War poems
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Britannia's Pastorals
© William Browne
Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
The Highwayman
© Alfred Noyes
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inndoor.
The Bistro Styx
© Rita Dove
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,
The Girt Woak Tree
© Ingeborg Bachmann
The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
Louis Armstrong And Duke Ellington
© James A. Emanuel
Satchmo's warm burlap,
Duke's cool cashmere: fine fabrics
make your love "Come here!"
« I'm A Jazz Singer, » She Replied
© James A. Emanuel
He dug what she said:
bright jellies, smooth marmalade
spread on warm brown bread.
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
© John Ashbery
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Daffy Duck In Hollywood
© John Ashbery
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Wife Killer
© Vernon Scannell
He killed his wife at night.
He had tried once or twice in the daylight
But she refused to die.
Silver Wedding
© Vernon Scannell
The party is over and I sit among
The flotsam that its passing leaves,
The dirty glasses and fag-ends:
Outside, a black wind grieves.
Incendiary
© Vernon Scannell
That one small boy with a face like pallid cheese
And burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze
As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold
And zany yellow as the one that spoiled
Death In The Lounge Bar
© Vernon Scannell
The bar he went inside was not
A place he often visited;
He welcomed anonymity;
No one to switch inquisitive
A City Remembered
© Vernon Scannell
Unlovely city, to which few tourists come
With squinting cameras and alien hats;
Left under a cloud by those who love the sun
And can afford to marry a cloud of bits
A Case Of Murder
© Vernon Scannell
They should not have left him there alone,
Alone that is except for the cat.
He was only nine, not old enough
To be left alone in a basement flat,
Meditation on a Bone
© Alec Derwent Hope
Words scored upon a bone,
Scratched in despair or rage --
Nine hundred years have gone;
Now, in another age,
They burn with passion on
A scholar's tranquil page.
Death of the Bird
© Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Conquistador
© Alec Derwent Hope
I sing of the decline of Henry Clay
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way,
He had in him some seed of enterprise.
Commination
© Alec Derwent Hope
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Australia
© Alec Derwent Hope
A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
Wars & Rumors Of Wars
© Emanuel Xavier
Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet
-Matthew 24:6
