Fear poems
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may my heart always be open to little... (19)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
i carry your heart with me
© Edward Estlin Cummings
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
The Arrivals
© Sharon Olds
I pull the bed slowly open, I
open the lips of the bed, get
the stack of fresh underpants
out of the suitcasepeach, white,
Crab
© Sharon Olds
When I eat crab, slide the rosy
rubbery claw across my tongue
I think of my mother. She'd drive down
to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a
1954
© Sharon Olds
Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt
he had put on her face. And her training bra
scared methe newspapers, morning and evening,
kept saying it, training bra,
The Progress of Poesy
© Thomas Gray
A Pindaric OdeAwake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
With The Face
© Laura Riding Jackson
With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
The Sompnour's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Carrack: A great ship of burden used by the Portuguese; the
name is from the Italian, "cargare," to load
The Man of Law's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Plight: pulled; the word is an obsolete past tense from
"pluck."
The Miller's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.
The Wife of Bath's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
7. "But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and
silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and
some to dishonour." -- 2 Tim. ii 20.
The Knight's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
Upon that other side, Palamon,
When that he wist Arcita was agone,
Much sorrow maketh, that the greate tower
Resounded of his yelling and clamour
The pure* fetters on his shinnes great *very
Were of his bitter salte teares wet.
If I Were King
© William Ernest Henley
If I were king, my pipe should be premier.
The skies of time and chance are seldom clear,
We would inform them all with bland blue weather.
Delight alone would need to shed a tear,
For dream and deed should war no more together.
The Hudson
© Luis Benitez
Now nobody says "horse"
and there is a new colt in the world.
From now on, damn, bless,
the bread that you take to your mouth will taste of contradiction.
The Pearl Fisherman
© Luis Benitez
This evening and part of the night
I sank again into the dense sea
where we beings and things float.
I descended for pearls to show to men
Father and Son
© Stanley Kunitz
Now in the suburbs and the falling light
I followed him, and now down sandy road
Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet
Curdle of fields, where the plums
Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
© Ted Hughes
He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment
On The Skeleton Of A Hound
© James Wright
Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
Fear Is What Quickens Me
© James Wright
2
What is that tall woman doing
There, in the trees?
I can hear rabbits and mourning dovees whispering together
In the dark grass, there
Under the trees.
