Sad poems

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To William Holden

© David Lehman

(July 15) We know who
the guards are
in those POW
movies with brutal

Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe

"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"

Philomela

© Sir Philip Sidney

O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,
That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.

Poetry Readings

© Charles Bukowski

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

Dedication To Wilfred And Alice Meynell

© Francis Thompson

If the rose in meek duty

May dedicate humbly

Intrusion

© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

I BUILT myself a pleasant house.
Content was I to dwell in it--
Its door was fast against the wind
With all the gusty swell of it.

Celestial Music

© Louise Gluck

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

Before The Tomb

© Madison Julius Cawein

The way went under cedared gloom
To moonlight, like a cactus bloom,
Before the entrance of her tomb.

Inferno (English)

© Dante Alighieri

CANTO I
ONE night, when half my life behind me lay,
I wandered from the straight lost path afar.
Through the great dark was no releasing way;

Fields of Soria

© Antonio Machado

Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red rocks
through which the Duero bends
its crossbow arc

The Assassination

© Donald Justice

It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.
It courses through the cables laid for it.
It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.
We are too close. Too late, we would move back.
We are involved with the surge.

Sadness

© Donald Justice

1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!

A Rajput Love Song

© Sarojini Naidu

O Love! were you the scented fan
that lies upon my pillow,
A sandal lute, or silver lamp that burns before my shrine,
Why should I fear the jealous dawn
that spreads with cruel laughter,
Sad veils of separation between your face and mine?

For the Young Who Want To

© Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Peace

Upon a headland by a whinny hedge
A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow
There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge
And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow.
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?

The Voice of Robert Desnos

the one I love is not listening
the one I love does not hear
the one I love does not answer.

Passing Out

The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored." Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull