War poems
/ page 288 of 504 /
A Map to the Next World
© Joy Harjo
for Desiray Kierra Chee
In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.
Turning Forty
© Jonathan Galassi
The barroom mirror lit up with our wives
has faded to a loaded-to-the-gills
Japanese subcompact, little lives
asleep behind us, heading for the hills
The Breeder’s Cup
© David Lehman
They cannot keep the peace
or their hands off each other,
breed not yet preach
the old discredited creed.
A Lullaby
© Madison Julius Cawein
In her wimple of wind and her slippers of sleep
The twilight comes like a little goose-girl,
Herding her owls with many "tu-whoos,"
Her little brown owls in the woodland deep,
Where dimly she walks in her whispering shoes,
And gown of glimmering pearl.
Sonnet CXXXIII: Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
© William Shakespeare
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me:
The Wheelchair Butterfly
© James Tate
concentrate long enough
on the history book of rodents
in this underground town
The Bungalows
© John Ashbery
Impatient as we were for all of them to join us,
The land had not yet risen into view: gulls had swept the gray steel towers away
So that it profited less to go searching, away over the humming earth
Than to stay in immediate relation to these other things—boxes, store parts, whatever you wanted to call them—
Whose installedness was the price of further revolutions, so you knew this combat was the last.
And still the relationship waxed, billowed like scenery on the breeze.
The Lepracaun Or Fairy Shoemaker
© William Allingham
Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath's green mound?
Lost In The Mist
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
THE thin white snow-streaks pencilling
That mountain's shoulder gray,
While in the west the pale green sky
Smiled back the dawning day,
Christabel
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak
But moss and rarest misletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
The Song of Lewes
© Pierre Reverdy
Sitteth alle stille and herkneth to me!
The King of Alemaigne, by mi leaute,
Thritty thousand pound askede he
For to make the pees in the countre
And so he dude more.
The Parting
© Abraham Cowley
As Men in Greenland left beheld the sun
From their horizon run;
And thought upon the sad half-year
Of cold and darkness they must suffer there:
Parson Turells Legacy
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR
A MATHEMATICAL STORY
Wasteful Gesture Only Not
© Tony Hoagland
Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills.
She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass
marks off the place where the memories are kept,
The Toad And Spyder. A Duell
© Richard Lovelace
The all-confounded toad doth see
His life fled with his remedie,
And in a glorious despair
First burst himself, and next the air;
Then with a dismal horred yell
Beats down his loathsome breath to hell.
Care of Birds for their Young
© James Thomson
As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Tho' the whole loosen'd spring around her blows,
Vespers ["Once I believed in you..."]
© Louise Gluck
Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
-------------------------------------------
