Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Greatness (in honor of Nelson Mandela International Day 7/18/2018)

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve 

greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” 

― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 2018 – The Nelson Mandela Centenary

"Nelson Mandela International Day 2018 marks 100 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela. The Centenary is an occasion to reflect on his life and legacy, and to follow his call to 'make of the world a better place.'. . . The Nelson Mandela Foundation is dedicating this year's Mandela Day to Action Against Poverty, honouring Nelson Mandela's leadership and devotion to fighting poverty and promoting social justice for all."

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.

- Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

🐳

Midweek Motif ~ Greatness 

Synonyms for "greatness" fall into two categories that may have little to do with each other:

➤eminence, distinction, illustriousness, repute, high standing; importance, significance; celebrity, fame, prominence, renown ~ "a child destined for greatness"
➤genius, prowess, talent, expertise, mastery, artistry, virtuosity, skill, proficiency; flair, finesse; caliber, distinction ~ "her greatness as a writer"

I think Mandela had greatness in both senses.   Do you agree?

Your Challenge: In your one new poem, use greatness as a theme.  You could reflect on the elimination of poverty, on Nelson Mandela, or on some other revelation of  greatness.

Source

Song of the Builders by Mary Oliver

On a summer morning

I sat down

on a hillside

to think about God - 

a worthy pastime.

Near me, I saw

a single cricket; 

it was moving the grains of the hillside 

this way and that way.

How great was its energy, 

how humble its effort.

Let us hope 

it will always be like this, 

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.

Invictus 

BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Out of the night that covers me, 

      Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 

      For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

      I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 

      My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 

      Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 

      Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

      How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 

      I am the captain of my soul. 

🐳

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 ~ wilderness.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Human

"Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here."

― Hailey Leithauser (See full poem below)

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” 

― Pearl S. Buck

source

 Midweek Motif ~ Human

I am human. I am only human.  
 I am sadly human.  Happily, I am human.
Hmm.

When you describe something as "human," 

what do you mean?  

(Click "What is a Human Being?" for a slideshow.)

Your Challenge: Write a new poem giving what is human its place in the natural world, the solar system, galaxy, and/or universe.

A Divine Image

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Cruelty has a Human Heart 

And Jealousy a Human Face 

Terror the Human Form Divine 

And Secrecy, the Human Dress 

The Human Dress, is forged Iron 

The Human Form, a fiery Forge. 

The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd 

The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

👫                          

The Guest House

by  Rumi 

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

👫

Arrhythmia

BY HAILEY LEITHAUSER

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered

mountain. The heart of a mountain’s a kiln.

The white heart of a moth has nineteen white

chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan.

The heart of a wasp is a prick of plush.

The heart of a skunk is a mink. The heart

of an owl is part blood and part chalice.

The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart.

The heart of a kestrel hides a house wren

at nest. The heart of lark is a czar.

The heart of a scorpion is swidden

and spark. The heart of a shark is a gear.

Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here.

(Used with the poet's permission. First published in Poetry, October 2015)

👫

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

(Next week Sumana’s Motif will be ~ "When I think about myself.")

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Truth

“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” 

― Nadine Gordimer

“Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...” 

― Natalie Goldberg

“Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude.” 

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth, holding a mirror and a serpent, by  Olin Levi Warner (1896).

 Midweek Motif ~ Truth

Back in the 1970s,  Adrienne Rich’s “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” asserted that  omission of truth is as much a lie as falsifying of information.  Honor demands truth. Rich says:

“The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.”  

I believe we poets aim always to tell the truth about things and about truth itself.   But truth is difficult. 

Your challenge:  Choose a truth to tell in a poem.  Or tell us how and where to find “the truth.”

Allegory of Truth by Jacopo Tintoretto (1 January 1564)

Sonnet 138: 

When My Love Swears That She Is Made Of Truth

by William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love, loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be. 

~

Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind by  Jean-Léon Gérôme (1896) 

~

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Search for Truth

by DH Lawrence

Search for nothing any more, nothing
except truth.
Be very still, and try and get at the truth.

And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I? 

A Truth, a Poem
~

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 ~ Running.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Summer

     

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy” — Anton Chekov

SOURCE

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” — John Lubbock, The Use Of life

Midweek Motif ~ Summer

Write a Summer poem today.

In cold countries summer is a brief and enjoyable time and in a country like India it’s endless torture.

Yet Mother Nature knows well how and with what to fill in summer time. So do our poets J

Sonnet 18

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

Tis The Last Rose Of Summer

by Thomas Moore

Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone:
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh. 

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead. 

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither'd,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone? 

Summer Stars

by Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming. 

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 ~ Barter / Trade)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Flower: Rose

   “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.

SOURCE

“Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.”— Arthur Miller

Midweek Motif ~ The Flower Rose

Say it with Roses today.

          

Write whatever it means to you. You might even focus on its thorns if you so wish.

Such a gentle, beautiful and aristocratic flower has deep rooted ties not only with love but also with religion and politics.

In April, 2011, NASA celebrated its 21^st anniversary by releasing an image of spiral galaxies positioned in a rose-like shape.

SOURCE

Now a few Rose poems for you:

Song of the Rose

by Sappho

IF Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth, 
He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it; 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth, 
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it! 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers, 
Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair, 
Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers 
On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware. 
Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup 
To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest! 
Ho, the rose having curled its sweet leaves for the world 
Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up, 
As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west. 

                    

My Pretty Rose Tree

by William Blake

A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore; 
But I said 'I've a pretty rose tree,'
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night; 
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight. 

                 

Nobody Knows This Little Rose

by Emily Dickinson 

Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose—how easy
For such as thee to die! 

                  

 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 ~ Bittersweet)