Grammar is Important

From a Teacher -- short and to the point.
 In the world of hi-tech gadgetry, I've noticed that more and more people who send text messages and emails have long forgotten the art of capital letters.

For those of you who fall into this category, please take note of the following statement: "Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse." 

Is everybody clear on that?

 

I can write the saddest lines tonight

                              XX From:’ Veinte poemas de amor’

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: ‘The night is fractured

and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.

I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.

Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.

The night is fractured and she is not with me.

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.

My heart looks for her: she is not with me

         

The same night whitens, in the same branches.

We, from that time, we are not the same.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.

Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.

Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,        

and these are the last lines I will write for her.

By:  Pablo Neruda

Copied and pasted by:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is My Name

Lamento lento

En la noche del corazón
la gota de tu nombre lento
en silencio circula y cae
y rompe y desarrolla su agua.

Algo quiere su leve daño
y su estima infinita y corta,
como el paso de un ser perdido
de pronto oído.

De pronto, de pronto escuchado
y repartido en el corazón
con triste insistencia y aumento
como un sueño frío de otoño.

La espesa rueda de la tierra
su llanta húmeda de olvido
hace rodar, cortando el tiempo
en mitades inaccesibles.

Sus copas duras cubren tu alma
derramada en la tierra fría
con sus pobres chispas azules
volando en la voz de la lluvia.

Por:  Pablo Neruda

Pequeño poema infinito [Tiny infinite poem]

Equivocar el camino 
es llegar a la nieve 
y llegar a la nieve 
es pacer durante veinte siglos las hierbas de los cementerios. 

Equivocar el camino 
es llegar a la mujer, 
la mujer que no teme la luz, 
la mujer que no teme a los gallos 
y los gallos que no saben cantar sobre la nieve. 

Pero si la nieve se equivoca de corazón 
puede llegar el viento Austro 
y como el aire no hace caso de los gemidos 
tendremos que pacer otra vez las hierbas de los cementerios. 

Yo vi dos dolorosas espigas de cera 
que enterraban un paisaje de volcanes 
y vi dos niños locos que empujaban llorando las pupilas de un asesino. 

Pero el dos no ha sido nunca un número 
porque es una angustia y su sombra, 
porque es la guitarra donde el amor se desespera, 
porque es la demostración de otro infinito que no es suyo 
y es las murallas del muerto 
y el castigo de la nueva resurrección sin finales. 
Los muertos odian el número dos, 
pero el número dos adormece a las mujeres 
y como la mujer teme la luz 
la luz tiembla delante de los gallos 
y los gallos sólo saben votar sobre la nieve 
tendremos que pacer sin descanso las hierbas de los cementerios.

Por: Federico García Lorca 
Copiado por:  Sin Hogar con una Computadora Portátil, ese es mi Nombre

How few hairs must a man have to be bald?

As I exited a local mall, where I had been shopping for widgets, i.e., nothing of significance, I noticed a man standing on the corner. He was looking at the sky, but I didn’t look up.

What captivated my attention was his lack of hair: he was bald. Big deal you say. I would have thought the same except that he had a few strands of long hair carefully plastered in a forward direction; towards his forehead. Was he a bald guy? A guy going bald? Or a bald guy with some hairs plastered on his head?

It seemed that because he once had blond hair, he was likely considered bald. If his hair had been dark brown for example, he might not have been considered bald but rather going bald or perhaps having a bouffant hairdo—a crucial distinction.

On the other hand, it’s clear that from his point of view that he wasn’t. If he was, he wouldn’t have carefully plastered the few strands of hair on his head and combed them forward.

I walked up to him and said really loud, “Excuse me, but how few hairs must a man have to be bald?” He looked at me with surprise then anger. Other people walking by frowned at me, except for two young black kids who were laughing.

As I combed my deep brown hair on the store window, I reflected, “Which grain makes the noise when corn is tipped from a container?”

by Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

‘Perhaps not to be is to be without your being.’ Pablo Neruda

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be. 

By:  Pablo Neruda
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Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

It's Time

It’s time, my friend: it’s time! The heart wants rest

the days slip by, the hours take away

fragments of our life: and you and I

plan how to live and, – just like that – we die.

No happiness on earth, yet there’s freedom, peace.

I’ve long dreamt of an enviable fate –

I’ve long thought, a weary slave, to fly

to some far place of labour and true joy.

 

By:  Alexander Pushkin

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Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name