Power poems
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I got so I could take his name
© Emily Dickinson
I got so I could take his name --
Without -- Tremendous gain --
That Stop-sensation -- on my Soul --
And Thunder -- in the Room --
Oh, honey of an hour,
© Emily Dickinson
Oh, honey of an hour,
I never knew thy power,
Prohibit me
Till my minutest dower,
My unfrequented flower,
Deserving be.
I took my power in my hand
© Emily Dickinson
I took my power in my hand
And went AGAINST the world
'Twas not so much as David had
But I was twice as bold
In this short Life
© Emily Dickinson
In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much -- how little -- is
Within our power
I dreaded that first Robin, so,
© Emily Dickinson
I dreaded that first Robin, so,
But He is mastered, now,
I'm accustomed to Him grown,
He hurts a little, though --
My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
© Emily Dickinson
My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --
Apparently with no surprise
© Emily Dickinson
Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play --
In accidental power --
The Widening Spell Of Leaves
© Larry Levis
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brotherOnce, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
The Pick
© Cecilia Woloch
I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
InheritanceHis
© Audre Lorde
Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?
Scotland's Winter
© Edwin Muir
Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
He Vows
© Constantine Cavafy
Every so often he vows to start a better life.
But when night comes with her own counsels,
with her compromises, and with her promises;
but when night comes with her own power
of the body that wants and demands, he returns,
forlorn, to the same fatal joy.
An Old Man
© Constantine Cavafy
At the back of the noisy café
bent over a table sits an old man;
a newspaper in front of him, without company.
Footsteps
© Constantine Cavafy
On an ebony bed decorated
with coral eagles, sound asleep lies
Nero -- unconscious, quiet, and blissful;
thriving in the vigor of flesh,
and in the splendid power of youth.
Shema
© Primo Levi
You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
The Summons
© Ezra Pound
I can not bow to woo thee
With honey words and flower kisses
And the dew of sweet half-truths
Fallen on the grass of old quaint love-tales
Canto XLIX
© Ezra Pound
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.
The Needle
© Ezra Pound
Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be.
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly.
The waves bore in, soon they bear away.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1: 1931-1934
© Anais Nin
"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of eating Jesus's flesh and drinking His blood that I couldn't swallow the host well, and I dreaded harming the it
Rahel to Varnhagen
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
NOTE.Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriageso far as he was concerned at any rateappears to have been satisfactory.
Now you have read them all; or if not all,
As many as in all conscience I should fancy
To be enough. There are no more of them
