All Poems
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A Barred Owl
© Lola Ridge
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man’s Footsteps #17
© Marvin Bell
1. At the Walking Dunes, Eastern Long Island
That a bent piece of straw made a circle in the sand.
April Love?
© Carol Ann Duffy
We have walked in Love's land a little way,
We have learnt his lesson a little while,
Private Beach
© Jane Kenyon
It is always the dispossessed—
someone driving a huge rusted Dodge
that’s burning oil, and must cost
twenty-five dollars to fill.
[Response to the Loyalty Oath]
© Jack Spicer
We, the Research Assistants and Teaching Assistants of the University of California, wish to register our protest against the new loyalty oath for the following reasons.
1) The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty by forcing every faculty member to sign an oath saying that he has never committed murder.
Northern Farmer: New Style
© Alfred Tennyson
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.
When She Wouldn’t
© Wesley McNair
When her recorded voice on the phone
said who she was again and again to the piles
of newspapers and magazines and the clothes
The Stream's Secret
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her.
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?
Providence
© Natasha Trethewey
What's left is footage: the hours before
Camille, 1969—hurricane
parties, palm trees leaning
in the wind,
fronds blown back,
"I loved you first: but afterwards your love"
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. Dante
Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly
© John Donne
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
It Couldn’t Be Done
© Edgar Albert Guest
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
(Lest I should know you...)
© Anselm Hollo
Lest I should know you too easily, you play with me.
You blind me with flashes of laughter to hide your tears.
I know, I know your art;
You never say the word you would.
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
© William Bronk
I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
that wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
Philosopher Orders Crispy Pork
© Heather McHugh
I love him so, this creature I do pray
was treated kindly. I will pay
as much as pig-lovers see fit
Niagara
© Daniel Nester
Driving westward near Niagara, that transfiguring of the waters,
I was torn—as moon from orbit by a warping of gravitation—
From coercion of the freeway to the cataract’s prodigality,
Had to stand there, breathe its rapture, inebriety of the precipice . . .
The River at Wolf
© Jean Valentine
Coming east we left the animals
pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake
their hair and skin and feathers
their eyes in the dark: red and green.
Your finger drawing my mouth.
