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BUT WE HAD MUSIC

Right this minute
across time zones and opinions
people are
making plans
making meals
making promises and poems

while

at the center of our galaxy
a black hole with the mass of
four billion suns
screams its open-mouth kiss
of oblivion.

Someday it will swallow
Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations,
swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass.

I know this.

And still
when the constellation of starlings
flickers across the evening sky,
it is enough

to stand here
for an irrevocable minute
agape with wonder.

It is eternity.

By Maria Popova Read more at the Marginalian

                Spring
With a difference —Hamlet.

Again the bloom, the northward flight,
The fount freed at its silver height,
And down the deep woods to the lowest,
The fragrant shadows scarred with light.

O inescapable joy of spring!
For thee the world shall leap and sing;
But by her darkened door thou goest
Forever as a spectral thing.

Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920) - American poet, essayist, editor, literary critic and biographer. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Magazine, McClure's, Blackwood's Magazine, Dublin Review, The Catholic World, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. There are twenty books published of her poetry and prose, including   Letters (1926, letters) and Recusant Poets, (1939, ed., with Geoffrey Bliss) which were published posthumously.

This poem is in the public domain

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remembered, even in the sky.

Then I sing the wild song ’twas once such pleasure to hear!
When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, oh my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852), was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist, born in Dublin. He is celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. The poem, about the memory of a lost love. was published in 1813 in Irish Melodies and later in 1903, in Poetry of Thomas Moore - Macmillan and Co. This poem is now in the public domain. More 

For a glance, a world;
for a smile, a heaven;
for a kiss...., I don't know
what I would give you for a kiss!

Original Spanish version:
Por una mirada, un mundo;
por una sonrisa, un cielo;
por un beso… ¡yo no sé
qué te diera por un beso

Translation by Calob - All copy rights reserved - 2023

Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida . -- better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836 – 1870), was a Spanish poet and writer (mostly short stories), also a playwright, literary columnist, and talented in drawing. Born in seville, He is now considered by some as one of the most important figures in Spanish literature, and possibly the most read author after Miguel de Cervantes. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had done earlier. This poem was published posthumously in 1871 in “Rhymes”

What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.”

Francis Joseph Thompson (1859 – 1907) was an English poet and Catholic mystic. He entered medical school at the age of 18, but at 26 left home to pursue his talent as a poet and writer and poet. He spent three years on the streets of London, supporting himself with menial labor. He become addicted to opium which he took to relieve a nervous problem. His first volume, "Poems" was published, in 1893. he began writing prose in 1897. His fragile health continued to deteriorate and he died of tuberculosis in 1907. 

This poem was published in 1897 and it is in the Public Domain.

Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
The world has its motion, all things pass away;
No night is omnipotent, there must be day!

The oak tarries long in the depths of the seed
But swift is the season of nettle and weed,
Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade
And rise with the hour for which you were made.

The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man,
Revolve in the orb of the infinite plan;
We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
And each has his hour — to dwell in the sun!

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966), American poet and playwright, music teacher and school principal, born in Atlanta, Georgia. She was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the earliest female African-American playwiters. She published her first poems in 1916 in the NAACP’s magazine Crisis where she wrote a weekly column, “Homely Philosophy,” from 1926 to 1932. Douglas Johnson also wrote plays, and four collections of poetry: The Heart of  a Woman (1918). Bronze (1922) and An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World (1962). More

               "NIght"

The night has a thousand eyes,
     And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
      With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
    And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
    When love is done.

Francis William Bourdillon (1852 - 1921) was a British poet, translator and a bibliophile. Bourdillon is known for his poetry, and in particular, for the single short poem "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes". He had many poem collections and essays published, including three smaller volumes of verse published anonymously at Oxford between 1891 and 1894.

Photo credit: RezaAskarii

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

Khalil Gibran (1883 - 1931) Lebanese-American poet, writer, visual artist and also considered a philosopher by some. He was born into a poor Maronite Christian family in the village of Bsharri in what was then the Ottoman Empire and is now Lebanon. Educated in Beirut, Boston, and Paris. He was the author of The Prophet, The Broken Wings, Beloved, The Three Ants and many others (His name is sometimes spelled Kahlil)

This poem is in the public domain.

No matter
what is said,
once you're gone,
your still dead.

When the day is gone,
when the nights grown cold
I remember when
we all grew old.

When the last wave,
has hit the distant shore,
please understand,
I won't be with you anymore.

The love I have for others,
may come nevermore,
but I will continue waiting for you
on the distant far offshore.

"She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew."

Sheldon Allan “Shel” Silverstein (1930 - 1999) was an American poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter, and children books author. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and his books have sold over 20 million copies. Among his most memorable books are: "Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), The Missing Piece (1976). After the 1970's, Silverstein continue releasing memorable children’s titles, among them A Light in the Attic (1981), and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O (1981).

“Masks”  tells the story of two wandering souls who never find each other because of their failure to show themselves as they truly were. Source: from Silverstein's book of poems called Everything On It. A collection of poems  published posthumously by Harper and Row Publishers in 2011.