All Poems

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A Sad Child

© Margaret Atwood

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Lines Written At Sea (I)

© Frances Anne Kemble

Dear, yet forbidden thoughts, that from my soul,

While shines the weary sun, with stern control

Variations on the Word Love

© Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing

History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)

© Joseph Brodsky

Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.

Postcards

© Margaret Atwood

I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual

Dickens: Sonnets

© Algernon Charles Swinburne

CHIEF in thy generation born of men

Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,

The Rest

© Margaret Atwood

The rest of us watch from beyond the fence
as the woman moves with her jagged stride
into her pain as if into a slow race.
We see her body in motion

The Death of Mary

© Charles Wolfe

I do not think, where'er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart
In thinking too of thee!

In The Secular Night

© Margaret Atwood

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;

Once the nation's chief was honored by the company of one,
Who to lift a fallen people had a work of worth begun,
Lofty things had he accomplished for a race so long despised,
In a land where naught but color by the whites are ever prized.

Habitation

© Margaret Atwood

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

Worth While

© Wilcox Ella Wheeler

It is easy enough to be pleasant,

When life flows by like a song,

Variation On The Word Sleep

© Margaret Atwood

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

Mystery Of Mysteries

© Mathilde Blind

Is this the End? This handful of brown earth
For all releasing elements to take
And free for ever from the bonds of birth?
Or will true life from Life's disguises break,
Called to that vast confederacy of minds
Which casts all flesh as chaff to all the winds?