BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond => Brokeback Mountain Fan Fiction & Poetry => Topic started by: twistedude on April 22, 2006, 04:08:09 am
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Struck trees die black
Fire in the Air
Leaves not a Wrack
of bone or hair
(poet's name not offered)
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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
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Just wanted to say I love the Naruda poem...it is so beautiful. It's called Sonnet 17, and the translator is not given.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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
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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!
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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.
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Punch up "Amazon.com; then type in "CD--Lili Marlene". THEN click on "z-shops." There's a real expensive one, but two cheap ones, too. The tune is lovely. I think a lot of people don't know that the song was sung by BOTH sides in WW2, and Marlene Dietrich recorded it for the OSS. A lot of people think of it as a Nazi marching song..hmmm,. how HANDY. "Lili Marlene" was the song the freezing Germans and Americans dug into fox holes started harmonizing on one night, the Germans in German, and the Americans in English (Vor der Kaserne, vor dem grossen Tor, steht eine Laterne, und steht sie noch davorn..she waits for a boy who marched away...and so on...)
This story better get a move on, or I'm going to be adding chapters myself...just kidding.\
I sent the verse to my GFIC (gay friend in closet), and added, "how'd you like to pay a visit to Germany, 1933...me neither." he wrote back," '33, maybe, '43 no."
Oh, I'm Jewish.
So I wrote back: after the election of Hitler as Chancellor, things weren't too pleasant for Guys Like Me...or even Guys Like You...
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He's the Lilly of the Valley,
The Bright and Morning Star,
He's the Fairest of 10,000 to my Soul.
---part of a hymn by Charles W. Fry, 19th century England
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Wild Nights
by Emily Dickinson
Wild nights. Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port
Done with the compass
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden.
Ah, the sea.
Might I but moor
Tonight with thee!
The Clod & the Pebble
by William Blake
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to It's delight:
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.
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Love Blake!
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Love Blake!
Ditto! I think he's great!
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Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I
you are you
Whatever we were to each other that we still are
Call me by my old familiar name
speak to me in the easy way you always used to
Put no difference in your tone
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together
Let my name be ever the household word it always was
let it be spoken without effort
without the trace of a shadow on it
Life means all that it ever meant
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight
I am waiting for you
for an interval
somewhere very near
just round the corner
All is well
Canon Henry Scott Holland, 1847-1918
Canon of St Paul's Cathedral
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Thank you for posting this, undercarriage.... and everybody! :)
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The winds out of the west land blow,
My friends have breathed them there;
Warm with the blood of lads I know
Comes east the sighing air.
It fanned their temples, filled their lungs,
Scattered their forelocks free;
My friends made words of it with tongues
That talk no more to me.
Their voices, dying as they fly,
Loose on the wind are sown;
The names of men blow soundless by,
My fellows' and my own.
Oh lads, at home I heard you plain,
But here your speech is still,
And down the sighing wind in vain
You hollo from the hill.
The wind and I, we both were there,
But neither long abode;
Now through the friendless world we fare
And sigh upon the road.
--poem XXXVIII from 'A Shropshire Lad' by A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
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I don't know, I thought about putting this in Ennis and Ellery, but then thought maybe here?? this is kind of greeting card stuff--no author is credited in the place I read it, but when I did read it, it sounded so Ennis, both about Jack and even about Ellery, I thought maybe I would share it anyway.
If Tears could build a stairway
and memories a lane
I would walk right up to heaven
and bring you back again.
No farewell words were spoken.
No time to say "Goodbye".
You were gone before I knew it
And only God knows why.
My heart still aches with sadness
and secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you
No one can ever know.
But now I know you want me
To mourn for you no more.
To remember all the happy times.
Life still has much in store.
Since you'll never be forgotten
I pledge to you today
A hollowed place within my heart
Is where you'll always stay.
they are putting that first verse on a "in loving memory" Christmas tree ornament.
but they are sending the whole poem in the box, and it just sort of grabbed me when I read it.
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I put Rou8's Pablo Naruda poem (page one) on "picture captions"--and someone said it was the most beautiful thing he/she had ever read...so I'm bumping this back to page 1...some great poems here.
I know...some of you just don't dig poetry, but for the rest of us...
Thanks for the beautiful stuff. The Naruda poem begins "I don't love you as if you were the salt rose topaz ..."
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Over his friend, Enkidu, Gilgamesh wept bitterly.
He wandered through the wilderness and cried:
"How can I rest? Despair is in my heart.
I too shall die, for am I not like Enkidu?"
--verse from Tablet IX of the Epic of Gilgamesh, adapted from various sources by Chad Gracia, and published in the introductory essay for Gilgamesh: A Verse Play (poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa; concept and dramaturgy by Chad Gracia) [Wesleyan University Press, 2006]
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from "Gitanjali: Songs of offering" by Rabindranath Tagore
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
. . . .
I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
That is why it is so late and why I have been guilty of such omissions.
They come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I evade them ever, for I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
People blame me and call me heedless; I doubt not they are right in their blame.
The market day is over and work is all done for the busy.
Those who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger. I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
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I read this poem by e.e. cummings (1894-1962) over the weekend, and was immediately reminded of all things Brokeback:
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death