Kvetch » Vows » Can we make a giant ceremony readings repository?
| On Love, by Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471) [message #47936] |
Wed, 03 December 2003 19:37   |
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Thanks for the thank-yous (for starting this thread) everyone, but I did it for purely selfish reasons: I wanted ideas for ceremony readings for myself! And I must say, it definitely paid off. Twiga, I really want to use "The Master Speed" in my ceremony -- I love it love it love it and had never heard it before.
Here's another reading to throw on the pile. It sort of reminds me of the common Corinthians one ("Love is patient, etc.") in theme, but, well, isn't Corinthians.
ON LOVE
~Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471)
Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good.
Love alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.
It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders all
bitterness sweet and acceptable.
Nothing is sweeter than love,
Nothing stronger,
Nothing higher,
Nothing wider,
Nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God.
Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.
It is free and unrestrained.
Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.
Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,
attempts things beyond its strength.
Love sees nothing as impossible,
for it feels able to achieve all things.
It is strange and effective,
while those who lack love faint and fail.
Love is not fickle and sentimental,
nor is it intent on vanities.
Like a living flame and a burning torch,
it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.
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| Re: Can we make a giant ceremony readings repository? [message #48013] |
Wed, 03 December 2003 23:58 |
 shannon
Messages: 2118
Registered: June 2003
Location: Illinois by way of Washin... |
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These two from ours:
Sappho’s Invocation of Aphrodite:
"Aphrodite of the Flowers at Knossos Coming Down from Heaven’s Mountain
Leave Crete and come to this holy temple Where your graceful grove of apple trees Circles an altar smoking with incense. Here ice water babbles through the apple branches and roses leave shadow on the ground and bright shaking leaves pour down profound sleep. In our meadows where the horses graze amid wild blossoms of the spring and anise shoots fill soft winds with aroma of honey; Love goddess, pour heaven’s nectar carefully into gold wineglasses and mingle our celebration with sudden joy."
Selections from Ruth 1 (which IS about romance if you're a lesbian):
Ruth 1:8-19 After the deaths of her sons Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back each of you to your mother's house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of a new husband." Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, "No, we will return with you to your people." But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has turned against me." Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So she said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law." But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die-- there will I be buried. May the LORD curse me, if even death parts me from you!" When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.
Here's a poem I wrote as a wedding gift to my partner and we printed it in the program:
Entreat Me Not to Leave You
(for Cole)
They will all stare;
they’ll shake their heads in sympathy at best;
we’ll be a laughing stock if we’re lucky.
But what are their redundant stones to us?
Ruth followed Naomi —
not because it was a wise thing to do,
not because Naomi offered her a
single grain of power —
but because her hopeless heart was tied
to the little finger of a woman
who was walking down the road, and away.
So she followed.
Not the wise choice — simply the only choice
has moved women in their wake ever since.
So if I follow you today,
who can scorn me for going the one way
some smiling goddess will send my shameless feet?
© Shannon LC Cate 21 June 2003
Here's a poem I wrote as a wedding gift for my best friend and her husband when they got married:
The Lesson of Corninth
(for Karen in faith and for Rob with hope
upon the occasion of their marriage)
Anyone can learn to speak like the angels,
even as children this is how we spoke.
Anyone can make a convincing noise
and boast in the praise and wealth of the world.
But now, with bright knowledge piled at our feet
as our childhood prophesies come to an end,
we look dimly back the way we have come,
down narrow paths we’d rather not have trod,
and realize that it was not all our faith —
though we stand in this high place, where once there was sea;
we know that it wasn’t our deathless hope —
dearly cradled and sheltered between us these years;
but something more patient, something more kind,
something much greater, far simpler than these
that bore us and bears us and sends us rejoicing;
something that never ends.
(c) Copyright Shannon LC Cate 2003
"All that you have is your soul."
-Tracy Chapman
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| Re: The Way The Forest Shelters, by Rabia [message #48723] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 12:02 |
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(Cabengo...I love Hafiz!)
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| From "Letters" by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell [message #48852] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 14:50 |
Talula
Messages: 181
Registered: June 2003
Location: Los Angeles |
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Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
(we are putting this in our program. there are lots of other great Rilke readings like this in the book "Into the Garden: A Wedding Anthology" edited by Robert Hass and Stephen Mitchell)
beyond right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field.
I will meet you there. --Rumi
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| Rumi, Kulliyat-E Shams, 2667 [message #48998] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 18:59 |
Hells_Belle
Messages: 1863
Registered: November 2003
Location: NY > London > Cork! |
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May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade, like the desert palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcomed as the moon in a clear blue sky.
"As above, so below."
Poochie Poochie: Canine Couture | Hoochie Poochie: The Dog Blog!
Bartlet for President 2008
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| From "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy [message #52801] |
Sun, 14 December 2003 10:24 |
Kreesta
Messages: 2
Registered: December 2003
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FI and I are big fans of this book, and I majored in Russian language and literature in college, so it seems supremely appropriate for us:
_____
"Levin was happy, but having embarked on married life, he saw at every step that it was not at all what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man experiences when, after admiring the smooth, happy motion of a boat on a lake, he finds himself sitting in it himself. He found that it was not enough to sit quietly without rocking the boat, that he had constantly to consider what to do next, that not for a moment must he forget what course to steer or that there was water under his feet, that he had to row, much as it hurt his unaccustomed hands, that it was pleasant enough to look at it from the shore, but very hard, though very delightful, to sail it."
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| Oh, Tell Me the Truth About Love, by W.H. Auden [message #53783] |
Tue, 16 December 2003 17:07 |
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"O Tell Me the Truth About Love" by W.H. Auden
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
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| To Say Before Going to Sleep, by Rainer Maria Rilke [message #53784] |
Tue, 16 December 2003 17:09 |
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To Say Before Going to Sleep
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.
The clocks are striking, calling to eachother,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.
My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.
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| Reprise, by Ogden Nash [message #53789] |
Tue, 16 December 2003 17:10 |
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Reprise
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Geniuses of countless nations
Have told their love for generations
Till all their memorable phrases
Are common as goldenrod or daisies.
Their girls have glimmered like the moon,
Or shimmered like a summer moon,
Stood like a lily, fled like a fawn,
Now the sunset, now the dawn,
Here the princess in the tower
There the sweet forbidden flower.
Darling, when I look at you
Every aged phrase is new,
And there are moments when it seems
I've married one of Shakespeare's dreams.
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| Yeats (sorry--unsure of the title) [message #53897] |
Tue, 16 December 2003 21:36 |
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How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love, false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
Just melt with that last line--"...loved the sorrows of your changing face." Reminds me that all of those ex-men, who loved me for a night, or when they were in the mood, were unworthy compared to my DH, who loves all of me, my sorrows and bad graces.
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| Walt Whitman "Sleep" [message #54150] |
Wed, 17 December 2003 13:45 |
kathleen
Messages: 192
Registered: June 2003
Location: Madison, WI |
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"The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself."
http://www.spicyquotes.com/html/Walt_Whitman_Sleep.html
[Updated on: Wed, 17 December 2003 13:46]
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| Frau Ava, title unknown [message #54648] |
Thu, 18 December 2003 12:57 |
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I've read that this is the oldest known poem in the German language, but I can't confirm that. It would be great for a blessing, a tiny reading, or a program quotation:
I am yours. You are mine.
Of this we are certain.
You are lodged in my heart, the small key is lost.
You must stay there forever.
(edited to add that I've seen several variations on punctuation/line breaks, but this seems to be the most common version.)
[Updated on: Thu, 18 December 2003 12:59]
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| Hope Is The Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson [message #55070] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 03:03 |
muriel
Messages: 1267
Registered: December 2003
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Hope Is The Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.
BTW, I know this isn't the Knot. I know how much better this place is. I was totally ganged up on over there over some of my centerpieces and I THOUGHT this place was more understanding. - DeblovesMike1985
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| The Bargain, by Sir Philip Sidney [message #55071] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 03:38 |
mouseysarah
Messages: 33
Registered: August 2003
Location: London |
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The Bargain
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
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| A description of marriage - Edmund O'Neill [message #55072] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 03:40 |
mouseysarah
Messages: 33
Registered: August 2003
Location: London |
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A description of marriage
Edmund O'Neill
Marriage is a promise of love.
It is a commitment to life – to the best two people can find to bring in each other.
Marriage offers opportunities for sharing and growth- a physical and emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime.
Within the circle of its love, marriage encompasses all of life's most important relationships. A wife and a husband are each other's best friend, confidant, lover, teacher, listener and critic.
Marriage deepens and enriches every fact of life. Happiness is fuller, memories are fresher, commitment is stronger. Even anger is felt more strongly, but passes more quickly.
Marriage understands and forgives the mistakes life is unable to avoid. It encourages and nurtures new life. When two people pledge to love and care for each other in marriage, they create a spirit unique in themselves which binds them closer then any spoken or written words.
Marriage is a promise. A potential, made in the hearts of two people who love, which takes a lifetime to fulfil.
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| To Love Is Not To Possess - James Kavanaugh [message #55073] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 03:41 |
mouseysarah
Messages: 33
Registered: August 2003
Location: London |
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To Love is Not to Possess
James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
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| Sonnet from the Portuguese XIV [message #55074] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 03:45 |
mouseysarah
Messages: 33
Registered: August 2003
Location: London |
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Sonnet from the Portuguese XIV
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
Thank you everyone for posting such inspiring excerpts and poems. They're a great insight into everyone's thoughts about marriage and partnership - this thread, better than any actual discussion I've seen, encapsulates what it is to 'be indie'. No schmaltz, no sickly sentiment, but lots of beautiful, honest, real understanding of what leads to and leads from a marriage. And readings people have posted have made me think - and that's what rocks most of all about this community. I learn every time I visit.
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| Re: The Master Speed by Robert Frost [message #55091] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 08:25 |
sundaysilence
Messages: 397
Registered: August 2003
Location: Boston, MA |
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THE MASTER SPEED by Robert Frost
No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still--
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar
[Updated on: Fri, 19 December 2003 08:26]
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| Re: Ithaka by C.P. Cavafy [message #55094] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 08:34 |
sundaysilence
Messages: 397
Registered: August 2003
Location: Boston, MA |
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Greetings - I came to this late, looks like you've already found the beauty of Frost's Master Speed! Here is another of ours. There are varied translations, we liked this one the best. Enjoy:
ITHAKA
by Constantine P. Cavafy
Translated by
Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
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| Shakespeare, Sonnet XXVII [message #55288] |
Fri, 19 December 2003 14:32 |
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What a wonderful idea this repository is!! Thanks! I'm completely drawn to the Ghibran poem, however overdone, but here's another I'm thinking of using:
Sonnet XXVII
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
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| excerpt from Poetry and Marriage, by Wendell Berry [message #56780] |
Sat, 27 December 2003 21:11 |
Yaz from Stumptown
Messages: 3122
Registered: July 2003
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An excerpt from Poetry and Marriage, written by Wendell Berry:
The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join one another only by joining the unknown.
We must not be misled by the procedures of experimental thought: in life, in the world, we are never given two known results to choose between, but only one result that we choose without knowing what it is.
Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words, bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed; some victories cannot be won; some loneliness is incorrigible.
But there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real; these givens come to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different place, or to make it perfect, but to make it inhabitable and to make it better. To flee from its realities is only to arrive at them unprepared.
Because the condition of marriage is worldly and it’s meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, is not going to be. where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you—and marriage, time, life, history, and the world—will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way. You have committed yourself with faith.
Faith has nothing to do with what is usually called optimism. As the traditional marriage ceremony insists, not everything that we stay to find out will make us happy. The faith, rather, is that by staying, and only by staying, we will learn something of the truth, that the truth is good to know, and that it is always both different and larger than we thought.
~ Yaz
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| The Rain Diary - Alan Brownjohn [message #56857] |
Sun, 28 December 2003 17:07 |
Baygirl
Messages: 2600
Registered: June 2003
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We printed this in our program because to me it speaks about the authentic self:
The Rain Diary
For my geography project I would keep a rain diary, a record starting on 1st January of the days that year when it rained and approximately how much.
On 1st January there was no rain. On 2nd January there was no rain. It did not rain on 3rd or 4th either. Would I go back to school on 8th January with nothing to show? Only blank pages with the dates in blue-black italic and the expectation of punishment?
Amanda kept a sunshine diary. The sun shone all the time that New Year, every day was like the legendary 1st January 1942. I saw long shadows of bare trees in Amanda’s garden revolving on the stiff white grass as the sun crawled low and bright round the Warwickshire sky. Amanda, day by day, logged her hours of sunshine in duffle coat and mittens, putting out her tongue to warm her fingertips.
Tiny planes inched over the blue from the aerodrome leaving lacy strips of vapour which crumbled into strung-out blurs. There was no rain on 5th, 6th, or 7th. I gained a sense of what life in general would be like.
On 8th January I stood at 8:55 a.m. on the worn stone step of the school with my blank diary – and raindrops fell. But I had no time to write anything down, the bell was pounding in the school campanile and we could not be late. So I opened my rain diary and let the rain fall into it, stain it and crinkle it, as the others fled past me into school.
To which rain I added my own joyful tears, knowing that Amanda might have statistics but I had a concrete event.
"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California." -- E. Abbey
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| Somewhere I have never traveled - e.e. cummings [message #56858] |
Sun, 28 December 2003 17:09 |
Baygirl
Messages: 2600
Registered: June 2003
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(This is our theme song:  )
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
[Updated on: Sun, 28 December 2003 17:10]
"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California." -- E. Abbey
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| Sudden light: Dante Rosetti [message #56859] |
Sun, 28 December 2003 17:11 |
Baygirl
Messages: 2600
Registered: June 2003
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Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall---I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California." -- E. Abbey
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| The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer [message #57357] |
Tue, 30 December 2003 21:20 |
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It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are square in your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed down from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving, to hide it, fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon in God’s presence.
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments.
My mom read this during our ceremony. We heard it at a friends wedding and fell in love with it.
[Updated on: Tue, 30 December 2003 21:23]
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| Re: Somewhere I have never traveled - e.e. cummings [message #57362] |
Tue, 30 December 2003 21:51 |
RuthD
Messages: 24
Registered: December 2003
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Member |
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| Baygirl wrote on Mon, 29 December 2003 10:09 |
(This is our theme song: )
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
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Baygirl - was this poem used in a movie once? I can hear a woman's voice reading the last line in my head, but I can't place the memory.
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| cummings and Yeats [message #57792] |
Fri, 02 January 2004 10:36 |
Rosalita
Messages: 1146
Registered: June 2003
Location: Philadelphia |
Member |
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RuthD, "somewhere i have never travelled" was read in "Hannah and Her Sisters"--it's the poem that Michael Caine gives to Amy Irving.
Anon from 12/16, that Yeats poem is titled "When you are old." It's one of my favorites, although the last stanza changes the meaning considerably:
And, bending down beneath the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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| A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING by John Donne [message #57969] |
Fri, 02 January 2004 21:19 |
Roisin
Messages: 391
Registered: June 2003
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Member |
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This is rather long, but I love the imagery - particularly the "gold to airy thinness beat"
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
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| Re: Can we make a giant ceremony readings repository? [message #58295] |
Mon, 05 January 2004 00:55 |
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Thanks Rosalita for answering my question about the cummings poem.
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| Sir Walter Scott: Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13. [message #59085] |
Tue, 06 January 2004 17:55 |
Hurricane
Messages: 1486
Registered: November 2003
Location: The Metroplex |
Member |
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True love ’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy’s hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
...
If I can get Mr. Hurricane to overlook the mention of God (he's an athesist), I want to use this at our wedding somehow...
livejournal ~ flickr ~ wedding
"Back off man, I'm a scientist." -- Dr. Peter Venkman
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| Re: Love is More Thicker Than Forget : e e cummings [message #59701] |
Thu, 08 January 2004 08:58 |
Furhouse
Messages: 158
Registered: September 2003
Location: Ohio |
Member |
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| Quote: |
Everyone loved it, and my only disappointment is the whole, "I can't use it myself now, because I read it at a family member's wedding."
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Why not? I say use and enjoy.
http://furhouse.blogspot.com (A writer who writes stuff.)
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 Re: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Rimas: [message #60525] |
Fri, 09 January 2004 14:05 |
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Becquer is a Spanish romantic poet I like a great deal.
Here are some great examples. I'm rKatt, when I can get home to my e-mail to confirm my registration!
Rima XXIV
Two red tongues of fire
entwined to the same trunk
they draw near and, when they kiss,
they are one flame;
two notes that the hand
plays on the lute at the same time,
they meet in the air
and harmoniously embrace;
two waves that together
come to die on a beach
and when they break are crowned
by a plume of silver;
two banks of mist
rising from the lake
when they meet up there in the sky
they become one white cloud;
two ideas that are shaped together;
two kisses that mingle together;
two echoes that resound as one:
these are our two souls.
Translation: All Rights Reserved © 1999 Guia K. Monti
****
XXI
What is poetry?, you ask while your blue
eyes rivet mine.
What is poetry?, And you ask this?
Poetry... is you.
The rest are, as with most romantics, a little more disillusioned. Still beautiful, though.
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| Re: Can we make a giant ceremony readings repository? [message #60729] |
Fri, 09 January 2004 19:58 |
Mazzy
Messages: 327
Registered: June 2003
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Member |
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Oooh, I love that Rima one. Thanks rKatt!
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| Adrienne Rich, 21 Love Poems - 1 [message #64265] |
Sun, 18 January 2004 17:45 |
AnarchoGirl
Messages: 33
Registered: January 2004
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Member |
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Whenever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk...if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseparable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.
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| Wendell Berry -- The Wild Rose [message #76625] |
Sat, 14 February 2004 00:10 |
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The Wild Rose
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
--Wendell Berry
We have a different Wendell Berry poem on our wall at home, but this is a good reading for us, marrying after a decade together. Liked the essay of his posted earlier, too.
We're thinking about having our friends who are newlyweds read this together, alternating.
Edited to add-- this is Audrey. I haven't posted in so long I forgot to sign in!
[Updated on: Sat, 14 February 2004 00:13]
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