Imagination poems
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Bahaman
© Bliss William Carman
To T. B. M.
IN the crowd that thronged the pierhead, come to see their friends take ship
Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
What made thee, when they all were gone,
And none but thou and I alone,
To act the Devil, and forbear
To rid me of my hellish fear?
Metropolitan
© John Fuller
In cities there are tangerine briefcases on the down-platform
and jet parkas on the up-platform; in the mother of cities
there is equal anxiety at all terminals.
West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false
For The Marriage of Faustus and Helen
© Hart Crane
There is the world dimensional for
those untwisted by the love of things
irreconcilable ...
Private Eye Lettuce
© Jack Gilbert
Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce,
the name and drawing of a detective
Epigram III.
© John Byrom
A Heated Fancy, or Imagination,
May be mistaken for an Inspiration -
True; but is this Conclusion fair to make,
That Inspiration must be all mistake?
A pebble Stone is not a Diamond - true;
But must a Di'mond be a Pebble too?
A Summer Garden
© Louise Gluck
1
Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
The sun was shining. The dogs
were sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping,
calm and unmoving as in all photographs.
Shore Line
© Carl Rakosi
Barrel-chested military water
rushes in a mass
to break the shore earth
into stonekind.
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!
The Deserted Village
© Mark van Doren
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts) [Part I]
© Ezra Pound
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start i
Ormuzd And Ahriman. Part II
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
Fear not, for ye shall live if ye receive
The life divine, obedient to the law
Of truth and good. So shall there be no frown
Upon his face who wills the good of all.
A Hymn to Childhood
© Li-Young Lee
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder in the attic?
Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
© Robert Browning
And I can love nothing-and this dull truth
Has come the last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
Sea Longings
© Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The first world-sound that fell upon my ear
Was that of the great winds along the coast
An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry
© William Taylor Collins
Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring, with a fond delay,
