Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I am your exhausted host, Anne Johnson. Anne Johnson is my real name. I think.
Last summer I successfully memorized "Miracles," by Walt Whitman. Reciting it has given me pleasure all year long. Therefore I am commencing another memorization task. It is the famous "first poem of Ireland," a work called "The Mystery," by Amergin.
See what you think:
I am the wind that breathes upon the sea
I am the wave of the ocean
I am the murmur of the billows
I am the ox of the seven combats
I am the vulture upon the rocks
I am a beam of the sun
I am the fairest of plants
I am a wild boar in valor
I am a salmon in the water
I am a lake in the plain
I am a word of science
I am a point of the lance of battle
I am the God who created in the head the fire.
Who is it that throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun?
If not I?
These repetitious ones are tough, but worth the effort. And pinky swear, I didn't add the part about the vulture. It was already there.
6 comments:
What a great idea! It would do my nubby brain a bit of good to put it to work like that. Not to mention my weary spirit. Off to find a poem for myself.
Very druidic!:)
...and we know you totally picked it for the vulture line. ;)
I would like it except that each "I am" seems to have been made up without much thought.......every one of those could have gone off in any direction and had the same impact......but, hey, I'm no poet, I just play one occasionally on a blog.........
when i was about 12 I recited the entire poem of Little Lord Faulteroy(sp) and acted it all as a skit..I can still remember most of it.On the other hand I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday.
We all know that you only chose this one because it mentions vultures. ;)
I do like it. It reminds me of the bard Taliesin.
I memorized a bunch of poems in Eighth Grade as an assignment. My memorizer broke after that and I can't anymore.
You're right about the repetition being hardest -- I never got through All In Green Went My Love Riding by e.e.cummings, though I love it. However,one of the ones I do know has this line in it, "Such was a poet, and shall be and is, who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life, and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand." A sunbeam's architecture. wow.
Post a Comment