Good poems
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Zebra
© C. K. Williams
Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms
against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days
not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs?
Town Eclogues: Saturday; The Small-Pox
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
FLAVIA. THE wretched FLAVIA on her couch reclin'd,
Thus breath'd the anguish of a wounded mind ;
A glass revers'd in her right hand she bore,
For now she shun'd the face she sought before.
The Tables Turned
© André Breton
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
Failed Tribute to the Stonemason of Tor House, Robinson Jeffers
© James Tate
We traveled down to see your house,
Tor House, Hawk Tower, in Carmel,
Fixed Ideas
© Kenneth Slessor
Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,
Agoraphobia
© Linda Pastan
"Yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the marketplace,
Hooting and shrieking."
—William Shakespeare
The Yellow Bowl by Rachel Contreni Flynn : American Life in Poetry #266 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.
Palinode-December
© James Russell Lowell
Like some lorn abbey now, the wood
Stands roofless in the bitter air;
In ruins on its floor is strewed
The carven foliage quaint and rare,
And homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with song.
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 3
© Alfred Tennyson
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
A Voice From The Bush
© Anonymous
High noon, and not a cloud in the sky
To break this blinding sun.
Well, I've half the day before me still,
And most of my journey done.
"Some Busy Hands "
© Edith Wharton
SOME busy hands have brought to light,
And laid beneath my eye,
The dress I wore that afternoon
You came to say good-by.
Sonnet CXLIV: Two loves I have of comfort and despair
© William Shakespeare
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still
Alimony
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Alimony alimony I work till my fingers are bloody and boney
Me oh my oh goodness sake I'm paying for my mistake
She calls it alimony alimony yeah you single men may think it's funny
Till one of these days you're gonna wake and find you're payin' for your mistake
To Whistler, American
© Ezra Pound
On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.
You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.
Meditation at Lagunitas
© Robert Hass
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
Autumn Song
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
The Landgraff
© Frances Anne Kemble
Through Thuringia's forest green
The Landgraff rode at close of e'en;
Kosmos
© Walt Whitman
Who includes diversity and is Nature,
Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also,
