And when death finds me

And when death finds me,

I hope it whispers,

“Come now,

the fight is done,”

and takes my hand gently,

like an old friend

who understands

why I’m so tired.

I hope it says,

“You've carried enough,

let me hold this weight for you.”

I hope it promises,

“Here there is quiet.

Here you can rest.”

Ticus Poetry

Ebb Tide

When the long day goes by
And I do not see your face,
The old wild, restless sorrow
Steals from its hiding place.

My day is barren and broken,
Bereft of light and song,
A sea beach bleak and windy
That moans the whole day long.

To the empty beach at ebb tide,
Bare with its rocks and scars,
Come back like the sea with singing,
And light of a million stars.

Sara Teasdale 1884 – 1933

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses

Louis Macneice 1907 - 1963

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: "Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Edward Thomas 1878-1917

Forget Safety

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Rumi 1207 – 1273

O Sweetheart, hear you

O Sweetheart, hear you
Your lover's tale;
A man shall have sorrow
When friends him fail.

For he shall know then
Friends be untrue
And a little ashes
Their words come to.

But one unto him
Will softly move
And softly woo him
In ways of love.

His hand is under
Her smooth round breast;
So he who has sorrow
Shall have rest.

James Joyce 1882 – 1941

Matthew XXV: 30

The first bridge, Constitution Station. At my feet
the shunting trains trace iron labyrinths.
Steam hisses up and up into the night,
which becomes at a stroke the night of the Last Judgment.

From the unseen horizon
and from the very center of my being,
an infinite voice pronounced these things—
things, not words. This is my feeble translation,
time-bound, of what was a single limitless Word:

"Stars, bread, libraries of East and West,
playing-cards, chessboards, galleries, skylights, cellars,
a human body to walk with on the earth,
fingernails, growing at nighttime and in death,
shadows for forgetting, mirrors busily multiplying,
cascades in music, gentlest of all time's shapes.
Borders of Brazil, Uruguay, horses and mornings,
a bronze weight, a copy of the Grettir Saga,
algebra and fire, the charge at Junin in your blood,
days more crowded than Balzac, scent of the honeysuckle,
love and the imminence of love and intolerable remembering,
dreams like buried treasure, generous luck,
and memory itself, where a glance can make men dizzy—
all this was given to you, and with it
the ancient nourishment of heroes—
treachery, defeat, humiliation.
In vain have oceans been squandered on you,
in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman's eyes.
You have used up the years and they have used up you,
and still, and still, you have not written the poem."

Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986

First Loss

Ah! who'll e'er those days restore,

Those bright days of early love
Who'll one hour again concede,

Of that time so fondly cherish'd!
Silently my wounds I feed,
And with wailing evermore

Sorrow o'er each joy now perish'd.
Ah! who'll e'er the days restore

Of that time so fondly cherish'd.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 – 1832

Alas, I thought I knew so much

Alas, I thought I knew so much
Of love, and yet I know so little!
For I cannot stop myself loving her
From whom I shall never have joy.
My whole heart, and all of me from myself
She has taken, and her own self,
and all the world,
For when she took herself from me,
she left me nothing
But desire and a yearning heart.

Bernard de Ventadour 1130-1140 – 1190-1200

Dinosaur Crush

I have a monster crush on you,
A super-dinosaur!
It sits upon my chest and throat
And yet I beg for more.
When you're away I miss you so
My heart is full of sand.
Yet when you're here my stupid fear
Won't let me touch your hand.

I cannot sleep, I cannot eat,
I'm so wrapped up in you.
My thoughts drift up, away from words,
And fade into the blue.

I know this crush is not your fault;
The dinosaur is mine.
Yet if you could, please rescue me,
And put your arms around me, and hold me, and say
you love me, and Oh! God! Would that be good!

Samatha Smith