„10 Minutes For a

“

A Selection of Poems presented by and in class 2Sa

in the first term 2004-2005

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Presented by Nicole and Corina

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                William Blake. 

My Pretty ROSE TREE

A FLOWER was offer'd to me,

Such a flower as May never bore;

But I said "I've a Pretty Rose-tree,"

And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree,

To tend her by day and by night;

But my Rose turn'd away with jealousy,

And her thorns were my only delight.

Sa

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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

THE DAFFODILS

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretch’d in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-

A poet could not but be gay

In such jocund company!

I gazed – and gazed – but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils.

Presented by Rachel

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Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
    I have dreamed of joy departed,
But a waking dream of life and light
    Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
    To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
    Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream - that holy dream,
    While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
    A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
    So trembled from afar,
What could there be more purely bright

In Truth_s day-star?

Presented by Evelyn and Stephanie

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Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Presented by Guido and Robin

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e.e. cummings

in a middle of a room

in a middle of a room

stands a suicide

sniffing a Paper rose

smiling to a self

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real: imagine

somewhere real flowers, but

I can't imagine real flowers for if I

could, they would somehow

not Be real"

(so he smiles

smiling)"but I will not

everywhere be real to

you in a moment"

The is blond

with small hands

"& everything is easier

than I had guessed everything would

be; even remembering the way who

looked at whom first, anyhow dancing"

(a moon swims out of a cloud

a clock strikes midnight

a finger pulls a trigger

a bird flies into a mirror)

Presented by Marc and Pablo

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David Diops

Times

There are times for dreaming

In the calm of nights by the hollow of silence

There are times for doubting

And the heavy veil of words is torn with sighs

There are times for suffering

Along the roads of war under our mothers’ eyes

There are times for loving

In the huts of light where the unique flesh signs

There is what colours the days to come

As the sun colours the flesh of plants

And in times of madness

In times of impatience

There is always the most fruitful seed

Of the times that bring the poised and certain stance.

Presented by Nayra and Sabine

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Sylvia Plath

Daddy
                                                 

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I'm finally through.

The black telephone's off at the root,

The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Sa

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Sylvia Plath

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

 Sa

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Sylvia Plath

The Colossus

"I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing."                                        

(Sa)

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Nicholas Gordon

Love Was Not Enough For Us
 

Love was not enough for us,
Though we were much in love.
We started down the well-worn path,
But it was not to be.
Delight was not enough for us,
Nor tenderness that moved
Through years of angry dissonance
Towards some dark, bitter sea.

Our differences were far too great,
Our lives too far apart.
We didn't like each other much,
But put that truth aside

Until one day it was too late
To reignite the heart.
One told the other, who agreed
At last that it had died.

But then, ah, then! we felt our loss
As unremitting pain,
As deep and inconsolable,
Unbearable regret.

And all alone we had to cross
That desert once again
That we might know that we had loved
Too much to soon forget.

Presented by Luana and Zora

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The-Pain-Within

Today

Today is a day, I do deeply dread,
Somehow I wish I could be dead,
Happy 15th birthday to me,
It's too bad that my existence must be.

I never thought I'd make it to this day,
Never did I want to have my birthday,
I wish that I wasn't alive right now,
I would prefer to be dead somehow.

I laid in bed awake all night,
Hoping to see God's death light,
Telling me that I have died,
Wiping the midnight tears I cried.

But he never came to my poor soul,
So right now, I still remain un-whole,
Broken and shattered, dreading this day,
Why do I have to be alive today? …

Presented by Tatjana N. and Fiona

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A Star

J.C. Lee

a
star
is al-
w a y s
shining.
therefore
you should
shine bright like
a star and be proud of all that you are. never put youself down just
because a friend said that you can’t do something, because
only you know what you can and cannot do. don’t
let someone’s words of criticism cause you
not to believe in yourself when you
are the only one who knows
exactly how to believe in
yourself. remember that you are a
star that shines bright in the sky and
if there was not          a "you" then the
sky would                                  not be as
bright                                                as it is
to-                                                            day.

Presented by Gina and Tatjana L.

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Benjamin Zephaniah

Talking Turkeys!!

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas

Cos turkeys jus wanna hav fun

Turkeys are cool, an turkeys are wicked

An every turkey has a Mum.

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,

Don't eat it, keep it alive,

It could be yu mate an not on yu plate

Say, Yo! Turkey I'm on your side.

I got lots of friends who are turkeys

An all of dem fear christmas time,

Dey say'Benj man, eh, I wanna enjoy it,

But dose humans destroyed it

An humans are out of dere mind,

Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys

Dey all hav a right to a life,

Not to be caged up an genetically made up

By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys jus wanna play reggae

Turkeys jus wanna hip-hop

Havey you ever seen a nice young turkey saying,

'I cannot wait for de chop'?

Turkeys like getting presents,

Dey wanna watch christmas TV,

Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain

In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey. His name was Turkey

He said'Benji explain to me please,

Who put de turkey in christmas

An what happens to christmas trees?'

I said, 'I am not too sure Turkey

But it's nothing to do wid Christ Mass

Humans get greedy and waste more dan need be

An business men mek loadsa cash.'

So, be nice to yu turkey dis christmas

Invite dem indoors fe sum greens

Let dem eat cake an let dem partake

In a plate of organic grown beans,

Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas

An spare dem de cut of de knife,

Join Turkeys United an dey'll be delighted

An yu will mek new friends'FOR LIFE'.

Sa

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