Poem of the moment

[Saffron]

I wonder if anticipation of sadness is worse than the thing itself... Here is the poem that captures my right now, as I anticipate all three daughters going off to school in the next 10 days.

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-- W.S. Merwin


This is also one of my favorite poems.

[Saffron]

I've been wanting to post a Langston Hughes poem for sometime. This one fits to a T just now.


Dreams
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

[Saffron]

A Poem for My Sister

Eighteen is not the time
---to be silent.
Even the young monks
take to the streets rioting.
To live a life of contemplation
one must live a life to
---contemplate.

K. Grandfield

[Grim]

Hello great introducing Langston Hughes to the posts, mayhaps you have come across James Baldwin? Here is one of my more favoured Hughes Poems.

Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

[Saffron]

This poem really belongs on the Favorite Poem thread, but for the sake of continuity, I'll post it here. So, Grim, here's my favorite Langston Hughes-

Dream Variations
by Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

[Saffron]

Autumn has traditionally been my favorite season of the year. With major life changes to face, this one may give some trouble. Thankfully, I am still finding the change in the air and the crisp mornings exhilarating. Here is my poem of the moment (and this is not one you'll find online)

from A Dakota Wheat-Field

Like liquid gold the wheat-field lies,
A marvel of yellow and russet and green,
That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
With the subtle shadows, the change,
the sheen,
That play in the golden hair of a girl, --
A ripple of amber -- a flare
Of light sweeping after -- a curl
In the hollows like a swirling feet
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
To the western sun
Through the deeps of
the ripening wheat.

[Penelope]

ROASTBEEF
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.

Gertrude Stein

[Saffron]

Here's the first stanza of To Autumn is a poem written by English Romantic poet John Keats in 1819

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

[DWill]

III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river swallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Who wrote the wheat-field poem, Saffron?
DWill

[Saffron]

Who wrote the wheat-field poem, Saffron?
DWill

I wish I could say it was me. The poem from A Dakota Wheat-field was written by Hamlin Garland. I pulled it from a favorite book of mine (well, really it is a book I gave to my daughter, so, technically it's not mine). The book is Celebrate America in Poetry and Art, ed Nora Panzer. It is a book published by the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The pairings of paintings and poems work very well.

So, DWill, what made you post the sad part of the Yeats poem?