Business poems
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First We Take Manhattan
© Leonard Cohen
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
Beach Glass
© Amy Clampitt
While you walk the water's edge,
turning over concepts
I can't envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
The Wake
© Robert Herrick
Come, Anthea, let us two
Go to feast, as others do:
Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes;
California Plush
© Frank Bidart
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
To Certain Journeymen
© Carl Sandburg
You handle dust going to a long country,
You know the secret behind your job is the same whether
you lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery,
well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the
body is laid in by naked hands and then covered
by the shovels.
To a Contemporary Bunkshooter
© Carl Sandburg
You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers
over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.
Aprons of Silence
© Carl Sandburg
MANY things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth shut.
So many times I was asked
To come and say the same things
Skyscraper
© Carl Sandburg
Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.
Off the Turnpike
© Amy Lowell
Good ev'nin', Mis' Priest.
I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye.
Yes, it's all over.
All my things is packed
The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde
© Amy Lowell
The Bell in the convent tower swung.
High overhead the great sun hung,
A navel for the curving sky.
The air was a blue clarity.
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck
© Amy Lowell
1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
The Grocery
© Amy Lowell
"Hullo, Alice!"
"Hullo, Leon!"
"Say, Alice, gi' me a couple
O' them two for five cigars,
The Cremona Violin
© Amy Lowell
Part First
Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
The Foreigner
© Amy Lowell
Have at you, you Devils!
My back's to this tree,
For you're nothing so nice
That the hind-side of me
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
© Amy Lowell
A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
To The Commissioners Of Northern Lights
© Robert Louis Stevenson
I SEND to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse
An' I believe't)
And on your business lay my curse
Before I leav't.
Envoy For "A Child's Garden Of Verses"
© Robert Louis Stevenson
WHETHER upon the garden seat
You lounge with your uplifted feet
Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;
Or whether on the sofa you,
Absalom And Achitophel
© John Dryden
Him staggering so when Hell's dire agent found,
While fainting virtue scarce maintain'd her ground,
He pours fresh forces in, and thus replies:
Mac Flecknoe
© John Dryden
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
