Music poems
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Nuit Blanche
© Amy Lowell
I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring
To fit my mood, it is so weary white
I have no wish for doing any thing.
Proem.
© Robert Crawford
I only knew one poet in my life.
BROWNING.
I have not known a poet but myself,
If I'm indeed one, as I ought to be,
Nostalgia
© Billy Collins
The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
Postpartum Blues
© Joseph Brodsky
But what's in the way
To the way in? God,
That desperate explanation,
Mentor and tormentor, giving us
The duties of paradise,
To Mr. Pope
© Thomas Parnell
To praise, and still with just respect to praise
A Bard triumphant in immortal bays,
The Learn'd to show, the Sensible commend,
Yet still preserve the province of the Friend,
What life, what vigour must the lines require?
What Music tune them, what affection fire?
The Bridal of the Year
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Yes! the Summer is returning,
Warmer, brighter beams are burning
Fresh Air
© Kenneth Koch
3
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea.
Epilogue To Shapes & Shadows
© Madison Julius Cawein
Beyond the moon, within a land of mist,
Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires,
Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst,
And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires;
There all lost things we loved hold ghostly tryst--
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
Boy Breaking Glass
© Gwendolyn Brooks
“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”
The Only Child
© Katharine Tynan
Lest he miss other children, lo!
His angel is his playfellow.
A riotous angel two years old,
With wings of rose and curls of gold.
Full Flight
© Richard Jones
I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building.
It's a SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers
The Empty Dance Shoes
© Cornelius Eady
My friends,
As it has been proven in the laboratory,
An empty pair of dance shoes
Will sit on the floor like a wart
Until it is given a reason to move.
Canada To England
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
If destiny is writ on night's dusk scroll,
Then youngest stars are dropping from the hand
Of the Creator, sowing on the sky
My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch
Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree
Bears on its boughs, which grows in Paradise.
Hugging the Jukebox
© Naomi Shihab Nye
They’ve tried putting him to bed, but he sings in bed.
Even in Spanish—and he doesn’t speak Spanish!
Sings and screams, wants to go back to the jukebox.
O mama I was born with a trumpet in my throat
spent all these years tryin’ to cough it up …
California Prodigal
© Jon Anderson
Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land,
Then quiet pools whisper
Private childhood secrets.
Beowulf
© Charles Baudelaire
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
The Rope-Maker
© Emile Verhaeren
Of old--as one in sleep, life, errant, strayed
Its wondrous morns and fabled evenings through;
When God's right hand toward far Canaan's blue
Traced golden paths, deep in the twilight shade.
Honours -- Part II.
© Jean Ingelow
As one who, journeying, checks the rein in haste
Because a chasm doth yawn across his way
Too wide for leaping, and too steeply faced
For climber to essay-
