History poems
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The Messenger
© Hugo Williams
The messenger runs, not carrying the news
of victory, or defeat; the messenger, unresting,
Baudelaire
© Delmore Schwartz
When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Sir Peter Harpdon's End
© William Morris
John Curzon
Of those three prisoners, that before you came
We took down at St. John's hard by the mill,
Two are good masons; we have tools enough,
And you have skill to set them working.
On Scratchbury Camp
© Siegfried Sassoon
Along the grave green downs, this idle afternoon,
Shadows of loitering silver clouds, becalmed in blue,
Bring, like unfoldment of a flower, the best of June.
St Vincent’s
© William Stanley Merwin
eyes open and ears to hear
these years across from St Vincent’s Hospital
above whose roof those clouds rose
Bosnia Tune
© Joseph Brodsky
As you pour yourself a scotch
Crush a roach or check your watch
As your hands adjust your tie people die
Pyrography
© John Ashbery
Out here on Cottage Grove it matters. The galloping
Wind balks at its shadow. The carriages
In Her Absence I Created Her Image
© Mahmoud Darwish
In her absence I created her image: out of the earthly
the hidden heavenly commences. I am here weighing
Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937
© Kenneth Rexroth
For a month now, wandering over the Sierras,
A poem had been gathering in my mind,
Kaddish
© Allen Ginsberg
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!
i wanted to overthrow the government but all i brought down was somebody's wife
© Charles Bukowski
30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses and one fox
and look here, they write,
you are a dupe for the state, the church,
you are in the ego-dream,
read your history, study the monetary system,
note that the racial war is 23,000 years old.
The Door
© Robert Creeley
for Robert Duncan
It is hard going to the door
cut so small in the wall where
the vision which echoes loneliness
brings a scent of wild flowers in a wood.
A Map to the Next World
© Joy Harjo
for Desiray Kierra Chee
In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.
The Wheelchair Butterfly
© James Tate
concentrate long enough
on the history book of rodents
in this underground town
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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The Brief Journey West
© Howard Nemerov
By the dry road the fathers cough and spit,
This is their room. They are the ones who hung
That bloody sun upon the southern wall
And crushed the armored beetle to the floor.
The Knight's Epitaph
© William Cullen Bryant
This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
