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Category Archives: Poetry
The fight is won or lost far away
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses…
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights” – Muhammad Ali
A Paratrooper’s prayer
I am not religious, but I relish the power of this prayer, known often as the Paratrooper’s prayer.
I bring this prayer to You, Lord,
For you alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.
Give me, Lord, what You have left over,
Give me what no one ever asks of You.
I don’t ask You for rest,
Or quiet,
Whether of [...]
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So You Want To Be A Writer?
Pete sent this poem through to me. I’m not sure I believe it all, but it’s food for thought…
So You Want To Be A Writer by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do [...]
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Poetry Of Departures – Philip Larkin
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It’s specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on [...]
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The Explorer – Rudyard Kipling
“There’s no sense in going further–it’s the edge of cultivation,”
So they said, and I believed it–broke my land and sowed my crop–
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop:
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting [...]
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The Journey of the Magi – TS Eliot
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then [...]
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Home From Abroad – Laurie Lee
Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,
My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,
I set my face into a filial smile
To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.
But shall I never learn? That gawky girl,
Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts,
Becomes again the green-haired queen of love
Whose wanton form dilates as it delights.
Her rolling [...]
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High Flight – John Gillespie Magee
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of [...]
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Fill the unforgiving minute
Things become cliches when they become too popular, too common. To become a cliche you first need to strike a chord. Kipling’s ‘If’ is, I believe, a poem worth re-reading as we head into the New Year. What’s your favourite line? Mine is “if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk [...]
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The Bright Field – R. S. Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering [...]
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