All Poems

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Sometimes Never

© Joyce Sutphen

Talking, we begin to find the way into
our hearts, we who knew no words,
words being a rare commodity
in those countries we left behind.

"A bunch of lilac and a storm of hail"

© Lesbia Harford

A bunch of lilac and a storm of hail
On the same afternoon! Indeed I know
Here in the South it always happens so,
That lilac is companioned by the gale.

There is a two-headed goat, a four-winged chicken
and a sad lamb with seven legs
whose complicated little life was spent in Hopland,
California. I saw the man with doubled eyes
who seemed to watch in me my doubts about my spirit.
Will it snag upon this aging flesh?

The Retinue

© Katharine Lee Bates

Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Austrian Heir-Apparent,
Rideth through the Shadow Land, not a lone knight errant,
But captain of a mighty train, millions upon millions,
Armies of the battle-slain, hordes of dim civilians;

Curriculum Vitae

© Samuel Menashe

Scribe out of work
At a loss for words
Not his to begin with,
The man life passed by
Stands at the window
Biding his time

To The Road

© Paul Laurence Dunbar

Cool is the wind, for the summer is waning,

Who 's for the road?

My Shoes

© Charles Simic

Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
Two gaping toothless mouths,
Two partly decomposed animal skins
Smelling of mice nests.

The Rich Mans Woes

© Edgar Albert Guest

HE 'S worth a million dollars and you think he should be glad,
Because you want for money you believe he can't be sad;
His name is in the papers nearly every day or so,
If he wants a trip to Europe he can pack his grip and go,
But he's really heavy-hearted and he often wears a frown,
For his daughter contradicts him and his new wife calls him down.

The Windhover

© Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ our LordTo Christ our Lord This epigraph dedicated the poem to Jesus while echoing the Latin phrase, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, the Jesuit motto meaning “To the Greater Glory of God.”

I caught this morning morning's minionminion favorite, darling; also, an underling or servant, king-

Later On

© William Percy French

Later on, later on,
Oh what many friends have gone,
Sweet lips that smiled and loving eyes that shone
Through the darkness into light,
One by one they've winged their flight
And perhaps we'll play together -- later on.

On the Death of Anne Brontë

© Octavio Paz

THERE 's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I 've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.

Neighbors by David Allen Evans: American Life in Poetry #1 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

We all know that the manner in which people behave toward one another can tell us a lot about their private lives. In this amusing poem by David Allan Evans, Poet Laureate of South Dakota, we learn something about a marriage by being shown a couple as they take on an ordinary household task.
Neighbors

They live alone
together,

Hooded Night

At night, toward dawn, all the lights of the shore have died,

And a wind moves. Moves in the dark

The Dwarfs of Tao-Chou

© Bai Juyi

In the land of Tao-chou

Many of the people are dwarfs;

Hector

We fought for Troy behind a mossy wall;
We burned the Grecian ships below a tree . . .
Ah, that great war was forty years ago !
Yet still I know that Hector did not fall;
For when the bell rang truce to friend and foe,
Achilles, lying Greek, was under me!

The Princess: Our Enemies Have Fall'n

Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed,
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.