Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Glory

“Age is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.”— Martha Graham

   

SOURCE

“Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man.”— Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Midweek Motif ~ Glory

Paths of glory can be many. Which do you want to traverse?

The First World War poets well realized “that war is not glorious and the people they are fighting are not their enemy.”

You can either keep your focus on human theme; that is directing your poem towards the meaning ‘high renown or honor won by notable achievements’ or towards ‘magnificence or great beauty’.

Here are some ‘Glory’ poems:

Buddha In Glory

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead. 

Glory of Women

by Siegfried Sassoon

You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,

or wounded in a mentionable place.

You worship decorations; you believe

That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.

You make us shells. You listen with delight,

By tales of dirt and danger ardours while we fight,

And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.

You can’t believe that British troops “retire”

When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses-blind with blood.

O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son

His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Torn Down From Glory Daily

by Anne Sexton

All day we watched the gulls
striking the top of the sky
and riding the blown roller coaster.
Up there
godding the whole blue world
and shrieking at a snip of land.
Now, like children,
we climb down humps of rock
with a bag of dinner rolls,
left over,
and spread them gently on stone,
leaving six crusts for an early king.
A single watcher comes hawking in,
rides the current round its hunger
and hangs
carved in silk
until it throbs up suddenly,
out, and one inch over water;
to come again
smoothing over the slap tide.
To come bringing its flock, like a city
of wings that fall from the air.
They wait, each like a wooden decoy
or soft like a pigeon or
a sweet snug duck:
until one moves, moves that dart-beak
breaking over. It has the bread.
The world is full of them,
a world of beasts
thrusting for one rock.
Just four scoop out the bread
and go swinging over Gloucester
to the top of the sky.
Oh see how
they cushion their fishy bellies
with a brother's crumb. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Literacy)