All Poems
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Aliens
© Amy Lowell
The chatter of little people
Breaks on my purpose
Like the water-drops which slowly wear the rocks to powder.
And while I laugh
My spirit crumbles at their teasing touch.
There Came a Soul
© Rita Dove
After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida
She arrived as near to virginal
Late March
© Edward Hirsch
Saturday morning in late March.
I was alone and took a long walk,
though I also carried a book
of the Alone, which companioned me.
In Piam Memoriam
© Geoffrey Hill
Created purely from glass the saint stands,
Exposing his gifted quite empty hands
Like a conjurer about to begin,
A righteous man begging of righteous men.
My Brother, the Artist, at Seven
© Philip Levine
As a boy he played alone in the fields
behind our block, six frame houses
A Lesson in Geography
© Kenneth Rexroth
In the Japanese quarter
A phonograph playing
“Moonlight on ruined castles”
Kojo n'suki
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
© Margaret Atwood
But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
The True Born Englishman
© Daniel Defoe
Which medly cantond in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintaind eternal wars,
And still the ladies lovd the conquerors.
Before Parting
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Karenge ya Marenge
© Countee Cullen
Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,
So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude,
That men who claim they fight for liberty
Can hear this battle-shout impassively,
Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung
At those same words cried in the English tongue?
The Lady’s Dressing Room
© Jonathan Swift
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
from First Book of Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry
© Ted Hughes
Muzzle and jowl and beastly brow,
bilious glaring eyes, tufted ears,
recidivous criminality in the slouch,
—This is not the latest absconding bankrupt
but a ‘beautiful’ tiger imported at great expense from
Kuala Lumpur.
The Moon is distant from the Sea (387)
© Emily Dickinson
The Moon is distant from the Sea
And yet, with Amber Hands
She leads Him docile as a Boy
Along appointed Sands
Marrying the Hangman
© Margaret Atwood
She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.
I Dug, Beneath the Cypress Shade
© Thomas Love Peacock
I dug, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin's grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.
"Go, lovely Rose"
© Edmund Waller
Go, lovely Rose
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
