Walt Whitman
Captain, our captain,
We take your hand,
Find your footsteps on the streets
Of Chicago, New York, San Francisco.
Your spirit grows from the grassy fields,
Appearing on the horizon
As a light-beam signaling America
To remind her of her roots.
We follow the traces of light
Leading to forgotten springs;
We place our ears to the ground
To be near the leaves of grass and listen
With a desire to recognize our America,
And we wonder, do you know that you have strayed?
Emily Dickinson
A word into the silence thrown
Always finds its echo somewhere
Where silence opens hidden lexicons
And words fly back
Only into silence to arrive
At just about the right instant
William Butler Yeats
To Helen Vendler
To accomplish the simplicity
Of words that learned how to dance
Without much support from a dancer
Who learned the steps of deserved living
From the vigor of his dancing mind.
Is it a dance or the dancing?
Is it to live or to be lived?
It was not the dancer, but the dancing;
It was not the life, but the living mind;
The truth of living found in dancing.
If he had chosen only to live,
The dance would have been much less lively.
It was the dancer who followed the dance;
The dance, living the dancer’s life.
Robert Frost
There is a word on the crossroad
That marks the open road ahead
There is a song coming from the dark woods
Of growing cities, no less dangerous
There is a huge world family riding on horses
Travelling different roads
Exploring and learning after
Why one was better than another
A word sent to open the road
Makes that road a singing road
The road, choosing the rider
The song, becoming the ride
Wallace Stevens
The sea was the house and the world was the nave
You were the sea and you were the nave
The nave was stormy, the sea was calm
While the house was waiting for the world
To come in by the navy of the sea
The sea was a nave, the world was a house
You were the nave in the sea—
The house and the world
The world was the navy in the sea
And the sea was the house
The Strange Love Song of T. S. Eliot
At twenty-six, I was inexperienced;
Still, I knew much about love
In the waste land, reasoning,
It’s not important when you start
Practicing, rather when you start searching;
And I committed myself to finding
It before others even knew it existed, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
My thoughts, my longings, my love
For something that didn’t need naming
In the misty mornings, recognizing
The dew on the petal, alive yet sleepy;
I was a dreamer, I admit, thinking,
April is the cruelest month, flying
Thoughts about some distant teaching,
Seeing invisible in the visible, loving
Wild thoughts making love, searching
To find it; love was a secret hard to decode—
Sacred to me, it was. Students talking
Of business, Dante and Michelangelo;
That was important, yet not so important
In the land where death died long ago, blooming
Roses taught me a lesson, doing
My search for me, wakening
The land where human measures are important
Yet not so important; so I stayed, deserving
A degree from real roses, forgetting
The Ph.D. at Harvard, which for me was waiting
Of course it was not about Michelangelo,
But does it really matter? I saw paintings
And landscapes, dead lands and lands
Alive, knowing it’s more important
To feel than to know. I had it all in my head;
And I stayed where dreaming
Was more important than competing
In the land where the women come and go, talking
Of Sara Bernhardt and Coco Chanel in the Sistine Chapel
And men come and go, talking
Of wars, children come and go, talking
Of chocolate, and they all go, leaving
Not much to think about exchanging
Experiences with feelings, transforming
Experiences into meanings, mixing
Thoughts about love evaporating
Into the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes;
And in the end I understood April, learning
That April seemed cruel only in the dead land, knowing
That every month is equally paradisiacal and hellish,
Equally paradoxical.
e. e. cummings
there are greater poets
perhaps
but there is only one
cum
m
i
n
g
s
to be nobody but yourself
is the hardest fight indeed
Plato did not say this
or we wouldn’t believe it
he heard us
(all)
in the silence
unknowingly
we spoke to him
and
he sent us an old word
flying over the new yet
unnamed avenue
a n d
we heard him
whissssssssssssssspering
===============================================
Avenue of Love = e. e. cummings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
===============================================
-Dejan Stojanovic
Captain, our captain,
We take your hand,
Find your footsteps on the streets
Of Chicago, New York, San Francisco.
Your spirit grows from the grassy fields,
Appearing on the horizon
As a light-beam signaling America
To remind her of her roots.
We follow the traces of light
Leading to forgotten springs;
We place our ears to the ground
To be near the leaves of grass and listen
With a desire to recognize our America,
And we wonder, do you know that you have strayed?
Emily Dickinson
A word into the silence thrown
Always finds its echo somewhere
Where silence opens hidden lexicons
And words fly back
Only into silence to arrive
At just about the right instant
William Butler Yeats
To Helen Vendler
To accomplish the simplicity
Of words that learned how to dance
Without much support from a dancer
Who learned the steps of deserved living
From the vigor of his dancing mind.
Is it a dance or the dancing?
Is it to live or to be lived?
It was not the dancer, but the dancing;
It was not the life, but the living mind;
The truth of living found in dancing.
If he had chosen only to live,
The dance would have been much less lively.
It was the dancer who followed the dance;
The dance, living the dancer’s life.
Robert Frost
There is a word on the crossroad
That marks the open road ahead
There is a song coming from the dark woods
Of growing cities, no less dangerous
There is a huge world family riding on horses
Travelling different roads
Exploring and learning after
Why one was better than another
A word sent to open the road
Makes that road a singing road
The road, choosing the rider
The song, becoming the ride
Wallace Stevens
The sea was the house and the world was the nave
You were the sea and you were the nave
The nave was stormy, the sea was calm
While the house was waiting for the world
To come in by the navy of the sea
The sea was a nave, the world was a house
You were the nave in the sea—
The house and the world
The world was the navy in the sea
And the sea was the house
The Strange Love Song of T. S. Eliot
At twenty-six, I was inexperienced;
Still, I knew much about love
In the waste land, reasoning,
It’s not important when you start
Practicing, rather when you start searching;
And I committed myself to finding
It before others even knew it existed, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
My thoughts, my longings, my love
For something that didn’t need naming
In the misty mornings, recognizing
The dew on the petal, alive yet sleepy;
I was a dreamer, I admit, thinking,
April is the cruelest month, flying
Thoughts about some distant teaching,
Seeing invisible in the visible, loving
Wild thoughts making love, searching
To find it; love was a secret hard to decode—
Sacred to me, it was. Students talking
Of business, Dante and Michelangelo;
That was important, yet not so important
In the land where death died long ago, blooming
Roses taught me a lesson, doing
My search for me, wakening
The land where human measures are important
Yet not so important; so I stayed, deserving
A degree from real roses, forgetting
The Ph.D. at Harvard, which for me was waiting
Of course it was not about Michelangelo,
But does it really matter? I saw paintings
And landscapes, dead lands and lands
Alive, knowing it’s more important
To feel than to know. I had it all in my head;
And I stayed where dreaming
Was more important than competing
In the land where the women come and go, talking
Of Sara Bernhardt and Coco Chanel in the Sistine Chapel
And men come and go, talking
Of wars, children come and go, talking
Of chocolate, and they all go, leaving
Not much to think about exchanging
Experiences with feelings, transforming
Experiences into meanings, mixing
Thoughts about love evaporating
Into the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes;
And in the end I understood April, learning
That April seemed cruel only in the dead land, knowing
That every month is equally paradisiacal and hellish,
Equally paradoxical.
e. e. cummings
there are greater poets
perhaps
but there is only one
cum
m
i
n
g
s
to be nobody but yourself
is the hardest fight indeed
Plato did not say this
or we wouldn’t believe it
he heard us
(all)
in the silence
unknowingly
we spoke to him
and
he sent us an old word
flying over the new yet
unnamed avenue
a n d
we heard him
whissssssssssssssspering
===============================================
Avenue of Love = e. e. cummings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
===============================================
-Dejan Stojanovic
