{"id":214,"date":"2009-04-06T19:01:28","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T19:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/04\/my-favorite-poem.html"},"modified":"2009-04-06T19:01:28","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T19:01:28","slug":"my-favorite-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/04\/my-favorite-poem.html","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is National Poetry Month and some have suggested I offer my favorite poem on this blog.  I have a small number of favorite poems, and a strong preference for a particular type of poem, ones that meld us with Place, and the deeper meaning beyond words of that Place.  <\/p>\n

But my favorite poem of all, one that deeply changed how I experience my world, is not like that.  Not quite.  And yet in another much more subtle way it is.<\/p>\n

When I was a college student I found it written on the wall of the men’s room in the Bierstube in Lawrence, Kansas, next to the observation “You don’t buy beer, you rent it.”<\/p>\n

The verse affected me deeply when I encountered it in the 60s.  It has never stopped doing so.  The whole poem was not there, only a crucial part.  Even that part was in translation from the original Russian.  I give it now, excerpted from Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s “People” in his Selected Poems<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

In any man who dies there dies with him
His first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.<\/p>\n

They are left books and bridges
And painted canvas and machinery.<\/p>\n

Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:<\/p>\n

By the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.<\/p>\n

It would be years still before I became a Pagan, but already I was captivated by the magic and meaning of immanence, and the deep beauty and sacredness of the concrete.<\/p>\n

For the next week I will offer some others that are special to me – and hopefully some of my readers will do the same.  I will save explicitly Pagan poems until the last.  I am doing this in part to motivate me to return to some of my favorites, and re-read them at my leisure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is National Poetry Month and some have suggested I offer my favorite poem on this blog.  I have a small number of favorite poems, and a strong preference for a particular type of poem, ones that meld us with Place, and the deeper meaning beyond words of that Place.   But my favorite poem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\nMy Favorite Poem - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/04\/my-favorite-poem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Favorite Poem - 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