Animal poems

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37

Living Among the Dead

© William Matthews

To love the dead is easy.
They are final, perfect.
But to love a child
is sometimes to fail at love
while the dead look on
with their abstract sorrow.

Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters
Always out of office hours running with her social betters
But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her
Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her
It was that look within her eye
Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 15

© William Langland

Ac after my wakynge it was wonder longe

Er I koude kyndely knowe what was Dowel.

Shakuntala Act VI

© Kalidasa

ACT VI

SCENE A STREET

Song of Myself

© Walt Whitman

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson

© Gertrude Stein

I knew too that through them I knew too that he was through, I knew too that he threw them. I knew too that they were through, I knew too I knew too, I knew I knew them.

Feeling Fucked Up

© Tony Harrison

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split

and I with no way to make her

Good People

© William Stanley Merwin

From the kindness of my parents
I suppose it was that I held
that belief about suffering

Things

© Louis Simpson

A man stood in the laurel tree
Adjusting his hands and feet to the boughs.
He said, “Today I was breaking stones
On a mountain road in Asia,

from The Testament of Love

© John Hall Wheelock

from Book I, Introduction

Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,

Northumberland House

© Stevie Smith

I was always a thoughtful youngster,
Said the lady on the omnibus,
I remember Father used to say,
You are more thoughtful than us.

A Lay Of St. Gengulphus

© Richard Harris Barham

Gengulphus comes from the Holy Land,
With his scrip, and his bottle, and sandal shoon;
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet his Lady deems him return'd full soon.

A Version of Alcman’s (fl. 630 BCE) “Sleep” poem . . .

© John Kinsella

Dormant are pinnacles and streams of the mountains,
Chasms and bluffs and crawlers fed by the dark earth;
Dormant are wild animals and that tribe of bees
And monsters out of the sea’s dark syntax;
Dormant are clans of birds with wings that envelop.

Beginning My Studies

© Walt Whitman

BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness-these forms-the power of motion,
The least insect or animal-the senses-eyesight-love;
The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish'd to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs.

The Animals are Leaving

© Nick Carbo

One by one, like guests at a late party
They shake our hands and step into the dark:
Arabian ostrich; Long-eared kit fox; Mysterious starling.

Orpheus Alone

© Mark Strand

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk

On the shores of the darkest known river,

"Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over"

Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over.
His sister was riding high: nothing bridled her.
Her light was falling, shining into woods and rivers.
Wild animals opened their jaws wide, stirred to prey.
But in the human world all was sleep, pause, relaxation, torpor.