History poems
/ page 31 of 51 /
1959
© Gregory Corso
Uncomprising yearI see no meaning to life.
Though this abled self is here nonetheless,
either in trade gold or grammaticness,
I drop the wheelwrights simple principle
Why weave the garland? Why ring the bell?
from Omeros
© Derek Walcott
In hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez,
the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of cane
down the archipelago’s highways. The first breeze
After Reading Trollope's History Of Florence
© Eugene Field
My books are on their shelves again
And clouds lie low with mist and rain.
Afar the Arno murmurs low
The tale of fields of melting snow.
List to the bells of times agone
The while I wait me for the dawn.
Convict Once - Part First.
© James Brunton Stephens
I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson
© Gertrude Stein
I knew too that through them I knew too that he was through, I knew too that he threw them. I knew too that they were through, I knew too I knew too, I knew I knew them.
Sonnet III
© Caroline Norton
THE FORNARINA.
AND bless'd was she thou lovedst, for whose sake
Thy wit did veil in fanciful disguise
The answer which thou wert compell'd to make
Eight Variations
© Weldon Kees
1.
Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns,
But that was quite some time ago.
Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs,
Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant.
The Dance
© Gary Snyder
“Against its will, energy is doing something productive, like the devil in medieval history. The principle is that nature does something against its own will and, by self-entanglement, produces beauty.” Otto Rössler
Izanami
The Return
© Frank Bidart
As the retreating Bructeri began to burn their own
possessions, to deny to the Romans every sustenance but
ashes,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
West Of Fanny O'Dea's
© Alice Guerin Crist
Youll not find the name in geography books,
It isnt marked on the map,
Nor mentioned in atlas or history,
Yet youve heard of the place mayhap.
A Lay Of St. Gengulphus
© Richard Harris Barham
Gengulphus comes from the Holy Land,
With his scrip, and his bottle, and sandal shoon;
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet his Lady deems him return'd full soon.
Travel Papers
© Carolyn Forche
Au silence de celle qui laisse rêveur.
—René Char
By boat to Seurasaari where
the small fish were called vendace.
A man blew a horn of birchwood
toward the nightless sea.
Conscription Camp
© Ishmael Reed
Your landscape sickens with a dry disease
Even in May, Virginia, and your sweet pines
Like Frenchmen runted in a hundred wars
Are of a child’s height in these battlefields.
Jhansi Ki Rani (With English Translation)
© Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
4
With valor in a grand festival, she got married in Jhansi,
After her marriage, Laxmibai came to Jhansi as a queen with shower of joy,
A grand celebration took place in the royal palace of Jhansi. That was a good luck for Bandelos that she came to Jhansi,
That was as Chitra met with Arjun or Shiv had got his beloved Bhavani (Durga).
From the mouths of the Bandelas and the Harbolas (Religious singers of Bandelkhand), we heard the tale of the courage of the Queen of Jhansi relating how gallantly she fought like a man against the British intruders: such was the Queen of Jhansi.
The American Way
© Gregory Corso
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
But I am afraid to return to America
I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
Black Earth
© Marianne Clarke Moore
Openly, yes,
With the naturalness
Of the hippopotamus or the alligator
When it climbs out on the bank to experience the
