"sibyl" poems
WEAVE no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the night.
Weave but the flag whose bars to-day
Drooped heavy o’er our early dead,
And homely garments, coarse and gray,
For orphans that must earn their bread!
Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet,
That poured delight from other lands!
Rouse there the dancer’s restless feet:
The trumpet leads our warrior bands.
And ye that wage the war of words
With mystic fame and subtle power,
Go, chatter to the idle birds,
Or teach the lesson of the hour!
Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot
Be all your offices combined!
Stand close, while Courage draws the lot,
The destiny of human kind.
And if that destiny could fail,
The sun should darken in the sky,
The eternal bloom of Nature pale,
And God, and Truth, and Freedom die!
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I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go—
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.
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Little girl
Chocolate brown
Living in a
***** town
Mama’s weak
So she lies down
And men come by
And lift her gown.
Tin roof clatter
Rain above
Drowning out
The sounds of love
And when the sounds
Die away
Her mamas doctors
Dress and pay.
Little girl
Spanish town
Turistas always
On the prowl
Her playground is
This neighborhood
Of peeling stucco
Splashed with mud
Mama hides her
In the closet
This is no place
For her small poppet
But times are hard
Closed legs don’t earn
And she must feed
Her little girl.
Little girl
Has an Abuela
She does not live
In this bordello
A sibyl -
She has mantic powers
She reads the future
In her cards.
Bee stings in her throat
At night
She prays to god
With all her might
- Ayudar a este niño
And help her mother
Si usted oye me dios
Don’t let them suffer.
Feb 2, 2012
Feb 2, 2012 at 2:03 PM UTC
I loved him.
I promise you, I did.
With what little I had,
My virtue, my art, my music,
I loved him.
I could've sworn
He loved me too.
I thought we were getting married.
I thought that
Until I saw the note,
Heard his voice.
I would never see him again,
Not as any more than
An adoring follower
That had fallen by the wayside.
I've heard stories since then.
Scandals.
Things too awful to repeat.
I can't bear to think of him that way.
Worse, to think that I loved him,
But I didn't know him.
The man I loved would never do that.
So here I am,
A lonely musician.
But I killed myself.
They say it was because I loved him so deeply
And that I couldn't bear the rejection.
That's not true though.
I killed myself so that I could be reborn.
To be a new Sibyl,
Apart from the weight
Of my regrets.
I died so that I could live.
I am Sibyl Vane.
I could be any one of you.
But truly, I am ME.
And I'm alive,
I am free.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 3:19 PM UTC
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. (Wikipedia)
Songs of prophecy on oaken leaves
Unread; unclaimed; unrequested
Fly from out either of the many entrances
To her cave chambers.
She doesn't mind. Poet or prophet, the
Wind has hands greater than human;
Words without willing ears wrestle away
Without struggle.
Only they and the wind see the beauty
Of it. She? She doesn't mind.
Guide to the Underworld, she has greater
Things to meditate on than
The Infants of the Universe
In their insignificant sandboxes.
*Here; more poetry. Come who may,
To read.*
Who may.
Apollo's twisted payment for her
Pleasures: As many years of life as grains
Of sand in her hand.
But she forgot to ask for youth.
After a thousand years, only her voice is
Left, whispering: *Children, all will
Be well. It already is.*
It already is.
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 11:54 AM UTC
That child,
seems to be reading to my old dog friend.
Can we teach a dog to read and see the significance
some men find in syllables unsaid?
In print,
Sibilant denture whistles, perk no ear
silent esses no ear can hear, un spoken esses essentially
signify nothing, simple noise.
But a good dog will respond to the slightest whistle, as if…
A sibyl said listen,
hear the wind enter the world once with
inspired expired whistling sound found in song
this way,
this is the way,
Say plain the sound of each sign.
Alpha Beta, Aleph Bet, Ayee Bee
See, these let words be saved as signals
Letters, let silent sounds hold meaning in
signs of sounds men can make,
Like
Ah. or baah, which certain ruminants make as well…
A man can say ah, and mean plain nothin'
and some dogs can too,
but when dogs say, ah, it's often
a yawn gone into a groan like a stretched out
awww as the back arches
backward and front paws stretch out.
Tail swishing slow sweeps
swirling dust mites in a shaft of morning light,
more wind than any butterfly wing or
humming bird wing could stir.
"Remember", his brown eyes say,
this posture always meant,
"let's do some fun,
go for a run,
follow a scent"
But then, another yawn
and a shake. a glance from those knowing eyes,
signifying, signing , if I am happy, he is, too.
A dog friend then punctuates, by curling down into
a black and white comma
with a bit of golden tail
covering the nose
twitiching ante
cipitating a chase that leads to this new place,
where new sounds can sound
insignificant,
dream time humms,
not worth the effort to hear,
since we are not going anywhere, today.
Ah, be, still.
Tomorrow is the myth.
My dog swears that's true.
Today, or never, and
never's fine. He Yawns.
Aug 27, 2022
Aug 27, 2022 at 4:37 PM UTC
I am not very good at feeling
Inward.
I can sympathize, empathize.
But when anything is turned back on me,
I can't make heads or tales of it.
So I don't know if he likes me,
A feeling that comes back to me.
I think I like him,
But I don't know what to make of that.
I sometimes don't relate well to people
Because I don't care about social politics
And that's all that seems to matter.
You may see what I write and think,
"I wouldn't like Sibyl much either,
If I knew her."
That's possible.
Likely, even.
Sibyl is basically Ophelia,
But a little better developed
And a little more tragic
And quite a bit more innocent.
She has the same role as Ophelia.
But she's an actress.
Sibyl is such an interesting character,
There's something so relatable about her.
We all sort of have a Sibyl inside of us.
That's not to say we all will **** ourselves over rejection,
I hope that isn't the case and won't happen to anyone.
But I don't know anything.
Je ne sais rien
Je ne connais rien
And that's okay.
Anyway,
I think I'd like him to know that I think he's
Really great.
For many reasons.
But I'm too scared.
Because my feelings run too deep
And I don't really understand them.
And it's like firing the cannon at the continent
And carving out the cliff
And digging the hole
And having a brick-maker when there's no need for bricks.
It all gets crazy in the heart of darkness
And nothing seems to make sense
In my mess of emotions,
Like an elaborate tangle of black yarn.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 8:41 PM UTC
'The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth
uttering things not to be laughed at,
unadorned and unperfumed, yet
reaches to a thousand years with her
voice by aid of the god.' (Heraclitus, fragment 12)
She curves into touches like neurosis
beyond the threshold of insanity
breeding desire into a lovely oddity
She mends the lie in facades to
empty them into our secrecy
With a banshee's throat
she splinters time's agonies
into the likeness of what
we ordered and
brings solitude to morning's arms.
She is of Sibyls.
Bold women who once dreamt
in ambiguous shadows and
lucent prophecies.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 8:29 PM UTC
That child,
seems to be reading to my old dog friend.
Can we teach a dog to read and see the significance
some men find in syllables unsaid?
In print,
Sibilant denture whistles, perk no ear
silent esses no ear can hear, un spoken esses essentially
signify nothing, simple noise.
But a good dog will respond to the slightest whistle, as if…
A sibyl said listen,
hear the wind enter the world once with
inspired expired whistling sound found in song
this way,
this is the way,
Say plain the sound of each sign.
Alpha Beta, Aleph Bet, Ayee Bee
See, these let words be saved as signals
Letters, let silent sounds hold meaning in
signs of sounds men can make,
Like
Ah. or baah, which certain ruminants make as well…
A man can say ah, and mean plain nothin'
and some dogs can too,
but when dogs say, ah, it's often
a yawn gone into a groan like a stretched out
awww as the back arches
backward and front paws stretch out.
Tail swishing slow sweeps
swirling dust mites in a shaft of morning light,
more wind than any butterfly wing or
humming bird wing could stir.
"Remember", his brown eyes say,
this posture always meant,
"let's do some fun,
go for a run,
follow a scent"
But then, another yawn
and a shake. a glance from those knowing eyes,
signifying, signing , if I am happy, he is, too.
A dog friend then punctuates, by curling down into
a black and white comma
with a bit of golden tail
covering the nose
twitiching ante
cipitating a chase that leads a new place,
where new sounds can sound
insignificant,
dream time humms,
not worth the effort to hear,
since we are not going anywhere, today.
Ah, be, still.
Tomorrow is the myth.
My dog swears that's true.
Today, or never, and
never's fine. He Yawns.
Dec 8, 2018
Dec 8, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
Poem-report: Greece
Writing poetry in the Hellenic region
Equals to discussing democracy
In Athens, its cradle then despotic tomb
The poem can’t survive in this rather cracy.
Greece however always belongs to pugnacious Achilles
Keeping the mythical beauty of its temples and islands:
The sea is as clear as the thin aquamarine
Which used to ornate Pallas’ bust, sibyl.
And what of Apollo, supreme oracle of Delphi
He is done delivering visions, no one calls out his name
The poet summons him, but he fails to arrive
What can he make of sanctity or lent?
The deity’s site looks as wild as it was then
Between an ochre mountain and a rising sun
The stray cats and dogs, worshipers of the past
Are the only believers who now crowd the p(a)lace.
Greece is pauper alas, and exploits its legends
To obtain some drachm from European folks:
Statues and vases, paintings and almonds
Everything is copied and sold–what a Herculean task!
What sad realization takes hold of the voyager
To follow the tracks of heroes, eager
Athens is filthy, and to heal her gray boyishness
The acropolis is yours for about thirty euros!
Men of our time have desacralized
What had been dreamt about when barely imagined
Glory only remains in what you can read of it
I almost couldn’t find some muses and their lyre.
Written in French in Athens, March 31, 2017
Translated in Lyon, April 19, 2017.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 8:11 AM UTC