Life poems
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Family Reunion by Catherine Barnett: American Life in Poetry #67 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.
To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias
© Alfred Tennyson
. OLD FITZ, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
He had his Dream
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
An Essay on Man: Epistle II
© Alexander Pope
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton as we shew an Ape.
Veterans of the Seventies by Marvin Bell: American Life in Poetry #146 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a new name for âshell shock,â? a term once applied only to military veterans. Here the poet Marvin Bell describes a group of these emotionally damaged soldiers, gathered together for breakfast. I'd guess that just about everybody who reads this column has known one or two men like these.
Veterans of the Seventies
Bud Discusses Cleanliness
© Edgar Albert Guest
First thing in the morning, last I hear at night,
Get it when I come from school: "My, you look a sight!
Go upstairs this minute, an' roll your sleeves up high
An' give your hands a scrubbing and wipe 'em till they're dry!
Now don't stand there and argue, and never mind your tears!
And this time please remember to wash your neck and ears."
Mother's Glasses
© Edgar Albert Guest
I've told about the times that Ma can't find her pocketbook,
And how we have to hustle round for it to help her look,
But there's another care we know that often comes our way,
I guess it happens easily a dozen times a day.
It starts when first the postman through the door a letter passes,
And Ma says: "Goodness gracious me! Wherever are my glasses?"
A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634. (Comus)
© John Milton
The Scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of
deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with all dainties. Comus
appears with his rabble, and the LADY set in an enchanted chair;
to
whom he offers his glass; which she puts by, and goes about to
rise.
Inside And Outside
© Allen Tate
For look you how her body stiffly lies
Just as she left it, unprepared to stay,
The posture waiting on the sleeping eyes,
While the body's life, deep as a covered well,
Instinctive as the wind, busy as May,
Burns out a secret passageway to hell.
The Stirrup Cup
© John Hay
My short and happy day is done,
The long and dreary night comes on;
And at my door the Pale Horse stands,
To carry me to unknown lands.
The God And The Bayadere - An Indian Legend
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men as man he'd fain perceive.
And when he the town as a trav'ller hath seen,
Observing the mighty, regarding the mean,
He quits it, to go on his journey, at eve.
A Fly About A Glasse Of Burnt Claret.
© Richard Lovelace
I.
Forbear this liquid fire, Fly,
It is more fatal then the dry,
That singly, but embracing, wounds;
And this at once both burns and drowns.
The Wreath
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
[EASTER, ] Here on my path by some hard fate struck down,
When life at last held out full hands to me.
To Epicharmus
© Theocritus
Read these lines to Epicharmus. They are Dorian, as was he
The sire of Comedy.
Of his proper self bereaved, Bacchus, unto thee we rear
His brazen image here;
A Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age
© Alice Meynell
Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.
Mogg Megone - Part I.
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone,
Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky,
