Power poems
/ page 275 of 324 /
On the Bill Which Was Passed in England For Regulating the Slave-Trade
© Helen Maria Williams
The hollow winds of night no more
In wild, unequal cadence pour,
Dreams
© Peter McArthur
IF every thought shall weigh in the award,
And every dream as if fulfilled shall stand,
Ode To Tranquillity
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;
The power of the Lake
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The power of the Lake lingers still
so many years beyond its fascination
ending; it was there in the beginning,
an unveiling of towering sensitivities,
The last excuse
© Ivan Donn Carswell
What is left now that weve used the last excuse,
what is left to justify excess. The rhetoric at best
was very thin when things began, but to suggest
we must remain and play the hand were dealt
A Une Madone (To A Madonna)
© Charles Baudelaire
Ex-voto dans le goût espagnol
Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse,
Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse,
Et creuser dans le coin le plus noir de mon coeur,
Tales in the beginning
© Ivan Donn Carswell
In the beginning that was all there was,
a new forged social unity of the self aware
in a community of need, a bare structure
to belie the complexities to come,
but it was where the tales all must have begun.
Sweetness Of The Decent Night
© Ivan Donn Carswell
They talked to me again today, they spoke in gentle tones
and said the things I ought to hear then lead me where
the frangipani flowered; they said the heady scent was meant
to soothe the wicked wounds I wore, to ease the twisted scars
Einst Sah Ich Viele
© Heinrich Heine
I saw a crowd of flowers in bloom,
On my way: too lazy of course
Flower-De-Luce: Hawthorne
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.
Rangipo Desert
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Whangaehu waters, hot-spilled from the cauldron
of Crater Lake, swirling mud-green from the cup
between Tahurangi and Pyramid Peak,
sulphurous, sibilant among purer daughters
Political nonsense
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I asked my fellow listeners what they thought
about his claims that malfeasance was soured
within this state by parliamentary representatives
but not, of course, those members seated where
he sat in opposition. His disposition was to blame
the government as if he wasnt part of it.
Desires that you can only tame to know
© Ivan Donn Carswell
"Zipless sex" one cynic called
this festival of fornication,
this celebration of new-found sexual strength
and urbane honesty, of sex for sex as sex alone
Mornings Reflections
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Were meetings predestined then ours was intended,
great oracles decreed it as fate, and the auguries chattered
with sweet benefactors and fêted to chance with a face.
We were then both separate and free in our choosing
Joys of the chase
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Colours fade into nameless shades of grey
and where the tonsure of bas-relief crudely
stands effete, semantic symbolism degrades
into meaninglessness. The artefacts of an old
Jessie of Gibraltar
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Our lives were founded on this rock, this Jessie of Gibraltar
Whose unfailing love endured beyond her ample nursing,
And we grew out of a rich and favoured childhood aware
Her powers were real (we tested them enough to know their soundness) into
The Nativity
© William Cowper
Upon my meanness, poverty, and guilt,
The trophy of thy glory shall be built;
My selfdisdain shall be the unshaken base,
And my deformity its fairest grace;
For destitute of good, and rich in ill,
Must be my state and my description still.
Fountain of your rise
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Michelle, the thought of you confused or under siege
bereaves us; you, the cheerful heart who waged a
silent war for lost, egregious souls whose thanks
deserted you should never be constrained, should never
need to grieve in anxious pain or ever cede to grieve alone.
Forever Alight
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Were meetings destined then this was one
to take a leading place, the oracle decreed it fate
in a matrix of moving matter, and the signs all clattered with
chance fêted as a sweet benefactor. When we were separate
