Poems begining by B
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Benediction
© Charles Baudelaire
When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:
Beacons
© Charles Baudelaire
Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.
Bregalad's Lament
© John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
O Orofarne, Lassemista, Carnimirie!
O rowan fair, upon your hair how white the blossom lay!
O rowan mine, I saw you shine upon a summer's day,
Your rind so bright, your leaves so light, your voice so cool and soft!
Bilbo's Last Song (At the Grey Havens)
© John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Bath-Song
© John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Sing hey! For the bath at close of day
that washes the weary mud away
A loon is he that will not sing
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!
Before you knew you owned it
© Alice Walker
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
By The Arno
© Oscar Wilde
The oleander on the wall
Grows crimson in the dawning light,
Though the grey shadows of the night
Lie yet on Florence like a pall.
Ballade De Marguerite (Normande)
© Oscar Wilde
I am weary of lying within the chase
When the knights are meeting in market-place.Nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town
Lest the hoofs of the war-horse tread thee down.But I would not go where the Squires ride,
I would only walk by my Lady's side.Alack! and alack! thou art overbold,
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
© Jane Kenyon
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .
Brother And Sister
© Lewis Carroll
"SISTER, sister, go to bed!
Go and rest your weary head."
Thus the prudent brother said.
Ballade of Modest Confession
© Hilaire Belloc
Envoi
Prince! do not let your Nose, your royal Nose,
Your large imperial Nose get out of Joint.
For though you cannot touch my golden Prose,
Painting on Vellum is my weakest point.
Blue Ridge
© Ellen Bryant Voigt
Up there on the mountain road, the fireworks
blistered and subsided, for once at eye level:
Buick
© Ishmael Reed
As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss.
Before Parting
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Box of Cigars
© Gerald Stern
I tried one or two but they were stale
and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them
Bitch
© John Betjeman
Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,
I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.
Becune Point
© Derek Walcott
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
Beyond Hammonton
© Stephen Dunn
The back roads I’ve traveled late
at night, alone, a little drunk,
wishing I were someone
on whom nothing is lost,
Burning
© Washington Allston
He lives, who last night flopped from a log
Into the creek, and all night by an ankle
Lay pinned to the flood, dead as a nail
But for the skin of the teeth of his dog.
Buddhist New Year Song
© Diane di Prima
I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I
brought down with me
