All Poems
/ page 2318 of 3210 /
1991-i
© Wendell Berry
The year begins with war.
Our bombs fall day and night,
Hour after hour, by death
Abroad appeasing wrath,
What We Need Is Here
© Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
Grizzly Bear
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Yeah they call me Grizzly Bear got long black grizzly hair
Walk down the street and everybody stop and stare
Ohohoh well I'm wild and wooly and free
And so you'd better not mess with me
Lemme tell you that I howl yowl growl like a grizzly bear
The Real Work
© Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,
Wind at Tindari
© Salvatore Quasimodo
Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills,
overhanging the waters
of the gods sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.
The Man Born to Farming
© Wendell Berry
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
Sonnet 18: With What Sharp Checks
© Sir Philip Sidney
With what sharp checks I in myself am shent,
When into Reason's audit I do go:
And by just counts myself a bankrupt know
Of all the goods, which heav'n to me hath lent:
Sabbaths 2001
© Wendell Berry
IV
Ask the world to reveal its quietude
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.
Dirty Ol Me
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Well I was sittin' up in my crane leftin' boulders in the rain
Can't get promoted no matter what I do
Ah when the forman he comes around and he yells up from the ground
He says hold that load up there for a minute or two
A Meeting
© Wendell Berry
In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
Youth And Love
© Robert Louis Stevenson
To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.
Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,
Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,
Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land
Call him with lighted lamp in the eventide.
The peace of wild things
© Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Where the Sidewalk Ends
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Winter
© William Wilfred Campbell
Already Winter in his sombre round,
Before his time, hath touched these hills austere
Weird-Bird
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
The Woodland Grave
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WE roam, my love and I,
'Mid the rich woodland grasses,
Where, through dense clouds of greenery,
The softened sunshine passes;
But near a rivulet's lonely wave
We come half startled, on--a grave!
Songs
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
SONGS are like painted window-panes!
In darkness wrapp'd the church remains,
If from the market-place we view it;
Thus sees the ignoramus through it.
No wonder that he deems it tame,-
And all his life 'twill be the same.
Rain
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.
Prisoner
© Dorothy Parker
Long I fought the driving lists,
Plume a-stream and armor clanging;
Link on link, between my wrists,
Now my heavy freedom's hanging.
