All Poems
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vegas
© Charles Bukowski
a marvelous description of a gazelle
is hell;
the cross sits like a fly on my window,
my mother’s breath stirs small leaves
in my mind;
Old Tunes
© Henry Lawson
WHEN friends are listening round me, Jack, to hear my dying breath,
And I am lying in a sleep they say will end in death,
Dont notice what the doctor saysand let the nurse complain
Ill tell you how to rouse me if Ill ever wake again.
The Song of Lewes
© Pierre Reverdy
Sitteth alle stille and herkneth to me!
The King of Alemaigne, by mi leaute,
Thritty thousand pound askede he
For to make the pees in the countre
And so he dude more.
The Parting
© Abraham Cowley
As Men in Greenland left beheld the sun
From their horizon run;
And thought upon the sad half-year
Of cold and darkness they must suffer there:
Parson Turells Legacy
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR
A MATHEMATICAL STORY
Prisoners
© Denise Levertov
We taste other food that life,
like a charitable farm-girl,
holds out to us as we pass—
but our mouths are puckered,
a taint of ash on the tongue.
Lesbia's Daughter
© Kenneth Slessor
LESBIA'S daughter, I shall tell no lie,
Here's no fit amber for such a dainty fly.
Let them embalm your beauty whoso can
In boastful odes, I'm a more honest man.
Small Woman on Swallow Street
© William Stanley Merwin
Four feet up, under the bruise-blue
Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim
Against Lawn by Grace Bauer: American Life in Poetry #50 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from the literary journal, Lake Effect, Volume 8, Spring 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright © 2004 by Grace Bauer, whose new book, Beholding Eye, is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications in 2006. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Fancy
© Jean Ingelow
O fancy, if thou flyest, come back anon,
Thy fluttering wings are soft as love's first word,
Camouflaging the Chimera
© Yusef Komunyakaa
We tied branches to our helmets.
We painted our faces & rifles
with mud from a riverbank,
The Joy Of Childhood
© George Darley
Down the dimpled green-sward dancing
Bursts a flaxen-headed bevy,
Bud-lipt boys and girls advancing
Love's irregular little levy.
Kisses Desired
© William Drummond (of Hawthornden)
Though I with strange desire
To kiss those rosy lips am set on fire,
Merry Andrew
© Matthew Prior
A reverend prelate stopp'd his couch-and-six
To laugh a little at our Andrew's tricks:
But when he heard him give this golden rule,
Drive on (he cried) this fellow is no fool.
Fragment 3: Come, come thou bleak December wind
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.
Easter Day
© John Keble
Oh! day of days! shall hearts set free
No "minstrel rapture" find for thee?
Thou art this Sun of other days,
They shine by giving back thy rays:
Springtime in the Rockies, Lichen
© Lew Welch
All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
The Homesteader
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
WIND-SWEPT and fire-swept and swept with bitter rain,
This was the world I came to when I came across the sea--
Sun-drenched and panting, a pregnant, waiting plain
Calling out to humankind, calling out to me!
