Family poems
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from Jubilate Agno
© Christopher Smart
let elizur rejoice with the partridge
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
Vandergast and the Girl
© Louis Simpson
Vandergast to his neighbors—
the grinding of a garage door
and hiss of gravel in the driveway.
Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection...
© Boris Pasternak
Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection,
A Brahms intermezzo will wound me-I'll start,
Remember that summer, the flowerbed garden,
The walks and the bathing, the tryst of six hearts,
The View from an Attic Window
© Howard Nemerov
for Francis and Barbara
1
Among the high-branching, leafless boughs
Above the roof-peaks of the town,
Snowflakes unnumberably come down.
Society
© Ezra Pound
The family position was waning,
And on this account the little Aurelia,
Who had laughed on eighteen summers,
Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus.
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV
© Alexander Pope
Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at—perhaps a Stowe.
Grandfather Bridgeman
© George Meredith
'Heigh, boys!' cried Grandfather Bridgeman, 'it's time before dinner to-day.'
He lifted the crumpled letter, and thumped a surprising 'Hurrah!'
Up jumped all the echoing young ones, but John, with the starch in his throat,
Said, 'Father, before we make noises, let's see the contents of the note.'
The old man glared at him harshly, and twinkling made answer: 'Too bad!
John Bridgeman, I'm always the whisky, and you are the water, my lad!'
Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School
© Jane Kenyon
The others bent their heads and started in.
Confused, I asked my neighbor
Its Like This
© Stephen Dobyns
for Peter Parrish
Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible
cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark,
the cord that makes him always dissatisfied,
has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes.
Care of Birds for their Young
© James Thomson
As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Tho' the whole loosen'd spring around her blows,
Design
© Billy Collins
I pour a coating of salt on the table
and make a circle in it with my finger.
America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity
© Gregory Corso
O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
The Town Dump
© Howard Nemerov
“The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.”
Visitation by Jeffrey Harrison: American Life in Poetry #115 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
Each of the senses has a way of evoking time and place. In this bittersweet poem by Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts, birdsong offers reassurance as the speaker copes with loss.
Visitation
The Intellectual
© Ishmael Reed
What should the wars do with these jigging fools?
The man behind the book may not be man,
His own man or the book’s or yet the time’s,
But still be whole, deciding what he can
In praise of politics or German rimes;
