Bolaji St.Ramos tweet poetry

Bolaji St.Ramos is a Nigerian poet, playwright, writer and lawyer with collections of poetry and children stories to his credit. His work is also published in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

Changing chameleon in the think woods Donning the duty of villagers and explorers I was the child farmer tilling the soil

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Extract from Ode to my childhood

Changing chameleon in the think woods,
Donning the duty of villagers and explorers.
I was the child farmer tilling the soil,
And the child of curiosity doing the toil,
The child fisherman toiling giver rivers,
The child crab hunter digging the holes,
The child snail gatherer, the wood wanderer
My childhood, oh my gallant childhood
A pinnacle perhaps more powerful than adulthood,
Changing chameleon in the urban wood,
Donning the duty of the villagers and explorers.

You can find more of his work here: http://www.voicesnet.org/displayonepoem.aspx?poemid=47427.

Peter Bennet tweet poetry - more

Cannot resist more from Peter Bennet. This is culled from the new and selected works in Goblin Lawn. Gorgeous stuff.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

Let me affirm that what I have not done Remains a plant so valueless That I have never learned its shape or name

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Look for the poem Ha-ha.




More on Flambard Press here http://www.flambardpress.co.uk/books/show.php?book=772&author=peter.bennet.

Note the Eric Ravilious woodcut on the front cover btw - a Sussexman (by birth? but certainly inclination) http://www.ericravilious.co.uk/

George Herbert tweet poetry

This poem describes the state of freedom that can be obtained by following rules; in this case, religious ones. Herbert makes such a case for breaking chains though that quotes from the poem often only focus on the absence of the collar rather than its accommodation.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

I will abroad What shall I ever sigh and pine My lines and life are free free as the road Loose as the wind as large as store

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Herbert himself was a Welsh poet who lived from April 1593 to March 1633.

The full poem:

The collar

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
                         I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
          Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
          Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
    Before my tears did drown it.
      Is the year only lost to me?
          Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
                  All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
            And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
             Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
          And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
          Away! take heed;
          I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
          He that forbears
         To suit and serve his need
          Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
          At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
          And I replied My Lord.

**************

More on George Herbert here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert

Salvador Novo tweet poetry

Salvador Novo was born in Mexico City in 1904, and died in 1974. He was the founder, together with Xavier Villaurrutia, of the magazines Ulises (1927) y Contemporáneos (1928), and actively participated in the early twentieth century revival of Mexican literature.

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

Dentro de estos cuatro muros pretendí ocultar mi dicha Pero el fruto pero el aire cómo me los guardaría

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Tema de Amor

Dentro de estos cuatro muros
pretendí ocultar mi dicha:
Pero el fruto, pero el aire
¿cómo me los guardaría?

Hora mejor que pospuse,
voces que eran para mí,
camino que no elegí
destino que no dispuse;
¡cómo os volvisteis oscuros!
¡qué amargo vuestro sabor
cuando nos encerró mi amor
dentro de estos cuatro muros!

Entre tu aurora y mi ocaso
el Tiempo desaparecía
y era nuestra y era mía
sangre, labio, vino y vaso.

En perdurar se encapricha
mi sombra junto a tu luz
y bajo negro capuz
pretendí ocultar mi dicha.
Pero el fruto, pero el aire,
pero el Tiempo que no fluya,
pero la presencia tuya
fuerte, joven, dulce, grande;
sangre tuya en vena mía,
lazos a instantes maduros,
dentro de estos cuatro muros
cómo me los guardaría?


Theme of love

Within these four walls

I tried to hide my happiness:

But the fruit, but the air

how could I keep them?

The better hour postponed,

voices that were for me, 

the path I did not choose

destiny that I did not fix;

how dark you turned!

how hard to swallow

when my love locked us

within four walls!

Between your dawn and my death

time disappeared

and she was ours and she was mine

blood, lip, wine and glass. 

In lasting glamour

my shade next to your light

and under your black hood

I tried to hide my happiness.

But the fruit, but the air,

but time does not flow,

but your presence

hard, young, sweet, immense;

your blood in my vein,

bends to consider,

within these four walls

how could I keep them?

More information on Salvador Novo can be found here:

http://www.los-poetas.com/poetas/bionovo.htm

John Clare tweet poetry 02

From 1837 until 1841, Clare spent his first years in the Dr Matthew Allen's private asylum High Beech. He didn't stop his creative work. He re-wrote famous poems and sonnets by Lord Byron but skewed. A version of Child Harold became a lament for lost love, and Don Juan, A Poem a rant redolent of an ageing misogynistic dandy. 

"I'm John Clare now," the poet claimed to a newspaper editor, "I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly."

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

How sweet thus nestling deep in boughs An ashen stoven pillowing me Faintly are heard the ploughmen But not an eye can find its way to see

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The full poem:

In Hilly-wood

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between.-
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

More John Clare tweet poetry: http://poetandgeek.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-clare-tweet-poetry.html

Alaíde Foppa tweet poetry

Guatemalan writer, university teacher, women's right's activist and poet Alaíde Foppa (born in 1914 or some sources say 1932 - missing presumed dead in 1980). She “disappeared” in December that year when she returned from exile in Mexico to visit her family in Guatemala. It is presumed that she was murdered by the Guatemalan government. In the context of her death, the lines of her poem Wound are all the more powerful. Read her work and remember her.

PoetGeek poetandgeek.net 

Your life hurts me son like a recently opened wound They think you broke from me because you were born the cord invisible arrow in my side

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This is from a poem called Wound, I am guessing Herida in the original Spanish. There seems to be no archive or resource for Foppa. I would love to see the poem in its original form; please send it to me if you have it. It is unclear who the translation I have is by but here it is in full.

Wound

Your life hurts me, son
like a recently opened wound.
They think that you have detached yourself from me
simply because you were born.
The cord is invisible:
an arrow in my side,
a ripened fruit
that does not abandon the tree,
a tender branch
threatened.
You are weaker than my hand,
more delicate than my eyes,
smoother than my lips.
You made me so vulnerable
that I feel fear:
your life depends on
a gust of wind,
whoever touches you lightly
hurts you,
at your side,
in the tepid folds
of your bed, death sleeps.
And even though you are
more mine than my hand,
oh my most tender little branch,
perhaps I won't know how to defend you.



More on Foppa and her poems can be found here: http://amediavoz.com/foppa.htm

More on the hunt to find out what became of Foppa here: http://www.ifex.org/guatemala/2010/11/23/donde_esta_alaide_foppa/

The poem is anthologised in the always rewarding anthology (out of print: why?) These are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women:(White Pine Press) edited by Marjorie Agosín.

Borges tweet poetry

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

Seguro de mi vida y de mi muerte miro los ambiciosos y quisiera entenderlos Su día es ávido como el lazo en el aire

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poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

Sure of my life and death I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air

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Boast of quietness from The moon across the street by Jorge Luis Borges (Jactancia de quietud, Luna de Enfrente 1925)