Pet poems
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To a Wren on Calvary
© Larry Levis
And all later luxuries—the half-dressed neighbor couple
Shouting insults at each other just beyond
Her bra on a cluttered windowsill, then ceasing it when
A door was slammed to emphasize, like trouble,
Its Like This
© Stephen Dobyns
for Peter Parrish
Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible
cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark,
the cord that makes him always dissatisfied,
has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes.
Wasteful Gesture Only Not
© Tony Hoagland
Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills.
She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass
marks off the place where the memories are kept,
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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The First Easter
© Edgar Albert Guest
Dead they left Him in the tomb
And the impenetrable gloom,
Rolled the great stone to the door,
Dead, they thought, forevermore.
The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly
© William Wordsworth
ART thou the bird whom Man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin;
The bird that comes about our doors
A Woman on the Dump
© Debora Greger
Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump?
—Wallace Stevens
Out of the cracks of cups and their handles, missing,
the leaves unceremoniously tossed, unread,
from a stubble of coffee ground ever more finely
into these hollowed grounds,
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 124
© Alfred Tennyson
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
These Lacustrine Cities
© John Ashbery
These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing
Into something forgetful, although angry with history.
They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,
Though this is only one example.
Two Little Dickie Birds
© Pierre Reverdy
Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall,
One named Peter, one named Paul.
Fly away, Peter! Fly away, Paul!
Come back, Peter! Come back, Paul!
Hymn to Life
© James Schuyler
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Salve Saturnia Tellus
© Oscar Wilde
I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
The Months
© Linda Pastan
Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,
Glory
© Robert Pinsky
Pindar, poet of the victories, fitted names
And legends into verses for the chorus to sing:
Names recalled now only in the poems of Pindar:
The Habitants Summer
© William Henry Drummond
O, who can blame de winter, never min'
de hard he 's blowin'
The Indian Upon God
© William Butler Yeats
I PASSED along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my
Vernal Ode
© William Wordsworth
I
BENEATH the concave of an April sky,
When all the fields with freshest green were dight,
Appeared, in presence of the spiritual eye
The Travelled Oyster
© John Kenyon
Good Reader! were it ours to choose,
Such ne'er should quit their native ooze;
Or ne'er, at least, should hit the track
Which brings them, for our torture, back.
