Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Changes

Autumn in Lodhi Garden, New Delhi

I am crooning a Tagore song as I write this prompt ‘Changes’ together with Susan: 

“Fallen leaves, I’m one of you dear.

With much laughter and many a tear

Phagun* chanted the farewell song into my core.”

(*Phagun / Phalgun is one of the last months

of the Bengali calendar.)

This year now rolls into its last month. There is an aroma of change everywhere; in every sphere of life. So it is in our dearest home Poets United. Mary and Sherry left in October, and both Susan and I are taking leave of Midweek Motif this December:

“The poetry of earth is ceasing never:   

On a lone winter evening, when the frost    

    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills   

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,   

  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,   

    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.”

Our last prompt will be 18 December 2019, though we will continue to write and blog our poetry.   We will write more about this change in Rosemary's feature this Friday.  So stay tuned, and stay in tune, too, for your new Wednesday prompt hosts in January 2020.

Much love, Sumana and Susan        

source

Midweek Motif  ~ Changes

  

We try to learn to appreciate change, as it cannot be avoided.  We would have to set life in bronze or stone or amber to preserve it.  Would it then be alive?  Can we then celebrate change, or at least find the words to recognize its power?   Adrienne Rich wrote in "Images for Godard":

 the mind of the poet is changing
the moment of change is the only poem.  

 What do you think?

Here are more poems to inspire you as you find the poetry in change:  

Want the change
 
by Rainer Maria Rilke
English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save. 

Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

By Naomi Shihab Nye
 

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change

is train tracks. She’s sure of it.

The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery

by the side, but not the tracks.

I’ve watched one for three years, she says,

and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track

near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train

is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.

The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street

butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.

The widow in the tilted house

spices her soup with cinnamon.

Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.

The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.

The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound

but when it goes away, shrinking back

from the walls of the brain,

it takes something different with it every time.

source

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 ~  A / The Moment.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Gift(s)

 

“A friend is a gift you give yourself”— Robert Louis Steveenson

SOURCE

“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”— Albert Camus

        Midweek Motif ~ Gift(s)

A gift is sometimes so special that it’s treasured for lifetime.

Gifts are exchanged on special days or on no occasion at all. Just given away and received with love.

Remember O. Henry’s story The Gift of the Magi? Very special gifts were there.

Write about a gift you gave or received or wanted to give to someone or a gift you gave yourself.

You might also write about your likes or dislikes about giving or receiving a gift.

And what about gift of words or a gifted person? Yes, give them space too if you wish J

Here are a few Gift Poems for you:

The Gift Outright

by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

The Gift

by Rabindranath Tagore

O my love, what gift of mine
Shall I give you this dawn?
A morning song?
But morning does not last long—
The heat of the sun
Wilts like a flower
And songs that tire
Are done.

O friend, when you come to my gate.
At dusk
What is it you ask?
What shall I bring you?
A light?

A lamp from a secret corner of my silent house?
But will you want to take it with you
Down the crowded street?
Alas,
The wind will blow it out.

Whatever gifts are in my power to give you,
Be they flowers,
Be they gems for your neck
How can they please you
If in time they must surely wither,
Crack,
Lose lustre?
All that my hands can place in yours
Will slip through your fingers
And fall forgotten to the dust
To turn into dust.

Rather,
When you have leisure,
Wander idly through my garden in spring
And let an unknown, hidden flower’s scent startle you
Into sudden wondering—
Let that displaced moment
Be my gift.
Or if, as you peer your way down a shady avenue,
Suddenly, spilled
From the thick gathered tresses of evening
A single shivering fleck of sunset-light stops you,
Turns your daydreams to gold,
Let that light be an innocent
Gift.

Truest treasure is fleeting;
It sparkles for a moment, then goes.
It does not tell its name; its tune
Stops us in our tracks, its dance disappears
At the toss of an anklet
I know no way to it—
No hand, nor word can reach it.
Friend, whatever you take of it,
On your own,
Without asking, without knowing, let that
Be yours.
Anything I can give you is trifling—
Be it a flower, or a song.

A Gift

By Amy Lowell

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lusters
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

 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 ~ Picnic{s})

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Sunset

“The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.”— Roberto Bolaño, 2666

SOURCE

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky”— Rabindranath Tagore

          Midweek Motif ~ Sunset

The sunset is a short-lived period that begins in the evening and also ends there creating perhaps a moment of pause, a time for stress release. It definitely wipes out the cares of the day and assures a restful, calm night.

You are asked to captivate these fleeting golden moments.  

Your theme could be subjective or objective; literal or metaphorical:

Sunset

by E.E. Cummings

Great carnal mountains crouching in the cloud
That marrieth the young earth with a ring,
Yet still its thoughts builds heavenward, whence spring
Wee villages of vapor, sunset-proud.—
And to the meanest door hastes one pure-browed
White-fingered star, a little, childish thing,
The busy needle of her light to bring,
And stitch, and stitch, upon the dead day’s shroud.
Poises the sun upon his west, a spark
Superlative,—and dives beneath the world;
From the day’s fillets Night shakes out her locks;
List! One pure trembling drop of cadence purled—
“Summer!”—a meek thrush whispers to the dark.
Hark! the cold ripple sneering on the rocks!

Going

by Philip Larkin

There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.

Silken it seems at a distance, yet
When it is drawn up over the knees and breast
It brings no comfort.

Where has the tree gone, that locked
Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,
That I cannot feel?

What loads my hands down?

The Fury Of Sunset

by Anne sexton

Something 
cold is in the air, 
an aura of ice 
and phlegm. 
All day I've built 
a lifetime and now 
the sun sinks to 
undo it. 
The horizon bleeds 
and sucks its thumb. 
The little red thumb 
goes out of sight. 
And I wonder about 
this lifetime with myself, 
this dream I'm living. 
I could eat the sky 
like an apple 

but I'd rather 
ask the first star: 
why am I here? 
why do I live in this house? 
who's responsible? 
eh? 

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 ~Evidence / Clues)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Vision

     

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”__ Jonathan Swift

SOURCE

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”— James Allen

          Midweek Motif ~ Vision

Helen Keller was asked, “What would be worse than being born blind?” She replied, “The only thing worse than being blind is to have sight without vision.”

Now we can’t say that this world of ours is sight without vision because we are seeing how little ones are rising and shaming the adults. Remember the March For Our Lives marches? I feel these kids are trying to live a lifestyle matching their vision.

Let’s share our Visions on anything for today’s Midweek Motif: Vision.

I’ll share a song composed by Rabindranath Tagore. It’s his vision on a firefly:

The Firefly Song

by Rabindranath Tagore

Little firefly,    how happily    you open out those wings.

In the dark, in the twilight, in woods,  elated   you pour out your being.

             Neither the sun nor the moon you are

             But is any the less      your pleasure!

 You’ve lived to your fill    to kindle your own glowing.

What you have you have;   to none you are indebted,

To the call from the power within        you have obeyed.

             Unfettering the darkness around       up you rise,

              You’re not at all small dear      despite your tiny size.        

In all worlds    wherever light there is     you’ve made them all your own.

(Translated by Sumana Roy)

          

 Here is another Vision poem by Yeats:

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

       

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 ~ Invention)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Narcissus (Vanity/Narcissism)

Range of Narcissus cultivars

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“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. ” ~ Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving 

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.  ~ George Eliot 

“. . . . 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. . . .   
'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.'”  ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - "Persephone".jpg

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Midweek Motif ~

Narcissus (Vanity / Narcissisum)

The narcissus is one of December's birth flowers.  According to Greek myth, it is the flower that grew when the vain young man Narcissus drowned in the lake in which he admired his own reflection.  There's more to the story--Echo, goddesses, love,  and, related to it is the story of Persephone and Demeter, a pomegranate, death, winter and summer.  Picking a narcissus flower separated Persephone from her peers, and Hades kidnapped her.  Her story associates her with the life cycle of plants.  

Do any of these stories have meaning to you? 

If not, hold with the beautiful flower itself.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem in response to the themes of one of the images included in this prompt.  (You may also provide images of your own that relate to narcissus and/or vanity).  

Demeter and Persephone :
"Demeter rejoiced, for her daughter was by her side"

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Persephone, Falling

by Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others!  She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished.  No one heard her.
No one!  She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don’t answer to strangers.  Stick
with your playmates.  Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens.  This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

(In Mother Love by Rita Dove. © 1995, W.W. Norton & Company.  Used with permission.)

Echo And Narcissus, John William Waterhouse (1903)

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Narcissus

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Encircled by her arms as by a shell,

she hears her being murmur,

while forever he endures

the outrage of his too pure image...

Wistfully following their example,

nature re-enters herself;

contemplating its own sap, the flower

becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens...

It's the return of all desire that enters

toward all life embracing itself from afar...

Where does it fall? Under the dwindling

surface, does it hope to renew a center? 

Sylvia Plath | Source

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Mirror
by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. 
Whatever I see I swallow immediately 
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. 
I am not cruel, only truthful- 
The eye of the little god, four cornered. 
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.  
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long 
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. 
Faces and darkness separate us over and over. 


Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, 
Searching my reaches for what she really is. 
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. 
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. 
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. 
I am important to her. She comes and goes. 
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. 
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman 
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity.
 Still Life by Jan Vermeulen (1653)

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Song VII (“My song has put off her adornments”)

BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

My song has put off her adornments.

She has no pride of dress and decoration. 

Ornaments would mar our union;

they would come between thee and me; 

their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. 

O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. 

Only let me make my life simple and straight, 

like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

Narcissus ~  Paperwhite

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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 Celebration. )