War poems
/ page 268 of 504 /
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.
Shore Scene
© John Logan
There were bees about. From the start I thought
The day was apt to hurt. There is a high
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)
© Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
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.
Sonnets from the Portuguese 1: I Thought how Theocritus
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,
Destitute Peru
© James Schuyler
For John Ashbery
We pullmaned to Peoria. Was
Gladys glad, Skippy missed
Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home.
“I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.”
Fragment 1: Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud
With arching Wings, the sea-mew o'er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687
© John Dryden
Stanza 4
The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.
In the Past
© Trumbull Stickney
There lies a somnolent lake
Under a noiseless sky,
Where never the mornings break
Nor the evenings die.
A.M. Fog
© Mark Jarman
Night’s afterbirth, last dream before waking,
Holding on with dissolving hands,
Out of it came, not a line of old men,
But pairs of headlights, delaying morning.
Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites
© Charles Simic
They also piss against the wind,
Pour water in a leaky bucket.
Strike two tears to make fire,
And have tongues with bones in them,
Bones of a wolf gnawed by lambs.
In School-days
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.
Boundary Issues
© John Ashbery
Here in life, they would understand.
How could it be otherwise? We had groped too,
unwise, till the margin began to give way,
at which point all was sullen, or lost, or both.
The Peacock at Alderton
© Geoffrey Hill
Nothing to tell why I cannot write
in re Nobody; nobody to narrate this
The Herdsman
© Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
I'm herdsman of a flock.
The sheep are my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears
And my hands and feet
And nostrils and mouth.
Thinking of Madame Bovary
© Jane Kenyon
The first hot April day the granite step
was warm. Flies droned in the grass.
When a car went past they rose
in unison, then dropped back down. . . .
An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England
© Geoffrey Hill
And, after all, it is to them we return.
Their triumph is to rise and be our hosts:
lords of unquiet or of quiet sojourn,
those muddy-hued and midge-tormented ghosts.
Afterword
© Louise Gluck
Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort
sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes.
