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Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
House: Some Instructions
© Grace Paley
If you have a house
you must think about it all the time
as you reside in the house so
it must be a home in your mind
The Three-Legged Dog at the Heart of Our Home
© Michael Rosen
She dances to the wheeze of my lungs. Were she taller,
or had she both hind legs, she would lick my aching knees.
There’s nothing like practice I firmly believe. Practice
Nights of 1964—1966: The Old Reliable
© Marilyn Hacker
for Lewis Ellingham
The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat . . .
James Fenton, “In a Notebook”
The Cleaving
© Li-Young Lee
He gossips like my grandmother, this man
with my face, and I could stand
Passing Through
© Ai
“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha,
as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose.
Chomei at Toyama
© Ted Hughes
Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum appearing
disappearing!
In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See . . .
© Gaius Valerius Catullus
In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
Constantinople
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Greiv'd at a view which strikes vpon my Mind
The short liv'd Vanity of Human kind
In Gaudy Objects I indulge my Sight,
And turn where Eastern Pomp gives gay delight.
Lincoln, Man of the People
© Edwin Markham
When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
Skin Cancer
© Mark Jarman
Balmy overcast nights of late September;
Palms standing out in street light, house light;
The Bachelor’s Soliloquy
© Edgar Albert Guest
To wed, or not to wed; that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Symphony of a Mexican Garden
© Grace Hazard Conkling
But all across the trudging ragged chords
That are the tangled grasses in the heat,
The mariposa lilies fluttering
Like trills upon some archangelic flute,
Song of the Open Road
© Walt Whitman
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
