Poem about runners?
November 2, 2010 8:02 AM Subscribe
I need a poem about running/runners. The poem will be read at a banquet for a college's cross country team (coed). It should be short and accessible.
The Runner, by W. H. Auden:
All visible visibly
Moving things
Spin or swing,
One of the two,
Move, as the limbs
Of a runner do,
To and fro,
Forward and back,
Or, as they swiftly
Carry him
In orbit go
Round an endless track:
So, everywhere, every
Creature disporting
Itself according
To the law of its making
In the rivals' dance
Of a balanced pair
Or the ring-dance
Round a common centre,
Delights the eye
By its symmetry
As it changes place
Blessing the unchangeable
Absolute rest
Of the space all share
The camera's eye
Does not lie
But it cannot show
The life within,
The life of a runner,
Of yours or mine,
That race which is neither
Fast nor slow,
For nothing can ever
Happen twice,
That story which moves
Like music when
Begotten notes
New notes beget
Making the flowing
Of time a growing
Till what it could be
At last it is,
Where Fate is Freedom,
Grace, and Surprise.
posted by dlugoczaj at 8:19 AM on November 2, 2010
All visible visibly
Moving things
Spin or swing,
One of the two,
Move, as the limbs
Of a runner do,
To and fro,
Forward and back,
Or, as they swiftly
Carry him
In orbit go
Round an endless track:
So, everywhere, every
Creature disporting
Itself according
To the law of its making
In the rivals' dance
Of a balanced pair
Or the ring-dance
Round a common centre,
Delights the eye
By its symmetry
As it changes place
Blessing the unchangeable
Absolute rest
Of the space all share
The camera's eye
Does not lie
But it cannot show
The life within,
The life of a runner,
Of yours or mine,
That race which is neither
Fast nor slow,
For nothing can ever
Happen twice,
That story which moves
Like music when
Begotten notes
New notes beget
Making the flowing
Of time a growing
Till what it could be
At last it is,
Where Fate is Freedom,
Grace, and Surprise.
posted by dlugoczaj at 8:19 AM on November 2, 2010
The Song of the Ungirt Runners by Charles Hamilton Sorley.
...And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.
posted by Siena at 8:48 AM on November 2, 2010
Ah. Short.
There's Walt Whitman's The Runner
ON a flat road runs the well-train'd runner;
He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs;
He is thinly clothed--he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais'd.
posted by Siena at 8:52 AM on November 2, 2010
There's Walt Whitman's The Runner
ON a flat road runs the well-train'd runner;
He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs;
He is thinly clothed--he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais'd.
posted by Siena at 8:52 AM on November 2, 2010
Well, this might be weird, but since you're talking to college runners, this is a prose poem I wrote for my college best friend, who ran cross country in high school, and, well, why not?:
We’re Both Suckers for “June on the West Coast”
By P. North
His father had hoped to conjure a runner from his son—made gangly muscles stress in the raw dim days before dawn on the hazy field out back behind the old barn—but they would both find only a rhythm in his head; breath in, wet mud and moss compressed under second-hand shoes, breath out, again, repeat and watch the rabbits retreat through tall reeds in rushed silence.
He finally broke through in Wayne and Wilmington, found his stride at foreign gatherings in the whirlpool base of plastic cups, projected his theories to the back of the skull of some pretty doe-eyed girl who flashed and flickered in the string-light midnight, sharing Camels with him as if they were snickered secrets. He only smoked while drinking, and he was always drinking.
We’d meet in his Formica kitchen over pipefuls of hot and sour soup, wormy deep-fried noodles, and tippled tequila, argue until coffee-time about the University, the Universe, the Definition, our Delinquencies, agreeing only on all of the same sad songs.
I get letters from him twice a month, one hundred and twenty six hand written lines etched across one single side of a wrinkled yellow page.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:13 AM on November 2, 2010
We’re Both Suckers for “June on the West Coast”
By P. North
His father had hoped to conjure a runner from his son—made gangly muscles stress in the raw dim days before dawn on the hazy field out back behind the old barn—but they would both find only a rhythm in his head; breath in, wet mud and moss compressed under second-hand shoes, breath out, again, repeat and watch the rabbits retreat through tall reeds in rushed silence.
He finally broke through in Wayne and Wilmington, found his stride at foreign gatherings in the whirlpool base of plastic cups, projected his theories to the back of the skull of some pretty doe-eyed girl who flashed and flickered in the string-light midnight, sharing Camels with him as if they were snickered secrets. He only smoked while drinking, and he was always drinking.
We’d meet in his Formica kitchen over pipefuls of hot and sour soup, wormy deep-fried noodles, and tippled tequila, argue until coffee-time about the University, the Universe, the Definition, our Delinquencies, agreeing only on all of the same sad songs.
I get letters from him twice a month, one hundred and twenty six hand written lines etched across one single side of a wrinkled yellow page.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:13 AM on November 2, 2010
Start with a joke.
Two guys are hiking in the jungle. A hungry tiger emerges from the underbrush, licks his chops and starts walking toward the pair.
One guy immediately starts stretching his quads and calves, and does a few warm-up lunges.
"What are you doing?" says one guy. "You can't outrun a tiger!"
"I don't need to outrun the tiger," says the other. "I just need to outrun you."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:29 AM on November 2, 2010
Two guys are hiking in the jungle. A hungry tiger emerges from the underbrush, licks his chops and starts walking toward the pair.
One guy immediately starts stretching his quads and calves, and does a few warm-up lunges.
"What are you doing?" says one guy. "You can't outrun a tiger!"
"I don't need to outrun the tiger," says the other. "I just need to outrun you."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:29 AM on November 2, 2010
"The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 A.M." by Agha Shahid Ali
The dark scissors of his legs
cut the moon's
raw silk, highways of wind
torn into lanes, his feet
pushing down the shadow
whose patterns he becomes
while trucks, one by one,
pass him by,
headlights pouring
from his pace, his eyes
cracked as the Hudson
wraps street lamps
in its rippled blue shells,
the summer's thin, thin veins
bursting with dawn,
he, now suddenly free,
from the air, from himself,
his heart beating far, far
behind him
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:42 AM on November 2, 2010
The dark scissors of his legs
cut the moon's
raw silk, highways of wind
torn into lanes, his feet
pushing down the shadow
whose patterns he becomes
while trucks, one by one,
pass him by,
headlights pouring
from his pace, his eyes
cracked as the Hudson
wraps street lamps
in its rippled blue shells,
the summer's thin, thin veins
bursting with dawn,
he, now suddenly free,
from the air, from himself,
his heart beating far, far
behind him
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:42 AM on November 2, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks all. So far nothing seems quite right, the college is in rural South Carolina. I'm not the person who will be giving this speech.
posted by mareli at 3:43 PM on November 2, 2010
posted by mareli at 3:43 PM on November 2, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by CathyG at 8:16 AM on November 2, 2010