Pet poems
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Falling Asleep over the Aeneid
© Robert Lowell
An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.
The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,
from Odes: 15 ["Nothing"]
© Ted Hughes
Nothing
substance utters or time
stills and restrains
joins design and
Washing Day
© Bliss William Carman
The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost
The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase,
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
© Edward Taylor
Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?
Breitmann As An Uhlan. II. Brietmann In A Balloon.
© Charles Godfrey Leland
WHO vas efer hear soosh voonders,
Holy breest or virshin nonn?
As pefelled de Coptain Breitmann,
Vhen he hoont an air-ballon.
Ballad of the Salvation Army
© Kenneth Fearing
On Fourteenth street the bugles blow,
Bugles blow, bugles blow.
The red, red, red, red banner floats
Where sweating angels split their throats,
Marching in burlap petticoats,
Blow, bugles, blow.
Dat Ol' Mare O' Mine
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Want to trade me, do you, mistah? Oh, well, now, I reckon not,
W'y you could n't buy my Sukey fu' a thousan' on de spot.
Lines Written Near San Francisco
© Louis Simpson
I wake and feel the city trembling.
Yes, there is something unsettled in the air
And the earth is uncertain.
Voyages
© Hart Crane
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.
St. Peter Claver
© Toi Derricotte
On holy cards St. Peter’s face is olive-toned, his hair near kinky;
I thought he was one of us who pass between the rich and poor, the light and dark.
Now I read he was “a Spanish Jesuit priest who labored for the salvation of the African Negroes and the abolition of the slave trade.”
I was tricked again, robbed of my patron,
and left with a debt to another white man.
... by an Earthquake
© John Ashbery
A, undergoing a strange experience among a people weirdly deluded, discovers the secret of the delusion from Herschel, one of the victims who has died. By means of information obtained from the notebook, A succeeds in rescuing the other victims of the delusion.
A dies of psychic shock.
Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, “Boris Karloff.”
A Day on the Big Branch
© Howard Nemerov
Still half drunk, after a night at cards,
with the grey dawn taking us unaware
Five Visions of Captain Cook
© Kenneth Slessor
Two chronometers the captain had,
One by Arnold that ran like mad,
One by Kendal in a walnut case,
Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face.
The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants
© Paul Muldoon
At four in the morning he wakes
to the yawn of brakes,
The Course Of Love
© Sant Surdas
Seeing Radha stand alone, Krishna came from behind and blindfolded her with his hands
