Time poems
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The Procession
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
The legislators pass along
A solemn, self-important throng!
Just raised from the common mass,
They feel themselves another class.
--But let them in the sunshine play
For every dog must have his day.
On my Sister Joanna's Entrance into Her 33rd Year
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
On this thy natal day permit a friend -
A brother - with thy joys his own to blend:
In all gladness he would wish to share
As willing in thy griefs a part to bear.
The Crane & The Fox, a Fable
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
She came - wide stood the unfolded door
And roses deck'd the sanded floor -
- There hyacinths in festoons hung
- Here lillies their rich fragrance flung -
Epithalamium: A Marriage Poem
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
'Twas summer, when softly the breezes were blowing,
And Hudson majestic so sweetly was flowing,
The groves rang with music & accents of pleasure
And nature in rapture beat time to the measure,
Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane
© Etheridge Knight
Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.
The Idea of Ancestry
© Etheridge Knight
I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins.I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece
(she sends me letters in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).
A Poem For Myself
© Etheridge Knight
(or Blues for a Mississippi Black Boy)I was born in Mississippi;
I walked barefooted thru the mud.
Born black in Mississippi,
Walked barefooted thru the mud.
As You Leave Me
© Etheridge Knight
Shiny record albums scattered over
the living room floor, reflecting light
from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt
my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters,
the beer foam making mustaches on your lips.
The Lonely God
© James Brunton Stephens
So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe; too sorrowful to frown
I heard a bird at dawn
© James Brunton Stephens
I heard a bird at dawn
Singing sweetly on a tree,
That the dew was on the lawn,
And the wind was on the lea;
But I didn't listen to him,
For he didn't sing to me.
The nymph's reply to the shepherd
© John Bodenham
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Eleanor Wilner
© Eleanor Wilner
It was a pure white cloud that hung there
in the blue, or a jellyfish on a waveless
sea, suspended high above us; we were
the creatures in the weeds below.
Adolescence II
© Rita Dove
Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.
The Geate a-Vallen to
© Ingeborg Bachmann
In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi vew a-left at hwome,
Vull a Man
© Ingeborg Bachmann
No, I'm a man, I'm vull a man,
You beat my manhood, if you can.
You'll be a man if you can teake
All steates that household life do meake.
The Girt Woak Tree
© Ingeborg Bachmann
The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
Easter Zunday
© Ingeborg Bachmann
Last Easter Jim put on his blue
Frock cwoat, the vu'st time-vier new;
Wi' yollow buttons all o' brass,
That glitter'd in the zun lik' glass;
The Young that Died in Beauty
© Ingeborg Bachmann
If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in ethly light,
An nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an feace,
Françoise And The Fruit Farmer
© James A. Emanuel
In town to sell his fruit, he saw her
Françoise in her summer slacks
turning to him, coming back
to feel the swelling plums,
