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three poems on what on what or what?
three poems on what on what or what?
LANGSTON HUGHES
Not What Was
By then the poetry is written
and the wild rose of the world
blooms to last so short a time
before its petals fall.
The air is music
and its melody a spiral
until it widens
beyond the tip of time
and so is lost
to poetry and the rose—
belongs instead to vastness beyond form,
to universe that nothing can contain,
to unexplored space
which sends no answers back
to fill the vase unfilled
or spread in lines
upon another page—
that anyhow was never written
because the thought could not escape
the place in which it bloomed
before the rose had gone.
Not What Was
By then the poetry is written
and the wild rose of the world
blooms to last so short a time
before its petals fall.
The air is music
and its melody a spiral
until it widens
beyond the tip of time
and so is lost
to poetry and the rose—
belongs instead to vastness beyond form,
to universe that nothing can contain,
to unexplored space
which sends no answers back
to fill the vase unfilled
or spread in lines
upon another page—
that anyhow was never written
because the thought could not escape
the place in which it bloomed
before the rose had gone.
___________
TPB's notes: n/a
DEREK WALCOTT
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
_______
TPB's notes: n/a
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