Death poems
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Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax
© Andrew Marvell
Within this sober Frame expect
Work of no Forrain Architect;
That unto Caves the Quarries drew,
And Forrests did to Pastures hew;
The Child Of The Islands - Winter
© Caroline Norton
I.
ERE the Night cometh! On how many graves
Rests, at this hour, their first cold winter's snow!
Wild o'er the earth the sleety tempest raves;
The Killing Place
© Edgar Albert Guest
Were hiking along at a two-forty pace
We 're making life seem like a man-killing race,
With our nerves all on edge and our jaws firmly set
We go rushing along; with our brows lined with sweat
And our cheeks pale and drawn every minute we dash,
And the goal that we 're after is merely more cash.
Koening Of The River
© Derek Walcott
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
Egypt, Tobago
© Derek Walcott
There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.
Codicil
© Derek Walcott
Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,
one a hack's hired prose, I earn
me exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,
A City's Death By Fire
© Derek Walcott
After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;
Under a candle's eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
Bankside: (Home Of Edmund Quincy Dedham)
© James Russell Lowell
I
I christened you in happier days, before
Blood Oranges
© Lisel Mueller
In 1936, a child
in Hitler's Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
Curriculum Vitae
© Lisel Mueller
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny
© Lisel Mueller
Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white:
you shoulder the crow on your left,
the snowbird on your right;
Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 4.
© William Cowper
Arion. Lo, from the field of air I too descend,
I who am called Arion,
The mighty ruler of this winged band,
At the command of hell.
St. Laurence
© Joyce Kilmer
Within the broken Vatican
The murdered Pope is lying dead.
The soldiers of Valerian
Their evil hands are wet and red.
Poets
© Joyce Kilmer
Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
To a Blackbird and His Mate Who Died in the Spring
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Kenton)An iron hand has stilled the throats
That throbbed with loud and rhythmic glee
And dammed the flood of silver notes
That drenched the world in melody.
The Cathedral of Rheims
© Joyce Kilmer
(From the French of Emile Verhaeren)He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
