Poetry

(I Ask For Silence) Translated by Heidi Fischbach Now if you’d leave me in peace. Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things, five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn. I cannot be without leaves f…

— Pablo Neruda · Pido Silencio (I Ask For Silence)

Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm\! – The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil;

— Theodore Roethke · Long Live The Weeds

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting

— Mary Oliver · The Journey

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word\! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, “What a big book for such a little head\!”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Oh, oh, you will be sorry

I stopped looking for you I stopped waiting for you I stopped dying for you and I started dying for myself

— Leonard Cohen · I stopped looking for you

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

— Mary Oliver · When I Am Among The Trees

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create

— Martha Postlethwaite · The Clearing

(Poetry) And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of nigh…

— Pablo Neruda · Poesia (Poetry)

I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song,

— William Butler Yeats · Sailing To Byzantium

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

— Rudyard Kipling · If

we had goldfish and they circled around and around in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes covering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all

— Charles Bukowski · A Smile to Remember

Now I am out of element And far from anything my own, My sources drained of all content, The pieces of my spirit strewn.

— Theodore Roethke · Against Disaster

(Poet’s Obligation) [https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf\&t=51](https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf&t=51) Translated by Alastair Reid To whoever is not listening to the seathis Friday morning, to whoever is cooped upin house or office, factory or woman…

— Pablo Neruda · Deber Del Poeta (Poet's Obligation)

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted.

— Andrea Gibson · The Nutritionist

AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, The confession I made I resume— what I said to you in the open air I resume: I know I am restless, and make others so;

— Walt Whitman · Epitaph for a Friend

my love, don't let your skin become so thick that

— John Roedel · My Love

Too much too little well not enough to fight too thin or nobody laughter or tears or immaculate haters lovers non-consumer an old guy in a cheap room

— Charles Bukowski · People Aren't Good (The Crunch)

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

— Naomi Shihab Nye · Kindness

The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds.

— Stephen Crane · The Wayfarer