Food poems
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The Song of Hiawatha: X
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"
Children
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
The Goblet of Life
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.
When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer
© Dylan Thomas
When once the twilight locks no longer
Locked in the long worm of my finger
Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist,
The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
The milky acid on each hinge,
And swallowed dry the waters of the breast.
January 1939
© Dylan Thomas
Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
V
© Tony Harrison
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
Long Distance I
© Tony Harrison
Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.
Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Undue Significance a starving man attaches
© Emily Dickinson
Undue Significance a starving man attaches
To Food --
Far off -- He sighs -- and therefore -- Hopeless --
And therefore -- Good --
The Luxury to apprehend
© Emily Dickinson
The Luxury to apprehend
The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time
An Epicure of Me
It would have starved a Gnat --
© Emily Dickinson
It would have starved a Gnat --
To live so small as I --
And yet I was a living Child --
With Food's necessity
I groped for him before I knew
© Emily Dickinson
I groped for him before I knew
With solemn nameless need
All other bounty sudden chaff
For this foreshadowed Food
Had I not This, or This, I said,
© Emily Dickinson
Had I not This, or This, I said,
Appealing to Myself,
In moment of prosperity --
Inadequate -- were Life --
Art thou the thing I wanted?
© Emily Dickinson
Art thou the thing I wanted?
Begone -- my Tooth has grown --
Affront a minor palate
Thou could'st not goad so long --
A Word made Flesh is seldom
© Emily Dickinson
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
I fit for them --
© Emily Dickinson
I fit for them --
I seek the Dark
Till I am thorough fit.
The labor is a sober one
A Prison gets to be a friend --
© Emily Dickinson
A Prison gets to be a friend --
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours -- a Kinsmanship express --
And in its narrow Eyes --
Fame is a fickle food
© Emily Dickinson
Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
The Widening Spell Of Leaves
© Larry Levis
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brotherOnce, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
