1st lines
The shepherd oft foretells by simple ways
The weathers change that will ere long prevail
He marks the dull ass that grows long and brays
And sees the old cows gad along the vail
A summer race and snuff the coming gale
...
John Clare around 1824
#1stlines #poetry #England
1st lines
From birth, from the first astonishing moment
when he pecked his way out of the shell, pure fluff,
he was looking for something - warmth, food, love
or light, or darkness - we are all the same stuff,
PK Page from Hologram 1994
#1stlines #poetry #Canada #BC
1st lines
So moping flat and low our valleys lie
So dull and muggy is our winter sky
Drizzling from day to day dull threats of rain
And when that falls still threatening on again
From one wet week so great an ocean flows
...
John Clare around 1824
#1stlines #poetry #England
1st lines read each morning
descend upon
the breathing monument
my family
of apparitions
is select
through dim
hours between
birds and darkness
from Birds by Molly Schaeffer 2011
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines read each morning
I too went out
to meet the dust
early in the morning
interleaf shakes dry
faceless birhters
dreamily warring fleets
from Birds by Molly Schaeffer 2011
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
The juicey wheat now spindles into ear
And trailing pea blooms ope their velvet eyes
And weeds and flowers by crowds far off and near
In all their sunny liverys appear
For summer lustre boasts unnumbered dyes
...
John Clare around 1824
#1stlines #poetry #England
1st lines
To protect the idea
One will hold even death and a curse in one's hand
The melancholy of my Amiel
For instance, the world of shadow in my mirror
...
From Paul Klee's Table by Yoshioka Minoru tr by Eric Selland 1980
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
Now we dive
Into a pink space never experienced before
A four-horse carriage in full mourning clothes
Turns upside down
...
From Poems for a Mysterious Time by Yoshioka Minoru tr by Eric Selland 1974
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
Circling around the heights
Above the sand dunes on the coach
Is it a disc-shaped concrete floor?
Like a star fish in a primary color
It moves toward summer
From Quiet House by Yoshioka Minoru tr by Eric Selland 1968
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
A gray horse and a horse that is not gray pass each other by the gray horse appears to be a female, her long hair hanging down the other horse is likely a
From Spindle Form by Yoshioka Minoru tr by Eric Selland 1958
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
I take another peek at the water lilly
No conversion takes place
The cords that bind the world's women have yet to be disentangled
Frogs too get caught there
From Monks by Yoshioka Minoru tr by Eric Selland 1958
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
Chewing the pickled scallions that's the time I'm partial to nestled in the deep folds of a hospital ward blanket I wait patiently neither for treatment nor for death ...
Yoshioka Minoru Monks tr by Eric Selland 1958
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
Going ashore on the island the man finds amongst the crags large arched fragments of bones belonging to beats and fish bleached by the circling sun ...
From Yoshioka Minoru Monks tr by Eric Selland 1958
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
In the ceaselessly falling snow
In a completely conceraled
Dimly lit chicle coup
The image of living things
The disgrace of things that go on living
...
From Yoshioka Minoru Still Life tr by Eric Selland 1955
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation
@chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
Within the hard surface of the night's bowl
Swelling with brightness
The autumn fruits
Apples, pears, grapes and so on
Poised on on top of the other
...
From Yoshioka Minoru Still Life tr by Eric Selland 1955
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #translation @chinmoku001.bsky.social
1st lines
The shepherd musing oer his summer dreams
The may day wild flowers in the meadow grass
The sunshine sparkling in the valley streams
The singing ploughman and hay making lass
These live the summer of thy rural themes
...
John Clare about 1824
#1stlines #poetry #England
1st lines
The pass of Nakayama was dusky though it was midday. The thick folliage of thetall trees blocked the sunlight. We cut through the woods along an ancient path paved with cobblestones until we came to an open place ...
From Yoko Danno A Woman in a Blue Robe 2016
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
Channeling, part of daily experience, is an underrated technique in literature.
It's natural for an artist to receive information from a non-objective source.
New spirits are expressing themselves from new quantum realms.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge 2020
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
I see his dark shape, moving and shifting against night's screen of stars.
My little girl reaches for his lighted silhouette.
Human beings are thought upward and flown through by bright birds.
...
From A Treatise on Stars bt Mei-mei Berssenbrugge 2020
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
Sometimes I brought the ETs flowers, sometimes a pretty rock.
I tell her that rocks like meteorites retain light, a sensible energy thought into existence by experiencing it.
All life is the coherence of light...
From A Treatise on Stars bt Mei-mei Berssenbrugge 2020
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
You can rise to a level of not knowing that's untouched by entropy.
Out of uncertainty, openness: order is mantained.
You rise to a realization beyond decay.
There's a deeper intelligence than that.
From A Treatise on Stars bt Mei-mei Berssenbrugge 2020
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
Of on that is so fayr and bright
Velut maris stelle,
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella:
Ic crie to the, thou see to me,
Levedy, prie the Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That ic mote come th three
Maria.
Annonymous c. 1300
#1stlines #poetry
1st lines
Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare:
Ofte I sike and mourne sare
When it cometh in my thoht
Of his worlde's joie, hou hit geth al to noht.
Annonymous c. 1300
#1stlines #poetry #
1st lines
The forest wakes from a world of long endurance
the trees stretch tap each others shoulders
Rub their hands together still a little chilled by the light wind
From Songs of the Frozen Plain by Sarashima Genzo tr by Nadine Willems 1941
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #Hokkaido #Ainu
1st lines
I don't really have any business there
But at night after work I go to Scum Town
Maybe I ought to keep slaving away like the old blokes in bygone days
...
From Seed Potatoes by Sarashima Genzo tr by Nadine Willems
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #Hokkaido #Ainu
Socho
Early this morning
after many frosty nights
a mist veils the hills
Shohaku
Smoke is seen to rise in peace
from the temporary shack
From Minase Sangin Hyakuin Renga , Sogi, Socho, Shahaku 1488 tr by Yoko Danno
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #renga
Socho
I might be taken
for dead, living secluded,
away from friends
Shohaku
If so, I will keep living
hanging on to this frail world
From Minase Sangin Hyakuin Renga , Sogi, Socho, Shahaku 1488 tr by Yoko Danno
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #renga
1st lines
Sogi
Snow still lingering,
the foot of the hills is veiled
in spring haze at dusk
Shohaku
Water flows far - the village
fragrant with the plum blossoms
From Minase Sangin Hyakuin Renga , Sogi, Socho, Shahaku 1488 tr by Yoko Danno
#1stlines #poetry #Japan #renga
