War poems
/ page 427 of 504 /
Courage is a motherless lamb
© Ivan Donn Carswell
For a small child crossing the pen alone was a courageous feat,
occasionally, with a maniacal bleat, the wether would burst from cover
and butt whomever graced his yard. He meant it in fun, something
he had done since his bottle-fed youth, he knew no other form of greeting.
Consciousness Of Our Return
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Night's grating of steel on stone and splash
of water crashing from the buckets
brings back that moment in a flash;
the night burnt bright in limb's caress
and flesh yielding flesh in passions
blessed by sealed lips.
Good Night
© Jane Taylor
Little baby, lay your head
On your pretty cradle-bed;
Shut your eye-peeps, now the day
And the light are gone away;
All the clothes are tucked in tight;
Little baby dear, good night.
Colours in lamplight
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Colours in lamplight are previews,
scarcely eschewed as wave-length turbulence
tuned to closeness and friendship.
Colours in firelight are skin-warmed
In A Lonesome Burial-Place
© Mathilde Blind
In a lonesome burial-place
Crouched a mourner white of face;
Wild her eyes-unheeding
Circling pomp of night and day-
Ever crying, "Well away,
Love lies a-bleeding!"
Carbonara eyes
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Nicky said I couldnt write, shes got a charming
sense of social etiquette given shes a bitch
(the canine sort, cant spell for shit or even write
a word) but then she has the most expressive eyes.
After the rain
© Ivan Donn Carswell
And in the morning when the sun returns
to claim the earth the mist surprises, rising
unabashed and clean again to grace the
nascent waiting skies after the rain.
© I.D. Carswell
A Crystalline Awakening
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Beds of icicles protrude from tussock bare patches,
needle pointed lances thrusting skyward
as if some new sprung lawn,
awaiting the crushing blows of booted feet,
soon to wilt in the onslaught of day.
Warble Of Lilac-Time
© Walt Whitman
My mind henceforth, and all its meditations-my recitatives,
My land, my age, my race, for once to serve in songs,
(Sprouts, tokens ever of death indeed the same as life,)
To grace the bush I love-to sing with the birds,
A warble for joy of Lilac-time.
Triple Feature
© Denise Levertov
Innocent decision: to enjoy.
And the pathos
of hopefulness, of his solicitude:
The Black Cottage
© Robert Frost
We chanced in passing by that afternoon
To catch it in a sort of special picture
From the Roof
© Denise Levertov
This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers animal vines twisting over the line and
slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery
A Fuedal Picture
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WITH what a grace she passed us by just now!
Her delicate chin half raised, her cordial brow
Electra On Azalea Path
© Sylvia Plath
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
St. Peter and the Angel
© Denise Levertov
Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained--
I Leave Thee for Awhile
© Eliza Cook
I leave thee for awhile, my love, I leave thee with a sigh;
The fountain spring within my soul is playing in mine eye;
I do not blush to own the tear,--let, let it touch my cheek,
And what my lip has failed to tell, that drop perchance may speak.
Mavourneen! when again I seek my green isle in the West,
Oh, promise thou wilt share my lot, and set this heart at rest.
The Liberator
© Emily Holmes Coleman
Keys turning
rattling in the loose locks
opening high the doors
that close again
like death-hours coming faster
Zeroing In
© Denise Levertov
"I am a landscape," he said,
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
and plains glad in their way
The Garden Wall
© Denise Levertov
Bricks of the wall,
so much older than the house -
taken I think from a farm pulled down
when the street was built -
narrow bricks of another century.
Maiden-Song
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
But I have a will to work,
And a heart for you:
Bid me stay or bid me go.'
