Poems--from anywhere, for Brokeback Mountain sensitized feelings...

[twistedude]

Struck trees die black
Fire in the Air
Leaves not a Wrack
of bone or hair

            (poet's name not offered)

[RouxB]

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
 or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Pablo Neruda

[twistedude]

Just wanted to say I love the Naruda poem...it is so beautiful. It's called Sonnet 17, and the translator is not given.

[twistedude]

let's see if i can do this from memory:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself, and curse my fate
Wishing myself like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope
With what I most enjoy contented least
Yet in these thoughts, myself almost despising
 Happly I think on thee, and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate
    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
    I then do scorn to change my place with kings. 

[OldeSoul]

Love the Neruda poem (I've had it in one of my journals for awhile) and the Shakespeare as well.

Here's one I recently read, and of course BBM popped into my head:

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?
~Amy Lowell

[twistedude]

from  A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
                           

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
    Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
    Like gold to aery thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so                                         
    As stiff twin compasses* are two ; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                               
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    
    And makes me end where I begun
 
*a single compass, as we know it today, is meant   


John Donne, 1590s.

[dly64]

I used this on another thread, but it really belongs here. I love this poem! It is about loving and parting. I can see Ennis feeling this:

A Dream within a Dream
by Edgar Allen Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet, if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it, therefore, the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[dly64]

Here is another one I really like ...

Bereft
by Robert  Frost

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking downhill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God

[twistedude]

Inspired by "Nightfall" (by Living-in-Transcendence, www.fanfiction.net)--actually very sophisticated, and God knows if it will ever get romantic, like this:

Unsere beiden Schatten
sahen wie einer aus
dass wir lieb uns hatten
das sah man gleich daraus.
Und alle Leute
sollen es sehen
wenn wir bei der
Laterne stehen
wie einst, Lili Marlene,
wie eins, Lili Marlene.

Our two shaows
looked like one,
so that anyone could see right away
that we loved each other,
and everybody shall see it
when we stand by the lantern,
as once, Lili Marlene, as one, Lili Marlene

But the song has been bugging me ever since chapter one, set in Germany, January, 1933.  Jack is a caberet actor, and Ennis is a painter.

This Kurt Weill-Bert Brecht song from "The threepemnny Opera" would perhaps be in better keeping:

Wach' auf, du verrotteter Krist;
mach' dich an dein suendiges Leben.
Zeig' , was fuer ein Shurker du bist
Der Herr Gott wird's dir denn shon geben.

 Verschacke dein' Bruder, do Schupf,
Verkaufe dein Eheweib, du Wicht,
Der Herr Gott-- fuer dich ist er Luft?
Er zeig's dir bei'm juengsten Gericht....

Wake up you rotten  Christian
get moving with  your sinful life.
show what a scoundrel you are
the lord God, he'll let you have it!
chain  up your  brother,  you pusher
sell you wife, you  critter-
The lord God, for you is he thin air?
he's let you have it at the Last Judgement!                                                                   

[Sheera]

Our two shaows
looked like one,
so that anyone could see right away
that we loved each other,
and everybody shall see it
when we stand by the lantern,
as once, Lili Marlene, as one, Lili Marlene

That's lovely.  I wonder if I could find an audio recording of this song?  Such poignant lyrics.