September 2011
29 posts
2 tags
Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots
by Mark Twain
And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thicken, ‘Twas not from sickness’ shots. No whooping cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear, with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen...
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My Little One
by Tennessee Williams
My little one whose tongue is dumb, whose little fingers cannot hold to things, who is so mercilessly young, he leaps upon the instant things,
I hold him not. Indeed, who could? He runs into the burning wood. Follow, follow if you can! He will come out grown to a man
and not remember whom he kissed, who caught him by the slender wrist and bound him by a tender yoke which,...
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Angel of the Perfumes
by Michael Symmons Roberts
From the night-shift cement works, dust built on fields, seeped into buildings, coughed me awake.
It fused with fallen rain to make a crust so thin one heel could break the landscape open.
I held my breath the sheet pulled up across my face, afraid my lungs would set.
When you awoke the dust cleared, I heard dawn crack smelt on your hands burst
Fruit. Old...
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Demon of the Gibbet
by Fitz-James O’Brien
There was no west, there was no east, No star abroad for eyes to see; And Norman spurred his jaded beast Hard by the terrible gallows-tree.
“O, Norman, haste across this waste,— For something seems to follow me!” “Cheer up, dear Maud, for, thanked be God, We nigh have passed the gallows tree!”
He kissed her lip: then—spur and whip! And fast...
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Late September Song
by Linda Pastan
With the sound of a freight train rushing through the trees, the first strong wind
of autumn makes each leaf sing the song of its own execution.
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The Ocean
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The ocean has its silent caves, Deep, quiet, and alone; Though there be fury on the waves, Beneath them there is none. The awful spirits of the deep Hold their communion there, And there are those for whom we weep, The young, the bright, the fair.
Calmly the wearied seamen rest Beneath their own blue sea. The ocean solitudes are blest, For there is...
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A Certain Young Lady
by Washington Irving
There’s a certain young lady, Who’s just in her heyday And full of all mischief, I ween; So teasing! so pleasing! Capricious! delicious! And you know very well whom I mean.
With an eye dark as night, Yet than noonday more bright, Was ever a black eye so keen? It can thrill with a glance, With a beam can entrance, And you know very well whom I mean.
With a...
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The Phenomenological World
by Jo McDougall
As I drive by my neighbor’s yard, a swan I’ve mistaken daily for an ornament raises a wing.
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All Lovely Things
by Conrad Aiken
All lovely things will have an ending; All lovely things will fade and die, And youth, that’s now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten, And goldenrod is dust when dead; The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten, And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return! But time goes on, and will,...
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Quarantine
by Eavan Boland
In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking – they were both walking – north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and west and north. Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning...
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Trench Names
by A.S. Byatt
The column, like a snake, winds through the fields, Scoring the grass with wheels, with heavy wheels And hooves, and boots. The grass smiles in the sun, Quite helpless. Orchard and copse are Paradise Where flowers and fruits grow leisurely, and birds Rise in the blue, and sing, and sink again And rest. The woods are ancient. They have names— Thiepval, deep vale, La Boisselle,...
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The Age Demanded
by Ernest Hemingway
The age demanded that we sing And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed The sort of shit that it demanded.
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The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.
...
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Leisure
by William Henry Davies
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how...
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Lack of Faith
by Anna Kamieńska
Yes, even when I don’t believe— there is a place in me inaccessible to unbelief, a patch of wild grace, a stubborn preserve, impenetrable, pain untouched by the sleeping body, music that builds its nest in silence.
1 tag
Barbara Allen
by Anonymous (traditional)
In Scarlet town, where I was born, There was a fair maid dwellin’, Made every youth cry Well-a-day! Her name was Barbara Allen.
All in the merry month of May, When the green buds they were swellin’, Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay, For love of Barbara Allen
He sent his men down to her then, To the town where she was dwelling: “O haste and come...
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Lucifer's Decision
by Alan Sillitoe
Lucifer slept on the journey south But only once-– For in the morning he had to decide Whether, having crossed the river And said goodbye to the moon, When no more dogs were barking, Nor hut smoke could be seen, Nor any voices heard, Whether to take the left Or right arm of the road.
It was best not to stop, Not think of warmth But lunge without thought to left or...
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Rain
by Don Paterson
I love all films that start with rain: rain, braiding a windowpane or darkening a hung-out dress or streaming down her upturned face; one long thundering downpour right through the empty script and score before the act, before the blame, before the lens pulls through the frame to where the woman sits alone beside a silent telephone or the dress lies ruined on the grass ...
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A Code Poem for the French Resistance
by Leo Marks
The life that I have is all that I have, And the life that I have is yours. The love that I have of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have; A rest I shall have, Yet death will be but a pause, For the peace of my years in the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours.
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The Night, the Porch
by Mark Strand To stare at nothing is to learn by heart What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by. Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish. What we desire, more than a season or a weather, is the comfort Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux Of the matter, which is why even now we...
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The God Forsakes Antony
by Constantine P. Cavafy
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear an invisible procession going by with exquisite music, voices, don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving. Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say it...
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Gifts
by William Ellery Channing
A dropping show of spray Filled with a beam of light— The breath of some soft day— The groves by wan moonlight— Some rivers flow, Some falling snow, Some bird’s swift flight.
A summer field o’erstrown With gay and laughing flowers, And shepherd’s clocks half blown That tell the merry hours— The waving grain, The spring soft...
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A Woman Named Thucydides
by Sherod Santos
Having slept in a turnout in the backseat of her car, she awoke before dawn, shivering, hungover, unsure of where she was. To her surprise, the sodium lights on the billboard she had parked beside were no longer on. Wind gusts, the smell of rain, the raw, unbroken landscape like a field of ice. If this had been a movie, someone would’ve been sitting up front, someone who...
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Juggler, Magician, Fool-- a Pantoum
by Peter Schaeffer
You mysterious jongleur, abstracted, absorbed, you slowly pace the street. You stare, detached, through a curtain: silver balls in the air.
You slowly pace the street, tossing coins, cups, scarves, silver balls in the air, making a skydance—
tossing coins, cups, scarves, each in their separate paths, making a skydance, chaotic, hypnotic;
each in their separate paths,...
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Lines on an X-ray Portrait of a Lady
by Lawrence K. Russel
She is so tall, so slender, and her bones— Those frail phosphates, those carbonates of lime— Are well produced by cathode rays sublime, By oscillations, amperes, and by ohms, Her dorsal vertebrae are not concealed By epidermis, but are well revealed.
Around her ribs, those beauteous twenty-four, Her flesh a halo makes, misty in line, Her noseless, eyeless face...
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Do Not Expect
by Dana Gioia
Do not expect that if your book falls open to a certain page, that any phrase you read will make a difference today, or that the voices you might overhear when the wind moves through the yellow-green and golden tent of autumn speak to you. Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon your shadow walks beside you on the wall, and the days stay...
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Men
by Dorianne Laux
It’s tough being a guy, having to be gruff and buff, the strong silent type, having to laugh it off—pain, loss, sorrow, betrayal—or leave in a huff and say No big deal, take a ride, listen to enough loud rock and roll that it scours out your head, if not your heart. Or to be called a fag or a poof when you love something or someone, scuffing a shoe across the floor, hiding a...
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The Laws of Primogeniture
by Linda Pastan
My grandson has my father’s mouth with its salty sayings and my grandfather’s crooked ear that heard the soldiers coming.
He has the pale eyes of the Cossack who saw my great-great-grandmother in the woods, then wouldn’t stop looking.
And see him now, pushing his bright red fire truck towards a future he thinks he’s inventing all by himself.
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Untitled
by Norman Mailer
That’s what it means to be in love.
You can’t tell a dame to go fuck herself.
