Poetry thread. Post poems you like, poems you don't like, and/or poems you've written. Others read, comment...

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

This is Phillip Larkin

I don’t want to make too much of this,
but because the bedroom faces east
across a lake here in Florida,

when the sun begins to rise
and reflects off the water,
the whole room is suffused with the kind

of golden light that might travel
at dawn on the summer solstice
the length of a passageway in a megalithic tomb.

Again, I don’t want to exaggerate,
but it reminds me of a brand of light
that could illuminate the walls
of a hidden chamber full of treasure,
pearls and gold coins overflowing the silver platters.

I feel like comparing it to the fire
that Aphrodite lit in the human eye
so as to make it possible for us to perceive
the other three elements,

but the last thing I want to do
is risk losing your confidence
by appearing to lay it on too thick.

Let’s just say that the morning light here
would bring to any person’s mind
the rings of light that Dante

deploys in the final cantos of the Paradiso
to convey the presence of God,
while bringing the Divine Comedy
to a stunning climax and leave it at that.

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This is Carl Sandburg

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