Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Celebration

      “Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.”— Plautus

SOURCE

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration.  Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.  Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.  To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. . . . Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Midweek Motif ~ Celebration

Celebrations compel all to look forward to it, to have fun, to enjoy, to de-stress.

There’s no dearth of celebrations in this world. From the tiniest particle to the cosmos is in a mood of celebration.

For people everywhere there are funny, bizarre, interesting, solemn, traditional, religious celebrations.

Celebrations are part of our lives bestowing a sense of belonging, recognizing, strengthening and honoring relationships & also adding a purpose to life.

Life itself can be celebrated too, in a breath of gratitude.

Now it’s time for Celebration. It’s your choice how you connect your poems to it.

Sunbeam

by Anna Akhmatova

I pray to the sunbeam from the window-

It is pale, thin, straight.

Since morning I have been silent,

And my heart - is split.

The copper on my washstand

Has turned green,

But the sunbeam plays on it

So charmingly.

How innocent it is, and simple,

In the evening calm,

But to me in this deserted temple

It’s like a golden celebration,

And a consolation.

I Love You Sweetheart

by Thomas Lux

A man risked his life to write the words.

A man hung upside down (an idiot friend

holding his legs?) with spray paint

to write the words on a girder fifty feet above

a highway.
 And his beloved,

the next morning driving to work.
.
.
?

His words are not (meant to be) so unique.

Does she recognize his handwriting?

Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before

of "something special, darling, tomorrow"?

And did he call her at work

expecting her to faint with delight

at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?

She will know I love her now,

the world will know my love for her!

A man risked his life to write the world.

Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love

is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb

and dangerous, ignited, blessed--always,

regardless, no exceptions,

always in blazing matters like these: blessed.

                

       

 When The New Year

by Rg Gregory

when the new year

came out of nowhere

and peeped into rooms

it was so flattered to find

all the tv's drinking its health

praising its innocent appearance

it responded with its warm

dark smile and went round

filling people's dry hearts

with joy   

over the coming weeks though

those same tv's attacked it

criticising its puerile style

its sickly contemptible face

one year is the same as another

(they said) for the doom

time belabours us with

it took the year all

its length to discover

that the celebration

so welcoming its birth

just happened to be

where the beer was

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

          Susan’s Midweek Motif on 3/01/2018 will be ~ Doorway(s)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Mercy

(. . . because this song insisted on being included.)

“The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; 

the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, 

where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.” 
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

http://izquotes.com/quote/326102

Midweek Motif ~ Mercy

St. Francis in his famous prayer-poem said "where there is injury let me sow pardon."  

Do we, can we, should we?  

If I had the power to be merciful on a grand scale, I would take in cities of refugees and make sure people who worked all their lives were financially secure to retire and . . . .  I would be the mouse taking the thorn out of the lion's paw.   If only.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem on 

an experience of mercy.  

(Would you believe I wrote this prompt and the next one 
before the attacks in Baghdad and Paris?  
Walk in safety, Poets United, and 
as for words?  Don't hold back.)

http://izquotes.com/quote/206082

Excerpt from Time as Memory as Story by  SIMON J. ORTIZ

                        Let’s say it’s half a century later.

                        Let’s say it’s never too late.

                        Let’s say Skull Valley.

                        Let’s say.

                        Let’s say it’s half a century later.

                        Let’s say it’s never too late.

                        Let’s say Skull Valley.

                        Let’s say.

Time has no mercy. It’s there. It stays still or it moves.

And you’re there with it. Staying still or moving with it.

I think it moves. And we move with it. And keep moving.

Eleven years old and soon to be in fifth grade. That’s time.

Boys’ time. Who knows what time it is but them. Eternally.

No one knows time better than they. Always and forever.

Our family. Mama, me, Angie, Gilbert, Earl, Louise.

Kids. Daddy working in Skull Valley for . . .

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

(This song insisted on being included, too.)

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 

in the spirit of the community.

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(Next week, November 25th, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.  Find Information HERE and many other places including Wikipedia.  I just read about Sheroes, a cafe near the Taj Mahal run by victims of acid attacks. Let's make the theme, the next Midweek Motif SURVIVAL.     Thanks, Susan)

Classic Poetry - "Ah, You Thought" by Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

AH, YOU THOUGHT

Ah, you thought I’d be the type
You could forget,
And that praying and sobbing, I’d throw myself
Under the hooves of a bay.

Or I would beg from the witches
Some kind of root in charmed water
And send you a terrible gift-
My intimate, scented handkerchief.

Damned if I will. Neither by glance nor by groan
Will I touch your cursed soul,
But I vow to you by the garden of angels,
By the miraculous icon I vow
And by the fiery passion of our nights-
I will never return to you.

Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova epitomized the poet dedicated to her work despite challenge and circumstance. Born in the Ukraine in 1889 and interested in poetry at a young age, Akhmatova was discouraged by her wealthy father who told her not to shame the family by becoming a "decadent poetess." She did not heed his command. At age 23, she married, wrote consistently and published her first book, Evening. Her son Lev was born that same year. Against her protestations, Lev was raised by his paternal grandmother, who disliked Akhmatova and allowed only holiday and summer visits between mother and child. She later wrote, "motherhood is a bright torture. I was not worthy of it."

Akhmatova continued writing and became much admired within the St. Petersburg literary scene. Her widely-praised second book, Rosary, was published in 1914 and cemented her reputation as a poet.

In 1922, Anno Domini MCMXXI was published, but because of the changing political environment, she could not find a publisher after that. From 1925 to 1940 her poetry was unofficially, but quite effectively, banned; so she focused on literary criticism and translations. In the late 1930s, she wrote, Requiem, dedicated to the memory of Stalin's victims. In 1940, a collection of previously published poems, From Six Books, was published. A few months later it was withdrawn. Following World War II, an official decree banned publication of her poetry and she was expelled from the Writer's Union.

In 1949 Akhmatova’s son Lev was arrested and jailed until 1956. In an effort to win his release, she wrote poems praising Stalin and the government, but later requested that these poems not appear in her collected works. She began writing and publishing again in 1958, but with heavy censorship. In 1964 she was awarded the Etna-Taormina prize and became president of the Writers' Union. A year later she received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. She died in Leningrad, where she had spent most of her life, in 1966.