• khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    Subh Milis (Sweet jam). It’s a short and powerful Irish poem reminding parents to be kind to their kids.

    English translation below. Can’t seem to get the formatting correct on mobile…

    Bhí subh milis ar bháscrann an doras

    ach mhúch mé an corraí

    ionaim a d’éirigh

    mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá

    a bheadh an bháscrann glan

    agus an lámh beag – ar iarraidh…”

    There was jam on the door handle

    But I quelled the anger

    That rose inside me

    Because I thought of the day

    That the handle would be clean

    And the little hand - longed for

  • EndOfLine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    Invictus by William Ernst Henley

    When I was younger I clung to it’s message of perseverance. It ended up being the first poem that I ever memorized.

    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.
  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    5 months ago

    “The View From Halfway Down” by Alison Tifel has always resonated with me:

    The weak breeze whispers nothing
    The water screams sublime
    His feet shift, teeter-totter
    Deep breath, stand back, it’s time

    Toes untouch the overpass
    Soon he’s water bound
    Eyes locked shut but peek to see
    The view from halfway down

    A little wind, a summer sun
    A river rich and regal
    A flood of fond endorphins
    Brings a calm that knows no equal

    You’re flying now
    You see things much more clear than from the ground
    It’s all okay, it would be
    Were you not now halfway down

    Thrash to break from gravity
    What now could slow the drop
    All I’d give for toes to touch
    The safety back at top

    But this is it, the deed is done
    Silence drowns the sound
    Before I leaped I should’ve seen
    The view from halfway down

    I really should’ve thought about
    The view from halfway down
    I wish I could’ve known about
    The view from halfway down

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 months ago

    I really like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. I first encountered it as a result of reading Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently novels, but one day I saw the original in the library and just read it from start to finish. It’s fantastic, so weird, so compelling.

    I also like his Kubla Khan, the imagery of the “caverns measureless to man” and the “sunless sea” have always stuck with me.

  • thenextguy@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 months ago

    Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
    Thy micturitions are to me,
    As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
    On a lurgid bee,

    That mordiously hath blurted out,
    Its earted jurtles,
    Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]

    Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
    Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
    And living glupules frart and slipulate,
    Like jowling meated liverslime,

    Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
    And hooptiously drangle me,
    With crinkly bindlewurdles,
    Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,

    See if I don’t.

    – Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

  • Nope@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 months ago

    London

    By William Blake

    I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

    Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.

    And mark in every face I meet

    Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

    In every cry of every Man,

    In every Infants cry of fear,

    In every voice: in every ban,

    The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

    How the Chimney-sweepers cry

    Every blackning Church appalls,

    And the hapless Soldiers sigh

    Runs in blood down Palace walls

    But most thro’ midnight streets I hear

    How the youthful Harlots curse

    Blasts the new-born Infants tear

    And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

  • reversebananimals@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    5 months ago

    Li Bai - Quiet Night Thought

    床前明月光
    疑是地上霜
    举头望明月
    低头思故乡

    Before my bed bright moonlight pools
    Almost like frost on the ground
    Raising my head I see the shining moon
    Bowing my head I think of home