Time poems
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"I saw my Lady weep"
© Pierre Reverdy
I saw my Lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In those fair eyes, where all perfections keep;
Her face was full of woe,
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts
Than mirth can do, with her enticing parts.
Goofer-Dust
© Thomas Lux
(dirt stolen from an infant’s grave around midnight)
Do not try to take it from my child’s grave, nor
Firstlings
© Louise Imogen Guiney
(January 7, 1915)
In the dregs of the year, all steam and rain,
In the timid time of the heart again,
When indecision is bold and thorough,
And action dreams of a dawn in vain,
Swordfish
© Andrew Hudgins
My fingertips marveled at the silvery shimmer,
already less silver, less shimmery than when it lived.
She Was a Phantom of Delight
© André Breton
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
Far Company
© William Stanley Merwin
At times now from some margin of the day
I can hear birds of another country
Parable of the Hostages
© Louise Gluck
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
from Mercian Hymns
© Geoffrey Hill
I
King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: saltmaster: moneychanger: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the friend of Charlemagne.
The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany
© Carl Sandburg
(We can succeed only by concert. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. . . . December 1, 1862. The President’s Message to Congress.)
Be sad, be cool, be kind,
remembering those now dreamdust
hallowed in the ruts and gullies,
solemn bones under the smooth blue sea,
faces warblown in a falling rain.
Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows
© William Shakespeare
When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
Numbers
© Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
The Jew and the Rooster Are One
© Gerald Stern
After fighting with his dead brothers and his dead sisters
he chose to paint the dead rooster of his youth,
from The Bridge: The Dance
© Hart Crane
The swift red flesh, a winter king
Who squired the glacier woman down the sky?
She ran the neighing canyons all the spring;
She spouted arms; she rose with maizeto die.
How We Were Introduced
© Zbigniew Herbert
—for perfidious protectors
I was playing in the street
no one paid attention to me
as I made forms out of sand
mumbling Rimbaud under my breath
Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
© William Shakespeare
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
Harvest Song
© Jean Toomer
My eyes are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time.
I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields
of other harvesters.
A Magic Mountain
© Czeslaw Milosz
I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years
ago or three.
The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before.
Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive,
Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed,
For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall.
