[theme set] The 31 Days of Kittenmas

[annwyd.livejournal.com]

Here are the themes for December!

1) let snow and silence mark the site of my unseemly appetite
2) make him tame so he can live in peace with the world
3) I appeal to your scratches and your tattered fur
4) making love in the temple
5) glorious eyes that smile and burn
6) I'll argue the point no longer, only cry for you a little
7) did you find enlightenment in the Western Paradise?
8) why should our children learn about monsters
9) generations of poison, centuries of poison
10) here's vengeance for your story-books
11) dying is what, to live, each has to do
12) those who early loved in vain
13) and you return to us in this condition--!
14) who knows perhaps I'll catch me a God
15) only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all
16) and night with different stars
17) but if I try to find you there are only the shadows
18) a common passion for the lonely hour
19) and he chants the hate of a million years
20) far now they be, fierce and free, and tamed is he
21) and by dark arts cast a light
22) light distilled before his time and ours
23) drunk with his own light
24) take care of all our dreams
25) a thousand sunsets in a box
26) come back in joy, come back in pain
27) and you honored in blood rite
28) grown small and thin with desire
29) nevertheless, to be curious is dangerous enough
30) the universe plunging at last into its cold decline
31) Here Lies a Veritable Dragon.

All themes for this month were taken from poems in the collection The Poetical Cat, edited by Felicity Bast. Specific sources:

1) Nancy Willard, "The Cat to His Dinner."
2) Sutardji Calzoum Bachri, "Cat." Translated from the Malay by Harry Aveling.
3) Thomas Flatman, "An Appeal to Cats in the Business of Love."
4) Kawai Chigetsu-ni, "Propriety." Translated from the Japanese by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi.
5) Algernon Charles Swinburne, "To a Cat."
6) Mei Yao-ch'en, "An Offering for the Cat." Translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson.
7) Nguyen Trai, "The Cat." Translated from the Vietnamese by Jess Williamson.
8) Czeslaw Milosz, "To Mrs. Professor in Defense of My Cat's Honor and Not Only." Translated from the Polish by the poet and Robert Hass.
9) George Seferis, "The Cats of St. Nicholas." Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
10) Obeyd-i-Zakani, "Gorby and the Rats." Translated from the Persian by Omar Pound.
11) Alastair Reid, "Curiosity."
12) Edward Newman Horn, "Pussycat Sits on a Chair."
13) William Carlos Williams, "Mujer."
14) Same as #2.
15) Same as #11.
16) Vita Sackville-West, "The Greater Cats."
17) Amy Lowell, "To Winky."
18) W.H. Auden, "The Single Creature."
19) Don Marquis, "The Tomcat."
20) J.R.R. Tolkien, "Cat on the Mat."
21) D.J. Enright, "The Egyptian Cat."
22) Louis MacNeice, "The Death of a Cat."
23) Attributed to Rajasekhara, "Moonlight." Translated from the Sanskrit by Henry Heifetz.
24) Pablo Neruda, "Cat's Dream." Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid.
25) Nancy Willard, "The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife."
26) E.V. Rieu, "The Lost Cat."
27) Agathias, "Justice." Translated from the Greek by Peter Whigham.
28) Harold Monro, "Milk for the Cat."
29) Same as #11.
30) Randall Jarrell, "The Happy Cat."
31) Felicity Bast, after Wang T'ung-kuei, "Frost Eyebrows."