravely, a tune of sorrow,
I dance to it on my riverbank.
What you give me is
the extraordinary sun
splashing its light
into astonished trees.
A branch
of berries, swaying
under the feet of a bird.
I know
other joys-they taste
bitter, distilled as they are
from roots, yet I thirst for them.
But you-
you give me
the flash of golden daylight
in the body's
midnight,
warmth of the fall noonday
between the sheets in the dark.
What is green in me darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall in season and now
is a time of ripening. If her part
is to be true, a north star,
good, I hold steady in the black sky
and vanish by day, yet burn there
in blue or above quilts of cloud.
There is no savor more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be what, woman,
and who, myself, I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder. If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can eat as I go.
So the poem is basically a protest of the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam during the war and it goes like this:
"White phosphorus, white phosphorus, mechanical snow, where are you falling?" "I am falling impartially on roads and roofs, on bamboo thickets, on people. My name recalls rich seas on rainy nights, each drop that hits the surface eliciting luminous response from a million algae. My name is a whisper of sequins. Ha! Each of them is a disk of fire, I am the snow that burns. I fall wherever men send me to fall– but I prefer flesh, so smooth, so dense: I decorate it in black, and seek the bone."
My main question about this poem are, if it is a protest poem why had Levertov assumed the identity of the phosphorus and taken to comparing it to "a whisper of sequins". It's a really unique poem and I'm trying to criticize it, just was wondering about it.
,
Hoy os ofrezco un poema de Denise Levertov (1923-1997), nacida en Inglaterra aunque en 1947 se marchó a vivir A EE.UU, donde adoptó la nacionalidad estadounidense.
Desde muy joven practicó la poesía, actividad que le llevó a escribir 20 poemarios a lo largo de su vida, además de otros trabajos de contenido crítico.
En los años 60 del pasado siglo se comprometió activamente con el feminismo y el pacifismo contra la guerra de Vietnam. Ello le impulsó a utilizar conscientemente la poesía como herramienta de lucha política y social.
Posteriormente dedicó su tiempo a la educación en diversas universidades. Tras su jubilación viajó por el país realizando conferencias y lecturas de sus poemas.
.
¿Cómo eran?
.
¿La gente de Viet Nam
usaba faroles de piedra?
¿Celebraban ceremonias
reverentes al abrirse los primeros capullos?
¿Eran propensos a reír apaciblemente?
¿Usaban hueso y marfil,
jade y plata, para sus ornamentos?
¿Tenían poemas épicos?
¿Sabían distinguir entre el discurso y el canto?
.
Oh, Dios, sus encendidos corazones se transformaron en piedras.
No se recuerda si en los jardines
los faroles iluminaban caminos agradables.
Tal vez se reunían de vez en cuando para deleitarse con las flores,
pero después de que sus hijos fueran asesinados
no hubo nuevos capullos.
,
Señor, amarga es la risa en una boca quemada.
Tal vez un sueño antiguo. Los ornamentos son
para épocas de alegría.
.
Todos los huesos estaban carbonizados.
No hay memoria. Recuerda,
la mayoría eran campesinos, su vida
se desenvolvía entre el arroz y el bambú.
.
Cuando las nubes pacíficas se reflejaban en los arrozales
y los búfalos caminaban con paso seguro a lo largo de las terrazas,
tal vez los padres contaban a sus hijos antiguas leyendas.
.
Cuando las bombas destrozaron aquellos espejos
sólo hubo tiempo para gritar.
Todavía permanece el eco
de sus voces, semejante a una canción.
Diríase que su canto se asemejaba
al vuelo de las mariposas nocturnas iluminadas por la luna.
¿Quién puede contarlo? Ahora reina el silencio.
.
Denise Levertov
--<>--
.
Break out, frog,
Sing, you who don’t know
anything about anything.
“to dance without moving” shall be your burden.
Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.
The bread,
the salt,
white meat and dark,
still hungry.
The marriage bed
and the cradle,
still empty arms.
You give them land,
their own earth under their feet,
still they take to the roads.
And water: dig them the deepest well,
still it’s not deep enough
to drink the moon from.
02....Wallace Stevens
03....Fulke Greville
07....Amiri Baraka
14....e.e. cummings
18....Thomas Love Peacock
19....Leigh Hunt
20....Robert Pinsky
20....Arthur Rimbaud
23....Robert Bridges
24....Denise Levertov
25....John Berryman
26....Andrew Motion
27....Dylan Thomas
27....Sylvia Plath
30....Ezra Pound
30....Paul Valery
31....John Keats
I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.
Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.
This was a short poem we had to read in middle school, and I only remember one verse as it always stuck with me. It was something along the lines of, "When I opened the door I saw the vine leaves speaking in hushed whispers". No idea about the writer, year, or context. Help appreciated
Do your worst!
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂
It really does, I swear!
They’re on standbi
Pilot on me!!
Nothing, he was gladiator.
Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.
This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.
If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.
Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.
When I got home, they were still there.
What did 0 say to 8 ?
" Nice Belt "
So What did 3 say to 8 ?
" Hey, you two stop making out "
I won't be doing that today!
[Removed]
This morning, my 4 year old daughter.
Daughter: I'm hungry
Me: nerves building, smile widening
Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.
She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.
Thank you all for listening.
Where ever you left it 🤷♀️🤭
You take away their little brooms
