Great poems
/ page 549 of 549 /
Good Friday 2001, Riding North
© Jennifer Reeser
Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
This Night Slip, In His Honor (after Komachi)
© Jennifer Reeser
This night slip, in his honor
flipped inside out of lace-
edged netting is the color
of Shaka Zulus face;
Wednesday
© Marvin Bell
Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
The Pleasure of Princes
© Alec Derwent Hope
What pleasures have great princes? These: to know
Themselves reputed mad with pride or power;
To speak few words -- few words and short bring low
This ancient house, that city with flame devour;
Death of the Bird
© Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Commination
© Alec Derwent Hope
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Wars & Rumors Of Wars
© Emanuel Xavier
Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet
-Matthew 24:6
The Death Of Art
© Emanuel Xavier
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
-critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry "the death of art.
