Quotes about alleys, page 15
The Sufi In The City
I.
When late I watched the arrows of the sleet
Against the windows of the Tavern beat,
I heard a Rose that murmured from her Pot:
'Why trudge thy fellows yonder in the Street?
II.
'Before the phantom of False Morning dies,
Choked in the bitter Net that binds the skies,
Their feet, bemired with Yesterday, set out
For the dark alleys where To-morrow lies.
III.
'Think you, when all their petals they have bruised,
And all the fragrances of Life confused,
That Night with sweeter rest will comfort these
Than us, who still within the Garden mused?
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poem by Sir Henry Newbolt
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Two Shadows
Moral codes under black lace
Permeate the sensuous epidermis
We touch in sanctuary
We meet inside the dim lit cathedral
Past the sinew
Past the circus
There are symbols on your walls
Conversion is not dogmatic
Love walks these stone alleys
Narrow streets where artists paint
Romance is a blue sea within
Romance is dangerous like a city
You see my dark corridors
You see my sharp edges
I am the defiled, the hopeful
Please see my warm fire
Your eyes are my candles
Self-portraits are incognito
We reveal one another
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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Of Reckoning
A somnolent velvet mustered and galloped
With the maladroit circling of the parliament
Of vultures and crows over slumbering carrion—
Meat suits disembogued of the singeing blood
And I am one among the riveted motions
Shearing the skies with profane pulsations
Lingering in the temples of the unholiest gods
Here, I am a colorless myriad of liaisons:
A sedentary life, a breathless death,
Lurking back into the svelte gutters
Of irrevocable stains of melancholia.
The redolence creaking with the floorboards
That used to be scraping warmth and life
Beneath the pheromones and morning breaths,
The humdrum noise in the alleys of turbulence
With people for walls, and hearts for rings
That binds ladders for all the falling,
The last tick of the crooning clockwork
Careening for gilded memories and staring
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poem by Norman Santos
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Vicissitude II: Spring
The picador sun retires
And pants gloriously in his throne
His sweat quenched the drought;
Ocher turns to green and yellow
Marauding with the superfluity
Of palettes soused in nubile flowers—
A chateau of jaunty heraldries
And in the subterfuge of its alleys
I trampled in a quaint boudoir;
A loquacious room for a witling orchid
In the labyrinthine contours of the heather
I strife, I stride, I earnestly bristle
The verdure of saccharine spring time
But the pristine panoramic scene
Diverges a tatterdemalion man
Lost in dainty blossoming days
So I sifted through the prairies,
Ran across turfs, knolls, and valleys,
And slumber with a wilting orchid
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poem by Norman Santos
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Alf’s Fifth Bit
The pomps of butchery, financial power,
Told 'em to die in war, and then to save,
Then cut their saving to the half or lower;
When will this system lie down in its grave?
The pomps of Fleet St., festering year on year,
Hid truth and lied, and lied and hid the facts.
The pimps of Whitehall ever more in fear,
Hid health statistics, dodged the Labour Acts.
All drew their pay, and as the pay grew less,
The money rotten and more rotten yet,
Hid more statistics, more feared to confess
C.3, C.4, 'twere better to forget
How many weak of mind, how much tuberculosis
Filled the back alleys and the back to back houses.
'The medical report this week discloses . . .'
'Time for that question!' Front Bench interposes.
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poem by Ezra Pound
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Heat
One summer day while jocular spare toothed old men
Played bocce in the park in their sleevless shirts
And drank beer from brown paper bags
While a scorching late afternoon breeze
Wafted odors of frying onions, ground beef and wax peppers which stung the flared nostrils
Of mothers pushing baby carriages, fanning themselves with newspapers
Which declared the heat wave of the century
While jagged edged loudspeakers played music of the Rancheros
from the door of a record store
While shrill voiced children ran through the wash of a fire hydrant
While wine pissed bums slept in alcoves and trolley cars clanged along the boulevard
One day as the summer sun sank steamily into the depths of the west coast
From the spectacle of light and heat arose a languishing solar flare
which licked along the walls and alleys, igniting the city
with a light the sun can never shine
And from nests come preened falcons and nightingales
warbling love songs in the hot endless night.
poem by George Murdock
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Water, Poet: Sohrab Sepehri
We shouldn’t muddy the water
A pigeon may drink it down the road
Or in a far away grove a starling may bathe
Or in the village, a jug may be filled
We shouldn’t muddy the water
This running water may feed a poplar and
wash away sadness from a heavy heart
A dervish may dip his dry bread in it
A pretty woman may come to the river bank
We shouldn’t muddy the water
The beauty will be doubled
What refreshing water!
What limpid river!
How pure the uptown people are
May their springs always boil and their cows always milk!
I have not seen their village
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poem by Mehraneh Hosseini
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I would go home again—to rooms...
I would go home again—to rooms
With sadness large at eventide,
Go in, take off my overcoat,
And in the light of streets outside
Take cheer. I'll pass the thin partitions
Right through; yes, like a beam I'll pass,
As image blends into an image,
As one mass splits another mass.
Let all abiding mooted problems
Deep rooted in our fortunes seem
To some a sedentary habit;
But still at home I brood and dream.
Again the trees and houses breathe
Their old refrain and fragrant air.
Again to right and left old winter
Sets up her household everywhere.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Qualities of light
A certain gauzy luminosity
In the dawn of a summer day
The diffuse, dispersive quality
As morning breaks… across the bay
That almost palpable morning spark
In a young girl’s liquid eyes
Dawn’s nascent glow… ‘neath night’s dark
Of star and moonlit skies
Golden haloes drape oe’r mountaintops
Beams peeking shyly through the valleys
Columns of crystal, piercing thunderclouds
Chasing darkness… down empty alleys
Filtering through filigree lace of old lady’s windows
Spotlighting dust motes dancing in air
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poem by David Whalen
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In an Old Town Garden
Shut from the clamor of the street
By an old wall with lichen grown,
It holds apart from jar and fret
A peace and beauty all its own.
The freshness of the springtime rains
And dews of morning linger here;
It holds the glow of summer noons
And ripest twilights of the year.
Above its bloom the evening stars
Look down at closing of the day,
And in its sweet and shady walks
Winds spent with roaming love to stray,
Upgathering to themselves the breath
Of wide-blown roses white and red,
The spice of musk and lavender
Along its winding alleys shed.
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poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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