One Too Many Mornings

By Bob Dylan

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark.
As the night comes in a-fallin’,
The dogs ‘ll lose their bark.
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind,
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind.

From the crossroads of my doorstep,
My eyes they start to fade,
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid.
An’ I gaze back to the street,
The sidewalk and the sign,
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind.

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good,
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side,
I’m right from mine.
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind.

One of the Butterflies

By W.S Merwin

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.

Love Minus Zero

Love Minus Zero/No Limit

By Bob Dylan

My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful,
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can’t buy her.

In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all.

The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge.

The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.

From the Mask of Anarchy

By P.B Shelley

‘And if then the tyrants dare

Let them ride among you there,

Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, –

What they like, that let them do.

‘With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise,

Look upon them as they slay

Till their rage has died away.

‘Then they will return with shame

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek.

You’d Sing Too

You’d Sing Too
By Leonard Cohen

You’d sing too
if you found yourself
in a place like this
You wouldn’t worry about
whether you were as good
as Ray Charles or Edith Paif
You’d sing
You’d sing
not for yourself
but to make a self
out of the old food
rotting in the astral bowel
and loveless thud
of your own breathing
You’d become a singer
faster than it takes
to hate a rival’s charm
and you’d sing, darling
you’d sing too

To Make a Prairie

By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Every Grain of Sand

By Bob Dylan

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need

When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed

There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere,

Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake,

Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.

In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand

In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,

Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.

The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way

To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame

And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.

Then onward in my journey I come to understand

That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night

In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light,

In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,

In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me.

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

A Dream within a Dream

By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow–

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

 

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand–

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep–while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Blowin’ In The Wind

By Bob Dylan

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

By John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead

In summer luxury,—he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.