[Winifred] The Cradle

Sweet dreams form a shade,

O'er my lovely infants head.

Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,

By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.

Weave thy brows an infant crown.

Sweet sleep Angel mild,

Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,

Hover over my delight.

Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,

All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,

Chase not slumber from thy eyes,

Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,

All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,

All creation slept and smil'd.

Sleep sleep, happy sleep.

While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,

Holy image I can trace.

Sweet babe once like thee.

Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,

When he was an infant small.

Thou his image ever see.

Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,

Who became an infant small,

Infant smiles are His own smiles,

Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

- William Blake

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

                                                         W.H. Auden

[Timothy] Windhover - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Kopitiam

Sit with a polystyrene cup
of kopi-o and kaya toast.

Watch the auntie sweat and smile
as she struts between
plastic chairs, tables --
coin clinking furiously.

Her incredible memory --
threads that link faces, names
in this clean neon
makan place.

Ah Peh says,
Last time got more butter. 

By Lau Peet Meng

Poem

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down

into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot


William Carlos Williams


[Rachel]

Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.


Emily Dickinson



[Rachel]

Spring and Fall

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

[shuyan]