Day 67 : Poems

I have a friend who is a big fan of poetry. Writes a little of it himself, mostly in tamil. And mostly in old Tamil which consists of two many complicated words that we generally used in common dialogues now. So obviously makes it a lot tougher for me to comprehend. But once he gets around to explaining to me what these words mean, I turn and compliment him on the great poem it was. Then he starts on his usual rant over how poetry is dead.

I am not kidding, this is like a routine now. Every other weak he sends over a text with a peom and voice clip of him reciting it. I reply to him asking a few meanings. He calls up to explain the meaning of them words. I understand them, he reads the whole thing again, I compliment him on how good the poem was. He starts his usual rant. Which goes on for about ten minutes, or the end of the talktime on his mobile, whichever comes first.

I do get what he's saying though. I mean, how many of us really do the whole poetry thing anyway. Everything that we see is in prose (or rap). Even the new Spoken Word fad is really just prose words written in rhyme. I sort of do miss the whole poetry style that we had in the earlier times. And some of them were really good. Poetry can say so much about so many things, in so few words. I love it!

These are the one's that most recently caught my attention - 

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

  

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

  

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

  

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

                                                                                                By William Ernest Henley

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! 

                                                                                        By Rudyard Kipling

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain. 

                                                                                                By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Glimpse

A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room
around the stove late of a winter night,

and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love,
silently approaching and seating himself near,
that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going,
of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content,
happy in being together,
speaking little, perhaps not a word.

                                                                                                By Walt Whitman