Violence poems
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“Actuarial File”
© Jean Valentine
Orange peels, burned letters, the car lights shining on the grass,
everything goes somewhere—and everything we do—nothing
ever disappears. But changes. The roar of the sun in photographs.
Inching shorelines. Ice lines. The cells of our skin; our meetings,
our solitudes. Our eyes.
Fand, A Feerie Act III
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[She looks towards the sea.
Attendant. None.
The sea mist drives too thickly.
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
The Sprits Of Light And Darkness
© Madison Julius Cawein
As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.
Paradise Regain'd: Book I (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
I Who e're while the happy Garden sung,
By one mans disobedience lost, now sing
The Place for No Story
© Robinson Jeffers
The coast hills at Sovranes Creek;
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Paradise Lost: Book IV
© Patrick Kavanagh
"Which of those rebel Spirits adjudg'd to Hell
Com'st thou, escap'd thy prison? and, transform'd,
Why satt'st thou like an enemy in wait,
Here watching at the head of these that sleep?"
Portico
© Rubén Dario
I am the singer who of late put by
The verse azulean and the chant profane,
Across whose nights a rossignol would cry
And prove himself a lark at morn again.
From Violence to Peace
© James Russell Lowell
Twenty-eight shotgun pellets
crater my thighs, belly and groin.
I gently thumb each burnt bead,
fingering scabbed stubs with ointment.
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
Imitations of Horace
© Alexander Pope
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Genie
© Arthur Rimbaud
He is affection and the present since he opened the house to foaming winter and the hum of summer, he who purified drink and food, he who is the charm of fleeting places and the superhuman deliciousness of staying still. He is affection and the future, strength and love that we, standing amid rage and troubles, see passing in the storm-rent sky and on banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and reinvented measurement, wonderful and unforeseen reason, and eternity: machine beloved for its fatal qualities. We have all experienced the terror of his yielding and of our own: O enjoyment of our health, surge of our faculties, egoistic affection and passion for him, he who loves us for his infinite life
And we remember him and he travels. . . And if the Adoration goes away, resounds, its promise resounds: “Away with those superstitions, those old bodies, those couples and those ages. It’s this age that has sunk!”
He won’t go away, nor descend from a heaven again, he won’t accomplish the redemption of women’s anger and the gaiety of men and of all that sin: for it is now accomplished, with him being, and being loved.
Unholy Sonnet 4
© Mark Jarman
Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,
Out of which comes and into which light goes,
This God recedes from every metaphor,
Turns the hardest data into untruth,
And fills all blanks with blankness. This love shows
Itself in absence, which the stars adore.
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Shooting Star
© Wole Soyinka
1 In a concussion,
the mind severs the pain:
you don’t remember flying off a motorcycle,
and landing face first
in a cholla.
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
Pro Femina
© John Betjeman
But we need dependency, cosseting, and well-treatment.
So do men sometimes. Why don’t they admit it?
We will be cows for a while, because babies howl for us,
Be kittens or bitches, who want to eat grass now and then
For the sake of our health. But the role of pastoral heroine
Is not permanent, Jack. We want to get back to the meeting.
The American Way
© Gregory Corso
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
But I am afraid to return to America
I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
