Water Poetry

The bare earth, plantless, waterless, is an immense puzzle.   In the forests
or beside rivers everything speaks to humans.  The desert does not speak.
I could not comprehend its tongue; its silence....
    - Pablo Neruda


We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water.  
Milk drinkers draw close to the mother.   
Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists,
Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound
and moves with thirst to meet it.
    - Jeladuddin Rumi (1207-1273)


“The Waking”

I came where the river
Ran over stones;
My ears knew
An early joy.
And all the waters
Of all the streams
Sang in my veins
That summer day.
     - Theodore Roethke, 1948


Even stones under
mountain waterfalls compose
odes to plum blossoms.
     - Onitsura


When you hear the splash
Of the water drops that fall
Into the stone bowl
You will feel that all the dust
Of your mind is washed away.
    - Sen-No-Rikyu


Collecting all
The rains of May
The swift Mogami River.
    - Basho


To the waters, and the wild, with a Faerie, hand in hand,
for the world is more
full of weeping  ... than you can understand.
    - W.B. Yeats


“Rain in Summer”

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


“The Danaides”

The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover.  
The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both
thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and
brought forth the buds in the orchards.  And it is I who empowered these moist espousals,
I the great Aphrodite ....
    - Aeschylus c.500 B.C.


“Blanco”

You open, land,
your mouth full of water,
your body gushes sky,
you burst, land,
your seeds explode,
the word grows green
    - Octavio Paz, 1966
      The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957 -1987.  



"Water"

The rain is plenteous but, by God's decree,
Only a third is meant for you and me;
Two-thirds are taken by the growing things
Or vanish Heavenward on vapour's wings:
Nor does it mathematically fall
With social equity on one and all.
The population's habit is to grow
In every region where the water's low:
Nature is blamed for failings that are Man's,
And well-run rivers have to change their plans.
    - Sir Alan Herbert



Here is the land where life is written in water
The West is where the water was and is
Father and son of old mother and daughter
Following rivers up immensities
of range and desert thirsting the sundown ever
Crossing a hill to climb a hill still drier
Naming tonight a city by some river
a different name from last night's camping fire
Look to the green within the mountain cup
look to the prairie parched for water lack
Look to the sun that pulls the oceans up
look to the cloud that gives the oceans back
Look to your heart and may your wisdom grow
to power of lightning and to peace of snow
    - Thomas H. Ferril, 1940



"Ode, On the General Subject of Water"

Water is far from a simple commodity,
Water's a sociological oddity,
Water's a pasture for science to forage in,
Water's a mark of our dubious origin,
Water's a link with a distant futurity,
Water's a symbol of ritual purity.

Water is politics, Water's religion,
Water is just about anyone's pigeon.
Water is frightening, water's endearing,
Water's a lot more than mere engineering.
Water is tragical, water is comical,
Water is far from Pure Economical,
So studies of water, though free from aridity
Are apt to produce a good deal of turbidity.
    - Kenneth Boulding; Feather River Anthology



"Two Tramps in Mud Time" (verse 5)

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching-wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
    - Robert Frost, 1936



"Gunga Din" (first half of first verse)

YOU may talk o' gin an' beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But if it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
    - Rudyard Kipling, 1865



“The Task”

A life all turbulence and noise may seem
To him that leads it wise and to be praised,
But wisdom is a pearl with most success
Sought in still waters.
    - William Cowper



“The Brook”

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
    - Alfred Lord Tennyson



"Just Add Water"

The words on labels tell this tale,
In recipes, in ads by mail,
And chances are, at work or play,
You'll see these famous words today -
Just add water.

You'd be surprised how many things
Are dry and useless till one brings
The magic liquid known to all;
You use it when you heed the call -
Just add water.

To illustrate and prove this thought,
Remember all the food you've bought
On which was printed, clear and bright,
Instructions that make cooking light -
Just add water.

You now can buy
Dried fruits, or soups, or tasty cakes;
To powdered milk and frozen juices,
To products with a thousand uses,
Just add water.

Imagine for a minute, please,
An arid wasteland, bare of trees;
This could be farmland, rich and good
And quite productive if we could
Just add water.

What turns cement into concrete?
What changes seed to golden wheat?
No other words now known to man
Can answer that: but these words can:
Just add water
    - David J. Ford



“The Cloud”

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
    - Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822



“April Rain Song”

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your headwith silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
    - Langston Hughes  1902 - 1967



“Water”

The rain is plentious but, by God's decree,
Only a third is meant for you and me;
Two-thirds are taken by the growing things
Or vanish Heavenward on vapour's wings:
Nor does it mathematically fall
With social equity on one and all.
The population's habit is to grow
In every region where the water's low:
Nature is blamed for failings that are Man's,
And well-run rivers have to change their plans.
    - Sir Alan Herbert



WATER:
    Renouncing any form of its own
        it becomes the creative matrix
            for form in everything else

WATER:
    Renouncing any life of its own
        it becomes the primal substance of all life

WATER:
    Renouncing material fixity
        it becomes the implementer of material change

WATER:
    Renouncing any rhythm of its own
        it becomes the progenitor
            of rhythm elsewhere
    - Theodor Schwenk from 'Water: The Element of Life
            
            
“Dry Salvages”

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
is a strong brown god–sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities--ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonored, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
    - T. S. Eliot


“The Man With the Blue Guitar”

It is the sea that whitens the roof.
The sea drifts through the winter air.

It is the sea that the north wind makes.
The sea is in the falling snow.
    - Wallace Stevens



The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters...
- Psalm 23:1-2