just enough to let one see what my favorite poetry tastes like

10
Pier Paolo Passolini
The Day of My Death

Under a warm green linden
I’ll fall into my death’s darkness
Scattering linden and sun.
The beautiful boys
Will run in that light
which I’ve just lost,
flying from school
which curls on their brows.

9
William Shakespeare
Sonnet VIII

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

8
T. S. Eliot
The Rock

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.


7
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ulysses

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
(…)
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

6
Attilio Bertolucci
For B.

The little paper planes you make
Flight into twilight, disappear
like nigh-moths in the darkening air
Now they will never circle back
Our days are like that, gathered in
By a less gradual abyss
Than this valley, silent with
Its dead lives in autumnal rain
Where, fragile, your imaginings
Glide down to rest on tired wings.

5
Rainer Maria Rilke
Extinguish Thou My Eyes

Extinguish Thou my eyes:I still can see Thee,
deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee,
and without feet I still can come to Thee,
and without voice I still can call to Thee.

4
Constantine P. Cavafy
Ithaca

Pray that the road is long.
(…)
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years.

3
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ulysses

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
(…)
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

2
Derek Walcott
The Sea is History

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.

(…)

in the salt chuckle of rocks
with their sea pools, there was the sound
like a rumour without any echo
of History, really beginning.

1
Prakash Kona
Rebel

Truth is a rebel that pushes one into the flux of becoming,
The status quo of lies means nothing to truth;
Memory is a rebel because it captures bits and pieces of void
before plunging into a sea of extinction;
The thing I rebel against is what takes me away from you,
I fight with strength of a dreaming tiger wounded to core.