War poems
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The Mowed Hollow
© Les Murray
Some yellow hangs on outside
forlornly tethered to posts.
Cars chase their own supply.
The Sleepout
© Les Murray
Childhood sleeps in a verandah room
in an iron bed close to the wall
where the winter over the railing
swelled the blind on its timber boom
Music To Me Is Like Days
© Les Murray
Once played to attentive faces
music has broken its frame
its bodice of always-weak laces
the entirely promiscuous art
Pigs
© Les Murray
Us all on sore cement was we.
Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush
under that pole the lightning's tied to.
No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy.
The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever
© Les Murray
To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
Travels With John Hunter
© Les Murray
We who travel between worlds
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth
when agony bayoneted me.
Away, Melancholy
© Stevie Smith
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
Daisies
© Mary Oliver
It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
Why I Wake Early
© Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
Cold Poem
© Mary Oliver
I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.
The Irreparable
© Charles Baudelaire
AN we suppress the old Remorse
Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,
Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,
Or as the acorn on the oak?
Balcony
© Charles Baudelaire
MOTHER of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,
Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,
The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,
Spleen
© Charles Baudelaire
I'M like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows ag?d blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
The Venal Muse
© Charles Baudelaire
You should, to earn your bread today
Like a choir boy with a censer to wave,
Sings hymns with feeling but without belief.
The Bad Monk
© Charles Baudelaire
On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.
War-Music
© Henry Van Dyke
Break off! Dance no more!
Danger is at the door.
Music is in arms.
To signal war's alarms.
Victor Hugo
© Henry Van Dyke
Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
The Oxford Thrushes
© Henry Van Dyke
I never thought again to hear
The Oxford thrushes singing clear,
Amid the February rain,
Their sweet, indomitable strain.
