War poems
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End, Middle, Beginning
© Anne Sexton
At her birth
she did not cry,
spanked indeed,
but did not yell--
instead snow fell out of her mouth.
Rumpelstiltskin
© Anne Sexton
Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
Colemira. A Culinary Eclogue
© William Shenstone
Nec tantum Veneris, quantum studiosa culinae.
Imitation.
Insensible of soft desire,
Behold Colemira prove
More partial to the kitchen fire
Than to the fire of Love.
The Shepherd's Calendar - August
© John Clare
Harvest approaches with its bustling day
The wheat tans brown and barley bleaches grey
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 02 - part 06
© Torquato Tasso
LXVI
"True labour in the vineyard of thy Lord,
Lullaby
© Anne Sexton
It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
The Death Baby
© Anne Sexton
I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.
The Knitters
© Padraic Colum
WATER, I did not seek you,
Water of hollow stone;
I crossed no one's acre to find you
You were where my geese lie down.
Invocation
© Alfred Austin
Where Apennine slopes unto Tuscan plain,
And breaks into dimples, and laughs to flowers,
To see where the terrors of Winter wane,
And out of a valley of grape and grain
There blossoms a City of domes and towers,
Hurry Up Please It's Time
© Anne Sexton
What is death, I ask.
What is life, you ask.
I give them both my buttocks,
my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana.
Live
© Anne Sexton
Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
The Mother
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
LAST night he lay within my arm,
So small, so warm, a mystery
To which God only held the key
But mine to keep from fear and harm!
I Remember
© Anne Sexton
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
The Garden
© Edith Nesbit
CHOKED with ill weeds my garden lay a-dying,
Hard was the ground, no bud had heart to blow,
Yet shone your smile there, with your soft breath sighing:
"Have patience, for some day the flowers will grow."
England's Answer
© Rudyard Kipling
Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;
Stark as your sons shall be - stern as your fathers were.
Buying The Whore
© Anne Sexton
You stink like my Mama under your bra
and I vomit into your hand like a jackpot
its cold hard quarters.
Did I Not Say To You
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Did I not say to you, Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?
Wanting to Die
© Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Her Kind
© Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
