Poem Suggestions?

[Gypsy]

FI''s family is being a PITA about attending a wedding they can''t drive to. But, since we''re ignoring that for the time being (he doesn''t want to talk about it, I just want to pick up the phone and tell his sisters what I think of the situation). We were talking about having two readings at the wedding and we want to do non-religious poetry.

Now, admittedly I love poetry and have many books on it in our basement in NJ (Lit Major), but I am drawing a TOTAL blank.

And he wants us to WRITE them. I think writing the vows will be enough, personally, so before that idea takes too firm a hold I wanted to get some poems together and present them to him.

Suggestions please?

Thank you ladies!
Layla

 

[darkeyesredshoes]

I''m partial to e.e. cummings, so we''re planning on incorporating this into our wedding.


i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it''s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that''s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

 

[ladyciel]

Gypsy, I too want some non-religious readings in our ceremony, and I happened across a section on the knot with a bunch of suggestions. A lot of them are more like meditations than poems, but they had some material I hadn''t come across before. In case it might help: http://weddings.theknot.com/odb/themes/slideshows/view.aspx?id=20425&type=10&CeremonyReadings=20070925&MsdVisit=1

 

[ladyciel]

Here''s one:

From The Awakened Heart

“There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the human desire for love. Every person in this earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire...

...love is the ‘why’ of life: why we are functioning at all, what we want to be efficient for... I am convinced it [love] is the fundamental energy of the human spirit, the fuel on which we run, the wellspring of our vitality. And grace, which is the flowing, creative activity of love itself, is what makes all goodness possible.
Love should come first; it should be the beginning of and the reason for everything.”

-- Gerald May

And another:

From The Dance Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life

"Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us, shout that soul''s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children''s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don''t say, "Yes!" Just take my hand and dance with me."

-- Oriah

 

[ladyciel]

And this one is a lot different from the others, and has more to do with an approach to life than about love, but it makes me smile:

From Sacred Voices: Essential Women''s Wisdom Through the Ages, edited by Mary Ford-Grabowsky

"A Time to Laugh"

1. Laugh when people tell a joke. Otherwise you might make them feel bad.

2. Laugh when you look into a mirror. Otherwise you might feel bad.

3. Laugh when you make a mistake. If you don''t, you''re liable to forget how ultimately unimportant the whole thing really is, whatever it is.

4. Laugh with small children… They laugh at mashed bananas on their faces, mud in their hair, a dog nuzzling their ears, the sight of their bottoms as bare as silk. It renews your perspective. Clearly nothing is as bad as it could be.

5. Laugh at situations that are out of your control. When the best man comes to the altar without the wedding ring, laugh. When the dog jumps through the window screen at the dinner guests on your doorstep, sit down and laugh a while.

6. When you find yourself in public in mismatched shoes, laugh -- as loudly as you can. Why collapse in mortal agony? There''s nothing you can do to change things right now. Besides, it is funny. Ask me; I''ve done it.

7. Laugh at anything pompous. At anything that needs to puff its way through life in robes and titles… Will Rogers laughed at all the public institutions of life. For instance, "You can''t say civilization isn''t advancing," he wrote. "In every war they kill you in a new way."

8. Finally, laugh when all your carefully laid plans get changed; when the plane is late and the restaurant is closed and the last day''s screening of the movie of the year was yesterday. You''re free now to do something else, to be spontaneous… to take a piece of life and treat it with outrageous abandon.


-- Sister Joan Chittister, originally published in her book, There is a Season

 

[Gypsy]

Date: 2/1/2008 5:25:00 PM
Author: darkeyesredshoes
I'm partial to e.e. cummings, so we're planning on incorporating this into our wedding.


i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

I love ee cummings. I was totally drawing a blank though, all I could remember is the "Art of Losing" which while lovely, wasn't the one I wanted. This one is!

Lady C-- thank you for the link, the exerpts and the passage about laughing. I really like the Gerald May qoute. I may (if I have them) put that in my programs, or if John decides that prose would work as well as poetry, have it as a reading!


I also have another random and not appropriate peom in my head, I don't remember it verbatim but it went something like:

Your absence goes through me like thread through (fabric or needle?)
And everything I do is colored with its stitching.

I have no idea what the actual poem is though. Weird, lit major quirks, random bits of poetry running around in my head.

What do you all think of this from The Bard?

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments. Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds,
or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! It is an ever-fixed mark.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
it is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
within his bending sickle's compass come;
love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

[Gypsy]

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL
By Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Or

A Poem by Walt Whitman
Listen, I will be honest with you
I do not offer the old smooth prizes
But offer rough new prizes
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid up stores,
However convenient the dwelling, you shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port, however calm the waters, you shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you,
You are permitted to receive it but a little while Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road
Healthy, free, the world before you the long brown path before you, leading wherever you choose.
Say only to one another:
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money; I give you myself before preaching and law:
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Apache Wedding Prayer
Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now you are two bodies,
But there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place
To enter into the days of your togetherness
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by e. e. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

 

[julabean]

I''m having one reader at my wedding and she''s going to read this sonnet by Pablo Nerudo:

I do not love you as if you were a rose made of salt or topaz
or an arrow of carnations spreading fire:
I love you the way certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you like the plant that never blooms,
but conceals within itself the light of those flowers;
and, thanks to your love, the darkness of my body
houses the suffocating aroma that arose from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, when, or where from;
I love you straightforwardly, with neither problems nor pride:
I love you thus, not knowing how to love you otherwise
than this way whereby neither ‘you’ nor ‘I’ exist…
so close that your hand on my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes grow heavy when I tire.

Another favorite is:

“To Be One With Each Other” by George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent unspoken memories?

 

[cara]

There are a ton in this indiebride thread:
ceremony readings

We used that Shakespeare sonnet above though I must admit it is a bit over my head.

 

[Gypsy]

Juliabean those are both so lovely!! Thank you!

 

[julabean]

Date: 2/1/2008 6:34:54 PM
Author: Gypsy
Juliabean those are both so lovely!! Thank you!

You''re welcome! I''ll be checking back to see some other suggestions for my own inspiration.

 

[Gypsy]

Date: 2/1/2008 6:30:02 PM
Author: cara
There are a ton in this indiebride thread:
ceremony readings

We used that Shakespeare sonnet above though I must admit it is a bit over my head.

Shakespere is a love of ours. And was one of our first 'sparks' of common interest with one another in our very first conversation. So, I think it would be fitting.

And from your wonderful thread link:
Here's something I would like the officiant to read, as it fits us perfectly:

From Union by Robert Fulghum:

You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making promises and agreements in an informal way. All those conversations that were held riding in a car or over a meal or during long walks - all those sentences that began with “When we’re married” and continued with “I will and you will and we will”- those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe”- and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding. The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “ You know all those things we’ve promised and hoped and dreamed- well, I meant it all, every word.” Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another- acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, and even teacher, for you have learned much from one another in these last few years. Now you shall say a few words that take you across a threshold of life, and things will never quite be the same between you. For after these vows, you shall say to the world, this- is my husband, this- is my wife.





Here are some others:

Is love pleasure, is love merriment?
No, love is longing constantly;
love is persevering unwearedly;
love is hoping patiently;
love is willing surrender;
love is regarding constantly the pleasure and displeasure of the beloved,
for love is resignation to the will of the possessor of one’s heart;
it is love that teaches us: Thou, not I.

~Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Gayan, Vadan, Nirtan"


"I searched, but I could not find Thee; I called Thee aloud, standing on the minaret; I rang the temple bell with the rising and setting of the sun... I looked for Thee on the earth; I searched for Thee in the heavens, my Beloved, but at last I have found Thee hidden as a pearl in the shell of my heart."
-Hazrat Inayat Khan, "Gayan, Vadan, Nirtan"



Oh how pretty and perfect this one is:

Understand, I'll slip quietly
Away from the noisy crowd
When I see the pale
Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.
I'll pursue solitary pathways
Through the pale twilit meadows,
With only this one dream:
You come too.


Thought provoking:

"Loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love". Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretence or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity -- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh."

More e e cummings: Love is More Thicker Than Forget

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is more sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

Mentions God, but not religious, really.
ON LOVE
~Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471)

Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good.
Love alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.
It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders all
bitterness sweet and acceptable.
Nothing is sweeter than love,
Nothing stronger,
Nothing higher,
Nothing wider,
Nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God.
Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.
It is free and unrestrained.
Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.
Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,
attempts things beyond its strength.
Love sees nothing as impossible,
for it feels able to achieve all things.
It is strange and effective,
while those who lack love faint and fail.
Love is not fickle and sentimental,
nor is it intent on vanities.
Like a living flame and a burning torch,
it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.

 

[Gypsy]

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you''re not here, I can''t go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don''t finally meet somewhere.
They''re in each other all along.
We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute, so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

--The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

 

[Gypsy]

Oh wow. Cara that is an awesome thread. This one made me cry:
Love by Roy Croft
I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;

I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.

 

[julabean]

Oh, I really like the one by Thomas Kempis. Slightly off topic, but that was written somewhere between the late 1300''s and early 1400''s and it''s STILL true! Sometimes I''m just amazed that people who lived 700+ years ago felt things that today, in 2008, I can relate to!

 

[Gypsy]

Date: 2/1/2008 7:07:24 PM
Author: julabean
Oh, I really like the one by Thomas Kempis. Slightly off topic, but that was written somewhere between the late 1300''s and early 1400''s and it''s STILL true! Sometimes I''m just amazed that people who lived 700+ years ago felt things that today, in 2008, I can relate to!

I agree. I loved studying poetry and amazed how certain concepts, thoughts, and feelings transcend time, race, religion, language barriars and continents.

And, at last, a Rumi poem that seems perfectly appropriate (for right before the rings), yet I''ve never seen it used in a wedding!
Also by Rumi:
I am here, this moment, inside the beauty,
the gift God has given,
our love:
this gold and circular sign
means we are free of any duty:
out of eternity
I turn my face to you, and into
eternity:
we have been in
love that long.