this poem brought tears to my eyes...

[AbbaRabbit]

Posted: 7/24/05 at 8:36pm

smoethign about it... it's a beautiful poem, and i guess it just hit home since my family is in the rescue service and sometimes things happen on calls that can't be explained. it kinda makes you wonder if when somethign can't be explained, it's because of somthing like this.

A drunk man in an Oldsmobile
They said had run the light
That caused the six-car pileup
On 109 that night.

When broken bodies lay about
And blood was everywhere,
The sirens screamed out eulogies,
For death was in the air.

A mother, trapped inside her car,
Was heard above the noise;
Her plaintive plea near split the air:
Oh, God, please spare my boys!"

She fought to loose her pinned hands;
She struggled to get free,
But mangled metal held her fast
In grim captivity.

Her frightened eyes then focused
On where the back seat once had been,
But all she saw was broken glass and
Two children's seats crushed in.

Her twins were nowhere to be seen;
She did not hear them cry,
And then she prayed they'd been thrown free,
"Oh, God, don't let them die!"

Then firemen came and cut her loose,
But when they searched the back,
They found therein no little boys,
But the seat belts were intact.

They thought the woman had gone mad
And was traveling alone,
But when they turned to question her,
They discovered she was gone.

Policemen saw her running wild
And screaming above the noise
In beseeching supplication,
"Please help me find my boys!"

They're four years old and wear blue shirts;
Their jeans are blue to match."
One cop spoke up, "They're in my car,
And they don't have a scratch."

They said their daddy put them there
And gave them each a cone,
Then told them both to wait for Mom
To come and take them home.

"I've searched the area high and low,
>But I can't find their dad.
He must have fled the scene,
I guess, and that is very bad."

The mother hugged the twins and said,
While wiping at a tear,
"He could not flee the scene, you see,
For he's been dead a year."

The cop just looked confused and asked,
"Now, how can that be true?"
The boys said, "Mommy, Daddy came
And left a kiss for you.

He told us not to worry
And that you would be all right,
And then he put us in this car with
The pretty, flashing light.

We wanted him to stay with us,
Because we miss him so,
But Mommy, he just hugged us tight
And said he had to go.

He said someday we'd understand
And told us not to fuss,
And he said to tell you, Mommy,
He's watching over us."

The mother knew without a doubt
That what they spoke was true,
For she recalled their dad's last words,
"I will watch over you."

The firemen's notes could not explain
The twisted, mangled car,
And how the three of them escaped
Without a single scar.

But on the cop's report was scribed,
In print so very fine,
"An angel walked the beat tonight on Highway 109."

[Aigoo]

Posted: 7/24/05 at 8:56pm

Am I the only person who is unaffected by this sort of thing? Anyway...this was the only poem that brought me close to welling up.

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child



Márgarét, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.



Gerard Manley Hopkins

[SallyBrown]

Posted: 7/24/05 at 8:58pm

...........you people are awful who like to make children like me CRY!

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 7/24/05 at 9:36pm

What happened to the other five cars?

I love poetry.
This is one of my very favorites, it always makes me cry:

There once was a young man named Saul
Who had a hexagonal ball
The square of its weight
Plus his pecker X 8
Is his phone number, give him a call.


Let us pray.

Posted: 7/24/05 at 10:07pm

OH Sueleen! Thank you for posting that lovely poem! It did me good! I hope you might enjoy this one, also:

I once knew a man named McGreene
He built a f*cking machine!
Concave or convex
it fit either sex
but, oh, what a bastard to clean!

[Mythus]

Posted: 7/24/05 at 10:27pm

That's inspiring, Joe.

I once read a poem about a man being led to the gallows (if I remember correctly). It was in a book of Irish poems, I wish I could find it. Oh, and I remember a verse from another poem in that book:

"Come away, oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand."

I just Googled it, it's by Yeats. Beautiful poem.

Updated On: 7/24/05 at 10:27 PM

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 7/25/05 at 1:04am

As neat as that first poem is, it's really just a simple rhyming narrative with some cliches and bad rhymes to boot. But Aigoo, I do enjoy the poem you posted; I remember being drawn to that one the first time I read it in my poetry class.

Here is one of my favourite poems, a work of real rich beauty. It's by one of our queer brethren (aren't all great poets?), W.H. Auden. Please excuse the lack of indentation, I can't seem to get the message window to do my bidding. Oh, it helps if you know Homer's ILIAD a bit.


THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES
W.H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

Updated On: 7/25/05 at 01:04 AM