ABC of Famous Poets

[lucimay]

Whitman, Walt

OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive...

[ussusimiel]

X, Alphonso

LADY, for the love of God,
Have some pity upon me!
See my eyes, a river-flood
Day and night, oh, see!
Brothers, cousins, uncles, all,
Have I lost for thee;
If thou dost not me recall,
Woe is me!

[lucimay]

Yeats, William Butler

...The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[ussusimiel]

Zarin, Cynthia

My heart, my dove, my snail, my sail, my
milktooth, shadow, sparrow, fingernail,
flower-cat and blossom-hedge, mandrake

root now put to bed, moonshell, sea-swell,
manatee, emerald shining back at me,
nutmeg, quince, tea leaf and bone, zither,

cymbal, xylophone; paper, scissors, then
there’s stone—Who doesn’t come through the door
to get home?

[sgt.null]

Aher, w.jude



the butterfly and the rose by W. Jude Aher

i walk the dream
where the street
breathes in the shadow
of moon-light,
the lovers night.

oh, sweet love
long time coming
longer time whispering
us free.

i sing your eyes
as willows
stretching into
the ever passing winds

i speak the words of my heart
i sing the songs of my dreams
i see in the water
your image
and it’s true...

as i ride the butterfly,
i offer the rose.

- jude

[ussusimiel]

Brendan Kennelly

The fox eats its own leg in the trap

To go free. As it limps through the grass

The earth itself appears to bleed.

When the morning light comes up

Who knows what suffering midnight was?

Proof is what I do not need.

[sgt.null]

cummings, ee



Chansons Innocentes: I
by E. E. Cummings


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

[deer of the dawn]

Donne, John

[lucimay]

Eady, Cornelius




The Dance

When the world ends,
I will be in a red dress.
When the world ends,
I will be in a smoky bar
.....on Friday night.
When the world ends,
I will be a thought-cloud.
When the world ends,
I will be steam in a tea kettle.
When the world ends,
I will be a sunbeam through
.....a lead window,
And I will shake like the
.....semis on the interstate,
And I will shake like the tree
.....kissed by lightning,
And I will move; the earth will move
.....too,
And I will move; the cities will move
.....too,
And I will move, with the remains of
.....my last paycheck in my pocket.
It will be Friday night
And I will be in a red dress,
My feet relieved of duty,
My body in free-fall,
Loose as a ballerina
.....in zero gravity,
Equal at last with feathers
.....and dust,
As the world faints and tumbles
.....down the stairs,
The jukebox is overtaken at last,
And the cicadas, under the eaves,
.....warm up their legs.

[ussusimiel]

Freda Downie

.....not to forget a bunch of violets
So that he would have a little poetry
Around him when he returned.
I like to think the violets were
Easily obtainable and that the poetry
Was there, on the table, breathing
Wordless volumes for one too tired
to turn pages ...

[lucimay]

Gilbert, Jack




Divorce

Woke up suddenly thinking I heard crying.
Rushed through the dark house.
Stopped, remembering. Stood looking
out at bright moonlight on concrete.

[ussusimiel]

Henri, Adrian

Love is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.

Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is

Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you are away from me

Love is...

[lucimay]

Irwin, Mark




My Father's Hats

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
was that of clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I can't be sure is there.

[sgt.null]

james joyce



"Lean out of the window,
Golden-hair,
I hear you singing
A merry air.

My book was closed;
I read no more,
Watching the fire dance
On the floor.

I have left my book,
I have left my room
For I heard you singing
Through the gloom,

Singing and singing
A merry air,
Lean out of the window,
Golden-hair."

[sgt.null]

rudyard kipling



Tin Fish by Rudyard Kipling

The ships destroy us above
And ensnare us beneath.
We arise, we lie down, and we
In the belly of Death.

The ships have a thousand eyes
To mark where we come . . .
But the mirth of a seaport dies
When our blow gets home.

[lucimay]

Lowell, Robert




Identification in Belfast
(I.R.A. Bombing)

The British Army now carries two rifles,
one with rubber rabbit-pellets for children,
the other's of course for the Provisionals....
'When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it's not him because he's blonde—
I imagine his hair was singed dark by the bomb.
He had nothing on him to identify him,
except this box of joke trick matches;
he liked to have them on him, even at mass.
The police were unhurried and wonderful,
they let me go on trying to strike a match...
I just wouldn't stop—you cling to anything—
I couldn't believe I couldn't light one match—
only joke matches... Then I knew he was Richard.'

[sgt.null]

Edna St. Vincent Millay



Whereas At Morning In A Jeweled Crown
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown
I bit my fingers and was hard to please,
Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down
I feel tonight more happy and at ease:
Feet running in the corridors, men quick—
Buckling their sword-belts, bumping down the stair,
Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click
Of hooves on pavement—this will clear the air.
Private this chamber as it has not been
In many a month of muffled hours; almost,
Lulled by the uproar, I could lie serene
And sleep, until all's won, until all's lost,
And the door's opened and the issue shown,
And I walk forth Hell's Mistress—or my own.

[lucimay]

Nemerov, Howard



Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

[sgt.null]

Sharon Olds



Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

[ussusimiel]

Philip Larkin

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.