Family poems

/ page 40 of 43 /

Order by :

1
. . .
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43

Hamlet Off-Stage: Mel Gibson Dolls It

© D. C. Berry

Mel Gibson's Hamlet stinks -- doll Mel. Wind up
Mel and Mel's eyes glaze into porcelain,
blue gulfs of earnestness, and Gertrude
sucks it up, swilling Mel's sincerity --

Meg Merrilies

© John Keats

Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv'd upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.

Hyperion

© John Keats

BOOK I Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,

Democracy

© Leonard Cohen

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,

Sisters Of Mercy

© Leonard Cohen

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go
on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me

The Fairy Temple; Or, Oberon's Chapel

RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW,
AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW;
SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE,
WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE.
THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU'ST SEEN MORE FINE
THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES' ONCE, NOW THINE.

California Plush

© Frank Bidart

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

Three Balls

© Carl Sandburg

JABOWSKYS place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.
When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:
A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,
And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.
I passed to-day and they were all there, resting in proud isolation, the clock and the crucifix saying no more and no less than before, and a yellow cat sleeping in a patch of sun alongside the family bible with the hasps off.
Only the rain washes the dusty three balls in front of Jabowskys place on a side street.

The Right to Grief

© Carl Sandburg

TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.

Mohammed Bek Hadjetlache

© Carl Sandburg

THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel a projectile shape a bald head hammered
Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?

House

© Carl Sandburg

TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas dont want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.

Blue Maroons

© Carl Sandburg

YOU slut, he flung at her.
It was more than a hundred times
He had thrown it into her face
And by this time it meant nothing to her.

Pickthorn Manor

© Amy Lowell

I
How fresh the Dartle's little waves that day! A
steely silver, underlined with blue,
And flashing where the round clouds, blown away, Let drop the

I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin

© Robert Louis Stevenson

I DO not fear to own me kin
To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin;
Or to my brothers, the great trees,
That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze,
Loud talkers with the winds that pass;
Or to my sister, the deep grass.

The Falcon

I RECOLLECT, that lately much I blamed,
The sort of lover, avaricious named;
And if in opposites we reason see,
The liberal in paradise should be.
The rule is just and, with the warmest zeal,
To prove the fact I to the CHURCH appeal.

The Cradle

IN truth, the wife was quite surprised to find
Her spouse so much to frolicking inclined;
Said she, what ails the man, he's grown so gay?
A lad of twenty's not more fond of play.
Well! let's enjoy the moments while we can;
God's will be done, since life is but a span!

The Contract

A CERTAIN Citizen, with fortune large,
When settled with a handsome wife in charge,
Not long attended for the marriage fruit:
The lady soon put matters 'yond dispute;
Produced a girl at first, and then a boy,
To fill th' expecting parent's breast with joy.

Ireland With Emily

Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.