All Poems

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Poem With Refrains

© Robert Pinsky

But they did speak: on the phone. Wept and argued,
So fiercely one or the other often cut off
A sentence by hanging up in rage--like lovers,
But all that year she never saw her face.

At Pleasure Bay

© Robert Pinsky

In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police

The Night Game

© Robert Pinsky

Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.

Shirt

© Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

To Television

© Robert Pinsky

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

Ode To Meaning

© Robert Pinsky

Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.

Impossible To Tell

© Robert Pinsky

Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

And these are more than memories of youth
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
Symbols of those same verities that play
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.

Two Poems from the War

© Archibald MacLeish

Not these, nor all we've been, nor all we've loved,
The pitiful familiar names, had moved
Our hearts to weep for them; but oh, the star
The future is! Eternity's too wan
To give again that undefeated, far,
All-possible irradiance of dawn.

Poem in Prose

© Archibald MacLeish

This poem is for my wife.
I have made it plainly and honestly:
The mark is on it
Like the burl on the knife.

The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever

© Archibald MacLeish

Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

The Too-Late Born

© Archibald MacLeish

We too, we too, descending once again
The hills of our own land, we too have heard
Far off --- Ah, que ce cor a longue haleine ---
The horn of Roland in the passages of Spain,

An Eternity

© Archibald MacLeish

There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.

You, Andrew Marvell

© Archibald MacLeish

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

The End Of The World

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing --- nothing at all.

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- A poem should be wordless

Between going and staying the day wavers,

© Octavio Paz

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

Stalk Me

© Maggie Estep

My friend Jenny is really
worried that people are going to follow me around and send me dead animal
parts and doll heads as a result of this song but please, if you feel inclined
to send me dead animal parts, think it through. Thanks.

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

© Maggie Estep

I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.