id int64 160k 1.59M | url stringlengths 46 285 | author stringlengths 0 217 | title stringlengths 1 241 | body stringlengths 100 77.3k |
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227,670 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50496/white-heliotrope | Arthur Symons | White Heliotrope | The feverish room and that white bed,
The tumbled skirts upon a chair,
The novel flung half-open, where
Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread;
The mirror that has sucked your face
Into its secret deep of deeps,
And there mysteriously keeps
Forgotten memories of grace;
And you half dressed and half awake,
Yo... |
183,976 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25830/renewable-sacrament | Ronald Bottrall | Renewable Sacrament |
The prime my digit fractured still can flourish,
Knitting with other numbers to produce a pearl
Rotund, serene, for memory to polish.
My dandelion loves their ticking seeds unfurl
That tell our time and parachute to grass,
Interlopers in a green virgin soil.
Singly we dream, and wake in mutual jars
Of jolting buffer... |
180,490 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24021/the-map | Patrick Anderson | The Map | Imagine how it is, living these years,
when day and night one stands by a great window
embracing, as an angel's might, the entire world:
the map over which no curtain is ever drawn.
There down the street of our involvement are
the neighbors' gardens unpronounceable,
the distant cottage Poland and its Jews,
men burn th... |
220,160 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44876/vision-56d2242245957 | Marjorie Pickthall | Vision | I have not walked on common ground,
Nor drunk of earthly streams;
A shining figure, mailed and crowned,
Moves softly through my dreams.
He makes the air so keen and strange,
The stars so fiercely bright;
The rocks of time, the tides of change,
Are nothing in his sight.
Death lays no shadow on his smile;
Life is a rac... |
235,486 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55234/epic-simile | A.E. Stallings | Epic Simile | Right shoulder aching with day-long butchery,
Left shoulder numb with dints clanged on the shield,
The hero is fouled with blood, his own and others',
First slick, then sticky, then caked, starting to mat
His beard-the armor deadweight all around him;
His teeth grit and rattle with every jolt
Of bronze-rimmed wheels be... |
241,202 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58334/wind-water-stone | Octavio Paz | Wind, Water, Stone | Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone,
stone's a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.
Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.
Each is another and no other:
crossing and ... |
186,172 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26964/rain-56d210e744a92 | Junzaburo Nishiwaki | Rain |
two poems
RAIN
A tender goddess came on a south wind,
Wet bronze, wet fountains,
Wet swallows' breasts and golden hair;
Embraced tides, lapped sands, drank fish.
Secretly wetting temples, bath-houses, and theatres,
The tongue of this goddess,
Tangled strings of a platinum lyre,
Secretly wet my tongue.
THE SUN
I spen... |
182,496 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25058/the-kings-hunt | Randall Jarrell | The King's Hunt |
After the door shuts, and the footsteps die,
I call out, "Mother?"
The wind roars in the leaves: my cold hands, curled
Within my curled, cold body- my blurred head-
Are warmed and tremble; and the red leaves flow
Like cells across the spectral, veined,
Whorled darkness of my vision. The red dwarf
Whispers, "The leaves... |
221,436 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46058/the-housewife-56d225d31d71a | Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman | The Housewife | Here is the House to hold me - cradle of all the race;
Here is my lord and my love, here are my children dear -
Here is the House enclosing, the dear-loved dwelling place;
Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here?
Here for the hours of the day and the hours of the night;
Bound with the bands of Duty, riv... |
203,276 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35578/quests | Dannie Abse | Quests |
To reach the other world some sought hemlock
in waste-places: umbels of that small white flower
still sway at eye-level when the eye is still;
and some, at broad sunset, walked the sea-shore
or prayed for their messiah in a darkening house.
But gods had human faces and were flawed.
When prying Apion, with eerie... |
174,090 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/20573/the-man-in-the-park | Stanley Kunitz | The Man in the Park | The people made a ring
Around the man in the park.
He was our banished king
Of blames and staunchless flows,
Exhibitor of the dark
Abominable rose;
Our chief, returned at last
From exile, with the grim
Stamina of the lost,
To show his sovereign hurt.
Wildly we dreaded him
And the menace of his heart
Unbosomed, crawlin... |
246,355 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145465/matariki | Jessie Puru | Matariki | The time of breathing into clasped hands
hovering over a lighter to make a flame
not knowing
that an angry man threw his eyes into the night
the belly of his shattered father
weeping rain for separation of earth and sky
harvesting bitter grudges
from minds like hardened soil
packing up the wounds with mud and whisk... |
180,872 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24215/defend-her-in-time-of-trouble | Winifred Cullen | Defend Her in Time of Trouble | MacArthur gained-it's really odd
Four miles at Lingayen
We won at home with help of God
Four blocks against the colored men.
It's the skin that makes the difference
You are not beautiful
So we cannot ever love you
Or let you go to school.
In the Halls of Montezuma
You can do the tyrant harm
But at home the vigilantes
... |
190,642 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29248/the-infant | Cid Corman | The Infant |
CID CORMAN
THE INFANT
Its
lips work,
rivulet, it
cries:
that's breath,
a shape of mouth.
It's
all that
it is: embrace
that
ani-
mal. That creature
can
cry is
our tender peace.
|
204,104 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35993/a-perfect-stranger | Earl McMurray | A Perfect Stranger |
In the distance,
across the parking lot,
a woman mops the aisles
of a grocery store.
She's thin,
drifts in and out of sight.
A man stands near her.
He seems a shape
cut out of paper
and pasted on the scene,
staring as he fails to see
their words have to be imagined.
I look up at the streetlights
and beyond them,
at t... |
202,694 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35287/a-sprig-of-dill | Howard Nemerov | A Sprig of Dill |
Small, fragrant, green, a stalk splits at the top
And rays out a hemisphere of twenty stems
That split in their turn and ray out twenty more
In hemispheres of twenty yellow stars
Targeted white, sprays mothered of spray
Displaying their tripled oneness all at once,
Radiant and delicate and loosely exact
As the cosmos ... |
169,974 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/18253/futility-56d20ab5c4184 | Ethel Woodruff Macy | Futility | He held his thin old coat
Tight against the driven rain.
He walked wedging his body through the wind.
So he struggled with living;
But you knew
His very bones were streaming rain.
Ethel Woodruff Macy
TWO MEN
|
211,382 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39647/le-sens-de-la-nuit | Linda Pastan | LE SENS DE LA NUIT |
Magritte, oil on canvas, 1927
Here are some clues
to The Meaning of Night:
pieces of bright foam estranged
from the sea; a woman wrapped
in a cage of winglike shapes;
the formal back of one man twinned
to the front of another-
or are they really the same man,
and could he be the undertaker of day?
If there is ... |
168,130 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17217/the-jarabe | Idella Purnell | The Jarabe | Ten thousand tiny steps in the summer dust!
High heels, spurn the ground! With skirts held wide,
I shall throw my head far back to show my pride
And whirl faster than the music. People must
See how Juan's partner is fleeter than a river,
Falling in grace as does a waterfall,
To leap as a wild mare startled at a call,
... |
218,406 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43300/the-woman-who-laughed-on-calvary | Heather McHugh | The Woman Who Laughed on Calvary | I.
Smilers, smirkers, chucklers, grinners,
platitudinizers, euphemists: it wasn't you
I emulated there, in that
Godawful place. What kind
of face
to put on it? How simple
is a simon's sign? To my mind
laughter's not the mark of pleasure, not
a pleasantry that spread; instead
it's intimate with sheer
delirium: spilt... |
232,820 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/53610/elegy-in-coherent-light | Anne Stevenson | Elegy: In Coherent Light | Teach-cheap, teach-cheap, teach-cheap, teach - cheap -
Sparrows are plying their chisels in the summer ivy,
Chipping the seconds spark by spark out of the hours.
I read in each whistling chip the sun's holography.
My brain's a film, I'm made of timed exposures,
And pounding my ears and eyes with waves of light-
These a... |
184,104 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25896/seasonal-56d20ff2755f0 | James Baker Hall | Seasonal |
Consider the cardinal's secret withdrawn
And swaying nest contrived from burning
Straws and the wing fluttering a spawn
Of sunlight, while that sapling
Shakes in the harsh frog note
Of Spring; yet bringing, in season,
This boy whistling Fall's old hope
Of harvest, devouring that sun
Caught now in fallen paw-paws. Cl... |
254,055 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/160560/refusing-eurydice | Ladan Osman | Refusing Eurydice | Someone tells me the earth and everything in it
will belong to me if I catch the horizon before sundown.
I sprint, kicking up dust all the while.
It seems I run with everyone in the world
standing on my kidneys, eating my head.
What ' s that for? I ask.
I know how to eat my head.
The more I run, the more I feel
like a ... |
159,900 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12594/immured | Lily A. Long | Immured | Within this narrow cell that I call "me",
I was imprisoned ere the worlds began,
And all the worlds must run, as first they ran,
In silver star-dust, ere I shall be free.
I beat my hands against the walls and find
It is my breast I beat, O bond and blind! |
212,188 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40053/black-stone-on-top-of-nothing | Philip Levine | BLACK STONE ON TOP OF NOTHING |
Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black
ribbon
around the apartment building covering the front door.
He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and
begins
to untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him
wondering what's going on. A middle-aged woman carrying
a loaf of fresh bread ask... |
239,024 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57195/men-who-march-away | Thomas Hardy | Men Who March Away | What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can mu... |
199,884 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33878/superbia-a-triumph-with-no-train | Mary Kinzie | Superbia: A Triumph with No Train |
They've loosed the Opposites who throng
the middle air, and Antichrist.
He phoned last night, pretending to be you.
He begged to know, How much I wanted him?
What I wanted (or wanted him) to do?
What could I say except, Thy Will?
What promise but, Time's Fealty?
He claimed to have been dreaming of me,
his whisper priv... |
226,592 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49793/fact | Rae Armantrout | Fact | Operation Phantom Fury.
* * *
The full force
of the will to live
is fixed
on the next
occasion:
someone
coming with a tray,
someone
calling a number.
* * *
Each material
fact
is a pose,
an answer
waiting to be chosen.
"Just so," it says.
"Ask again!" |
236,598 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55852/torch | Lisa Williams | Torch | If I could hold a fire against
a hemisphere of shadows, hold it
close, not so that damage
finds my hands, but so fire scatters
galvanizing strands, my pupils
responsive to the flames' unbridled
tutelage as they tell me
nothing but these little jumps
out of your definitions, small
or large or leaping, sinking, slumped .... |
235,278 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55065/capital-one | John Hodgen | Capital One | All day I have been thinking about the color of his cauterized skin,
the burned young man lying flat on his back on the rehab slab in Wiesbaden,
and think, finally, that it is the color of rhubarb, that drab maroon and green,
but seared on, blasted into a mottled, speckled, crystallized sheen.
Rhubarb , meaning a fight... |
224,910 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48567/all-souls-56d229e85f66c | Michael Collier | All Souls | A few of us-Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky-peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks
over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with t... |
167,412 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16819/san-sabas-tr-by-muna-lee | Luis Pales Matos | San Sabas |
There is here an ancient anchorite
Who so spring-like shows
That on a cliff inaccessible
«He tended his mystic rose,
Intoxicate with April and hair-cloth
And censers; and over all-
Since no earthly dew fell there-
The dew celestial.
He lived remote in a cave
Viscous as an evil mind;
Amid thistles and brambles
H... |
241,172 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58317/william-my-man | Mary Hickman | William My Man | I
A cave with arms at the mouth.
Our hero is blind: everything he hears he sees.
Hear! Gold light sifts to his ear.
A roar. The seas
beaten-his duodenum, colon,
blind intestine and appendix, destined
for heat, they blush.
II
William's cabbage heart shook.
He dragged himself from the dirt.
If he could rest his ears... |
248,277 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149239/stolen-dress | Tess Gallagher | Stolen Dress | I was walking through a vast darkness
in a dress studded with diamonds, the cloth
under them like chain mail-metallic,
form fitting like the sea to its horizon. I could
hear waves breaking on the shore and far off
concertina music drifting over the dunes. What
was I doing in high heels in sand in a diamond-studded
dre... |
176,460 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/21945/death-from-natural-causes | James Daly | Death from Natural Causes | FIVE POEMS
DEATH FROM NATURAL CAUSES
"Because the deceased left a sort of note, at first they
thought his death was suicide; but the autopsy proved
that he died from natural causes."-News item.
have learned much this year
within have grown quieter - much pain
has taugh... |
171,276 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/18972/in-conclusion | Abbie Huston Evans | In Conclusion | If I could live year-round upon this hill
I should be wiser, but I could not prove
Even then some things I know: say what you will,
The sweet-fern leans against the log for love.
Beyond the reach of argument with me
Is the purple on the shingles of the shed
That kindles as the sun sinks. When I see
Mist fill the lowla... |
214,558 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41240/sightseers | Leslie Monsour | Sightseers |
A string of pelicans in gliding file
Traversed the setting sun. We watched awhile
Before the captain shared an observation:
"The pelicans die early, from starvation.
They waste ashore, unable to take flight;
They haven't lost their wings, they've lost their sight.
The reason they go blind is said to be
The forc... |
191,994 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29928/fan-poems | Barbara Guest | Fan Poems |
I
Who walks softly causes mutiny among the lilies
as a chateau is perverse refusing wings,
refusing a colder climate for its rooms;
and the blossoms fall repeatedly, exciting
those unique flower beds when at morning's edge
they hasten to lift themselves to a cautious heel print.
... |
244,557 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92219/an-elementary-school-classroom-in-a-slum-588122c09a94b | Stephen Spender | An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum | Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-
seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
Of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease,
His lesson, from his desk. At back of the dim class
... |
225,944 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49269/when-you-have-forgotten-sunday-the-love-story | Gwendolyn Brooks | when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story | -And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday-
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrappe... |
213,500 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40710/the-fidgeting | Chris Forhan | The Fidgeting |
Easy to make prayers to the darkness, to break bread
with the inconceivable. Harder to love
the moon-dusty dead-white relic
in the star museum, bald and obvious
as a drunken uncle. Hard to find worth
in the crooked pine that creaks
outside the kitchen window, every twig
a wagging finger as it lectures
on the mirac... |
183,546 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25604/poem-for-st-valentines-day | Leslie A. Fiedler | Poem for St. Valentine's Day |
five poems
POEM FOR ST. VALENTINE'S DAY
My silver nutmeg, my golden tree
Pulse like a riveter's shadow,
Dance like a riveter's dream.
They remember over the sea
The silence before your name.
They think, like addled children,
That you are the Princess of Spain.
My silver nutmeg, my golden tree'
Pulse like a riveter... |
194,854 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31359/circe-56d214d42f1cf | Frederic Will | Circe |
I
A careless red dog closed
the distance between us
like the Easter in Faust
his eyes were feathers.
I let him come,
his scrofulous ears
printed neatly upward,
his bones coral thin,
until he lay and talked.
Said you were across
the valley, sealed, lonely,
capable of hatred now.
Wd I follow him there?
... |
162,730 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14197/the-lilies-of-france | Louise Ayres Garnett | The Lilies of France | FLOWERS OF WAR
THE LILIES OF FRANCE
(J. F. 8.)
France's lilies are tall and white,
Brave as the dawn, calm as the night;
And fragrantly they sway above
The quiet head of one I love.
Unceasingly these fadeless flowers
Hasten their bloom through the war-swept hours,... |
227,212 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50227/in-the-house-of-wax | John Haines | In the House of Wax | I
Far-sighted into yesterday
they stand, gripping
their charters and speeches,
the presidents and kings,
masters of unconscious evil.
Their deputies are here -
judges, robed executioners,
steely and triumphant.
And stunned at their feet,
the beheaded, the betrayed,
healed and hallowed now
in this grave sorrow of wax... |
223,114 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47234/tiare-tahiti | Rupert Brooke | Tiare Tahiti | Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,
Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.
Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to understand.
Out of time, beyond the sun,
All are one in Paradise,
You and Pupure ar... |
197,454 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32662/rhetorical-questions | Andrew Hoyem | Rhetorical Questions |
Who among sea lions alive shall be allowed into heaven?
How judge we the virtues of a bull or a cow or a calf?
In that great grotto under the sea are all bulls brave,
all lionesses motherly cows to meek cubs, eager calves?
During their lives did they sin; did they learn to swim?
Yes, they learned to swim and swam in ... |
165,952 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16026/thetis | H.D. | Thetis |
He had asked for immortal life
In the old days and had grown old.
Now he had aged apace,
He asked for his youth,
And I, Thetis, granted him
Freedom under the sea,
Beauty of fifty nereids,
Sisters of mine.
I one of their least,
Yet great and a goddess,
Granted Peleus
Love under the sea,
Beauty, grace infinite.
So I c... |
198,282 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33077/stellaria | Hjalmar Gullberg | Stellaria |
HJALMAR GULLBERG
STELLARIA
As when the clocks inside his shop all strike
noon, and the old clockmaker hears them sound
deafeningly at once, no two in like
time, and the cuckoo too seems newly wound-
so full of singing was the forest hung
the woman stood bewildered and spellbound.
Buttercu... |
220,994 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45517/extempore-effusion-upon-the-death-of-james-hogg | William Wordsworth | Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg | When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
The mighty Minstrel breathes... |
191,700 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29781/6-a-m | Robert Krieger | 6 a.m. |
ROBERT KRIEGER
6 AM.
Two stories at either ear, pots and kettles.
The ax, far down wet roads,
Signals as I lace up my boots
Heartwood, heartwood, long silver edge.
But house summons its own ghosts:
Downstairs, a woman sings in a corner
And I adjust my bones to the pleasure of hers.
Two stories... |
229,156 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51472/nietzsches-hands | Christopher Middleton | Nietzsche’s Hands | Celebrated, the moustache,
And near enough ignored
His "beautiful hands".
Capable on a keyboard, improvised
A polonaise, his own artistic
Compositions "dull and decent".
He could see, some, but much swam, out there:
Knives and forks, print, street signs.
Then, his mind made up, he laid about,
Sank immense nets into ... |
220,950 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45489/skipper-iresons-ride | John Greenleaf Whittier | Skipper Ireson’s Ride | Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borák, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred... |
239,642 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57516/transformed-creatures | Liu Xia | Transformed Creatures | You have a strange pet -
one eye is a cat's, the other a sheep's.
Yet, it won't socialize with felines,
will attack any flock.
On moonlit nights,
it wanders on the roof.
When you're alone
it will lie in your lap
preoccupied, slowly studying you
until - on its face - a challenge.
Translated from the Chinese |
205,230 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36559/houseplants-in-winter | Eamon Grennan | Houseplants in Winter |
Their survival seems an open question:
I make a mess of watering, prune
without discretion, grieve over the leaf
whose borders burn and curl. Their
fresh petals a perpetual surprise-
minute coral hearts, magnesium stars.
I've lined them up on the table
I work and eat at, facing the small window
that faces almost sout... |
211,418 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39665/death-the-archbishop | Anthony Hecht | DEATH THE ARCHBISHOP |
... and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be
a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home;
and the mourners go about the streets.
Ah my poor erring flock,
Truant and slow to come unto my ways,
Making an airy mock
Of those choice pastures where my chosen g... |
196,802 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32335/the-narrow-road-through-the-deep-west | John L. Foster | The Narrow Road Through the Deep West | "Unworthy of God and unworthy of Liberty, essence
of the world, in the sweet breeze of my divine sea;
since you have stretched your impious hands towards me,
and you turned your servile thought lustfully toward my
islands,
see how the abyss can reach the stars,
how the lowest depths of the sea can blend
with the vau... |
230,208 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52129/morning-news | Marilyn Hacker | Morning News | Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.
Glass ... |
199,728 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33800/the-thickets-of-sleep | Gary Miranda | The Thickets of Sleep |
GARY MIRANDA
THE THICKETS OF SLEEP
Dreams
have luminous edges,
like the flash of some object
in a copse of trees
that sets the mind's eye
guessing: eyes? a bird's
beak? wet
leaves? a gun barrel?
The thickets of sleep
are thick with creatures of
anger and love,
against which the beams
of your thought
are usele... |
223,970 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47903/the-fatalist-the-best-words-get-said-frequently-they-are-like-fertile-pips | Lyn Hejinian | from The Fatalist: The best words get said frequently‚ they are like fertile pips. | The best words get said frequently-they are like fertile pips.
Apples fall heavily to the ground and lie in the sun, their scent
abandoning them as a philosophy which cannot be further perfected. Love
releases playful sensations even from serious things providing a life
to think about. Take R-the only thing
R cou... |
223,330 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47458/i-grant-you-ample-leave | George Eliot | I Grant You Ample Leave | "I grant you ample leave grant you ample leave In other words, to let you express your grand opinion
To use the hoary hoary Ancient, worthy of respect for its age formula 'I am'
Naming the emptiness where thought is not;
But fill the void with definition, 'I'
Will be no more a datum datum A single piece of data or info... |
1,546,660 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54466/the-changing-face-of-aids-v-elegy-for-the-aids-virus | Rafael Campo | The Changing Face of AIDS: V. Elegy for the AIDS Virus | How difficult it is to say goodbye
to scourge. For years we were obsessed with you,
your complex glycoproteins and your sly,
haphazard reproduction, your restraint
in your resistance, how you bathed so slight
yet fierce in our most intimate secretions.
We will remember you for generations;
electron micrographs of you s... |
185,812 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26779/now-it-is-light | Frank O’Hara | Now It Is Light . . . | NOW IT IS LIGHT...
Now it is light, now it is the calm
yellow after the night goes to sleep.
A goat picks its way down 14th Street
through the briars of the cadenza of dull things
which the moon had summoned with
its guitar-like gutters-Sit down, boy!
I say Waldo, sit down!-resting
his curly head on the curb the sailor... |
242,002 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58751/praise-be | Yusef Komunyakaa | Praise Be | When the trees were guilty, hugged up
to history & locked in a cross-brace
with Whitman's Louisiana live oak,
you went into that mossy weather.
Did you witness the shotguns at Angola
riding on horseback through the tall sway
of sugarcane, the glint of blue steel
in the bloodred strawberry fields?
Silence was backed u... |
183,190 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25418/juke-joint | William E. Stafford | Juke Joint |
When the chromium buds of America bloom
and they turn the springtime on,
smooth-cast youth fill the juke box room
and hunt the phonograph fawn.
Corduroy heroes from a drug store booth,
maids from a cement lawn
shoot their arrow of chipped-flint youth
and hunt the phonograph fawn.
Tinsel laurel peeps over their ears
... |
177,756 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22615/victory | Arthur J. Kramer | Victory | TWO POEMS
VICTORY
O white and glorious Victory, you lie!
You are too white and clean to have fought any battles.
After the battle, after the sweat and blood,
After the slaughter, after the terror of steel
Against flesh, after the reek of the carrion
Friend and foe, after the horro... |
202,704 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35292/the-doctrine | Pattiann Rogers | The Doctrine |
Someone might think there is a tiny human fetus
Alive and curled inside each bristled germ
Of the bottlebrush grass in the field this afternoon.
Someone might imagine those infants inside their clear shells
Deep beyond the plumules of the brown seeds
Of the sow thistle, at the bottom of the frost-like
Blooms of the bl... |
217,302 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42637/the-heavy-bear-who-goes-with-me | Delmore Schwartz | The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me | The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brot... |
197,502 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32686/under-the-arc-de-triomphe-october-17 | Marilyn Hacker | Under the Arc de Triomphe: October 17 |
The French clocks struck two-thirty, and above
autumnal Paris, itching with parades,
starlings darted in a blinding sky.
And you did not stare after. Nor did I.
Later that evening, in a chilly bed,
I slept, fatigued with seas I had not swum,
stone-battered on the shores of missed Calais,
and did not dream the air I h... |
240,630 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58039/comings-and-goings | Glenna Luschei | Comings and Goings | In Tucson
when a university student
goes home
she might leave her desk
and a chair, a bookcase outside her cave
with a sign, "Take me."
And who could resist
heat radiating over furniture
like a mirage? You hoist
an old Victrola into your pickup
and ratchet up a new song.
You start that life in the West,
invent a past... |
230,410 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/52255/leave-the-hand-in | John Ashbery | Leave the Hand In | Furthermore, Mr. Tuttle used to have to run in the streets.
Now, each time friendship happens, they're fully booked.
Sporting with amaryllis in the shade is all fine and good,
but when your sparring partner gets there first
you wonder if it was all worth it. "Yes, why do it?"
I'm on hold. It will take qu... |
183,956 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25820/this-virgin | Virginia Berry | This Virgin |
... c'est bien pour Dieu que la pensée chrétienne garde
jalousement cette vierge, dont la présence veille sur Pin-
telligibilité du monde, alors même quelle nengendre pour
l'homme aucun de ces résultats pratiques . . . Reprocher au
finalisme sa stérilité scientifique . . . c'est méconnaitre . . .
le primat de la conte... |
166,730 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16449/a-woman-ponders | Hazel Hall | A Woman Ponders | My hands have uttered prayer.
They have been afraid
Of terror and despair.
My hands have uttered prayer.
My lips were more afraid
Of cowardice than pain.
They have not asked, nor made
A syllable of pain.
My lips have wrought a quiet
To bind them like a mesh-
A web that is a riot
Of silences . . . a quiet
That yet may s... |
195,138 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31503/the-dead-56d214f9b6041 | Stephen Berg | The Dead | STBPHEN BERG
THE DEAD
It'll be much easier when the dead
lash us with wings,
rise with an ocean of dirt in their mouths
and the slow birth of hair and fingernails.
This afternoon I thought about us,
sleeping in blankets, being fatal,
and it seemed wrong to be on one side.
... |
198,046 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32959/white-poplar-leaves | Leah Goldberg | White Poplar Leaves |
I
White poplar leaves
light the mute darkness
and all the birds hush
the hours of evening.
How did you manage
to find yourself a haven
on an island without even
one single dream?
2
In the purified empty
silence
the Name that had sounded in vain-
in the isolated
silence
cleaving to
the Name-
in... |
172,642 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/19748/the-clock-56d20b8957483 | Janet Loxley Lewis | The Clock | Whose is the clock that strikes the hours,
And strikes them true?
Above my beds of gaudy flowers,
Of mint and rue,
The sound floats like a light that left
A turning glass
To flicker along a wall, more deft
Than hands that pass,
Having laid down the mirror's round,
To coil soft hair,
Brushed on a summer morning, sm... |
213,256 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40588/ghost-runners | James Scruton | Ghost Runners |
They haunt the sandlots, load the bases
of memory. On clearest days
they shimmer over empty infields,
flicker past the chainlink facets
of a backstop, footsteps with the sound
a ball at dusk made through the grass,
whisking quickly into the dark.
They'd score and disappear as needed,
get forced at home and vanish
i... |
226,144 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49471/my-chosen-landscape | P. K. Page | My Chosen Landscape | Sand dunes, interminable deserts, burning winds
the night temperatures bitter, a land of grit;
and floating above me stars as violent
as fire balloons, tactile and brilliant.
The all-enveloping sky, a cloak of soot.
This is my story, my brief biography.
The sum total of my experience. I travel-
a compass useless in my ... |
238,834 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57093/reading-milosz | Adam Zagajewski | Reading Milosz | I read your poetry once more,
poems written by a rich man, knowing all,
and by a beggar, homeless,
an emigrant, alone.
You always wanted to go
beyond poetry, above it, soaring,
but also lower, to where our region
begins, modest and timid.
Sometimes your tone
transforms us for a moment,
we believe-truly-
that every da... |
202,436 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35157/barns-collapsing | John Vernon | Barns Collapsing |
One leans into the wind
hung on a roofbeam and when
the wind stops folds into wood.
Another drops in a dry spell, boards shrunk.
After inspection I condemn
the empty fields, the sun and rain.
I examine each gulched board
in stalls left standing,
gaps in the boards gullies of light
before they're nailed up in restauran... |
196,086 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31977/sunday-a-m-not-in-manhattan | John Hollander | Sunday A.M. Not in Manhattan |
Across the street, closed shops
Where glass reflects this wide
Light only, or faintly
Etched on the sky, trolley
Lines that the overhead,
Half-open windows are
Thinking. Long, slant shadows
Cast on the wan concrete
Are of nearby fallen
Verticals not ourselves.
Lying longest, most still,
Along the unsigned blank
Of si... |
240,448 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57940/a-part-of-speech | Joseph Brodsky | A Part of Speech | I was born and grew up in the Baltic marshland
by zinc-gray breakers that always marched on
in twos. Hence all rhymes, hence that wan flat voice
that ripples between them like hair still moist,
if it ripples at all. Propped on a pallid elbow,
the helix picks out of them no sea rumble
but a clap of canvas, of shutters, ... |
177,558 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22512/street-lights-at-dusk | Jessie Wilmore Murton | Street Lights at Dusk |
These are night's luminous blossoms, hybrid blooms
Whose origins were not in earthly soil:
They are the fruitage of lean years of toil
By those who grafted lightning's lambent plumes
To roots of steel, to stems of copper wire -
Who tore bright petals from the heaven-born vine,
And taught celestial tendrils to entwine
... |
186,444 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27101/art-song | Howard Nemerov | Art Song | Down where the dog-toothed tide
Crawled at the bay,
I held in my fingers the feather of a gull,
Black, white and grey,
Lighter than the wind
Which twisted and tried to tear it away.
That single feather danced
In a welter where
Twelve winds contended with my hand.
Shattered in focus there,
The o... |
196,758 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32313/the-lovers-tarot-key-vi | Lewis Turco | The Lovers: Tarot Key VI |
Was hers the blame? Blossoms flare.
Was his? The Garden is lost.
When will it be found?
He must ascend the mountain;
he looks toward her.
LEWIS TURCO
The mountain is between them.
She looks to Raphael
hovering above the mount.
She is searching strength.
She will give what... |
206,478 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37184/clay | Dave Smith | Clay |
A Valentine
This heap of dirt contains nothing,
no etched figure of man, no woman,
no rosebud or child or house.
It bears the smell of cows,
crops, the paths of county farms,
but lacks still the kiss and slap
clay needs to become an urn, lacking
also broken bits of glass, though ticks
ha... |
176,134 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/21774/the-phoenix-56d20ceab91d1 | Carl Bulosan | The Phoenix | Gigantic buildings of our day,
Tall towers that the winds know,
Dark Flower! betray
This secret and my sorrow. ...
Into the streets of sheltered rooms,
Where sleepers sleep with grief,
Where night looms
Majestically like death;
O Dark Mother, mute with pity,
Creep in with a new faith
And tell us what glory
Is there o... |
169,754 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/18127/after-prayer | Gladys Campbell | After Prayer | I came from darkness to light with a cry,
But I shall be silent when I die.
I walked in woods where small birds
Utter solitary words.
I explored the green wave
Where cold fish in silence move.
I heard the red leaf, lonely dancer,
Whisper to earth. I heard no answer.
The feeble drip of water on stone
Is language that... |
240,104 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57758/listening-to-a-white-man-play-the-blues | Silvia Curbelo | Listening To A White Man Play The Blues | Pushing the seed into the ground
isn't enough. Whatever blooms
in this place is dumb and blind.
Foreclosure is a one-eyed man.
Nothing falls from a sky like this
except a little rain, never enough rain.
All night my wife looks down
the neck of my guitar
passing the bottle back and forth
like a story she's been tell... |
182,616 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25123/marsh-leaf | David Wagoner | Marsh Leaf | DAVID R. WAGONER
MARSH LEAF
The swamp reeds murmur the song.
The voices and tongues are brown.
Cold water-mouths move and sing,
And grey mist huddles down.
I look for a hopeful thing,
But the mud and reeds have been troubled long.
Inside of a low-roof house
The wavering wall... |
160,680 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13032/on-the-great-plateau | Edith Franklin Wyatt | On the Great Plateau |
In eternal silence.
Let the world all fade,
Break and pass away.
Yet will this remain,
Deep beyond all singing,
My own true companion,
Beautiful past singing:
We were here together-
On this earth together ;
I w... |
244,809 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/92662/a-french-piano-tuner-a-one-eyed-glassblower-walk-into-a-bar | Amy Beeder | A French Piano Tuner & a One-Eyed Glassblower Walk into a Bar | Would you rather hear the louche pun drawn from glory hole, lip wrap or fingering
or hear a tiny hammer striking wire? Would you rather see the molten birthing glass?
Seat Eros next to Kronos, for the banter. I heard she's yet unplowed - I heard your quiver dangled down -
I heard you dwell in borrowed forms - love's ... |
181,266 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24422/homecoming-56d20ec7e40ae | Thomas McGrath | Homecoming | After the cries of gulls and the fogbound island;
After the last accident, the last suicide, the last alert;
After we had broken the ties of separation;
After the ship, projection of desire, and the homeward passage;
When the country opened up like a child's picture book,
(The hills were colored by our loneliness, lak... |
188,898 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28365/a-paper-horse | Robert W. Watson | A Paper Horse |
ROBERT W. WATSON
A PAPER HORSE
Tonight the world's roof burns,
The yellow roof of the last palace of a living God
Blackens in my dreams: my spirit shrinks in bed.
How childish habits persist! In bed before sleep
I unfold my mind's map in the dark and mark
A place to sleep, a tent near Lhasa,
... |
210,552 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39230/penitential | Myrna Stone | Penitential |
There, in the maple's branches
beyond the window, light has gathered,
luminous for a moment in its passage
into night, in its clear and familiar
sense of diminishing grace,
what the priests for years allowed us
from one summer Saturday to the next,
so that while feeding the dog or setting
the table, we m... |
221,954 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/46486/sparrow-trapped-in-the-airport | Averill Curdy | Sparrow Trapped in the Airport | Never the bark and abalone mask
cracked by storms of a mastering god,
never the gods' favored glamour, never
the pelagic messenger bearing orchards
in its beak, never allegory, not wisdom
or valor or cunning, much less hunger
demanding vigilance, industry, invention,
or the instinct to claim some small rise
above the p... |
248,907 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150767/the-winter-beach-at-sanderling | Stanley Plumly | The Winter Beach at Sanderling | The "wolves in the waves" driving or being driven
inside the rain, which is one sort of day to be alone
in, then again the beach mile either way disappearing
into the thinness of the air, dead detail of the gone world
from the night before-probably an eaten-out barrel
or two, traps and lines of netting, lumber and almo... |
193,612 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/30738/the-misery-of-mechanics | Philip Booth | The Misery of Mechanics |
PHILIP BOOTH
THE MISERY OF MECHANICS
The misery of mechanics, back
after Labor Day, with nothing
to punch but the Time Clock:
somebody's wife has a squeak
in her new right-rear door;
an old professor phones in
for his first State Inspection.
Dry-tongued with pushbutton
coffee, shapeless in cover-
alls, ea... |
218,938 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43759/home-thoughts-from-the-sea | Robert Browning | Home-Thoughts, from the Sea | Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-East distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
"Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"-say,
Whoso... |
167,990 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17136/the-city-of-glass | Vachel Lindsay | The City of Glass | Beside the lake we call the City of Glass
We watched our red dear afternoon go past,
Red with Indian paint and heart's-blood hours.
Innocent were all the other flowers.
What rhyme of love or shout of love can sing
Of that deep grass and secret rock and spring?-
Of your sun-blaze of whiteness and your laughter,
My still... |
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