"manful" poems
Loitering with a vacant eye
Along the Grecian gallery,
And brooding on my heavy ill,
I met a statue standing still.
Still in marble stone stood he,
And stedfastly he looked at me.
"Well met," I thought the look would say,
"We both were fashioned far away;
We neither knew, when we were young,
These Londoners we live among."
Still he stood and eyed me hard,
An earnest and a grave regard:
"What, lad, drooping with your lot?
I too would be where I am not.
I too survey that endless line
Of men whose thoughts are not as mine.
Years, ere you stood up from rest,
On my neck the collar prest;
Years, when you lay down your ill,
I shall stand and bear it still.
Courage, lad, 'tis not for long:
Stand, quit you like stone, be strong."
So I thought his look would say;
And light on me my trouble lay,
And I stept out in flesh and bone
Manful like the man of stone.
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To where do you run, my dear
when all is said and done.
To where do your manful thoughts roam,
Is it to your lions den of greed? Or the pleasant shoal of fun?
Or perhaps the tropical forest of mating?
Yes, love, this is where your hungers are calculating.
Ah, but there lies a dearest freshness in your sigh and pant,
which gives me glorious hope.
Hope, which has begun to look like the Promise Land.
As you fire questions at me more and more,
I have faith that you will see.
See my fire that burns for you,
and the fire that blazes in you for me.
Because when the curtains draw, my dear
It seems we are all hurtling toward the end.
I swear by then we shall have joined hands; there will be nothing left to fear.
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 8:40 PM UTC
If I can see the end clearly --
the sum of your disappointments finally adds up to the courage to set yourself free --
should I nonetheless walk on,
celebrating each closer to the last moment,
drinking the cup to the very dregs,
mindfully aware this bottle shall be the last?
Would it be more manful or mindful to loose you now?
If that is our inexorable destination?
Can I host that party, clownlike, weeping on the inside?
When I know that my voice grates on your ears?
When you perceive only aggression, judgment and negativity in my words?
When you believe I don't even try to understand?
Can I be fully present in those final moments
climbing the gallows of our love,
mindful of the coming loss,
clinging to the vestige of Pandora's final gift:
What if we changed the road we're on?
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 5:46 PM UTC