“
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
”
”
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
“
He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (The Complete Stories and Poems)
“
ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE
But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.
Ain't no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.
Floors are flowers - take a few.
Ferns grow here and daisies too.
Whoosh, swoosh - too-whit, too-woo,
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too.
Ha-ha-ha,hee-hee,hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too.
And my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here...and so do you.
”
”
Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends)
“
And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose....it made the stories look on the surface like 'a mere bubble of nonsense' within which it was possible to 'utter harsh truths, to say what you dare' about the state of women's lives. Because they were just stories, right? Harmless little fantasies?
”
”
Christine Heppermann (Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty)
“
A young Buddhist frog took a leap,
into some traffic, "Beep, Beep!"
He sprang from his feet,
jumping into the street,
and soon became one with a jeep.
-The Ginger Poem of the Month
”
”
Lennie Peterson
“
A young Buddhist frog took a leap,
Into some traffic, "Beep, Beep!"
He sprung from his feet,
Jumping into the street,
And soon became one with a jeep.
-The Ginger Poem of the Month
”
”
Lennie Peterson
“
Perfection"
Every oak will lose a leaf to the wind.
Every star-thistle has a thorn.
Every flower has a blemish.
Every wave washes back upon itself.
Every ocean embraces a storm.
Every raindrop falls with precision.
Every slithering snail leaves its silver trail.
Every butterfly flies until its wings are torn.
Every tree-frog is obligated to sing.
Every sound has an echo in the canyon.
Every pine drops its needles to the forest floor.
Creation's whispered breath at dusk comes
with a frost and leaves within dawn's faint mist,
for all of existence remains perfect, adorned,
with a dead sparrow on the ground.
(Poem titled : 'Perfection' by R.H.Peat)
”
”
R.H. Peat
“
He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
picking the weft threads
threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:
"Once there was
and there was not,
oh, best beloved,
when the world was filled with wishes
the way the sea is filled with fishes..."
All those threads
pulling us back
to another world, another time,
when goosegirls married well
and frogs could rhyme,
when maids spoke syllables of pearl
and stepmothers came to grief.
.... (from The Storyteller poem)
”
”
Jane Yolen (The Last Selchie Child)
“
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
”
”
Emily Dickinson (Selected Poems)
“
When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.
When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"
When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.
Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?
When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.
They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.
One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.
When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.
”
”
David Lehman (When a Woman Loves a Man: Poems)
“
Frog Princess loved the lilly flowers
where Green Frog lay dreaming away the hours
”
”
Suzy Davies (Sleepy Animals)
“
#anote2self Dear Self, Your king is coming. Please continue to be patient. You’ve kissed some frogs and you’ve learned some lessons. Now it’s time to prepare yourself and Queendom for the ONE who is worthy. I know you get lonely and worried but fear not, your love is being prepared carefully and especially
”
”
Alexandra Elle Smith (Words from a Wanderer (Notes and Love Poems Book 1))
“
These ears aren't to be trusted.
The keening in the night, didn't you hear?
Once I believed all the stories didn’t have endings,
but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,
had yet to be imagined.
The months come around again,
and we are in the same place;
full moons, cherries in bloom,
the same deer, the same frogs,
the same helpless scratching at the dirt.
You leave poems I can’t read
behind on the sheets,
I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.
you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;
I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise.
Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.
I've inhaled the spells of willow trees,
spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.
Sleep easy, from behind the closet door
I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.
(from, The Fox-Wife's Invitation)
”
”
Jeannine Hall Gailey
“
She touched me once
And life then stopped.
She held my hand,
My frog heart hopped.
She left my mouth
And formed a smile
With lips that promised:
“In a while.”
I look, I hope, I stand, a dunce—
Where is the one who touched me once?
”
”
Walt Kelly (The Pogo Poop Book)
“
Things I love about spring are these:
Blooming flowers on fruit-bearing trees.
Fire-red tulips—their first reveal—
Followed by sun-yellow daffodils.
Trees acquiring new coats of green.
Natural waterfalls glistening.
The chirps and melodies of birds.
Throaty ribbits of frogs overheard.
A passing whiff of mint to smell,
Oregano and basil as well.
Colorful butterflies with wings.
Fuzzy, industrious bees that sting.
Sunlight waning late in the day.
Warm breezes causing willows to sway.
Most of all, a sense of things new,
Including budding feelings for you.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
“
If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that
witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well-hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.
Do not be jealous of your sister.
Know that diamonds and roses
are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs:
colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.
Remember your name.
Do not lose hope -- what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.
When you come back, return the way you came.
Favors will be returned, debts be repaid.
Do not forget your manners.
Do not look back.
Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).
Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).
Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).
There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand.
When you reach the little house, the place your journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
Or rest.
”
”
Neil Gaiman
“
Blossom
In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another.
”
”
Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
“
Lord let me suffer much and then die Let me walk through silence and leave nothing behind not even fear Make the world continue let the ocean kiss the sand just as before Let the grass stay green so that the frogs can hide in it so that someone can bury his face in it and sob out his love Make the day rise brightly as if there were no more pain And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane bumped by a bumblebee’s head tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
”
”
Christian Wiman (Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair)
“
One Or Two Things
Mary Oliver
1
Don't bother me
I've just
been born.
2
The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower
3
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things; I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
4
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
5
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning --- some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
6
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.
7
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love your life
too much," it said,
and vanished
into the world.
”
”
Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
“
Thich Nhat Hanh shares this Mahayana philosophy of non-dualism. This is clearly demonstrated in one of his most famous poems, “Call Me By My True Names:”1 Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow– even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I am still arriving, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of every living creature. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird, that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people, dying slowly in a forced-labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm that it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast that it fills up all four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and open the door of my heart, the door of compassion. (Nhat Hanh, [1993] 1999, pp. 72–3) We
”
”
Darrell J. Fasching (Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach to Global Ethics)
“
Lucifer Sansfoi
Varlet Sansfoi
Omer Perdiu
I.B.Perdie
Billy Perdy
I'll unwind your
guts from Durham
to Dover
and bury em
in Clover--
Your psalms I'll 'ave
engraved
in your toothbone--
Your victories
nilled--
You jailed under
under a woman's skirt
of stone--
Stone blind woman
with no guts
and only a scale--
Your thoughts & letters
Shandy'd about
in Beth
(Gaelic for grave)
Your philosophies
run up your nose
again--
Your confidences
and essays bandied
in ballrooms
from switchblade
to switchblade
--Your final
duel with
sledge hammers--
Your essential secret twinned
to buttercups
& dying--
Your guide to 32
European cities
scabbed in Isaiah
--Your red beard
snobbed in
Dolmen ruins
in the editions
of the Bleak--
Your saints and
Consolations bereft
--Your handy volume
rolled into
an urn--
And your father
And mother besmeared
at thought of you
th'unspent begotless
crop of worms
--You lay
there, you
queen for a
day, wait
for the "fun-
sucked frogs"
to carp at you
Your sweety beauty
discovered by No Name
in its hidingplace
till burrs
Part from you
from lack
of issue,
sinew, all
the rest--
Gibbering quiver
graveryard Hoo!
The hospital
that buries
you
be Baal,
the digger
Yorick,
& the shoveler
groom--
My rosy tomatoes
pop squirting
from your awful
rotten grave--
Your profile,
erstwhile
Garboesque,
mistook by earth-
eels for some
fjord to
Sheol--
And your timid
voice box
strangled
by lie-hating
earth
forever.
May the plighted
Noah-clouds
dissolve in grief of you--
May Red clay
be your center,
& woven into necks,
of hogs, boars,
booters & pilferers
& burned down
with Stalin, Hitler
& the rest--
May you bite
your lip that
you cannot
meet with God--
or
Beat me to a pub
--Amen
The Almoner,
his cup hat
no bottom,
nor I
a brim.
Devil, get thee
back
to the russet caves.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Scattered Poems)
“
Ceux qui luttent ce sont ceux qui vivent..
And down here they luttent a very great deal indeed..
But if life be the desideratum,. why grieve,. ils vivent..
”
”
Stevie Smith (The Frog Prince and Other Poems)
“
During her first weeks of working at Bright Ideas, Lydia had noticed that not all the customers were actually customers, and a whole category of lost men began to formulate in her mind. They were mostly unemployed, mostly solitary, and they--like Joey--spent as much time in the aisles as the booksellers who worked there.They napped in armchairs and whispered in nooks and played chess with themselves in the coffee shop. Even those who didn't read had books piled around their feet, as if fortressing themselves against invading hordes of ignoramuses, and when Lydia saw them folded into the corners for hours at a time, looking monastic and vulnerable, she thought of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Beatrix Potter's dapper frog who was often portrayed reading a newspaper with his lanky legs in the air. They were like plump and beautiful frogs scattered across the branches of the store, nibbling a diet of poems and crackers.
”
”
Matthew Sullivan
“
Outside insects or maybe frogs were making the noise of phone calls. Vertical blinds drifted like bars being moved for a great escape. When you slapped a mosquito against the wall you shook the place.
”
”
Kate Camp (How to Be Happy Though Human: New and Selected Poems)
“
Old pond— a frog jumps in the sound of water
”
”
Stephen Addiss (Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems (Shambhala Library))
“
I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are.
I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems.
So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one…
The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
Friends, the ancient word is dead; the ancient books are dead; our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead; our poems have gone sour; women's hair and nights have gone sour; my grieved nation, in a flash, you turned me from a poet writing for love and tenderness to a poet writing with a knife; our shouting is louder than our actions; our swords are taller than us; friends, smash the doors; wash your brains; grow words, pomegranates and grapes; sail to countries of fog and snow; nobody knows you exit in your caves; friends, we run wildly through streets; dragging people with ropes; smashing windows and locks; we praise like frogs; turn midgets into heroes; in mosques, we crouch idly; write poems and proverbs; and pray God for victory.
”
”
Tarek Osman (Egypt on the Brink: From the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak)
“
One famous Japanese haiku illustrates the state that Sid managed to discover in himself. It is one that Joseph Goldstein has long used to describe the unique attentional posture of bare attention: The old pond. A frog jumps in. Plop!2 Like so much else in Japanese art, the poem expresses the Buddhist emphasis on naked attention to the often overlooked details of everyday life. Yet, there is another level at which the poem may be read. Just as in the parable of the raft, the waters of the pond can represent the mind and the emotions. The frog jumping in becomes a thought or feeling arising in the mind or body, while “Plop!” represents the reverberations of that thought or feeling, unelaborated by the forces of reactivity. The entire poem comes to evoke the state of bare attention in its utter simplicity.
”
”
Mark Epstein (Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective)
“
We’re a pair of frogs engrossed in each other’s arms. We know nothing about the world and the world knows nothing about us either.
”
”
Bhuwan Thapaliya (Safa Tempo: Poems New & Selected)
“
Rainforest
Nictitating eyelid sky
omening leaf mould melancholia
mollusc ruminating spores/ spruce
pores sweat steamed [fungus]/ frog
needles old man's beard
devil's club seeps gloom.
”
”
Barbara Black (Heartwood: Poems for the Love of Trees)
“
Sounds"
Few are the sounds
that deepen and enrich silence ..
There are sounds without which
silence remains incomplete,
like a ticking clock
or the sudden sound of a cycling fridge…
The chirping roaches and cicadas,
or croaking frogs…
Then there are those sounds that make existence
more alienating and unbearable,
like the scuffle of a big insect against a window or a door
as if committing suicide!
Or a creaking rusty door
we close behind a departing loved one,
knowing deep inside that they won’t return
and nothing would be the same
after closing that door..
The whistling sound of a kettle
declaring that peace and tranquility
are illusions that never last…
There are also those sounds
that summarize the traumas of the past
from which hearers never recover,
like the screams and cries
of the woman next door when beaten by her husband…
The coughing, spitting, and heavy breathing
of an elderly woman
we visited in our childhood…
And can we ever forget
the sounding sirens of the ships and trains
declaring that departure is inevitable?
[Original poem published in Arabic on September 15, 2023 at ahewar.org]
”
”
Louis Yako
“
Praise the rain; the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—
Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we're led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
”
”
Joy Harjo (Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems)
“
One of the most begrudging avian take-offs
is the heron's ‘fucking hell, all right, all right,
I'll go the garage for your flaming fags’
cranky departure, though once they're up
their flight can be extravagant. I watched
one big spender climb the thermal staircase,
a calorific waterspout of frogs
and sticklebacks, the undercarriage down
and trailing. Seen from antiquity
you gain the Icarus thing; seen from my childhood
that cursing man sets out for Superkings,
though the heron cares for neither as it struggles
into its wings then soars sunwards and throws
its huge overcoat across the earth.
”
”
Paul Farley (Selected Poems)
“
A myth is a work of imagination and therefore a work of art. It needs a poet to make it. It needs a poet to criticize it. ... for some reason it is only the minority of unpoetical people that are allowed to write critical studies of these popular poems. ... Mythology is a lost art. ... Scientists seldom understand as artists understand that one branch of the beautiful is the ugly, they seldom allow for the legitimate liberty of the grotesque. ... the frog laughed but the folklore student remains grave.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Everlasting Man: The Christian Apologetics Classic (Annotated))
“
all this riotous back and forth? Or had we only invoked alarm, amphibian for get-back! get-back! I didn’t know. But how happy we were, for that hour, to believe we were one marvelous body, in our smooth and slippery skin. Even if the frogs did not want us. Even if our joint fates are written, already, in the tainted water, the dark and opulent mud.
”
”
Danusha Laméris (Bonfire Opera: Poems)
“
We are victims of our own choices, is found in Six Feathers To The Son< that can be found in His Ultimate Path.
The P.U.S.H. Method. Pray until something Happens Then Pray some more, or The F.R.O.G. Method Fully Rely On God. These can be found in my book. The Many Wonders Of Deanie in the IF poem.
”
”
Bernadine Ziegler
“
One Day Eight Years Ago - Poem by Jibanananda Das
It was heard: to the post-mortem cell
he had been taken;
last night—in the darkness of Falgoon-night
When the five-night-old moon went down—
he was longing for death.
His wife lay beside—the child therewith;
hope and love abundant__in the moonlight—what ghost
did he see? Why his sleep broke?
Or having no sleep at all since long—he now has fallen asleep
in the post-mortem cell.
Is this the sleep he’d longed for!
Like a plagued rat, mouth filled with crimson froth
now asleep in the nook of darkness;
And will not ever awake anymore.
‘Never again will wake up,
never again will bear
the endless—endless burden
of painful waking—’
It was told to him
when the moon sank down—in the strange darkness
by a silence like the neck of a camel that might have shown up
at his window side.
Nevertheless, the owl stays wide awake;
The rotten still frog begs two more moments
in the hope for another dawn in conceivable warmth.
We feel in the deep tracelessness of flocking darkness
The unforgiving enmity of the mosquito-net all around;
The mosquito loves the stream of life
awake in its monastery of darkness.
From sitting in blood and filth, flies fly back into the sun;
How often we watched moths and flies hovering
in the waves of golden sun.
The close-knit sky, as if—as it were, some scattered
lives, possessed their hearts;
The wavering dragonflies in the grasp of wanton kids
Fought for life;
As the moon went down, in the impending gloom
With a noose in hand you approached the aswattha,
alone, by yourself,
For you’d learnt
a human would ne’er live the life of a locust or a robin
The branch of aswattha
Had it not raged in protest? And the flock of fireflies
Hadn’t they come and mingled with
the comely bunch of daffodils?
Hadn’t the senile blind owl come over
and said: ‘the age-old moon seems to have been washed away
by the surging waters?
Splendid that!
Let’s catch now rats and mouse! ’
Hadn’t the owl hooted out this cherished affair?
Taste of life—the fragrance of golden corn of winter evening—
seemed intolerable to you; —
Content now in the morgue
In the morgue—sultry
with the bloodied mouth of a battered rat!
Listen
yet, tale of this dead; —
Was not refused by the girl of love,
Didn’t miss any joy of conjugal life,
the bride went ahead of time
and let him know
honey and the honey of reflection;
His life ne’er shivered in demeaning hunger
or painful cold;
So
now in the morgue
he lies flat on the dissection table.
Know—I know
woman’s heart—love—offspring—home—not all
there is to things;
Wealth, achievement, affluence apart
there is some other baffling surprise
that whirls in our veins;
It tires and tires,
and tires us out;
but there is no tiring
in the post mortem cell
and so,
there he rests, in the post mortem cell
flat on the dissection table.
Still I see the age-old owl, ah,
Nightly sat on the aswattha bough
Winks and echoes: ‘The olden moon seems
to be carried away by the flooding waters?
That’s splendid!
Let’s catch now rats and mouse—’
Hi, granny dear, splendid even today?
Let me age like you—and see off
the olden moon in the whirlpool at the Kalidaha;
Then the two of us will desert life’s abundant reserve.
”
”
Jibanananda Das (Selected Poems (English and Bengali Edition))
“
How can I be alone when these brain cells chat to me their million messages a minute. But sitting there in the ordinary trance that is any mammal’s birthright, say on a desert boulder or northern stump, a riverbank, we can imitate a barrel cactus, a hemlock tree, the water that flows through time as surely as ourselves. The mind loses its distant machine-gun patter, becomes a frog’s occasional croak. A trout’s last jump in the dark, a horned owl’s occasional hoot, or in the desert alone at night the voiceless stars light my primate fingers that I lift up to curl around their bright cosmic bodies.
”
”
Jim Harrison (The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems)
“
many took the leap
with the frog, only to become Basho's
ignoring the frog and the pond
”
”
Soman Gouda (Seedlings of Light: A Haiku Collection (Paperback))
“
Do poems shine
like stars on the night sky?
Do frogs reside
in ponds outside of time?
All we have is deeds
and dreams to live by —
Only with great zeal
to stars you may fly!
”
”
Akira Sternberg (The Stargazing Frog: A poetry collection of 366 original haiku about nature, humans and stars)
“
I’m nobody! Who are you?’ I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
”
”
The American Poetry and Literacy Project (101 Great American Poems)