Suddenly Some... Poetry

Inner Peace

I love poetry, it makes me feel inside, I can feel all the things which usually you can't show and they feel so real. This love moved up on me slowly and took me by surprise, in fact I hated them when I was younger thinking them a waste of time. Maybe I've grown up, I enjoy them more than music, they reach deeper. I must admit I go for deep emotional poems whether happy or sad.

Reading a poem can change your day calming you or giving you inspiration to continue, helping you through the difficult times or infusing you with joy. 

Reading poetry is not the preserve of the intellectual or well educated it's not elitist and one thing it will never do is become part of the commercialized, fast moving online social networks, never a meme. The reason is they are intensely private, everyone sees something different in the words written on a page. You can plug poetry or poem into a search engine to find a poem, I usually find that the poems on the internet whether by famous or completely unknown author are polluted by with pictures giving you the sense of what the person who posted it thought about it. If I want to find a poem the only place to go is the library, or a book shop, words on a plain background.

OK, I've just read through that and it sound a little pretentious! So I'm just going to give you a couple of favourites:

My all time favourite poem and inspirational, I can read it quietly but find that I love reading it out loud gives it extra power:

If - Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 

But somehow not this version and I'm not even going to mention what UK television did to it during the football.

I also speak German and of course the same applies to any other language in the world, however German has the reputation of being a hard language not only to learn but also emotionally. In defense I give you Xavier Naidoo, the singer and front man of Söhne Mannheim.

Not only is the music haunting but, the lyrics are beautiful, deep and tragic. A declaration of love and caring and protection in a hopeless situation. Whatever my emotional state - and it has been a roller caster recently I do and also will regard this as my favourite song and one of the best poems of our time.