All Poems
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Shakespear
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dear friend, if there be any bond
Which friendship wins not much beyond
So old and fond, since thought began
It may be that whose subtle span
Binds Shakespear to an English man.
Night
© Ruth Padel
Does a zebra foal dream? Head lower, lower
under lenticular dark cloud,
he drags harlequin fetlocks, porcelain
quails' egg hooflets through pimpling dust,
Writing To Onegin
© Ruth Padel
(After Pushkin)
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk
And passionate cold feet
How The Peaceful Aladdin Gave Way To His Madness
© Guy Wetmore Carryl
The Moral: When stamps you're adept on
Of risks you are reckless, and yet
Beware! If your face is once stepped on,
That's the last stamp you're likely to get!
Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire
© Ruth Padel
We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.
To The Small Celandine
© William Wordsworth
PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
The Cricket
© Edwin Markham
Faintly the light breaks over the blowing oats
Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir.
We worship Song, and servants are of her
I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time:
Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes,
And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.
Trial
© Ruth Padel
I was with Special Force, blue-X-ing raids
to OK surfing on the Colonel's birthday.
Operation Ariel: we sprayed Jimi Hendrix
loud from helis to frighten the slopes
before 'palming. A turkey shoot.
The Lion and Albert
© Marriott Edgar
There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
Herodotus In Egypt Remembers Delos
© Ruth Padel
The ground verdigris, fluffy with young mosquitoes. Waters
as sacred as these, as fatted with reeds. Bronze palm planted
to Sun. Lizards, Nile alligators, hindquarters
rolling on granite sphinx-chippings. Air salted with confident
I Rose Up As My Custom Is
© Thomas Hardy
I rose up as my custom is
On the eve of All-Souls' day,
And left my grave for an hour or so
To call on those I used to know
Before I passed away.
Tiger Drinking At Forest Pool
© Ruth Padel
Water, moonlight, danger, dream.
Bronze urn, angled on a tree root: one
Slash of light, then gone. A red moon
Seen through clouds, or almost seen.
Remind Me Not, Remind Me Not
© George Gordon Byron
Remind me not, remind me not,
Of those beloved, those vanish'd hours,
When all my soul was given to thee;
Hours that may never be forgot,
Till Time unnerves our vital powers,
And thou and I shall cease to be.
African Writings
© Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
If you meet literature from Africa
Or even their mentors
In such works
You realize a trait of madness
Publishers
© Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
And then they pretend like owls
With marble eyes and wizened stupidity
I do not know why they cannot perceive
True art
The Garden Of Death
© Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
Rip Van Winkle. Canto II.
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
So Rip began to look at peopleâs tongues
And thump their briskets (called it âsound their lungs"),
Brushed up his knowledge smartly as he could,
Read in old Cullen and in Doctor Good.
The town was healthy; for a month or two
He gave the sexton little work to do.
