Starship Asterisk*

I've decided to begin a Poetry Thread!

My first contribution is by Piet Hein

ASTRO-GYMNASTICS
Do-it-yourself grook

Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.

Feel Earth's colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head.

http://www.leptonica.com/cachedpages/grooks/grooks.html

Polaris

• Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,
  Six and twenty thousand years
  Have revolv'd, and I return
  To the spot where I now burn.
  Other stars anon shall rise
  To the axis of the skies ;
  Stars that soothe and stars that bless
  With a sweet forgetfulness :
  Only when my round is o'er
  Shall the past disturb thy door.
  
  • H.P. Lovecraft

Nice. Thanks for posting it, Owlice. It's one I've not heard before and I didn't know Lovecraft wrote poetry. And, as I'm not fond of the horror genre, I would have assumed that any poems he wrote would not be to my taste. Good to be proved wrong.
Margarita

SPRING AND FALL

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Although my name is spelled differently, I always thought he was writing to me, especially when I was going through my teenage period of angst.

Now I've had a poetry interlude, I'll get back to my mathematics study...

M

Improvisation

I was sad last night
looking at the stars
than in the night sky
shone with sparkies.
I never saw so many
in all infinity.
I was sad last night
looking at the stars
and you were there
Love, in my memory,
beautiful, sweet and loving,
illuminating my conscience
as the Full Moon:
splendid, romantic and so far...

by saturno2

I liked the improvisation, saturno. Did you write it?
(Edit - I've just seen that you did. Wow.)

I promised myself I wouldn't post another poem today (too addictive...)
But here is one more of my favourites:

Every Railway Station ... Yevgeni Vinokurov (1962)

Every railway station keeps a book for complaints
And, if you ask for it, they have to give it to you:
It wouldn't be a bad idea, I think,
If eternity had a book like that,
Then people wouldn't have to keep silent about their sorrow.
Timidly, cautiously at first, they would all come, bringing
The griefs they endure, the wrongs they are made to suffer,
To universal attention and judgement.
How we should then be struck I know,
By that entry of half a line
written
By that woman, who, slumped against its railings,
Was crying in the park last night.

Teach me your mood,
O patient stars.
Who climb each night,
the ancient sky.
leaving on space no shade, no scars,
no trace of age, no fear to die.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet.

Silently, one by one,
in the infinite meadows of the heaven,
blossumed the lovely stars,
the forget-me-nots of the angels.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline A Tale of Acadie, 1847.

Margarita
This afternoon saw your topic about poetry and I wrote
Improvisation
I like that you like it
Thanks.

This is marvellous - I had a feeling that there were poets and poetry lovers on board the Asterisk and I am correct!
Thank you so much for your contributions, Stephen and saturno.
Margarita

Not a poem, but a quote about poetry, sort of...

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. Poetry is the exact opposite.” ~ Paul Dirac

Rob

Here's a link with lots of goodies, Margarita!

http://www.spacequotations.com/index.html

A very short poem about this thread.

Roses are red, violets are blue.
Every once in a while,
I'll peruse you.

Beyond, you have reminded me of a very short poem I got on Valentine's Day, via an email package that used white text on a blue background. The very short poem read:

Roses are red; this screen is cerulean.
This poem is logical, but not really Boolean.

Or, to quote the old country song...

Roses are red, violets are purple,
Sugar is sweet, and so is maple syrple.

Rob

owlice wrote:Beyond, you have reminded me of a very short poem I got on Valentine's Day, via an email package that used white text on a blue background. The very short poem read:

Roses are red; this screen is cerulean.
This poem is logical, but not really Boolean.

I guess I'm not enough of a computer geek to get the Boolean part. Even after googleing, it makes less sense to me than a lot of poetry. On a scale of 1-10, poetry, for me, ranks at about 100.

rstevenson wrote:Not a poem, but a quote about poetry, sort of...

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. Poetry is the exact opposite.” ~ Paul Dirac

Rob

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

from Little Gidding T.S. Eliot

Margarita

life’s flame burns like fusion
propagating emotion like starlit nebulae
who can hide from its beckoning
to the stars… onward outward… ever reaching
for love’s reward

Got one! This is one of my favorite shorts:

Many a night I saw the Pleiades,
Rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies
Tangled in a silver braid.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1837-8

Mmm. Nice.
I'd not seen the Tennyson one before,TNT.
And, emc - who who wrote the poem you posted? I like it very much.
Margarita

Thank you MargaritaMc! I’m very glad you like my poem! It is featured on my recreational website.

emc wrote:Thank you MargaritaMc! I’m very glad you like my poem! It is featured on my recreational website.

Mmmm - and I like the site.

I'm very impressed by the two people who've been courageous enough to post poems they have written themselves. I only write poetry (not very good poetry...) when I'm seriously unhappy. The thing is, when I go back to read the poems, I can't remember just what the unhappiness was that triggered the poem... So perhaps writing the poems was effective.

I can remember this wonderful friend, but not why I so needed her care and love:

How do I write about you,
my long devalued friend?
How we stood, in my grief,
with your soft muzzle against my neck,
My arms around you, holding on
to something solid in my despair.

I visited often. You demanded
nothing (but you shooed off the other mares).
A more platonic relationship I’ve never had.
I gave you nothing but me.
And you wanted it.

Margarita

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill.
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will.
— Neil Peart (Rush — Freewill, Permanent Waves)

MargaritaMc wrote:I'm very impressed by the two people who've been courageous enough to post poems they have written themselves. I only write poetry (not very good poetry...) when I'm seriously unhappy. The thing is, when I go back to read the poems, I can't remember just what the unhappiness was that triggered the poem... So perhaps writing the poems was effective.

I can remember this wonderful friend, but not why I so needed her care and love:

How do I write about you,
my long devalued friend?
How we stood, in my grief,
with your soft muzzle against my neck,
My arms around you, holding on
to something solid in my despair.

I visited often. You demanded
nothing (but you shooed off the other mares).
A more platonic relationship I’ve never had.
I gave you nothing but me.
And you wanted it.

Margarita

It’s easy to love an animal, especially one that loves you back… it’s emotional fusion.

When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.

I took the old track
the hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
they were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
and as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain
was warm and soaked the crowd.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
use up what we used to be.

Peter Gabriel – Here Comes the Flood