Citatepedia^®.com

Nine Billion Names Of God

Once nine billion names of God were known
the world would end, the monks declared.
When scientists transferred them from a stone
on which He’d written them, they then compared
these names to those of all the stars astronomers
had managed to discover, and thus found
a proof their names were all eponymous,
based on a God, who out of sight and sound,
left traces in the starry sky that He
exists, the Founder of the universe.
Once this was known, they could no longer see
the stars, which He extinguished with a curse,
because although He challenges us to know
His names, He does not want us to find out
precisely where the trees of knowledge grow,
because His universe is based on doubt.

Dennis Overbye (“A Boy’s Life, Guided by the Cosmic Wonder, ” NYT, March 25,2007) writes about the science fiction writer and space visionary, the co-creator with Stanley Kubrick of the classic 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Overbye, who was greatly influenced by Clarke’s writings which he describes as the ultimate reason why he ended up becoming an MIT graduate, reports that a supernova exploded in the constellation Boötes on the day of Clarke’s death:
It was the remains of a cataclysmic explosion, a gamma-ray burst, that must have torched a galaxy seven billion light-years away, around the curve of the cosmos, as Clarke might have put it. Nobody knows if there could have been somebody or something living there, when the universe was half its present age. When I heard about it I couldn’t help thinking about Clarke’s Jesuit and the star of Bethlehem. Whoever or whatever was there now belongs to the ages. Darkness has now reclaimed that spot in the sky.

[...] Read more

poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Idols Of Death

Cold marble pressed against sweating skin
The floor of my asylum is a rivulet of luxury
Decadent memories of a former life stir
Reminiscence within the hours of my awakening
I'm falling, failing to rise
Keeping open with a hope in faith my eyes,
Still I fall; still I am to be found
Carving circles in the ground
Crying out for a sanctuary in the sky.

We are as insane puppets dancing, fuelled my the motion to live
Pulling our own strings when we wish and sometimes the strings of others.

I sit alone at a table round
Where are the knights of my fable?
Where is the romance that was promised to me by fairy tale philosophies?

Some are coordinated by the will to live
Some by the fear they may die
Some by the notion to give

[...] Read more

poem by David Lacey
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Provincia Deserta

At Rochecoart,
Where the hills part
in three ways,
And three valleys, full of winding roads,
Fork out to south and north,
There is a place of trees . . . gray with lichen.
I have walked there
thinking of old days.
At Chalais
is a pleached arbour;
Old pensioners and old protected \vomen
Have the right there
it is charity.
I have crept over old rafters,
peering down
Over the Dronne,
over a stream full of lilies.
Eastward the road lies,
Aubeterre is eastward,
With a garrulous old man at the inn.

[...] Read more

poem by Ezra Pound
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.

[...] Read more

poem by Ogden Nash
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Not Imitating Anything Within Myself

Not imitating anything within myself. Not
cloning, replicating, or even confining
the same seeds to the same plants, endlessly
spiralling through space like a galaxy or a hawk,
drift, release, and disperse, condense and shine,
shudder with motherlodes of lightning in the ore,
let the light turn back on itself like a solar flare
or an ingrown hair, let the presence show me
the absolute purity of its absence if it must,
and that which is greatly unknown retain its sublimity.

I seek nothing. And find it everywhere. I make
no appeal to the silence to make something happen
for a change, as if it had a mind of its own
that didn't come with an explanation or an alibi.
Neither indictment nor confession, I'm not listening
to the stars through the black walnut leaves with my ears.
Three blocks away the teen agers sound like
white water in a small rapid, and the heavy night air
can barely keep its eyelids open, and though

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

My Wild Rose & A Good Woman's Love!

MY WILD ROSE & A GOOD WOMAN'S LOVE!

You 're the full moon of my nights
And the sunshine of my day
Like a queen upon her throne
You rule what I do and say.

It's God who makes us beautiful
And the Devil who makes us mean
It all depends on whom we follow
Which way our lives shall lean.

With one foot in the future
And one foot in the past
Let us try to live our days
As though each was our last.

You're the wild rose of my life
My flower of desire

[...] Read more

poem by Tom Zart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Security

There once was a limpet puffed with pride
Who said to the ribald sea:
"It isn't I who cling to the rock,
It's the rock that clings to me;
It's the silly old rock who hugs me tight,
Because he loves me so;
And though I struggle with all my might,
He will not let me go."

Then said the sea, who hates the rock
That defies him night and day:
"You want to be free - well, leave it to me,
I'll help you get away.
I know such a beautiful silver beach,
Where blissfully you may bide;
Shove off to-night when the moon is bright,
And I'll swig you thee on my tide."

"I'd like to go," said the limpet low,
"But what's a silver beach?"

[...] Read more

poem by Robert William Service
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Address to the Unco Guid

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An' lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight
May hae some pyles o' caff in;
So ne'er a fellow creature slight
For random fits o' daffin.
Solomon.--Eccles. ch. vii. verse 16

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours' fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water;
The heapèd happer's ebbing still,
An' still the clap plays clatter.

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Burns
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Summary History of Sir William Wallace

Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie,
I'm told he went to the High School in Dundee,
For to learn to read and write,
And after that he learned to fight,
While at the High School in Dundee,
The Provost's son with him disagree,
Because Wallace did wear a dirk,
He despised him like an ignorant stirk,
Which with indignation he keenly felt,
And told him it would become him better in his belt.

Then Wallace's blood began to boil,
Just like the serpent in its coil,
Before it leaps upon its prey;
And unto him he thus did say:
'Proud saucy cur, come cease your prate,
for no longer shall i wait,
For to hear you insult me,
At the High School in Dundee;
For such insolence makes my heart to smart,

[...] Read more

poem by William Topaz McGonagall
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Address to the Unco Guid, or The Rigidly Righteous

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An' lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight
May hae some pyles o' caff in;
So ne'er a fellow-creature slight
For random fits o' daffin.
Solomon.-Eccles. ch. vii. verse 16.

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours' fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water;
The heaped happer's ebbing still,
An' still the clap plays clatter.

Hear me, ye venerable core,

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Burns
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!