Inspired madness: poems and quotes

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Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies
and trip over the roots
of a sweet gum tree,
in search of medieval
plants whose leaves,
when they drop off
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they
plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal
human desire for peace
with every other species
wells up in you. The lion
and the lamb cuddling up.
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,
queen of the weeds, revives
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt
there is a leaf to cure it.

- Amy Gerstler

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[dvg]

We dare not touch the sugar,
And we must not touch the pie,
We're afraid to eat the syrup,
Can you guess the reason why?
The bread must be inspected,
And we overlook 'em then;
It just seems we've got to eat 'em.
Yes the ants are back again.
They are crawlin' in the cellar,
Everywhere on ev'ry shelf;
They are trackin' through the butter,
Every feller fer herself,
In the fruit upon the table,
In the stuff down on the floor;
Yes the busy ants are movin',
Never saw the like before.
We have killed 'em by the thousands
Yet a million more came on,
Couldn't tell fer all our trouble
That a single one was gone.
Scalded, peppered, mashed and burned 'em,
Yet they seem to have the call;
And I guess we're bound to eat 'em,
Bound to eat 'em after all.

-Ed Blair

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[dvg]

The panther wind
Leaps out of the night,
The snake of lightning
Is twisting and white,
The lion of thunder
Roars-and we
Sit still and content
Under a tree -
We have met fate together
And love and pain,
Why should we fear
The wrath of the rain!

- Sara Teasdale

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[dvg]

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Elliot

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The whiskey stink of rot has settled
in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises
when I touch the dying tomato plants.

Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms
flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots
and toss them in the compost.

It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village
as they pulled the flax. Songs so old
and so tied to the season that the very sound
seemed to turn the weather.

-Karina Borowicz

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Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.

- William Butler Yeats

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What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

- Theodore Roethke

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[gj]

Came across this and thought it would be worth sharing. It's a little long, so I just put the link below instead of putting the whole thing in the post.

The Sundew - Swinburne

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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

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[dvg]

Weeds don't need planting in well-drained soil; they don't ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away the birds. They come without invitation; and they don't take the hint when you want them to go. Weeds are nobody's guests: More like squatters.

-Norman Nicholson

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[dvg]

Say instead it was an evening in head-high
bracken with its smell of dark and medicine.
Thinking green of the infecting fern

where you may crouch and not be known,
lodging your feet for good amid the stalks.
A bower is a dwelling place or once it was

a cage for pent-up singing birds.
Look down to see the warp and weft of root.
All the world is in these clutches.

Look up to clock the fern’s drab underneath
blotched with spores you mustn’t breathe.
Breathe in deep. There’s nowhere else to live.

~Katherine Towers

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[dvg]

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart,



Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose looming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,



and once again I am blessed, choosing

again what I chose before.

~ Wendell Berry

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[dvg]

I sit staring out of my window

my thoughts melancholy

wondering how God

whom I so lately praise

for giving me such beautiful trees

after so many years

of careful caring

could destroy them

in one day

with twenty inches of wet snow

that will be gone tomorrow

and my heart tells me

God was right

I did not love them

nearly enough


~Sandy Mactaggart

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[dvg]

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer …

~Sara Teasdale

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[dvg]

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

~Emily Dickenson

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