Food poems
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The Tragic Condition of the Statue of Liberty
© Bernadette Mayer
A collaboration with Emma Lazarus
Give me your tired, your poor,
Bird Parliament (translation of)
© Edward Fitzgerald
And first, with Heart so full as from his Eyes
Ran weeping, up rose Tajidar the Wise;
The mystic Mark upon whose Bosom show'd
That He alone of all the Birds THE ROAD
Had travell'd: and the Crown upon his Head
Had reach'd the Goal; and He stood forth and said:
Ferdiah; Or, The Fight At The Ford
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Time is it, O Cuchullin, to arise,
Time for the fearful combat to prepare;
For hither with the anger in his eyes,
To fight thee comes Ferdiah called the Fair.
Wasted
© Ada Cambridge
But, oh, how few the saved, how small the gain,
How poor the profit as against the cost,
The waste of life potential, vast and fair,
In soul unfructified and starveling brain,
Of Power that might have been, and might be-lost
For want of common food and common air!
On A Diet
© William Matthews
to the heaven of revisions. Why be
adipose: an expense, etc.,
in a waste, etc.? Something like
the body of the poet’s work, with its
pale shadows, begins to pare and replace
the poet’s body, and isn’t it time?
Ave Atque Vale
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
In Memory of Charles Baudelaire
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
The Inn Of Earth
© Sara Teasdale
I came to the crowded Inn of Earth,
And called for a cup of wine,
But the Host went by with averted eye
From a thirst as keen as mine.
In Rubble
© David Wagoner
Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling
And walls and floor are rearranging
The Crystal Lithium
© James Schuyler
The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from a beach
Eve-shuttering, mixed with sand, or when snow lies under the street lamps and on all
Song Of Slaves In The Desert
© John Greenleaf Whittier
WHERE are we going? where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee?
Lord of peoples, lord of lands,
Look across these shining sands,
The Two Elizabeths
© John Greenleaf Whittier
AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt,
A high-born princess, servant of the poor,
Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt
To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.
On The Death Of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch
© William Cowper
Ye Nymphs, if e'er your eyes were red
With tears o'er hapless favourites shed,
Oh, share Maria's grief!
Her favourite, even in his cage,
(What will not hunger's cruel rage?)
Assassined by a thief.
Another Insane Devotion
© Gerald Stern
This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich
with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped
Paradise Lost : Book X.
© John Milton
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
