History poems

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Above them old Mizzentop, palatial white
Hostelry—floor by floor to cinquefoil dormer
Portholes the ceilings stack their stoic height.
Long tiers of windows staring out toward former
Faces—loose panes crown the hill and gleam
At sunset with a silent, cobwebbed patience . . .

The Broken Crutch: A Tale

© Robert Bloomfield

A burst of laughter rang throughout the hall,
And Peggy's tongue, though overborne by all,
Pour'd its warm blessings, for, without control
The sweet unbridled transport of her soul
Was obviously seen, till Herbert's kiss
Stole, as it were, the eloquence of bliss.

Underneath (13)?

© Jorie Graham

needed explanation

To Yvor Winters, 1955

© Thom Gunn

I leave you in your garden.

In the yard

Lancelot And Elaine

© Alfred Tennyson

How came the lily maid by that good shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not even his name?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond jousts,
Which Arthur had ordained, and by that name
Had named them, since a diamond was the prize.

History Lesson

© Natasha Trethewey

I am four in this photograph, standing
on a wide strip of Mississippi beach,
my hands on the flowered hips

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch

© Diane Wakoski

Foreword to “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch”
This poem is more properly a “dance poem” than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.
The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.
She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn’t feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she’s glad he’s gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.

The Troubadour. Canto 4

© Letitia Elizabeth Landon

But he was safe!--that very day
Farewell, it had been her's to say;
And he was gone to his own land,
To seek another maiden's hand.

A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar

© Robert Duncan

I
The light foot hears you and the brightness begins
god-step at the margins of thought,
quick adulterous tread at the heart.

Elegy for the Native Guards

© Natasha Trethewey

Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .
—Allen Tate

Freedom's Plow

© Langston Hughes

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.

Scopolamine (English translation)

© Catherine Pozzi

This wine that flows within my vein
Has drowned my heart and will again
In the sky-with neither captain nor money-
My heart sails into a scene
Where Oblivion melts like honey

If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso

© Gertrude Stein

If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.

Under The Rose

© Christina Georgina Rossetti

Oh the rose of keenest thorn!
One hidden summer morn
Under the rose I was born.

The Hunting of the Snark

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

Between the Wars

© Robert Hass

When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon—

midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote,

Naucratia; Or Naval Dominion. Part III.

Arm'd in her cause, on Chalgrave's fatal plain,
Where sorrowing Freedom mourns her Hambden slain,
Say, shall the moralizing bard presume
From his proud hearse to tear one warlike plume,
Because a Cæsar or a Cromwell wore
An impious wreath, wet with their country's gore?