Time mashup:

In its flow, in its motion
The past can never live up to the present,
especially when the color is yellow.
Nature's rhythm enables those who listen.

In its flow, in its motion
The past can never live up to the present,
especially when the color is yellow.
Nature's rhythm enables those who listen. — Cavacava

Is that your own? Don't make me bring out my poetry. Things could get ugly.

I never understood poetry outside of English class lessons analyzing them. I feel like I'm missing out on something but have difficulty in understanding poems as they can be quite deep in meaning.

I never understood poetry outside of English class lessons analyzing them. I feel like I'm missing out on something but have difficulty in understanding poems as they can be quite deep in meaning. — Posty McPostface

For me, poetry either works or it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. If it doesn't for you, that's just the way things go.

For me, poetry either works or it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. If it doesn't for you, that's just the way things go. — T Clark

I did like the “Tao Te Ching” – Lao Tzu poem though.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and ac-
cepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of chil-
dren,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

-Burnt Norton I, from Four Quartets, by T.S. Elliot

Damn, I get something new out of that every time I re-read it.

I think great poetry, like any art form, works on multiple levels. It should suck you in viscerally and emotionally, but have enough depth that you can reflect on it later, analyze it, and gain something new from it. And once that cycle has completed, and begins again, the new info you've gleaned through analysis influences the fresh, visceral experience of re-reading. This is how a poem gains depth. And yes, the poem is what gains depth over time, because your individual experience of the poem is what's undergoing an evolution.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. — Noble Dust

I have never liked T.S. Elliot, but I liked that. I wonder if it's because I'm almost 66.

Dunno; I'm much younger than that but love him. Was your dislike because of The Wasteland, by any chance? Edit: saw what you quoted, re: age. Never mind. I like the time stuff because it's confusing, but intuitively feels right.

Four Quartets is a must read, to me. That's just the first section; it's about 50 pages long, and all equally as arcane, profound, annoying, and beautiful. It's the kind of long form poem I'll be reading for the rest of my life, and always gleaning something new from.

Also, Elliot studied philosophy, and then turned to poetry later. The minimalist composer Steve Reich did the same thing, turning to music.

Dunno; I'm much younger than that but love him. Was your dislike because of The Wasteland, by any chance? Edit: saw what you quoted, re: age. Never mind. I like the time stuff because it's confusing, but intuitively feels right. — Noble Dust

It's just that the way he talks about time matches how it feels looking back. Not exactly the same thing - but I often feel as if everything that ever happened in my life is still happening. My whole life is happening at once. Things that happened 50 years ago are just as real, and close at hand, as things that happened yesterday. My father, who died in 2001, is just as much with me as he was then.

That makes sense; I was made aware of that to a small degree when I was in therapy; living with regret or shame causes us to live in the past, or rather, the past is living with us in the present. Hopefully there's positive applications of that as well.

Actually, re: Elliot as a philosopher-turned-poet, I love how in that first section of Burnt Norton, he sets out a philosophical proposition, and then, rather than providing a logical argument, he paints a dream-like picture of the surreal concept of "what might have been and what has been" (all of which occurs in "the rose-garden"). And then finishes off the section with a re-statement of the proposition. The way he creates that world, through imagination, feels more "real" than a logical proof attempting the same goal.

Now it is time that gods came walking out
of lived-in Things...
Time that they came and knocked down every wall
inside my house. New page. Only the wind
from such a turning could be strong enough
to toss the air as a shovel tosses dirt:
a fresh-turned field of breath. O gods, gods!
who used to come so often and are still
asleep in the Things around us, who serenely
rise and at wells that we can only guess at
splash icy water on your necks and faces,
and lightly add your restedness to what seems
already filled to bursting: our full lives.
Once again let it be your morning, gods.
We keep repeating. You alone are source.
With you the world arises, and your dawn
gleams on each crack and crevice of our failure...

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from Uncollected Poems (1923-1926)

No, it's because you're more than 65.

From Wallace Stevens Esthetique du Mal:

XII

He disposes the world in categories, thus:
The peopled and the unpeopled. In both, he is
Alone. But in the peopled world, there is,
Besides the people, his knowledge of them. In
The unpeopled, there is his knowledge of himself.
Which is more desperate in the moments when
The will demands that what he thinks be true?

Is it himself in them that he knows or they
In him? If it is himself in them, they have
No secret from him. If it is they in him,
He has no secret from them. This knowledge
Of them and of himself destroys both worlds,
Except when he escapes from it. To be
Alone is not to know them or himself.

This creates a third world without knowledge,
In which no one peers, in which the will makes no
Demands. It accepts whatever is as true,
Including pain, which, otherwise, is false.
In the third world, then, there is no pain. Yes, but
What lover has one in such rocks, what woman,
However known, at the centre of the heart?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/785/785-h/785-h.htm

Perhaps a bit obvious, but worth noting all the same.

Philosophy, philosophy,
Bad for your head.
The more you think,
The more your brain farts.
The more your brain farts,
The worse you think.
So let's pour philosophy down the sink.

(Y)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/wisdom-and-follies-haikus/

Wisdom and Follies Haikus
by George Bruce

Books – thousands – on shelves –
Wisdom of ages.
Folly if not in me

When two words do
for ten, then there is
the possibility of wisdom

When ten words set out
to do what two will do
then there is foolishness

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mindfulness-of-righteous-anger/

Mindfulness of Righteous Anger
by McGuire

Mindfully running for the bus and missing it anyway. 
Mindfully mistreating a cold caller with disproportionate contempt. 
Mindfully furious as the news unfolds. 
Mindfully shouting until you’re red in the face at the opposition. 
Mindfully arming yourself against injustice  
by doing nothing for a bit. 

Mindfully arguing for an hour and wanting to be right  
about something you don’t entirely understand yourself  
but you are too invested in now 
to be willing to concede anyway. 

Mindfully breaking suddenly in your car 
at a pedestrian walking out in front of you shouting:  
‘WATCH WHERE THE HELL YOU’RE GOING, IDIOT!’ 

Mindfully alarmed with the awareness 
that it is in your nature to die, have accidents and get ill. 
Mindfully alone, unbalanced and tear-filled. 
Mindfully slamming the door and deleting all accounts. 

Mindfully finished. 
Mindfully snapping the last straw. 
Mindfully to the bin with it all. 
Mindfully in a love hate relationship with dissatisfaction. 
Mindfully sitting with your eyes squeezed shut  
wishing to vanish the world away. 

Mindfully so had it with the world  
you’ll give this mindfulness malarkey a miss  
for an hour of screaming at the sky instead.  

Mindfulness of this.

Deleted

If it doesn't for you, that's just the way things go. — T Clark

Or how the cookie crumbles.

Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Philip Larkin

Pretty bleak. As I've gotten older, I've felt less and less this way, for what that's worth. I think it started changing when my father died in 2001, when I was 49. It brought my family together in a way that had never happened before. That change continues.

I hear you. I don't share the poem's sentiment particularly, it's just one of the more memorable poems about death.

There once was a philosopher from Nantucket
Whose posts were too stupid to cut it
So he gave a quick glance as he unzipped his pants
And said if. @Baden must ban me he can suck it.

Sir Hanover

I hear you. I don't share the poem's sentiment particularly, it's just one of the more memorable poems about death. — Tom Storm

The closer I get to death, the funnier it seems. There's also that feeling of vertigo you get when you stand close to the edge of a great height.

Changing the subject, this is from "Aunt Celia, 1961" by Carl Dennis:

People will tell you there are many good lives
Waiting for everyone, each fine in its own way.
And maybe they’re right, but in my opinion
One is miles above the others.
Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so clear to me
When I found it. Otherwise those who lack it
Wouldn’t be able to tell so clearly it’s missing
As they go on living as best they can
Without complaining. Noble lives, and beautiful,
And happy as much as doing well can make them.
But as for the happiness that can’t be earned,
The kind it makes no sense for you to look for,
That’s something different.

Sir Hanover — Hanover

Poet, presidential candidate, goatherd, philosopher. Is there anything he can't do.

:lol: