Thomas Stearns Eliot – Song 2

If space and time, as sages say,

    Are things which cannot be,

The fly that lives a single day

    Has lived as long as we.

But let us live while yet we may,

    While love and life are free,

For time is time, and runs away,

    Though sages disagree.

The flowers I sent thee when the dew

    Was trembling on the vine,

Were withered ere the wild bee flew

    To suck the eglantine.

But let us haste to pluck anew

    Nor mourn to see them pine,

And though the flowers of love be few

    Yet let them be divine.

Anne Spencer – For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was Gethsemane,

with old tombs set high against

the crumpled olive tree--and lichen,

this, my garden, has been to me.

For such as I none other is so sweet:

Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,

and certainly its ancient tree.

Peace is here and in every season

a quiet beauty.

The sky falling about me

evenly to the compass . . .

What is sorrow but tenderness now

in this earth-close frame of land and sky

falling constantly into horizons

of east and west, north and south;

what is pain but happiness here

amid these green and wordless patterns,--

indefinite texture of blade and leaf:

Beauty of an old, old tree,

last comfort in Gethsemane.

Charles Bukowski – I Met A Genius

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Wilfred Owen – The Chances

I mind as 'ow the night afore that show
Us five got talking, -- we was in the know,
"Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it,
First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it."
"Ah well," says Jimmy, -- an' 'e's seen some scrappin' --
"There ain't more nor five things as can 'appen;
Ye get knocked out; else wounded -- bad or cushy;
Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy."

One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops.
T'other was hurt, like, losin' both 'is props.
An' one, to use the word of 'ypocrites,
'Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz.
Now me, I wasn't scratched, praise God Almighty
(Though next time please I'll thank 'im for a blighty),
But poor young Jim, 'e's livin' an' 'e's not;
'E reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e's 'ad;
'E's wounded, killed, and pris'ner, all the lot --
The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim's mad.

Wilfred Owen – Storm

His face was charged with beauty as a cloud
With glimmering lightning. When it shadowed me
I shook, and was uneasy as a tree
That draws the brilliant danger, tremulous, bowed.


So must I tempt that face to loose its lightning.
Great gods, whose beauty is death, will laugh above,
Who made his beauty lovelier than love.
I shall be bright with their unearthly brightening.


And happier were it if my sap consume;
Glorious will shine the opening of my heart;
The land shall freshen that was under gloom;
What matter if all men cry aloud and start,
And women hide bleak faces in their shawl,
At those hilarious thunders of my fall?