– Gerard Manley Hopkins, early 1900s

Miss Nancy Ellicott
Strode across the hills and broke them,
Rode across the hills and broke them –
The barren New England hills –
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
But they knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law.

by T.S. Eliot. In his earlier years IIRC. I love that stanza in the middle.

Monet never knew
              he was painting his "Lilies" for
      a lady from the Chicago Art Institute
          who went to France and filmed
              today's lilies
              by the "Bridge at Giverny"
                  a leaf afloat among them
      the film of which now flickers
          at the entrance to his framed visions
              with a Debussy piano soundtrack
flooding with a new fluorescence (fleur-essence?)
      the rooms and rooms
              of waterlilies

Monet caught a Cloud in a Pond
               in 1903
      and got a first glimpse
                      of its lilies and for twenty years returned
      again and again to paint them
          which now gives us the impression
              that he floated thru life on them
                              and their reflections
          which he also didn�t know
              we would also have occasion
                          to reflect upon
Anymore than he could know
          that John Cage would be playing a
              "Cello with Melody-driven Electronics"
                      tonight at the University of Chicago
And making those Lilies shudder and shed
                                  black light

–Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1950s

The thing I like most about this poem is the underlying conflict between expressionism/impressionism, but how that’s totally unnecessary to aesthetically enjoying the poem. Irony?

(aside: Poetry sucks in html. This is the best fix I could find. My apologies.)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

-e. e. cummings

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida
en la pr�xima tratar�a de cometer m�s errores.
No intentar�a ser tan perfecto… me relajar�a m�s.
Ser�a m�s tonto de lo que he sido;
de hecho tomar�a muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Ser�a menos higi�nico.
Correr�a m�s riesgos, har�a m�s viajes, contemplar�a m�s atardeceres,
subir�a m�s monta�as, nadar�a m�s r�os.
Ir�a a m�s lugares a donde nunca he ido;
comer�a m�s helados y menos habas;
tendr�a m�s problemas reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui de esas personas que vivi� sensata y prol�ficamente cada momento de su vida.
Claro que tuve momentos de alegr�a, pero si pudiera volver atr�s
tratar�a de tener solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no saben, de eso est� hecha la vida, s�lo de momentos; no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna parte sin un term�metro,
una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paraca�das.
Si pudiera volver a vivir, comenzar�a a andar descalzo a
principios de primavera y seguir�a as� hasta concluir el oto�o.
Dar�a m�s vueltas en calesita, contemplar�a m�s amaneceres
y jugar�a con m�s ni�os, si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.
Pero ya ven, tengo 85 a�os y s� que me estoy muriendo…

–Jorge Luis Borges

UPDATE:
Whoops, and it looks like there is some skepticism as to authenticity of this poem.
This text did seem a lit too whimsical for Borges when I was reading it (Since when does he talk as goofily as needing to take a thermos and parachute outside with him). But, the talk of dawn and sunsets, and especially that bit about being 85 and dying at the end, well, it had me fooled.

His replies have been amazing, especially in their spread of subject matter.
Ranging from introspective

to psychotic

to (probably my favorite, by Doctorow), futuristic.

..the notes rose and they fell – moving with easy grace through the evening air and across the rest of her life…

yes, we are, handfuls of dust, yet, made of stars, you have fastened, across the walls, of this room without ceiling,
but our aimless exsistance is given meaning,
when at the threshold, without distance, you stand in Your meridian

-Jyro Xhan

but, then, blogging about it does draw me out of the moment, doesn’t it? there’s some unspoken boundary between observer and participant, the one who experiences and the one who reminisces, that we cross when we decide to write about things.

oh well, i’ll forget about it. and get back to finding, or losing, this moment in time.