Invictus - William Ernest Henley

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.


P.S.

At the age of 12, Henley fell victim to tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated when he was 25. In 1875, he wrote the "Invictus" poem from a hospital bed. Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his death at the age of 53.

The Good-Morrow - John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.


And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.


My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Consummation Of Grief / Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

Crossing the Bar / Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
    Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
    Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
    When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
    The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
    When I have crost the bar.

Our Desires / Jack Kerouac

There is a wind that seeks the crevice
under my heart
the way insects file at night
beneath a doorway


Its edges are rough, it slits
the cords.It trips my steady breathing.
When it comes there is no one
I can trust.


It seems, at times, I have designed
too well this vision of you.
I cannot survive your eyes
when they are scarred with a need
for some lesser form of love.


I admit to this conceit.
And though you will not accept it
You love it nonetheless


It is just like you.Our desires
will always be kept sharp
by a kind of perversity.A need
to be each forever alone….


Its color is violet, like lips
that have been smashed by nights
or robbed of blood by lack of breath.
The wind I was speaking of does this.

I can feel it now.

On Tears / Jack Kerouac

Tears is the break of my brow,
The moony tempestuous
Sitting down

In dark railyards
When to see my mother’s face
Recalling from the waking vision
I wept to understand
The trap mortality
And personal blood of earth
Which saw me in—

Father father

Why hast thou forsaken me?
Mortality & unpleasure
Roam this city—

Unhappiness my middle name
I want to be saved,--
Sunk—can’t be
Won’t be
Never was made—
So retch!

Ditty of First Desire / Federico García Lorca

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.


And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.


(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)


In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.


And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale. Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.