Good poems
/ page 545 of 545 /The Lonely God
© James Brunton Stephens
So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe; too sorrowful to frown
The Highwayman
© Alfred Noyes
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inndoor.
Vull a Man
© Ingeborg Bachmann
No, I'm a man, I'm vull a man,
You beat my manhood, if you can.
You'll be a man if you can teake
All steates that household life do meake.
Woak Hill
© Ingeborg Bachmann
When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden
Green-ruddy in hedges,
Bezide the red doust o' the ridges,
A-dried at Woak Hill;
Tokens
© Ingeborg Bachmann
Green mwold on zummer bars do show
That they've a-dripped in winter wet;
The hoof-worn ring o' groun' below
The tree do tell o' storms or het;
Françoise And The Fruit Farmer
© James A. Emanuel
In town to sell his fruit, he saw her
Françoise in her summer slacks
turning to him, coming back
to feel the swelling plums,
Syringa
© John Ashbery
Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Makers And Creatures
© Vernon Scannell
It is a curious experience
And one you"re bound to know, though probably
In other realms than that of literature,
Though I speak of poems now, assuming
Death In The Lounge Bar
© Vernon Scannell
The bar he went inside was not
A place he often visited;
He welcomed anonymity;
No one to switch inquisitive
Good Friday 2001, Riding North
© Jennifer Reeser
Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
Imagining youd come to say goodbye...
© Jennifer Reeser
Imagining youd come to say goodbye,
I made a doll of raffia and string.
I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt
of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye
Wednesday
© Marvin Bell
Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
The Pleasure of Princes
© Alec Derwent Hope
What pleasures have great princes? These: to know
Themselves reputed mad with pride or power;
To speak few words -- few words and short bring low
This ancient house, that city with flame devour;
Observation Car
© Alec Derwent Hope
To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket,
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting,
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting.
Crossing the Frontier
© Alec Derwent Hope
Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time,
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait:
Passports in order, nothing to declare
And surely holding hands was not a crime
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate,
All their most formidable friends were there.
Conquistador
© Alec Derwent Hope
I sing of the decline of Henry Clay
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way,
He had in him some seed of enterprise.