All Poems
/ page 2595 of 3210 /
January 2
© David Lehman
The old war is over the new one has begun
between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday
in New York light is the variable and structure
the content according to Rodrigo Moynihan's
The Rhymes That Our Hearts Can Read
© Edwin Greenslade Murphy
The Rhymes That Our Hearts Can Read
We are sated of songs that hymn the praise
December 14
© David Lehman
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere,
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
That never touch with inarticulate pang
Wind
© Ted Hughes
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
September 22
© David Lehman
It's the day of the ram
and the head of the year
Rosh Ha'Shanah at
services I sat next to
June 6
© David Lehman
No two are identical though
they begin from the same
point in time the same point in
the dream when the radio shuts
Vitrail
© Laurent Tailhade
Un soir de flamme et d'or hante la basilique,
Ravivant les émaux ternis et les couleurs
Ancestrales de l'édifice catholique.
May 8
© David Lehman
700 francs will get you $109.91
on this muggy May afternoon
which is good to know since
I just found 700 francs in my wallet
The Buried Chief
© Sir Henry Parkes
With speechless lips and solemn tread
They brought the Lawyer-Statesman home:
They laid him with the gather'd dead,
Where rich and poor like brothers come.
March 1
© David Lehman
I could stare for hours
at her, the woman stepping
out of her bath, breasts
bare, towel around her waist,
Inscription On The Shanklin Fountain
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O Traveller, stay thy weary feet;
Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet;
With Tenure
© David Lehman
If Ezra Pound were alive today
(and he is)
he'd be teaching
at a small college in the Pacific Northwest
The Shield Of A Greeting
© David Lehman
Ashes that survive the aftermath of fire
Bury the past bravely, retaining
Only those messages that are least decipherable
And therefore most desirable
To be sung by the bright-eyed few remaining
Voices of our frankly foolish choir.
The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 04
© William Langland
" Cesseth!' seide the Kyng, " I suffre yow no lenger.
Ye shul saughtne, forsothe, and serve me bothe.
July 10
© David Lehman
The sky was a midnight blue
velvet cloth draping
a birdcage and no moon
but the breeze was whistling
The Poetry Of Coleridge
© George Meredith
A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed -
Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.
Maximism
© David Lehman
What I propose is not
Marxism, which
is not dead yet in
the English department,
January 31
© David Lehman
Nothing extends a phone
call more effectively than
saying you're on your way out
but she wants to tell you
