Come to the orchard in Spring

"Even though all it takes to fill a life is the sun, the land and a poem." --Kikuchi Masaou.

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To a young Poet

Don’t believe our outlines, forget them

and begin from your own words.

As if you are the first to write poetry

or the last poet.

If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,

but to correct our errs

in the book of agony.

Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?

You know who your mother is.

As for your father, be your own.

Truth is white, write over it

with a crow’s ink.

Truth is black, write over it

with a mirage’s light.

If you want to duel with a falcon

soar with the falcon.

If you fall in love with a woman,

be the one, not she,

who desires his end.

Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think

of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.

If you ponder a rose for too long

you won’t budge in a storm.

You are like me, but my abyss is clear.

And you have roads whose secrets never end.

They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

You might call the end of youth

the maturity of talent

or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,

the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

One thousand birds in the hand

don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.

A poem in a difficult time

is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

Example is not easy to attain

so be yourself and other than yourself

behind the borders of echo.

Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.

So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,

follow it before you reach your path.

Don’t tell the beloved, you are I

and I am you, say

the opposite of that: we are two guests

of an excess, fugitive cloud.

Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

Don’t place two stars in one utterance

and place the marginal next to the essential

to complete the rising rapture.

Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.

Believe only the caravan’s trace.

A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart

a deadly wisdom.

Be strong as a bull when you’re angry

weak as an almond blossom

when you love, and nothing, nothing

when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:

plains and hills, rivers and valleys.

Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily

follows you or the gallows.

Your tasks are not what worry me about you.

I worry about you from those who dance

over their children’s graves,

and from the hidden cameras

in the singers’ navels.

You won’t disappoint me,

if you distance yourself from others, and from me.

What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.

From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.

Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow

like candle tears, of who will see you

or follow your intuition’s light.

Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

No advice in love. It’s experience.

No advice in poetry. It’s talent.

And last but not least, Salaam.

-MAHMOUD DARWISH

Filed under To a young poet MAHMOUD DARWISH no advice love experience talent poetry poem don't believe be yourself

2 notes

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelly

I.            

O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,     

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead    

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

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Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,        

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O, thou,              

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

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The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,               

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

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Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill        

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)      

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

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Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;         

Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!

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II.           

Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,            

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,         

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

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Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread    

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

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Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge           

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height      

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

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Of the dying year, to which this closing night      

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,    

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

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Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere         

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O, hear!

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III.          

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams             

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,               

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

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Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,          

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers              

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

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All overgrown with azure moss and flowers        

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou              

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

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Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below              

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear            

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

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Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,    

And tremble and despoil themselves: O, hear!

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IV.         

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;             

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;  

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

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The impulse of thy strength, only less free          

Than thou, O, uncontroulable! If even  

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

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The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,   

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed          

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

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As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.     

O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!        

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

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A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed             

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

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V.           

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:               

What if my leaves are falling like its own!             

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

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Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,       

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

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Drive my dead thoughts over the universe         

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!     

And, by the incantation of this verse,

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Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth          

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!  

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

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The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,     

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 

Filed under Bysshe Ode Percy Poem Poetry Prophecy Shelly Spring Winter the to west wind Romantic