All Poems

/ page 2609 of 3210 /

Order by :

Midnight

© Louise Gluck

Speak to me, aching heart: what
Ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
Weeping in the dark garage
With your sack of garbage: it is not your job

Up the steep stair they clatter to each room,
In whispered merriment they pierce the gloom
Of Time's sweet mercy, who with his grey sheet
Did seek in vain to stay their restless feet.
Their peeping eyes and prying fingers' thrust
Disturb Death's shroud and wanton in the dust.

The Garden

© Louise Gluck

The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
The ecstatic reds of the roses,
So that you will come to it with your lovers.

Limerick: There was an Old Man of Peru

© Edward Lear

There was an Old Man of Peru,
Who never knew what he should do;
So he tore off his hair,
And behaved like a bear,
That intrinsic Old Man of Peru.

Widows

© Louise Gluck

My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Prayer

© George MacDonald

We doubt the word that tells us: Ask,
And ye shall have your prayer;
We turn our thoughts as to a task,
With will constrained and rare.

Early Darkness

© Louise Gluck

How can you say
earth should give me joy? Each thing
born is my burden; I cannot succeed
with all of you.

The Azalea

© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore

There, where the sun shines first

Against our room,

Nostos

© Louise Gluck

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts

Fortune Of War

© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

NOUGHT more accursed in war I know

Than getting off scot-free;

Parable Of The Dove

© Louise Gluck

A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.

Gallio's Song

© Rudyard Kipling

All day long to the judgment-seat

The crazed Provincials drew-

Siren

© Louise Gluck

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.

Mon Choual "Castor"

© William Henry Drummond

I'm poor man, me, but I buy las' May
Wan horse on de Comp'nie Passengaire,
An' auction feller w'at sole heem say
She's out of de full-breed "Messengaire."

Penelope's Song

© Louise Gluck

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,
Do now as I bid you, climb
The shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;
Wait at the top, attentive, like

He Wonders Whether To Praise Or To Blame Her

I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,
But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.
For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;
Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?