TOUS LES DEUX

            …crossing
a great sea in a small boat, you come from Gortyn
I greet you with pleasure
(3 lines)
…cargo doesn’t interest me
…if it is lost
…or if there is some means
…I’d not have found another friend
…if sea-waves had engulfed you
or if…at the hands of armed men
you had lost your glorious youth.
But now…a god has rescued you
…and me, alone…
…lying in the shadow…
…I stand in sun again.

— Archilochus, fragment (P.Oxy.XXII 2310), quoted in Anne Pippin Burnett’s Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho.

Aut.

   But they that have incensed me, can in soul
   Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare
   To spurn or baffle them, or squirt their eyes
   With ink or urine; or I could do worse,
   Arm’d with Archilochus’ fury, write Iambics,
   Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves;
   Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats
   In drumming tunes. Or, living, I could stamp
   Their foreheads with those deep and public brands,
   That the whole company of barber-surgeons
   Should not take off, with all their art and plasters.
   And these my prints should last, still to be read
   In their pale fronts; when, what they write ‘gainst me
   Shall, like a figure drawn in water, fleet.
   And the poor wretched papers be employ’d
   To clothe tobacco, or some cheaper drug:
   This I could do, and make them infamous.
   But, to what end? when their own deeds have mark’d ‘em;
   And that I know, within his guilty breast
   Each slanderer bears a whip that shall torment him
   Worse than a million of these temporal plagues:
   Which to pursue, were but a feminine humour,
   And far beneath the dignity of man.

— Ben Jonson, from “To the Reader” in The Poetaster.

The thoughts are broken in my memory,
   Thou lovely Joy, whene’er I see thy face;
   When thou art near me, Love fills up the space,
   Often repeating, “If death irk thee, fly.”
My face shows my heart’s colour, verily,
   Which, fainting, seeks for any leaning-place
   Till, in the drunken terror of disgrace,
   The very stones seem to be shrieking, “Die!”
It were a grievous sin, if one should not
   Strive then to comfort my bewilder’d mind
   (Though merely with a simple pitying)
For the great anguish which thy scorn was wrought
   In the dead sight o’ the eyes grown nearly blind,
   Which look for death as for a blessed thing.

This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I tell the cause why I abstain not from coming to this lady. In the second, I tell what befalls me through coming to her; and this part begins here, “When thou art near.” And also this second part divides into five distinct statements. For, in the first, I say what Love, counselled by Reason, tells me when I am near the lady. In the second, I set forth the state of my heart by the example of the face. In the third, I say how all ground of trust fails me. In the fourth, I say that he sins who shows not pity of me, which would give me some comfort. In the last, I say why people should take pity; namely, for the piteous look which comes into mine eyes; which piteous look is destroyed, that is, appeareth not unto others, through the jeering of this lady, who draws to the like action those who peradventure would see this piteousness. The second part begins here, “My face shows”; the third, “Till, in the drunken terror”; the fourth, “It were a grievous sin”; the fifth, “For the great anguish.”

— Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova, trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Even as the others mock, thou mockest me;
   Not dreaming, noble lady, whence it is
   That I am taken with strange semblances,
   Seeing thy face which is so fair to see:
For else, compassion would not suffer thee
   To grieve my heart with such harsh scoffs as these.
   Lo! Love, when thou art present, sits at ease,
   And bears his mastership so mightily,
That all my troubled senses he thrusts out,
   Sorely tormenting some, and slaying some,
   Till none but he is left and has free range
To gaze on thee. This makes my face to change
   Into another’s; while I stand all dumb,
   And hear my senses clamour in their rout.

This sonnet I divide not into parts, because a division is only made to open the meaning of the thing divided: and this, as it is sufficiently manifest through the reasons given, has no need of division. True it is that, amid the words whereby is shown the occasion of this sonnet, dubious words are to be found; namely, when I say that Love kills all my spirits, but that the visual remain in life, only outside of their own instruments. And this difficulty it is impossible for any to solve who is not in equal guise liege unto Love; and, to those who are so, that is manifest which would clear up the dubious words. And therefore it were not well for me to expound this difficulty, inasmuch as my speaking would be either fruitless or else superfluous.

— Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova, trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

To make a long story short

To make a long story short
I leave all of my possessions
to the Municipal Slaughterhouse
to the Special Forces Unit of the Police Department
to Lucky Dog Lotto

So now if you want you can shoot

— Nicanor Parra, from Antipoems: How to look better & feel great, trans. Liz Werner.

THE TRUE PROBLEM of philosophy
is who does the dishes

nothing otherworldly

God
        the truth
                        the passage of time
absolutely
but first, who does the dishes

whoever wants to do them, go ahead
see ya later, alligator
                        and we’re right back to being enemies

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HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
compose a sonnet
                        that begins with the following iambic pentameter line:
                        I would prefer to die ahead of you
and that ends with the following:
                        I would prefer that you be first to die

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— Nicanor Parra, from “Something like that” in Antipoems: How to look better & feel great, trans. Liz Werner. Link.