Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.– Khalil Gibran.

Puisi dapat memulihkan hati, dapat memperbaiki jiwa. Puisi membuat kita melihat dunia dalam cahaya yang baru. Puisi—membacanya, memberi makan  imajinasi, membentangkan pikiran.  Sebuah puisi biasanya pendek tetapi berdampak  besar. Sebegitu besarnya dampak puisi terhadap saya, sampai saya hampir selalu membacanya sebelum tidur. Dan berikut adalah beberapa puisi favorit yang ingin saya bagikan kepada Anda, semoga bisa juga berdampak bagi Anda. Happy reading 🙂

She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Puisi-puisi Lord Byron dianggap sebagai puisi paling romantis dalam sastra Inggris. She Walks in Beauty, dengan pilihan kata-kata yang indah mampu mengungkapkan pesona dan keanggunanan wanita sehingga tak heran bila puisi ini tak lekang waktu. Bahkan banyak dipakai dalam pernikahan dan lamaran 🙂

Love after Love, Derek Walcott 

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Saya pikir puisi Love after Love mampu memberikan atmosfer positif saat broken hearted. Sebuah puisi tentang bangkit dan mencintai lagi, tentang mencintai diri sendiri setelah semua rasa pahit dan kehilangan.

“Why I Am Not a Painter”, Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg,
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

Saya jatuh cinta dengan puisi ini. Sebuah puisi tentang passion tapi somehow Frank O’Hara memainkan kata-kata dengan begitu personal dan urban, tidak peduli dengan semua tetek bengek tentang rima.

Having a coke with you, Frank O’Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

Having A Coke With You adalah puisi cinta yang melawan tradisi, Having a Coke With You adalah tipikal karya Frank O’Hara yang spontan, terbuka dan antusias. Frank terkenal dengan tulisannya yang bebas. Dia tidak menyukai pretensi sastra dan menginginkan puisinya mencerminkan keterlibatannya dengan aktivitas budaya yang terupdate.

Hujan Bulan Juni, Sapardi Djoko Damono

tak ada yang lebih tabah
dari hujan bulan juni
dirahasiakannya rintik rindunya
kepada pohon berbunga itu

tak ada yang lebih bijak
dari hujan bulan juni
dihapusnya jejak-jejak kakinya
yang ragu-ragu di jalan itu

tak ada yang lebih arif
dari hujan bulan juni
dibiarkannya yang tak terucapkan
diserap akar pohon bunga itu

Dari sekian banyaknya puisi Sapardi yang menyentuh hati saya, Hujan Bulan Juni adalah yang paling mengena di hati. Puisi yang mewakili rasa cinta, kerinduan terhadap seseorang, tentang mencintai dalam diam. Duh, adem rasanya kalau baca puisi ini ^^

Derai-derai Cemara, Chairil Anwar

Cemara menderai sampai jauh
Terasa hari akan jadi malam,
Ada beberapa dahan ditingkap merapuh
Dipukul angin yang terpendam.

Aku sekarang orangnya bisa tahan
Sudah berapa waktu bukan kanak lagi
Tapi dulu memang ada suatu bahan
Yang bukan dasar perhitungan kini
Hidup hanya menunda kekalahan
Tambah terasing dari cinta sekolah rendah
Dan tahu, ada yang tetap tidak diucapkan
Sebelum pada akhirnya kita menyerah

Tidak ada yang lebih baik mengungkapkan tentang penderitaan, rasa pahit, keterasingan, dan penyerahan diri yang putus asa bahwa segala sesuatu dalam dunia ini pasti akan berakhir selain Chairil Anwar.

Alone, Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were–I have not seen
As others saw–I could not bring
My passions from a common spring–
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow–I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone–
And all I lov’d–I lov’d alone–
Then–in my childhood–in the dawn
Of a most stormy life–was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still–
From the torrent, or the fountain–
From the red cliff of the mountain–
From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold–
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by–
From the thunder, and the storm–
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view–

Puisi ini adalah kisah flashback masa kecil Edgar Allan Poe. Pilihan kata-kata seperti alone, sorrow, thunder, demon…membuat nada puisinya murung dan gelap. Poe mengalami kehidupan masa kecil yang suram, sehingga dia mengekspresikan perasaannya akan isolasi dan siksaan batin. Dia juga menjelaskan, betapa berbedanya dirinya dengan orang lain. Passion yang terbentuk sejak kecil karena pengalamannya. Puisi ini membuat orang-orang ‘berbeda’ justru tidak merasa sendirian, semuanya karena Poe 😉

Rain, Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Mungkin karena dimulai dengan adegan hujan di film, makanya saya begitu tertarik dengan puisi ini. Tapi selain itu ada nada penuh dengan ketiadaan dan penyesalan yang dimunculkan oleh Don Paterson. Sekalipun suaranya begitu personal tapi puisi ini tetap terasa universal.