"I hear the River's scornful Genius say: / 'Raise for eternal time / Your palaces sublime'"

[larryhammer]

Some recently enjoyed poetry:

A haiku by Jan Benson.

Sonnet to Orpheus II:13 by Rainer Maria Rilke. Snippet:

Be ahead of all parting, as if it were
behind you, like the winter you just weathered.
Because among the winters there is one so endless winter,
that, overwintering it, your heart recovers altogether.

—tr. Howard Landman

(A few alternate versions.)

An extract from Eben Bochan by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, a medieval Jewish scholar and apparent would-be* transwoman. Snippet:

If my Father in heaven has decreed upon me
and has maimed me with an immutable deformity,
then I do not wish to remove it.
And the sorrow of the impossible
is a human pain that nothing will cure
and for which no comfort can be found.
So, I will bear and suffer
until I die and wither in the ground.
And since I have learned from the tradition
that we bless both the good and the bitter,
I will bless in a voice, hushed and weak,
Blessed are you, O Lord,
who has not made me a woman.

—tr. Steven Greenberg

(Longer excerpt here.)

* The correct qualifier here, if any, is difficult to determine.

Our good friend, the anonymous Japanese poet:

the love letter
from a man she despises --
she shows it to mother.

—tr. Alan Cummings

---L.

Subject quote from "The Neva," Bayard Taylor.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the extract from Kalonymus ben Kalonymus - it's sad, and fascinating.

[larryhammer]

It is both. Source linked in the linked source provides even more text to gnaw on.

---L.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

O dear. What longing.

Nine

[larryhammer]

Yes. Very much yes.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Really like that last couple.

[larryhammer]

I was browsing a book cart and opened a volume of love haiku to that last one -- and immediately had to buy the volume.

---L.