"beeches" poems
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.
Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the ****
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.
Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.
5.5k
I knew a man once who could read the trees
He'd stand in a field with nothing on
And look at them for hours
(He couldn't talk to flowers)
But he would pour over every branch
Trace every knot and feel their bark
He translated a sycamore for me once
But oaks and beeches were his favourite
He said he just preferred their type.
The elbow bends told him of seasons
The trunk's tilt told the prevailing winds
Their denseness in relation to their neighbours
Told him all manner of gossipy things.
The colours and the hues told of the soil
The moulds and lichens the local fashions
He'd tell you if they'd ever been frightened
By hippies, chainsaws, axes or lightening.
And as I looked on, I realised something
As I read his naked body with no clothes
This man was obviously a stark raving lunatic.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 8:31 AM UTC
Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.
On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller's joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.
On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.
Posses, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger's feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.
2.9k
I.
Here we halt our march, and pitch our tent
On the rugged forest ground,
And light our fire with the branches rent
By winds from the beeches round.
Wild storms have torn this ancient wood,
But a wilder is at hand,
With hail of iron and rain of blood,
To sweep and waste the land.
II.
How the dark wood rings with voices shrill,
That startle the sleeping bird;
To-morrow eve must the voice be still,
And the step must fall unheard.
The Briton lies by the blue Champlain,
In Ticonderoga's towers,
And ere the sun rise twice again,
The towers and the lake are ours.
III.
Fill up the bowl from the brook that glides
Where the fireflies light the brake;
A ruddier juice the Briton hides
In his fortress by the lake.
Build high the fire, till the panther leap
From his lofty perch in flight,
And we'll strenghten our weary arms with sleep
For the deeds of to-morrow night.
2.5k
It faces west, and round the back and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,
And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks
Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish
(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)
To overtop the apple trees hard-by.
Red roses, lilacs, variegated box
Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers
As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these
Are herbs and esculents; and farther still
A field; then cottages with trees, and last
The distant hills and sky.
Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze
Are everything that seems to grow and thrive
Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn
Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit
An oak uprises, Springing from a seed
Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.
In days bygone—
Long gone—my father’s mother, who is now
Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk.
At such a time I once inquired of her
How looked the spot when first she settled here.
The answer I remember. ‘Fifty years
Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked
The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots
And orchards were uncultivated slopes
O’ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn:
That road a narrow path shut in by ferns,
Which, almost trees, obscured the passers-by.
Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs
And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts
Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats
Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers
Lived on the hills, and were our only friends;
So wild it was when we first settled here.’
2.4k
This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s Rest,’
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.
This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.
2.3k
We become part of nature,
part of sunflowers & leafy stature.
By the running brook, quiet creek,
Like snowflakes on jagged peaks.
By sunny beaches, which the horizon reaches,
In wispy woods & pristine beeches.
Below the dark, cold depths of the ocean,
Which moon tides draw in motion.
Tis where my soul would go,
For solitude, no friend, no foe.
Dec 24, 2022
Dec 24, 2022 at 2:50 AM UTC
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
2k
Have you ever been impacted by the feminine vocals of this plight of legalistic acquittal?
Let us travel northbound along those east coast beeches where the historical presence is tangible and innocent sexuality is exposed in oyster-bars of cobbled awareness.
Acknowledge the fragrance of the hanging-basket in English country gardens, where nectar is extracted by nocturnal mammals.
Do you have any suggestions about the outcome?
Mar 9, 2014
Mar 9, 2014 at 12:14 AM UTC
Not all was what it seemed
Those dreams were never real
The night lights shone
Then faded like the moon.
City streets were crowded
People busy with there lives
All seemed normal to the eye
Who could see behind the scene.
1938 crowded parks and beaches full
Ice cream stands and punch and Judy men
Normality was all that children knew
Family's made plans unaware of what lay ahead.
Summer days flowers displayed there colours
Work for dad.and children going to school
Christmas time and snow covering the ground
Another festive time was there with celebrations.
The summer time of 39 stormy days ahead
Young boys 18 plus answered to the country's call
Not realising adventure was never there at all
They lied about their age .in search of that adventure.
So six long years they fought and died
The survivers came home with open eyes
Seeing the world for what it was there youth denied.
The storm now over they now faced the calm.
Time to move on now the war days had gone
They found work and learned a trade
Those night lights shone once more
And the city streets filled with happy times again.
1945 the years move on the past now history
It was a time to rebuild a future of hope
And to find the will to carry on
Back too the beeches sands and the ice cream man.
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 10:01 AM UTC
abjectness is a form of inroads
toil the Woodlands Trust
all hail no coppiced beeches,
my first sighted R.S.P.B Avocet
the perplexed scale comparable
to competing blank stares,
endorphins withstanding,
clueless and unconscionable
instinctual pomposity
suffers Nature's either
way.
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 4:16 PM UTC
*there you said it
i like you because..
you’re sensitive
me? sensitive? an ever mask
but maybe
with you
maybe
i can finally put that **** off
and i like you because..
you really want to
help me too
face the darkness
end a career i don’t like
the so called doctor
never voted for a strike
even though i never earned a penny
like these argentinian doctors
they help them in hospitals, many
in poor districts with poor people
because they have nothing
some not even a foot to stand
and the doctors have everything
they think
as if they differ mentally
they think there’s a difference
between such rich and poor
see nothing else
so they always ask for more
but nowadays
for me
it are just temporary words
a weak or strong one doesn't exist
because in weak times
we all need a superman
inclusive the man in red suit
even Peter Pan
one that comes with high speed
still questioning yourself
how superman has got so strong
what does superman actually need?
and now i say it
that from the day i met you
i felt it was different
than all these times before
because i simply can't compare
and on my lucky day, you just opened the door
the door of my cage so severe
this beast in me finally free
it felt so incredibly weird
new things to see
unusual, too
that someone thinks
and thinks pretty much like you
all you told me, so sincere
still questioning myself
where has this been before?
a burning soul like yours
maybe because i always fell for the poor
while you were being superman
all these years, wandering
sauntering through a poor land
you slammed
into exotic beaches
that started with leeches and ended with peaches,
beautiful flowers and grass, green beeches
planted on the edge of the deepest oceans in my heart*
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 2:31 PM UTC
If slumber, sweet Lisena!
Have stolen o'er thine eyes,
As night steals o'er the glory
Of spring's transparent skies;
Wake, in thy scorn and beauty,
And listen to the strain
That murmurs my devotion,
That mourns for thy disdain.
Here by thy door at midnight,
I pass the dreary hour,
With plaintive sounds profaning
The silence of thy bower;
A tale of sorrow cherished
Too fondly to depart,
Of wrong from love the flatterer,
And my own wayward heart.
Twice, o'er this vale, the seasons
Have brought and borne away
The January tempest,
The genial wind of May;
Yet still my plaint is uttered,
My tears and sighs are given
To earth's unconscious waters,
And wandering winds of heaven.
I saw from this fair region,
The smile of summer pass,
And myriad frost-stars glitter
Among the russet grass.
While winter seized the streamlets
That fled along the ground,
And fast in chains of crystal
The truant murmurers bound.
I saw that to the forest
The nightingales had flown,
And every sweet-voiced fountain
Had hushed its silver tone.
The maniac winds, divorcing
The turtle from his mate,
Raved through the leafy beeches,
And left them desolate.
Now May, with life and music,
The blooming valley fills,
And rears her flowery arches
For all the little rills.
The minstrel bird of evening
Comes back on joyous wings,
And, like the harp's soft murmur,
Is heard the gush of springs.
And deep within the forest
Are wedded turtles seen,
Their nuptial chambers seeking,
Their chambers close and green.
The rugged trees are mingling
Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel,
To clasp the boughs above.
They change--but thou, Lisena,
Art cold while I complain:
Why to thy lover only
Should spring return in vain?
1.1k
Sing in love to the world!
That mystery is from the shadows hurled!
Into darkness and into light!
May in harmony we unite!
Sing a song of woe and gloom
that ever emphasizes our painful doom!
Let joyous ponds with lilies fair
entwine with nature and Nature's hair!
Let silver streams of moonlight clear
enlighten us on our unending fears!
May together the night and the sky
bring love and joy that cannot die!
May tunes high strung and beeches far
bring joy to us!
From Gaia the Fair!
Jul 6, 2010
Jul 6, 2010 at 9:28 AM UTC
these, these,
knock
this stranger's words on my screen
knock
reminding me of me
knock
In my stomach, a sinking
slow
In my chest heavy. Shoulders
solid
want to crunch into each other
want to erase
Helpless sad
pain from
leans bone into back
your words
back-bent behind birds and beeches
I found
Dreaming for seasons, I
the sun
miss the sun
speak
silent
please
miss the days I numbed myself while it was cloudy
I'll drown
even with a good chance of clearing up before noon, I
in your words
don't remember any of them
remembering
The flavor of my thoughts
not
was lost
What do you say to the corpse that is lying in your grave?
caustic
You learn to accept that you're still here.
golden
You look yourself in the mirror and decide each day that you'll
stay constant
shake love out of your living limbs
sorrow
into the earth
love
with each step.
is like
Step.
DANCING
You become grateful for the beat.
move with me
Beat.
&
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 12:06 AM UTC
The sun exits, ever so slowly,
down behind the heights of bursting-into-leaf beeches
as gym-shoe-running children
are called in to supper and to bed.
Voices sound from balconies and neighbours' gardens
while blackbirds bid, contentedly, the day farewell.
Lawnmowers cease their whirring sounds
and clippers, rakes and hoes clank in wooden or plastic sheds.
Fragrances roam the evening air,
invading every square metre with terrestial joy,
and cigarettes are passed around
as the face next door has ceased
being a removed nod and smile.
Eventually, the curtains are drawn on a happy ending
while tentative talk succeeds in silencing
any riotous upheavals that might occur
in the night's discourses and dreams.
Aug 14, 2010
Aug 14, 2010 at 12:18 AM UTC
We don’t have winds like this
Here in the shire
Right now the world is screaming
Squirming on its axis
'I am here!' it shouts
However much you **** me
A deafening rush
The trees could crush me
The battling branches break, fell me
The low clouds lumbar onwards
Indifferent, closing down
The last sneak of blue
The west-south-westerly whips
All grass and grain flat
Against dark earth
Freshly turned by the blade
Autumn comes abruptly this year
The leaves are torn to the ground
The path ahead a boil of branches
Lashing at me
The dry-gold giant Hogweed
Oscillates with insanity
The tall beeches mope and weep above
The wind an inferno
Its sound like steam is cleansing
The earth is separate today
It says 'fuck you!'
The wind can hear me
It Shrieks at me
My heart beats a little faster
Once again that thought of oblivion
Like diving under waves
26/8/20
Apr 14, 2021
Apr 14, 2021 at 5:15 PM UTC
Rain. Quenching summer’s green thirst, flaking hills rust. Pitted iron. Old bone beeches, alabaster reaching finger trunks and damp obsidian spines round crowns bronzed, pebbled umber arbors released, fluttering mast patina of carotenoids and iron browned and burnished from months of sun. Golden feathers molt from stands of birches, aluminum wire ghosts. First hard frost smokes up from the cinnamon stick curls of cherry leaves,
and stainless pines in scrap metal hills.
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 1:00 PM UTC
see the mirror mirror the sea
thyme scents sense time
me and you sleeping sleep in you and me
waves disquiet these quiet ways
and continents wear down down where continents end
barques dock while wild dogs bark
at oars or at
noon
redcurrants, sand beaches, beeches and recurrence
our morning mourning hour
terns whirled there / their world turns
Sep 16, 2020
Sep 16, 2020 at 8:13 PM UTC
Whisper to me
You tall beeches
Whisper your shadows
The words of your leaves
On clouds I sit
Chalk
Your
Boughs
Long
Shadows
Like tresses
Of hills
Soft and downy
With grass
Listen beeches
Remember your days
The way the sun climbs
And lowers itself
Remember drifts of snow
White as chalk
Whisper your secrets of leaves
Let me sleep
Beneath your shadows
Glad that summer is arrived
Before
Snow
May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 at 10:57 AM UTC
Let us run with lunar amazement whilst celestial beings bring bizarre revelations to our finite comprehension.
Can you hear the chanting of Celtic monks resound throughout the beeches of extraterrestrial seduction?
Footprints are powerful, as they leave eternal impressions which will never be unrecognised by the mighty collage of our spiritual predecessors.
I celebrate the continuation of what is deemed to be the future, simply because it is also a feature of the undefined end.
The texts and languages of malevolent souls are open to the advice of familiars.
Conjure my soul, oh forbidden mistress of ancient blasphemies.
We will always be connected to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 11:18 PM UTC
Some prose poems patched in his hands
Suddenly then, ecstasy or hypnosis faces him!
As he was reading, bathing in scents of cedar
She stands before him, disrobed, Phaedra-like and solemn!
He mouthed those lines while blossomed within him
A garden of secrets, rustling beeches
The mused muse came to visit him when
Every morning he read on, gold upon her head
He never put the velvety book down
The air heavy with laughter, desires, and rhymes
The Western wind gently rocked them as they held
Each other…Yet as the last poem echoed, she adamantly fled!
Translated on April 17, 2019
Nancy, France
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 17, 2019 at 4:40 AM UTC
Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 7/20/2018
And the sun seems to disappear in the west
in beeches crowns, it sinks in green
and the night like a king sits upon the throne
and it shimmers in moonlight.
And nothing has changed - ages are passing:
the moon has not grown, the sun has not diminished,
hunter and hare do not count the stumbles,
no beginning will ever meet the end.
The crows are cawing though I do not know what
- allegedly they carry foretaste of winter
and it so happens that my eyes water,
because time turns winter's birthday
into the autumn's funeral. The last travelers
will sit for a moment as before the journey
the strangers sat with the household members
like a daisy with the most beautiful rose.
And so is the Earth that there is enough space for everyone,
enough water and air, fire and ash:
for the rich, the beggars, for those experienced by fate
- without favoring - it will host everyone.
Wieslaw Musialowski 6/14/2008
Oct 5, 2019
Oct 5, 2019 at 8:47 AM UTC
The grave they kept on the lonely beach
Lay under a foot of lime,
Most of the pile had washed away
With rain, and the tides of time,
It had been so long since its stone was laid
As a warning to who went there,
The rough-cut name had begun to fade,
To the solitary word, ‘Despair!’
It said, ‘Despair if you dig it up,
Despair if you set it free,
It savaged the girl called Maidenhair
It ravaged this fair country,
It roamed the farms at the dead of night
And tore into sheep and hogs,
The farmers called it the devil’s blight
When they found their blood-spattered dogs.
The only monk that was left to tend
The grave, now lay in the church,
His Order gone, now the only one
To fend off the tidal surge.
The church was almost a ruin since
It had shattered the oak-backed doors,
And blasted the Brothers altar with
Its devils breath, and its claws.
But the monk lay ill, and he knew full well
He never could make the beach,
To pile the lime on the Beast of Time
And the sea would surely breach.
His fellow monks were all laid in clay
On the upper side of the cliff,
Their duty done, they had one by one
Passed on, and lay cold and stiff.
A crack appeared in the bed of lime
With a rush of air from the shore,
And something groaned with an eerie moan,
The seed of the devil’s spore.
A whisp rose out of the open grave
To join with a gully breeze,
That sent it whirling along a wave
And into a grove of trees.
And then an ominous rumble rose
As a whirlwind formed on high,
It whipped the waves to a surly peak
As it rose to blacken the sky,
A tempest, such as had never been
Tore trees, like beeches and birch,
And cut a swathe like the path it paved,
On its wayward way to the church.
The monk lay there with his gilded cross
As he heard the beast outside,
It gave a roar by the shattered door
And the monk had almost died.
But a gentle hand took the cross from him,
A hand that was soft and fair,
And held it up to the beast so grim,
The ghost of Maidenhair.
It shuddered once as she stood with ease
And the cross then drove it back,
The whirlwind died to a gully breeze
As it fled back down the track.
It seemed confused, and it seemed to lose
Its overwhelming reach,
And sank back into its limestone grave
On that long deserted beach.
The sea had battered the arching cliff
Hung over that limestone shore,
It now collapsed in a final lapse
With the monks who’d passed before.
And beneath a thousand tons of earth
That is holding off the sea,
There’s a rough-cut stone that says, ‘Despair,
Despair if you let it free!’
David Lewis Paget
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 4:22 AM UTC