Life poems
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Accepted
© Elizabeth Jennings
You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit
Meditation By The Stove
© Linda Pastan
I have banked the fires
of my body
into a small but steady blaze
here in the kitchen
The New Dog
© Linda Pastan
Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
To A Daughter Leaving Home
© Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
Mack The Knife
© Bertolt Brecht
Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear
And he shows them pearly white.
Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight.
How Fortunate The Man With None
© Bertolt Brecht
You saw sagacious Solomon
You know what came of him,
To him complexities seemed plain.
He cursed the hour that gave birth to him
May 24, 1980
© Joseph Brodsky
I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
Part Of Speech
© Joseph Brodsky
...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
The Whipping
© Robert Hayden
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
The Prisoners
© Robert Hayden
Steel doors guillotine gates
of the doorless house closed massively.
We were locked in with loss.
Middle Passage
© Robert Hayden
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
Frederick Douglass
© Robert Hayden
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5
© Alexander Pope
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapp'd his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
Propp'd on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1
© Alexander Pope
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
The Rape of the Lock
© Alexander Pope
He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leapt up, and wak'd his Mistress with his Tongue.
'Twas then Belinda, if Report say true,
Thy Eyes first open'd on a Billet-doux.
Wounds, Charms, and Ardors, were no sooner read,
But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head.
The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt)
© Alexander Pope
He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book
© Alexander Pope
Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry public virtue we excel:
We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
From an Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
The First EpistleAwake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
© Alexander Pope
Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
