All Poems

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The Onion, Memory

© Craig Raine

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin--without palaver.
All's over in a flash,
too silently...

An Attempt At Jealousy

© Craig Raine

So how is life with your new bloke?
Simpler, I bet. Just one stroke
of his quivering oar and the skin
of the Thames goes into a spin,

Dandelions

© Craig Raine

Dead dandelions, bald as drumsticks,
swaying by the roadside

Nature Study

© Craig Raine

All the lizards are asleep--
perched pagodas with tiny triangular tiles,
each milky lid a steamed-up window.
Inside, the heart repeats itself like a sleepy gong,
summoning nothing to nothing.

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.Mist is when the sky is tired of flight

A Large Number

© Wislawa Szymborska

Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.

Pi

© Wislawa Szymborska

The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also just a start,
five nine two because it never ends.

Still

© Wislawa Szymborska

In sealed box cars travel
names across the land,
and how far they will travel so,
and will they ever get out,
don't ask, I won't say, I don't know.

Tortures

© Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.

Going Home

© Wislawa Szymborska

He came home. Said nothing.
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.
He lay down fully dressed.
Pulled the blanket over his head.

Some Like Poetry

© Wislawa Szymborska

Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass

Women's Rights

© Annie Louisa Walker

You cannot rob us of the rights we cherish,
Nor turn our thoughts away
From the bright picture of a "Woman's Mission"
Our hearts portray.

The Night Cometh

© Annie Louisa Walker

Work! for the night is coming;
Work! through the morning hours;
Work! while the dew is sparkling;
Work! 'mid the springing flowers;

Conversation

© Ai

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.

The Quarry

Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea
I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.
Upon his back a huge pagoda towered
Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.

The Daguerreotype

This, then, is she,
My mother as she looked at seventeen,
When she first met my father. Young incredibly,
Younger than spring, without the faintest trace

On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines

Streets of the roaring town,
Hush for him, hus, be still!
He comes, who was stricken down
Doing the word of our will.

Gloucester Moods

A mile behind is Gloucester town
Where the flishing fleets put in,
A mile ahead the land dips down
And the woods and farms begin.

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade