Birthday poems

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Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
To suit it; when he struck at length
My honour, 't was with all his strength.

here rests

© Paul Celan

my sister Josephine
born july in '29
and dead these 15 years
who carried a book
on every stroll.

To One Of The Author's Children

© Felicia Dorothea Hemans

THOU wak'st from happy sleep to play
With bounding heart, my boy!
Before thee lies a long bright day
Of summer and of joy.

A Birthday Greeting: To My Little Nephew

© Annie McCarer Darlington

I know a happy little boy,
They call him Charlie Gray,
Whose face is bright, because you know,
He's six years old to-day.

Beginning with 1914

© Paul Eluard

Since it always begins

in the unlikeliest place

On My Mother's Birthday

© Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Clad in all their brightest green,
This day verdant fields are seen;
The tuneful birds begin their lay,
To celebrate thy natal day.

After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa

© Robert Hass

New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

A Poem for the Cruel Majority

© Jerome Rothenberg

Nothing can make the dark turn into light
for the cruel majority.
Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror.

Humboldts Birthday

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

ERE yet the warning chimes of midnight sound,
Set back the flaming index of the year,
Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round
Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere!

The Turtle Shrine Near Chittagong

© Naomi Shihab Nye

Humps of shell emerge from dark water.
Believers toss hunks of bread,
hoping the fat reptilian heads
will loom forth from the murk
and eat. Meaning: you have been
heard.

The Poet And The Children

© John Greenleaf Whittier

WITH a glory of winter sunshine
Over his locks of gray,
In the old historic mansion
He sat on his last birthday;

Hymn to Life

© James Schuyler

The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp

And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass

sisters

© Paul Celan

for elaine philip on her birthday

me and you be sisters.

Imitations of Horace

While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?

Effort at Speech Between Two People

: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.