Life poems
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Stone Shadows
© David St. John
For an entire year she dressed in all the shades
Of ash the gray of old paper; the deeper,
Almost auburn ash of pencil boxes; the dark, nearly
Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet
© Tony Hoagland
At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn
Lucky
© Tony Hoagland
If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.
Jet
© Tony Hoagland
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
The Source
© William Stanley Merwin
There in the fringe of trees between
the upper field and the edge of the one
below it that runs above the valley
one time I heard in the early
Green Fields
© William Stanley Merwin
By this part of the century few are left who believe
in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
are sounds of shadows that possess no future
For The Anniversary Of My Death
© William Stanley Merwin
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Air
© William Stanley Merwin
Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.
Yesterday
© William Stanley Merwin
My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand
Winter Heavens
© George Meredith
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Phoebus with Admetus
© George Meredith
NOW the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes;
Swift fly the fleeces,
Thick the blossom-flakes.
Modern Love XXXI: This Golden Head
© George Meredith
This golden head has wit in it. I live
Again, and a far higher life, near her.
Some women like a young philosopher;
Perchance because he is diminutive.
Modern Love XXX: What Are We First
© George Meredith
What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,
And all that draweth on the tomb for text.
Modern Love XXV: You Like Not That French Novel
© George Meredith
You like not that French novel? Tell me why.
You think it quite unnatural. Let us see.
The actors are, it seems, the usual three:
Husband, and wife, and lover. She--but fie!
Modern Love XVIII: Here Jack and Tom
© George Meredith
Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg.
Curved open to the river-reach is seen
A country merry-making on the green.
Fair space for signal shakings of the leg.
Disabled
© Wilfred Owen
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
Modern Love XLIII: Mark Where the Pressing Wind
© George Meredith
Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like,
Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave!
Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
Modern Love XLI: How Many a Thing
© George Meredith
How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
When others pick it up becomes a gem!
We grasp at all the wealth it is to them;
And by reflected light its worth is found.
Modern Love XIII: I Play for Seasons, Not Eternities
© George Meredith
'I play for Seasons; not Eternities!'
Says Nature, laughing on her way. 'So must
All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!'
And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies
