Bee

Love Songs of Vidyapati Here are some of my favourites... 1. Signs of youth Radha's glances dart from side to side. Her restless body and clothes are heavy with dust. Her glistening smile shines again and again. Shy, she raises her skirt to her lips. Startled, she stirs and once again is calm, As now she enters the ways of love. Sometimes she gazes at her blossoming breasts Hiding them quickly, then forgetting they are there. Childhood and girlhood melt in one And young and old are both forgotten. Says Vidyapati: O Lord of life, Do you not know the signs of youth?[63] 2. Tangled tresses Each day the breasts of Radha swelled. Her hips grew shapely, her waist more slender. Love's secrets stole upon her eyes. Startled her childhood sought escape. Her plum-like breasts grew large, Harder and crisper, aching for love. Krishna soon saw her as she bathed Her filmy dress still clinging to her breasts, Her tangled tresses falling on her heart, A golden ...

On This Island By #W H Auden Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at a small field's ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the suck- -ing surf, and a gull lodges A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands, And this full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter.

A Little Learning by Alexander Pope A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring : There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ; While from the bounded level of our mind Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise New distant scenes of endless science rise ! So pleased at first the towering Alps we try, Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ; The eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ; But those attained, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthened way ; The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, Hill peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise !

A poem on the man who drew the lines. **W H Auden _________________________________________________________________ Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. 'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in separation. The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter, That the less you are seen in his company the better, So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation. We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu, To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.' Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away, He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at his disposal we...

Love and a Question A STRANGER came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with the eyes more than the lips For a shelter for the night, And he turned and looked at the road afar Without a window light. The bridegroom came forth into the porch With, ‘Let us look at the sky, And question what of the night to be, Stranger, you and I.’ The woodbine leaves littered the yard, The woodbine berries were blue, Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind; ’Stranger, I wish I knew.’ Within, the bride in the dusk alone Bent over the open fire, Her face rose-red with the glowing coal And the thought of the heart’s desire. The bridegroom looked at the weary road, Yet saw but her within, And wished her heart in a case of gold And pinned with a silver pin. The bridegroom thought it little to give A dole of bread, a purse, A heartfelt prayer for t...

Don't imitate me by Matsuo Basho ******************************** Don't imitate me; it's as boring as the two halves of a melon. ******************************** ******************************** A bee by Matsuo Basho ******************************** A bee staggers out of the peony.

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton by Alan Dugan +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The first and last time I met my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at a protest poetry reading against some anti-constitutional war in Asia when some academic son of a bitch, to test her reputation as a drunk, gave her a beer glass full of wine after our reading. She drank it all down while staring me full in the face and then said "I don't care what you think, you know," as if I was her ex-what, husband, lover, what? And just as I was just about to say I loved her, I was, what, was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy Galway Kinnell, who said to her "Just as I was told, your eyes, you have one blue, one green" and there they were, the two beautiful poets, staring at each others' beautiful eyes as I drank the lees of her wine.