Continuing to live — that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries —
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise —
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it’s chess.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
And what’s the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Юлия Друнина – Альпинисту
- Владимир Британишский – В Емуртлинском форпосте сибирских драгун
- God Cut the Cord by Raj Napal
- Drinking-Song, A. To a Formal, Proud, Sober Coxcomb by William Wycherley
- The Pulling Away by Timothy Cole
- Владимир Высоцкий – День-деньской я с тобой, за тобой
- By the Hoof of the Wild Goat by Rudyard Kipling
- Full Moon by Walid Saba
- you witness my dying by Raj Arumugam
- Ок Мельникова – Где-то на приморском
- Pied Beauty by Ted Hughes
- By The Camp Fire
- Robert Burns: To Alex. Cunningham, ESQ., Writer: Ellisland, Nithsdale, July 27th, 1788.
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 2. Old Yew, which graspest at the sto poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.