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from Totem Poem [In the yellow time of pollen]

© Luke Davies

In the yellow time of pollen, in the blue time of lilacs,

in the green that would balance on the wide green world,

There is a change—and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.

from Queen Mab: Part VI

© Percy Bysshe Shelley

(excerpt)

"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,

There Came a Soul

© Rita Dove

After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida

She arrived as near to virginal

A Lesson in Geography

© Kenneth Rexroth

In the Japanese quarter
A phonograph playing
“Moonlight on ruined castles”
Kojo n'suki

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.

Mirror

© James Merrill

I grow old under an intensity

Of questioning looks. Nonsense,

The Metal and the Flower

© P. K. Page

Intractable between them grows
a garden of barbed wire and roses.
Burning briars like flames devour
their too innocent attire.
Dare they meet, the blackened wire
tears the intervening air.

Paradise Lost: Book I

© Patrick Kavanagh

So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:

The Lie

© Don Paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour
before the house had woken to make sure
that everything was in order with The Lie,
his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

A Crown of Autumn Leaves

© Annie Finch

For Mabon (fall equinox), Sept. 21
Our voices press
from us
and twine
around the year's
fermenting wine

North of Childhood

© Jonathan Galassi

FOR B.

Somewhere ahead I see you

Advice to a Prophet

© Lola Ridge

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,

from The Triumph of Love

© Geoffrey Hill

Rancorous, narcissistic old sod—what
makes him go on? We thought, hoped rather,
he might be dead. Too bad. So how
much more does he have of injury time?

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl

To the Memory of the Household It Describes

This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

After Midnight

The dark streets are deserted,
With only a drugstore glowing
Softly, like a sleeping body;

Ellen West

© Frank Bidart

I love sweets,—
heaven
would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ...
But my true self

Yellow Glove

What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.
I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.
The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.