Lighthouse Poetry Quotes

If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity. Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity.

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

At least I want to get up early one more morning, before sunrise. Before the birds, even. I want to throw cold water on my face and be at my work table when the sky lightens and smoke begins to rise from the chimneys of the other houses. I want to see the waves break on this rocky beach, not just hear them break as I did in my sleep. I want to see again the ships that pass through the Strait from every seafaring country in the world - old, dirty freighters just barely moving along, and the swift new cargo vessels painted every color under the sun that cut the water as they pass. I want to keep an eye out for them. And for the little boat that plies the water between the ships and the pilot station near the lighthouse. I want to see them take a man off the ship and put another one up on board. I want to spend the day watching this happen and reach my own conclusions. I hate to seem greedy - I have so much to be thankful for already. But I want to get up early one more morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait. Just wait, to see what's going to happen.

Some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don't know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt / the mind forgetting / the body's crime of living

Liberty On my notebooks from school On my desk and the trees On the sand, on the snow I write your name On every page read On all the white sheets Stone blood paper or ash I write your name On the golden images On the soldier’s weapons On the crowns of kings I write your name On the jungle, the desert The nests and the bushes On the echo of childhood I write your name On the wonder of nights On the white bread of days On the seasons engaged I write your name On all my blue rags On the pond mildewed sun On the lake living moon I write your name On the fields, the horizon The wings of the birds On the windmill of shadows I write your name On the foam of the clouds On the sweat of the storm On dark insipid rain I write your name On the glittering forms On the bells of colour On physical truth I write your name On the wakened paths On the opened ways On the scattered places I write your name On the lamp that gives light On the lamp that is drowned On my house reunited I write your name On the bisected fruit Of my mirror and room On my bed’s empty shell I write your name On my dog greedy tender On his listening ears On his awkward paws I write your name On the sill of my door On familiar things On the fire’s sacred stream I write your name On all flesh that’s in tune On the brows of my friends On each hand that extends I write your name On the glass of surprises On lips that attend High over the silence I write your name On my ravaged refuges On my fallen lighthouses On the walls of my boredom I write your name On passionless absence On naked solitude On the marches of death I write your name On health that’s regained On danger that’s past On hope without memories I write your name By the power of the word I regain my life I was born to know you And to name you LIBERTY

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes. There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames, its arms turning like a drowning man's. I send out red signals across your absent eyes that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse. You keep only darkness, my distant female, from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges. Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes. The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you. The night gallops on its shadowy mare shedding blue tassels over the land.

And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be, are full of trees and changing leaves

The city they are building asks you to stay; remind yourself what is worth keeping, while the lighthouse of your moan warns the ship of your heart that he is a stone.

She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly’s wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral.

Touch was absolutely out of the question. I couldn’t stop sweating. My heart, a butterfly pinned to a glacier. Empires fell inside my mouth. I touched myself like a pogrom & broke my sex into a history of inconsequential shames. I wept viciously inside of my own stomach & had it condemned. From an upside-down bell I drank silence, subsisted on the memory of someone else’s hands. Wolves sang & I did not answer. I forgot their names. Mornings were the worst, then there were days & evenings. Streetlights & darkened sycamore & suburban grief so full it made me foolish. I shattered my fist on the Lord’s jaw. Sorrow sat, licking my wrists & my neck. I slept at its convenience. O, uncelebrated body. My penis, a lighthouse on the bottom of the ocean, shining shadows at the undersides of boats. Nobody drowned for so many years. Desperate for the making of those candy-throated ghosts, I found the rooms between the violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the sky bent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill. (So I Locked Myself Inside A Star for Twenty Years)

[Mr Carmichael brought out a volume of poems that spring, which had an unexpected success. The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.]

We are a short poem in a endless emptiness page, words are lighthouses that ignites and struggle to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite, and mystic sounds struggle to give voice to the unlived beings, to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.

Who's more interesting: A famous scientist, or the famous who plays the cello and whittles marionettes in a lighthouse at the edge of the world where he sometimes writes poetry by the light of passing ships? Exactly. Follow your weird impulses and do all sorts of things. Getting sidetracked can lead you to exactly where you belong.

The Lighthouse by Stewart Stafford Apart and alone, From where the ships dock, Stands the white sentinel edifice on a promontory rock. Like the land's index finger, At the extent of the sea, Warning passing vessels where it's safe to be. It's one luminous eye, Swivels around its clear head, To keep lucky sailors off the seabed. It seeks no credit, And needs no thanks, Saluting proudly from above the fog banks. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment- the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It's like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away. That's my sense of the poem's beginning. What follows is a period of more concentrated work, so called because as long as one is working the thing itself is wrong or unfinished: a failure. Still, this engagement is absorbing as nothing else I have ever in my life known. And then the poem is finished, and at the moment, instantly detached: it becomes what it was first perceived to be, a thing always in existence. No record exists of the poet's agency. And the poet, from that point, isn't a poet anymore, simple someone who wishes to be one.

She is a lighthouse Leading me through the darkness To my hearts true north She slowly guides me With her light And suddenly I know My loves true worth

I want to be your lighthouse No matter how many dreams change I want to be built upon rock Weathered by storms Smoothed out by the sea With jagged edges only you know

Poetry is the lighthouse of life Guiding the lost from a stormy sea. Without it's presence darkness prevails Keeping us from all we can be. People write poetry because they have no choice Answering to the call of their gift. Where some tend to pull their readers down Others compose to give them a lift. excerpts from The Power of Poetry by Tom Zart

I carry my heart like a crucifix, but I remember once you told me that sorrow can be a blessing too. You told me that what is coming is better than what is gone. You’ve carried my heavy heart to light with ease. I believe in lovely souls ever since burrowing inside of yours. So many storms have ravaged me at sea, but I know those eyes. I know lighthouses guide the rootless home. Maybe you can find light in me as well, and from there find a fire to sleep by. We are here, and we are alive, and that is hope.

Quão rapidamente flui a corrente de janeiro a dezembro! Somos levados de roldão pela torrente das coisas que se tornaram tão familiares que não projetam nenhuma sombra.

The winds blow swift and sure As I steer my little sailboat Towards the island shore And solid ground once more

The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arts, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night-club were varnished in bright crude colours to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses into the clear February sky. It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to a scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield, and perhaps Milly resembled a little flower on an old rampart where an attack had been repulsed with heavy loss many years ago.

He was jealous, fearful and tender, He loved me like God's only light, And that she not sing of the past times He killed my bird colored white. He said, in the lighthouse at sundown: "Love me, laugh and write poetry!" And I buried the joyous songbird Behind a round well near a tree. I promised that I would not mourn her. But my heart turned to stone without choice, And it seems to me that everywhere And always I'll hear her sweet voice.

Or was it that she knew as well as did he that his job fuelled the poetry, that the best of his verse had its roots in the pain, horror and pathetic detritus of the tragic and broken lives which made up his working life? Was it this knowledge that kept her silent and distanced when he was working? For him as a poet, beauty in nature, in human faces, had never been enough. He had always needed Yeats’s foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. He wondered, too, whether Emma sensed his uncomfortable, half-shameful acknowledgement that he who so guarded his privacy had chosen a job that permitted—indeed required—him to violate the privacy of others, the dead as well as the living.