Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Wilderness

   

   “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”— Edward Abbey

Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”— Tacitus

Midweek Motif ~ Wilderness

This week we are away from our frenzied, civilized lives into the wilderness, places untrammeled by man: in reality or in imagination (like hikes with friends or solitary day trips).

You might also discover a bit of wilderness, traces of the wild in the cities / in people too.

Is wilderness a place? Is it an instinct? Is it an idea?

How does wilderness make you feel?

Share some wilderness moments in your poems today:

A Voice In The Wilderness

by Audrey Hepburn

            

I roamed the streets of Rome,
It felt like home,
People told me to stay,
But I said no 'This is my Roman Holiday',

I was a flower seller, poor and dirty,
but sang like a canary,
Henry Higgins said maybe,
And called me his Fair Lady.

I was being chased,
Life was a maze,
Four men made it a craze,
It was more like a game of charades. 

Wilderness

by Carl Sandburg

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.    

               

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot’s hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

 Anecdote of the Jar

by Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

    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 ~ "a bundle of contradictions" or Anne Frank's last letter)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Song of a Single Word

“The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.” 
― Wendell Berry

“PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there's a word to lift your hat to... to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that's the genius behind poetry.” 
― Emily Dickinson

“The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, 
whether through malice or through ignorance, 
remain branded in his memory, and 
sooner or later they burn his soul.” 
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.” 
― Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada

Midweek Motif ~ 

The Song of a Single Word

One day our Sumana sent me a song she translated, and said: 

I tried to translate it, but it's quite hard to do it in English. I lost all the cadences of the beautiful Sanskrit words which themselves are songs.

This made me wonder if any of my words~in English, German, Latin or any language at all~contain songs all by themselves. Or does a word spark a song?


Your challenge: Chose a word which sings to you. Write a poem from its lyrics ~ or write a lyrical poem in answer to it. Enjoy!

Verb

BY PABLO NERUDA  
Translated by T.M. Lauth

I’m going to wrinkle this word, 

I’m going to twist it, 

yes, 

it is much too flat

it is as if a great dog or great river

had passed its tongue or water over it

during many years.

I want that in the word

the roughness is seen

the iron salt

The de-fanged strength 

of the land,

the blood 

of those who have spoken and those who have not spoken. 

I want to see the thirst

Inside the syllables 

I want to touch the fire

in the sound:

I want to feel the darkness 

of the cry. I want

words as rough

as virgin rocks.

(Found HERE) 

I never hear the word “Escape” (144)

Related Poem Content Details

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I never hear the word “Escape” 

Without a quicker blood, 

A sudden expectation – 

A flying attitude! 

I never hear of prisons broad 

By soldiers battered down, 

But I tug childish at my bars 

Only to fail again!

Insha’Allah

Related Poem Content Details

BY DANUSHA LAMÉRIS

I don’t know when it slipped into my speech

that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.”

Insha’Allah I will see you next summer.

The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah.

Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain.

So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled

easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.

Every language must have a word for this. A word

our grandmothers uttered under their breath

. . . . 

(Read the rest of this amazing poem HERE)

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

(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~  Predator and Prey !   )