Good poems
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The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever
© Les Murray
To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
The Aboriginal Cricketer
© Les Murray
Good-looking young man
in your Crimean shirt
with your willow shield
up, as if to face spears,
Babi Yar
© Yevgeny Yevtushenko
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
Away, Melancholy
© Stevie Smith
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
Stanley Kunitz
© Mary Oliver
I used to imagine him
coming from his house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
© Mary Oliver
Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
Why I Wake Early
© Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
Turtle
© Mary Oliver
Now I see it--
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal
Yes! No!
© Mary Oliver
How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.
Flare
© Mary Oliver
It is not the sunrise,
which is a red rinse,
which is flaring all over the eastern sky;
Wild Geese
© Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Music
© Mary Oliver
I tied together
a few slender reeds, cut
notches to breathe across and made
such music you stood
shock still and then
Spleen
© Charles Baudelaire
I'M like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows ag?d blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
Benediction
© Charles Baudelaire
When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:
Elevation
© Charles Baudelaire
Above the ponds, beyond the valleys,
The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas,
Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,
The spheres that wilt to infinity
Victor Hugo
© Henry Van Dyke
Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
New Year's Eve
© Henry Van Dyke
I The other night I had a dream, most clear
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer.
Jesus, Thou Divine Companion
© Henry Van Dyke
Jesus, Thou divine Companion,
By Thy lowly human birth
Thou hast come to join the workers,
Burden bearers of the earth.
