Not a poem, but a couple of lines from As You Like It: I think about mortality more than I'd like, and this verse always stays with me. I suppose that it has a similar message to the The Swimmer's Moment, at least that's why I remember it.And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.
Haha! That line from As You Like It is fantastic. I was about to ask who it was by and then Googled it instead: Shakespeare. Some knack for words that guy : ) I also think about mortality a lot, but don't really carry it with distaste. I enjoy the weight. Most of the poets I'm really into also carry that weight. Current poet of interest: Bill Holm. He also wrote the first poem I ever memorized; something I did simply because the poem was so good, I just wanted to carry it around as long as I could. It also spoke of music, which I love to play, but am especially into when described through words. Using words to describe sounds, a tough space for language to fill... Here's the poem: Bach in Brimnes Stebbi brings his cello into Brimnes.
He is a big thick fellow with ham fists,
Who looks like a seaman or a deck hand
More used to tubs of fish than cello bows.
No scores here, so he plays what he knows:
Bach! Let's have some Bach! Play a saraband!
The cello seems too big for this small room
But when he starts the Saraband in G,
The whole house grows too tiny for the tune,
As if the walls demanded to expand
Another fifty meters toward the sea
To make a proper space for all this sound,
If any human space at all could house
The planets whirling around inside this suite.
People have been looking for this poem (I can tell by the record of web searches) - so I just want to put it up in lines. Bach in Brimnes
Stebbi brings his cello into Brimnes.
He is a big thick fellow with ham fists,
Who looks like a seaman or a deck hand
More used to tubs of fish than cello bows.
No scores here, so he plays what he knows:
Bach! Let's have some Bach! Play a saraband!
The cello seems too big for this small room
But when he starts the Saraband in G,
The whole house grows too tiny for the tune,
As if the walls demanded to expand
Another fifty meters toward the sea
To make a proper space for all this sound,
If any human space at all could house
The planets whirling around inside this suite.