#poem

My child, I know you're not a child But I still see you running wild Between those flowering trees. Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh Your wishes to the stars above Are just my memories. And in your eyes the ocean And in your eyes the sea The waters frozen over With your longing to be free. Yesterday you'd awoken To a world incredibly old. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You had to kill this child, I know. To break the arrows and the bow To shed your skin and change. The trees are flowering no more There's blood upon the tiles floor This place is dark and strange. I see you standing in the storm Holding the curse of youth Each of you with your story Each of you with your truth. Some words will never be spoken Some stories will never be told. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. I didn't say the world was good. I hoped by now you understood Why I could never lie. I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for spring Just spread your wings and fly. Though in the hidden garden Down by the green green lane The plant of love grows next to The tree of hate and pain. So take my tears as a token. They'll keep you warm in the cold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You've lived too long among us To leave without a trace You've lived too short to understand A thing about this place. Some of you just sit there smoking And some are already sold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. This is the age you are broken or turned into gold. ↗

— Antonia Michaelis

#growing-up #innocence #poem #youth #age

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#emotions #language #lie #metaphorically #moods

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#deduction #generated #judgement #laws #may

I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand. ↗

— David Antin

#i #more #poems #think #thinking

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker. ↗

— David Antin

#committed #composing #experimental #filmmaker #i

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. ↗

— David Antin

#always #ancient #anxiety #began #deficiencies

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page. ↗

— Howard Nemerov

#above #appears #bulk #icebergs #like

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote. ↗

— Simon Armitage

#begin #between #came #day #downstairs

It took some time to gather the research and develop it into the storyline, and to finally finish an origin myth poem that I had been working on for twenty years. ↗

— Jean M. Auel

#develop #finally #finish #gather #had

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#body #get #means #missed #poem