One single line of poetry....

[Clawdy]

that stays with you? Not necessarily your favourite poem but sometimes just one line....for me it's " What will survive of us is love " from the Philip Larkin poem.

'What a thrill, my thumb instead of an onion.'

Cut, Sylvia Plath

Caught my breath the first time I read it as it was the first time I found someone who's mind was so confused that they found a perverse enjoyment in hurting themselves, someone who might even do it deliberately as opposed to accidentally. Someone who was like myself, at the time. I owe a lot to that woman, her poetry and writing was a bit of a lifeline at times as I felt less strange.

"A four foot box, a foot for every year."

Upsetting but unforgettable (the box is coffin). Seamus Heaney Mid-Term Break

Your children are not your children, but the children of life's longing for life..

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep.

Three lines, one sentence

That everything would go back as it was.

An earthquake tremor: fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

This is the way the world ends:
Not with a bang, but a whimper.

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons - Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot.

'Rage; rage against the dying of the light'

Sums up exactly how I feel about the end of life.

I wish I were two little dogs so I could play together.

Sums up my childhood perfectly.

"to cease upon the midnight with no pain...." from Ode to a Nightingale.

Such a comforting description of death.

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage...

Richard Lovelace.

Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

Tell Me the Truth About Love, WH Auden.

Woman much missed/how you call to me, call to me

Thomas Hardy

World's strand, sway of the sea
Gerard Manley Hopkins in 'Wreck of the Deustchland'

Or

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon
In his riding of the rolling level
(also Hopkins; I've parsed it wrongly but you'll get the drift)

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I :
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Windhover:-

I caught this morning morning’s minion

Xpost with Mehsmum :o

If you ask me,
I would have to say
all the world's magic
comes directly from the mouth

Jane Yolen

"My tribe is the Asra
Who die when they love"

Heine. Der Asra.

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

Invictus, WE Henley

'Time does not bring relief, you all have lied'

Edna St Vincent Millay

These are the ghosts of the unwilling dead

From Ghosts, Fire, Water by James Kirkup

To call myself beloved
To feel myself beloved on the earth

Raymond Carver's Last Fragment.