Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Cloud

 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud”— Maya Angelou

SOURCE

“Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don’t.” — Joe Weinman

Midweek Motif ~ Cloud

As a cloud you can be an actual cloud, that is a visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating in the atmosphere, above the general level of the ground; wandering in groups or absolutely lonely (may be being watched by some poets, intending to catch you in their lines); you can be a state or cause of gloom, threat; you can grow dim, less transparent as Wikipedia defines you.

Cloud can be ‘just a metaphor for the internet’ too. You know what I mean, all about this ‘storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your own computer’s hard drive’. Not a lonely cloud here but a network cloud.

Choose your own ‘cloud’ and go on poeming:

 Clouds Come and Go

by Matsuo Basho

“The clouds come and go, 
providing a rest for all 
the moon viewers” — Matsuo Basho

THESE are the clouds

by W. B. Yeats

THESE are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, So much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye. 

Clouds

by Rupert brook

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth. 

Clouds Gathering

Charles Simic

(The poem is here)

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 ~ Kindness )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Treasure

 

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” — Jesus Christ

                                           

  

SOURCE

  

  “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.”— Walter Anderson

    Midweek Motif ~ Treasure

Today you are to write about that which you treasure most in your life. It might be a moment, a person, a relationship, a dream, a pet, your family, your life, a poem or whatever you think most valuable to you.

Here’s a treasure poem for you:

The Treasure

by Rupert Brooke

                      

When colour goes home into the eyes,

And light that shines are shut again,

With dancing girls and sweet birds’ cries

Behind the gateways of the brain;

Still Time may hold some golden space

Where I’ll unpack that scented store

Of song and flower and sky and face,

And count and touch and turn them o’er,

Musing upon them; as a mother who

Has watched her children all the rich day through

Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,

When children sleep, ere night.

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 ~ Beginnings)

                                     

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

The Wayfarers

Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place
Made fair by one another for a while.
Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;
The long road then, unlit by your faint smile.
Ah! the long road! and you so far away!
Oh, I’ll remember! but … each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.

…Do you think there’s a far border town, somewhere,
The desert’s edge, last of the lands we know,
Some gaunt eventual limit of our light,
In which I’ll find you waiting; and we’ll go
Together, hand in hand again, out there,
Into the waste we know not, into the night? 

– Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

English poet Rupert Brooke's haunting Fragment, Source, which Susan used in the latest Midweek Motif, reminded me about this poet, whose work I was brought up on.

Some of his poetry, in its attempts at poetic language, now seems old-fashioned and even pretentious, with 'thees', 'thous' and inversions. But when he writes from the heart he achieves some minor masterpieces.

This is especially true when he writes of simple, everyday things, as in two of his best-known poems, The Great Lover, in which he celebrates domestic objects as well as the natural world, and the homesick The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. They also reveal his mastery of rhyme. I think this must be the most ingenious rhyme in English poetry:

Ah God! to see the branches stir

Across the moon at Grantchester!

It made a great impression on me when I was kid, and I'm still amazed by it.

He also wrote some renowned war poems, and his most famous poem was one of these: The Soldier, which was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday 1915 and has been featured in numerous anthologies ever since. I think it sentimentalises war, but very persuasively, and is also redolent of homesickness.

I love his love poems most of all, and The Wayfarers best of all his love poems.

He died young, aged 27. Although he was known as one of the 'war poets' of the First World War, was commissioned into the Navy and was on the way to Gallipoli at the time of his death, he didn't die in battle but of a mosquito bite that turned septic. He was buried 'in a foreign field' as his most famous poem imagines, but not a field of war. His grave is on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.

It's sad for anyone to die so young, and although he doesn't have the stature of, say, a Wilfred Owen, he was a talented poet whose best work is lasting, and  would surely have gone on to greater things.

He was educated at Rugby, where he won the school poetry prize when he was 18, and at Kings College, Cambridge where, we are told, he was noted for his good looks, intellect and charm as well as his poetic talent.

As an adult he travelled extensively (before war broke out) and wrote travel articles as well as poetry.

You can read more about him at Wikipedia, Poetry Foundation, or The Academy of American Poets. PoemHunter has his poems, and you can find books by and about him at Amazon.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright). The photo of Rupert Brooke, above, is in the Public Domain.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Dark Moon, New Moon

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Source

“In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.” 

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life. . . 

"From untruth lead us to Truth.
From darkness lead us to Light.
From death lead us to Immortality.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace."

--Vedic prayer from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

“A new moon teaches gradualness

and deliberation and how one gives birth

to oneself slowly. Patience with small details

makes perfect a large work, like the universe.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.”  ― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

🌑

Midweek Motif ~ 

Dark Moon, New Moon

           Says:

"Historically and pragmatically speaking, The Dark Moon refers to the period of time when the moon exhibits zero illumination, while the New Moon starts the very first day that the moon appears in the night sky as a slim sliver of light. By this reasoning, the Dark Moon is a one day event, while the New Moon lasts approximately 7 days as a Waxing Crescent, right up until the First Quarter of illumination."

I think we're talking about that mysterious turn around time here. Maybe there is a moment's emptiness before the waxing begins, a moment without the reflected light of the sun. It feels dark, but often has the most stars we ever see.

Your Challenge: In your new poem, paint a picture with images you know in this Dark-New Moon.

Source, Source, from Dream Work

🌑

Fragment, Source
by RUPERT BROOKE

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,
Or coming out into the darkness. Still
No one could see me.

I would have thought of them
—Heedless, within a week of battle—in pity,
Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness
And link’d beauty of bodies, and pity that
This gay machine of splendour ’ld soon be broken,
thought little of, pashed, scattered. …

Only, always,
I could but see them—against the lamplight—pass
Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass,
Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave’s faint light,
That broke to phosphorus out in the night,
Perishing things and strange ghosts—soon to die
to other ghosts—this one, or that, or I.

🌑

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

by LINDA PASTAN

Isn't the moon dark too, 

most of the time? 

And doesn't the white page 

seem unfinished 

without the dark stain 

of alphabets? 

When God demanded light, 

he didn't banish darkness. 

Instead he invented 

ebony and crows 

and that small mole 

on your left cheekbone. 

Or did you mean to ask 

"Why are you sad so often?" 

Ask the moon. 

Ask what it has witnessed.

🌑

Michael Kamen's symphonic poem "The New Moon in the Old Moon's arms, 

inspired by the history of the Native American Anasazi people. 

🌑

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

(Next Midweek Motif will be Sumana's prompt ~ Journey.)