Kometenmelodie

[Lyrics are an excerpt of "The Heaven Prolog" from Faust - Wolfgang von Goethe. In this masterpiece, these lines are said by Raphael archangel]
Die sonne toent nach alter weise
In brudersphaeren wettgesang
Und ihre vorgeschriebene reise
vollendet sie mit donnergang
[Translation 1:]
The sun sounds out in an old manner
In a fraternal vocal competition
And its prescribed course
Reaches a conclusion with a thunder
[Translation 2:]
The sun intones its ancient song
Mid rival chant of brother spheres
Its predestined course it speeds along
In thund?rous march throughout the years
[Translation 3:]
The sun intones, in ancient tourney
With brother-spheres, a rival song
Fulfilling its predestined journey
With march of thunder moves along

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song performed by Kraftwerk
Added by Lucian Velea
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Enthusiasm's Promise

You’ve heard it said;
it sounds just great –
as well it might..

so now there’s just the matter
of our really-truly believing it; of
living up to it..

The divine world and
all its beings rest, reside, it’s said,
in each individual, as in the universe;

not remote – unless they remain
locked beyond forbidding heavy door of ego;

not sternly aloof – but ready
to offer in abundance, lawfully
to the lawful, whatever might be necessary;
it’s said they cannot lawfully resist;
are eager; smiling, running, to our voice…

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Epistle ll

everything's interconnected:
sex and procreation unlinked
then faith in immortality is shaken-
how nervous we get!
for faith relies on earthly correlates
via blood-lines and genome, does it not?
question that and you question
the point of life itself.
there go the churches and temples.
there go coercion, guilt, shame.
there go the shifting backdrops of existence
so depended upon as cues.
there goes the price of gasoline.
there go advertising and the press.
there goes television and magazines.
And, approaching the Pascalian paradigm
we even begin to wonder what
on earth we're doing this for-
getting up in the morning and so forth-
since the distraction of that willing bondage

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poem by Morgan Michaels
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Rovigo

ROVIGO STATION. Unclear associations. A drama of Goethe
or something from Byron. I traveled through Rovigo
n times and exactly at the nth time I understood
that in my inner geography it is a special
place although it certainly yields
to Florence. I never touched it with my living foot
and Rovigo was always approaching or fleeing behind
At the time I was filled with love for the Altichiera
at the Oratory of San Giorgio in Padua and for Ferrara
which I loved because it reminded me
of the pillaged city of my fathers. I lived stretched
between the past and the present moment
many times crucified by a place and a time
And yet happy firmly trusting
the sacrifice will not be wasted
Rovigo wasn’t distinguished by anything particular it was
a masterpiece of mediocrity straight streets plain houses
only before or after the city (depending on the train’s direction)
a mountain suddenly rose from the plain -sliced open by a red quarry
like an Easter Ham surrounded by kale

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poem by Zbigniew Herbert
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To Friedrich Holderlin, poet

Here in this river valley below the Alps
which mimic high Olympus’ watching spirit,
everyone’s a silent poet of nature:
lakes; rivers; green fields; steeper goatfoot pastures;
forests; bare gaunt rocks and snow;

and the poetry of seasons of the year.
Once to see the seasons through, is to be
a little nearer God; to know
how gods measure out the earth.

Here inside the wooden room,
the measures, not so clear:
measured out by sterner, darker gods
whose seasons are not so predictable:
storms, tempests, thunder, flood
may last until we learn
lessons we do not yet understand.

Outside the window now

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Last Blossom

THOUGH young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.

Who knows a woman's wild caprice?
'It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's 'niece'
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A Private Eye Bajadere

Monday morning, washing day, clothes, linen,
towels, sneakers, socks of course - before I start
I need a shot of dreams, a fantasy to carry me
through a mundane job of cleaning things

I could be an old-fashioned galley slave working
away on a ship crossing the Caribbean, or I could
be a fairy banished from fairyland forced to toil
a human life in order to earn fairy Brownie points

Or I could be a Private Eye posing as a household
drudge in order to fool all the street thugs while I’m
watching their every move, sending information
to my spy friends through secret signs

Suddenly, while I’m still sending signs pretending
I’m washing windows, someone grabbed me from
behind, I screamed, Rudi laughed; enquired about
my funny game, I told him my Private Eye fantasy

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poem by Louise Tredoux
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Clothes

Walking back to the office after lunch,
I saw Hans. “Mister Isham, Mister Isham,”
He called out in his hurry, “Herr Wegner needs you.
A woman waiting for a border pass
Took poison, she is dead, and the police
Are there to take the body.” In the hall,
The secretaries stood outside their doors
Silently waiting with Wegner. “Sir,” he said,
“It was her answer on the questionnaire,
A clerk for the Gestapo. So it was.”
Within the outer office, by the row
Of wooden chairs, one lying on its side,
On the discolored brown linoleum floor
Under a GI blanket was the lost
Unmoving shape; uncovered, from a fold,
A dirty foot half out of a dirty shoe,
Once white, heel bent, the sole worn through, the skin
Bruised red and calloused, uncut toenails curved
And veined like an old ivory. No one spoke.
Police stood at attention by a stretcher.

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poem by Edgar Bowers
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Epode

BEYOND the Night, down o'er the labouring East,
I see light's harbinger of day released:
Upon the false gleam of the ante-dawn,
Lo, the fair heaven of sun-pursuing morn.
Beyond the lampless sleep and perishing death,
That hold my heart, I feel my New Life's breath, —
I see the face my Spirit-shape shall have
When this frail clay and dust have fled the grave.
Beyond the Night, the death of doubt, defeat,
Rise dawn and morn, and life with light doth meet,
For the great cause, too, — sure as the Sun, you ray
Shoots up to strike the threatening clouds and say:
I come, and with me comes the victorious Day!
When I was young, the Muse I worshipped took me,
Fearless, a lonely heart, to look on men.
''Tis yours,' said she, 'to paint this show of them
Even as they are.' Then smiling she forsook me.
Wherefore with passionate patience I withdrew,
With eyes from which all loves, hates, hopes and fears,
Joy's aureole and the blinding sheen of tears,

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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Solution

I am the Muse who sung alway
By Jove, at dawn of the first day.
Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought
To fire the stagnant earth with thought:
On spawning slime my song prevails,
Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales;
Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,
Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.
Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,
And Nile substructs her granite base,--
Tented Tartary, columned Nile,--
And, under vines, on rocky isle,
Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak,
Forward stepped the perfect Greek:
That wit and joy might find a tongue,
And earth grow civil, HOMER Sung.

Flown to Italy from Greece,
I brooded long, and held my peace,
For I am wont to sing uncalled,

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poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There Is

There is this ship which has taken my beloved back again
There are six Zeppelin sausages in the sky and with night
coming on it makes a man think of the maggots from which the
stars might some day be reborn
There is this enemy submarine slipping up beneath my love
There are one thousand young pinetrees splintered by the
bursting of the same shells falling around me now
There is this infantryman walking by completely blinded by
poison gas
There is the obvious fact that all that is happening here was
hatched a long time ago in the intestinal trenches of Nietzche
Goethe and the metaphysicians of the town of Cologne
There is the obvious fact that I'm dying over a letter which
has thus far been delayed
There are in my wallet various photos of my beloved
There are prisoners marching past with anxious faces
There is this artillery battery with its faithful servants
hurrying among the guns
There is the postmaster arriving at a trot on the road beneath
the single tree in silhouette

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poem by Guillaume Apollinaire
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Great Poets Missed Never Met

Great poets missed
never met
never engaged
artistic in conversation

we missed William Shakespeare
John Milton, Edmund Spenser
who wrote 'The Faerie Queene';
John Done long gone but not forgotten

we missed Francois Marie Arouet
better known as pen name Voltaire
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
and macabre master Edgar Allan Poe

we missed the romantic poets
Shelley, Keats, Lord Byron
all dead within three years
of each others tragic deaths

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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Internet Fête 1998 French Version 0865

Ici en France les choses avancent et grâce à Internet
Nous pouvons suivre et vivre aussi les changements de vie
Tantôt troublants, tantôt grisants, - le partage est mot qui
Est à la mode où tous ces codes parfois montent à la tête.
Regard nouveau - et pas trop tôt - tourne vers l'Internet,
Nos têtes blondes et brunes sondent une autre galaxie
Echangeant méls par modem - elles inventent jeux aussi.

Travail, hobbies, dans tous pays de nouvelles formes revêtent.
France d'abord et puis encore au monde on fait la fête
En ce printemps où la chanson est gaie et réussie,
Toujours, c'est sûr, ensemble pour s'amuser et aussi
Essayer de cerner du jeu les termes et les requêtes.
Magique est site qui invite à planète Internet.
Ici le temps s'arrête dans l'élan qui l'ennuie
Laisse de côté pour naviguer au gré de la tempête
Lyrique du désir partout de découvrir dans cet
Ensemble un sens où dans la danse on avance et on rit
Niant le noir, trouvant l'espoir, écartant les soucis.

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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Internet Fête 1998 English Version 0865

Come to Planet Internet
I know today both work and play will change with Internet,
Now dark and fair exchange mail, share together, soul sincere.
Then surf here there and everywhere to web sites far and near.
Each in his way his part shall play to make this day a fête,
Ring in the mind bells all will find sing through the alphabet.
New ventures start which wide worlds chart, and so it does appear
E-Mail can bring true joy this Spring, to all who volunteer, -
Thus those apart can heart to heart converse without regret.

From hemisphere to hemisphere a global town can yet
Emerge to urge investment surge, as false fears disappear.
The tongues of man will somehow scan - Goethe, Racine and Shakespeare.
Efforts will be rewarded, - we past problems shall forget.
Needs, hopes, combine for future fine as unemployment's threat
Is overcome, leaves critics dumb, as progress from this year
New hope for scope shows - most can cope on-line, can persevere,
Enjoyment all can find to call a friend, or good news get.

Though some may find they're left behind by talk of 'netiquette', -

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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To ------,

WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.

Maiden! with the fair brown tresses
Shading o'er thy dreamy eye,
Floating on thy thoughtful forehead
Cloud wreaths of its sky.

Youthful years and maiden beauty,
Joy with them should still abide,--
Instinct take the place of Duty,
Love, not Reason, guide.

Ever in the New rejoicing,
Kindly beckoning back the Old,
Turning, with the gift of Midas,
All things into gold.

And the passing shades of sadness
Wearing even a welcome guise,

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto I.

Preludes.

I The Impossibility
Lo, Love's obey'd by all. 'Tis right
That all should know what they obey,
Lest erring conscience damp delight,
And folly laugh our joys away.
Thou Primal Love, who grantest wings
And voices to the woodland birds,
Grant me the power of saying things
Too simple and too sweet for words!

II Love's Reality
I walk, I trust, with open eyes;
I've travell'd half my worldly course;
And in the way behind me lies
Much vanity and some remorse;
I've lived to feel how pride may part
Spirits, tho' match'd like hand and glove;
I've blush'd for love's abode, the heart;

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poem by Coventry Patmore
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Epilogue To Lessing's Laocooen

One morn as through Hyde Park we walk'd,
My friend and I, by chance we talk'd
Of Lessing's famed Laocooen;
And after we awhile had gone
In Lessing's track, and tried to see
What painting is, what poetry--
Diverging to another thought,
'Ah,' cries my friend, 'but who hath taught
Why music and the other arts
Oftener perform aright their parts
Than poetry? why she, than they,
Fewer fine successes can display?

'For 'tis so, surely! Even in Greece,
Where best the poet framed his piece,
Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground
Pausanias on his travels found
Good poems, if he look'd, more rare
(Though many) than good statues were--
For these, in truth, were everywhere.

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poem by Matthew Arnold
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The New Locksley Hall

'Forty Years After'

COMRADE, yet a little further I would go before the night
Closes round and chills in darkness all the glorious sunset light —
Yet a little, by the cliff there, till the stately home I see
Of the man who once was with us, comrade once with you and me!
Nay, but leave me, pass alone there; stay awhile and gaze again
On the various-jewelled waters and the dreamy southern main,
For the evening breeze is sighing in the quiet of the hills,
Moving down in cliff and terrace to the singing sweet sea-rills,
While the river, silent-stealing, thro' the copse and thro' the lea
Winds her waveless way eternal to the welcome of the sea.
Yes, within that green-clad homestead, gardened grounds and velvet ease
Of a home where culture reigneth and the chambers whisper peace,
Is the Man, the Seer and Singer, who (ah, years and years away!)
Lifted up a face of gladness at the breaking of the day.
For the noontide's desperate ardours that had seen the Roman town
Wrap the boy Keats, 'by the hungry generations trodden down,'
In his death-shroud with the ashes of the fairy Child of Storm,
Fluttering skylark in the breakers, caught and smothered by the foam,

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poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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A Minor Poet

"What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"

Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world),
Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand,
(Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!)
And lectured me a lecture, all compact
Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled
From works of newest culture: "common good ;"
"The world's great harmonies;""must be content
With knowing God works all things for the best,
And Nature never stumbles." Then again,
"The common good," and still, "the common, good;"

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poem by Amy Levy
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The Birth Of Rain

Drifting on a drab Sunday in Perth among the ashtrays and leftover sublimities of the church bells. My studio window above the rooftops a smear of willow and wet pine undulating gently in the stillness that followed the rain. Wolves on the easel, waiting to pay the rent. May of the fifth year into the twenty-first century, fifty-six, I sit in a blizzard of tobacco crumbs because I'm too poor to buy tailor-mades, coughing at the computer, wiping small drops of water like pygmy tears from the Cyclopean eye of the screen that glows with the same effulgence as the dirty sheet of the sky. The main migrations are over, but maybe these words are rosaries of late-returning birds. Two anthracite, boat-tailed grackles on a branch just beyond the grimy glass and a gust of sparrows chirrup like squeaky alternator-belts, manically elated in the wake of the storm that has just passed. My freedoms are more sober, my resurgencies probably less profound than the gray roses I give birth to here at my desk, waiting for one of these terminal urgencies of insight to sway me like a bell.

Maybe Louise later today with her Cola and cassettes, and her rough, voluptuous, laughing humanity scorning the random acids of the vulgar world that schools her, a muse who doesn't take requests, a generous longing that's been through a lot. So I sublimate the root-fires of my leafless batons into an auto-de-fe of white canes tired of trying to tap their way through a maze of sexual creeds, blind. The result? A novel and dozens of poems apples above the worms. And I keep her cats, Morgan and Rain, mother and kitten almost fully grown. There are no humans Louise loves more.

The kitten was born beside me on the couch at one-thirty in the morning while Louise was in the hospital and I read La Mettrie, d'Holbach, Diderot, d'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau and Helvetius, eighteenth century French les philosophes. Two days ago, remembering, she asked me to write a poem to celebrate the birth. And it's two hundred and fifteen years since the French revolution went into convulsions and mothered daggers out of its wounds, and we are neither free, nor equal, nor brothers, and the birth of Rain, by association, is only the smallest of iota subscripts below the voluminous pretext of that slaughter, hardly, if at all, a mote that matters; but in a way she was born while the peasants stormed the Bastille, and time sent corpses and ideas floating facedown on one of its more famous rivers of blood all the way to the embryonic comma of this tender, contrary event. And there was honour in being a witness when Morgan jumped up beside me

and lay her head upon my right arm as a pillow, the great red text
with ivory pages open to the public like the Vatican before me
as the soft, gray satchel of her body shuddered with the natal lightning
of a different storm, the quickening eruptions of a different riddle
than the one that dropped its answer like a blade
on the necks of the cropped carnations as I kept on reading, thinking
to run for a towel before deciding not to disturb her,
that a little blood on the couch wouldn't hurt anything
compared to the streams of gore that caked the pages of my book.

And there was a humility in the act of watching, and a trust,
as if a great secret were demanding something of her
she was willing to go through hell to give. And my heart
laboured with her like a sympathetic strawberry, convinced of a miracle,

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poem by Patrick White
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