"Up then came / a worthy warrior, Oak-tall, oak-strong / shorn-locked, short-shaven, Dark as leather / dyed in walnut; Clad in canvas / white as moonlight. Up he strode / fearless, noble, where Geatlings gathered. / Scorning arms He spoke these words: / "Look upon me. Now upon yourselves. / Again upon me. You are not me." / Deep his voice Like thunder's cry / or breath of God. Woe to the warriors! / How they trembled! Then again spoke / the white-garbed warrior: "Nor have your coats / the smell of me, For rather smell you / of maidens' nosegays Or worse, of dead fish / silver fish hand-caught." Shame befell / the men of Geatland. And one man spoke: / "Woe to the dragon That slew great Beowulf! / Were he living, This great shame / would not now haunt us." Once more spoke / the white-garbed warrior: "But this I say: / bathe in Gamol-léac, The old and noble herb / and you will be men Who smell like me." / He raised his hand And wonder seized / the men of Geatland, For now they stood / on deck of ship..."

Read More (a work by Castiron)

HOW TO BUILD A THING

The way I built you was  With my hands. I have built Others with my feet and teeth. I built them from metal and scrap. But you, you were easy as breathing. I also built you with my pointed tongue, Tracing your shape in the air.  My hands are muscular and Very small. You are made of teak. I carved you with my knife. I built you Beam by beam. I hauled the wood Myself.  This is how I learned to build a thing: When I was three, I built a boat. I dragged All the sticks and scraps of wood I could hold, Choosing each one carefully, crouching  In the woods behind the house In the middle of the night In my white nightgown, barefoot And carried them out of the woods Into the guest bathroom And dumped them in the tub. I stood and studied it awhile. Then I built a boat.  You were a beautiful Thing, maybe the most beautiful  I’ve ever seen. You were almost  David. I tell the story often of How, when someone asked Michelangelo How he made David, he said He just took away everything that wasn’t him.  I never told you that story. Like anything else, you emerged from nothing  until you were tangible, solid in my hands.  Jawbone, cheekbone, the sharp Slash of bone under the eye.  I felt the blood rush Into your cheeks, the hot, flushed cheeks of Beautiful boys. Then you stood before me, My Adam, Eve, the thing That always existed but did not exist Until I came. I moved into your chest And hid awhile. Today it was time to leave. I opened the door of your chest And stepped out. Tomorrow I will deconstruct you,  My most perfect structure,  Breaking you down joint by joint, Beam by beam that I built.  Marya Hornbacher

via words_end_here

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.  You do not have to walk on your knees  for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.  You only have to let the soft animal of your body  love what it loves.  Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  Meanwhile the world goes on.  Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain  are moving across the landscapes,  over the prairies and the deep trees,  the mountains and the rivers.  Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,  are heading home again.  Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  the world offers itself to your imagination,  calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place  in the family of things. -Mary Oliver

Simile

What did we say to each other that now we are as the deer who walk in single file with heads high with ears forward with eyes watchful with hooves always placed on firm ground in whose limbs there is latent flight

-N. Scott Momaday

via greatpoets

Sunrise- Mary Oliver

  SUNRISE You can die for it— an idea, or the world. People have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light. But this morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn, I thought of China, and India and Europe, and I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many! What is my name? What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire. Mary Oliver

via words_end_here

Staying After

I grew up with horses and poems when that was the time for that. Then Ginsberg and Orlovsky in the Fillmore West when everybody was dancing. I sat in the balcony with my legs pushed through the railing, watching Janis Joplin sing. Women have houses now, and children. I live alone in a kind of luxury. I wake when I feel like it, read what Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva. At night I watch the apartments whose windows are still lit after midnight. I fell in love. I believed people. And even now I love the yellow light shining down on the dirty brick wall-Linda Gregg , via greatpoets