The Poemarium

Walt Whitman - Two Rivulets

Two Rivulets side by side, 
Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, 
Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. 
 
For the Eternal Ocean bound, 
These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life,
Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, 
The Real and Ideal, 
 
Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, 
(Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, Past.) 
 
In You, whoe’er you are, my book perusing,
In I myself—in all the World—these ripples flow, 
All, all, toward the mystic Ocean tending. 
  
(O yearnful waves! the kisses of your lips! 
Your breast so broad, with open arms, O firm, expanded shore!)

(Walt Whitman, West Hills, New York 31 May 1819 - Camden, New Jersey 26 March 1892)

Louis MacNeice - Conversation

Ordinary people are peculiar too:
Watch the vagrant in their eyes
Who sneaks away while they are talking with you
Into some black wood behind the skull,
Following un-, or other, realities,
Fishing for shadows in a pool.

But sometimes the vagrant comes the other way
Out of their eyes and into yours
Having mistaken you perhaps for yesterday
Or for tomorrow night, a wood in which
He may pick up among the pine-needles and burrs
The lost purse, the dropped stitch.

Vagrancy however is forbidden; ordinary men
Soon come back to normal, look you straight
In the eyes as if to say 'It will not happen again',
Put up a barrage of common sense to baulk
Intimacy but by mistake interpolate
Swear-words like roses in their talk.

(Louis MacNeice, Belfast, 12 September 1907 - 3 September 1963)