Time poems
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The Cottage Hospital
© John Betjeman
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.
A Bay In Anglesey
© John Betjeman
The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas pink with thrift.The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Grows greener emerald out from landAnd brown over shadowy shelves below
Winter Seascape
© John Betjeman
The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slatey shelf
And thunder under in a cave.
Winter Landscape
© John Betjeman
The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Ireland With Emily
© John Betjeman
Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Five O'Clock Shadow
© John Betjeman
This is the time of day when we in the Mens's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
Whe he who strggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.
Myfanwy
© John Betjeman
Kind oer the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
White oer the playpen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap scented fingers I long to caress.
In Westminster Abbey
© John Betjeman
Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.
Diary of a Church Mouse
© John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
The Norbert Dentressangle Van
© Sophie Hannah
I heave my morning like a sack
of signs that don't appear,
say August, August, takes me back...
That it was not this year...
Rondeau Redoublé
© Sophie Hannah
I know the rules and hear myself agree
Not to invest beyond this one night stand.
I know your patter: in, out, like the sea.
The sharp north wind must blow away the sand.
Long For This World
© Sophie Hannah
I settle for less than snow,
try to go gracefully like seasons gowhich will regain their ground -
ditch, hill and field - when a new year comes round.Now I know everything:
how winter leaves without resenting spring,lives in a safe time frame,
Manteau Three
© Jorie Graham
must it tangles up into a weave,
tied up with votive offerings laws, electricity
what the speakers let loose from their tiny eternity,
what the empty streets held up as offering
when only a bit of wind
litigated in the sycamores,
The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life
© Jorie Graham
All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia
© Jorie Graham
restless irritations
for? A bit dizzy from the altitude of everlastingness,
the tireless altitudes of the created place,
in which to make a life -- a liberty -- the hollow, fetishized, and starry
Salmon
© Jorie Graham
I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
Elegy IX: The Autumnal
© John Donne
No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnall face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
Celestial Music
© John Donne
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.
The Sun Rising
© John Donne
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
