Work poems
/ page 166 of 355 /
You, You Only, Exist
© Rainer Maria Rilke
To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!
M'Fingal - Canto IV
© John Trumbull
"For me, before that fatal time,
I mean to fly th' accursed clime,
And follow omens, which of late
Have warn'd me of impending fate.
M'Fingal - Canto III
© John Trumbull
By this, M'Fingal with his train
Advanced upon th' adjacent plain,
And full with loyalty possest,
Pour'd forth the zeal, that fired his breast.
M'Fingal - Canto II
© John Trumbull
"T' evade these crimes of blackest grain
You prate of liberty in vain,
And strive to hide your vile designs
In terms abstruse, like school-divines.
Man in a Window
© Ralph Angel
I dont know man trust is a precious thing
a kind of humility Offer it to a snake and get repaid with humiliation
Luckily friends rally to my spiritual defense
I think theyre reminding me
my father moved through dooms of love
© Edward Estlin Cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
Pinup
© Billy Collins
The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
The Iron Bridge
© Billy Collins
the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.
Shoveling Snow With Buddha
© Billy Collins
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Child Development
© Billy Collins
As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.
The Best Cigarette
© Billy Collins
There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.
Candle Hat
© Billy Collins
In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.
I Ask You
© Billy Collins
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
The Curse Upon Edward
© Thomas Gray
Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun)
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)
The Fatal Sisters
© Thomas Gray
Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air.
The Sompnour's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Carrack: A great ship of burden used by the Portuguese; the
name is from the Italian, "cargare," to load
The Cook's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Jack of Dover: an article of cookery. (Transcriber's note:
suggested by some commentators to be a kind of pie, and by
others to be a fish)
The Man of Law's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Plight: pulled; the word is an obsolete past tense from
"pluck."
The Reeve's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. "With blearing of a proude miller's eye": dimming his eye;
playing off a joke on him.
The Miller's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.
