The Flower Duet (‘Sous le dôme épais’) from Lakmé

Flower Duet
Under the thick dome where the white jasmine
With the roses entwined together
On the river bank covered with flowers laughing in the morning
Let us descend together!
Gently floating on its charming risings,
On the river’s current
On the shining waves,
One hand reaches,
Reaches for the bank,
Where the spring sleeps,
And the bird, the bird sings.
Under [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 30 2009

[Often when he was advancing]
often
when he was advancing
feeling his way in the night
he was doubtful rebelled
wanted to climb back up
to the old light
but a force held him
enjoined him
to pursue
to venture
once more
once again
into the thickest darkness
of his shadow
one day
at the height of his distress
emptied of all force
driven to see that
the inaccessible [...]

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The highest form of goodness is like water

Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them.
It stays in places loathed by all men.
Therefore, it comes near the Tao.
In choosing your dwelling, know how to dive in the hidden deeps.
In dealing with others, know how to be gentle and kind.
In speaking, know how to keep your words.
In governing, know how to [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 29 2009

Broken Promises
I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval
long after the others have taken their seats,
and [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 28 2009

Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
…………………………………
by Jane Hirshfield (born 1953)

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Poem of the day, Sept. 27 2009

Photograph of my Room
after Walker Evans
Thirty years from now, you might
hold this room in your hands.
So that you will not wonder:
the china cups are from Serbia
where a man filled them with plum
wine and one night talked
of his life with the partisans
and in prison, his life
as a poet, Slavko, his life
as if it could not have [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 26 2009

The Way I Learned to Write
There were words I had to leave behind,
moonlight, backward ponies.
Leaving flowers out seemed safest.
Trying for something surreal,
A trouble free rise of smoke and lavender.
No not lavender. Any shade
of purple is best left alone.
Perhaps a jaundiced smoke
rising in my poetry
would be best, although I like violet haze.
Many a summer morning,
while other [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 25 2009

The Truth
Every time I use
my language, I tell
the truth. A cat
in a white collar,
like a priest with calico
fur, walks across the dead
grass of the yard, and out
through the white fence. The sun’s
strong, but the colors of the lawn
were washed out by the winter, not the light.
February. Stained glass window of the house
next door takes the [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 24 2009

In a letter to author Annette Kolb, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: That which speaks to me about the humane, the overwhelming, and with an authorative calm that gets my full attention, are the figures of the young dead, and even more necessary, clean, inexhaustible: the loving. Through both those figures, the humaneness is blended into [...]

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Poem of the day, Sept. 23 2009

Hats
Auntie lies in the rest home with a feeding tube and a bedpan, she weighs nothing, she fidgets and shakes, and all I can see are her knotted hands and the carbon facets of her eyes, she was famous for her pies and her kindness to neighbors, but if it is true that every hat [...]

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