Work poems

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from Queen Mab: Part VI

© Percy Bysshe Shelley

(excerpt)

"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,

You came to my door in the dawn and sang; it angered me to be awakened from sleep, and you went away unheeded.
You came in the noon and asked for water; it vexed me in my work, and you were sent away with reproaches.
You came in the evening with your flaming torches.
You seemed to me like a terror and I shut my door.
Now in the midnight I sit alone in my lampless room and call you back whom I turned away in insult.

Romance

© Ruth Stone

I went back, as to my relatives.

When I arrived, the elms had been shaved.

For We Are Thy People

© Pierre Reverdy

For we are thy people, and thou art our God;

We are thy children and thou our father.

A Friendly Address

© Thomas Hood

TO MRS. FRY IN NEWGATE

My Brother, the Artist, at Seven

© Philip Levine

As a boy he played alone in the fields

behind our block, six frame houses

The Lady’s Dressing Room

© Jonathan Swift

Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)

By haughty Celia spent in dressing;

Marrying the Hangman

© Margaret Atwood

She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.

Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday

© Robert Hayden

Lord’s lost Him His mockingbird,
His fancy warbler;
Satan sweet-talked her,
four bullets hushed her.
Who would have thought
she’d end that way?

[The Doleful Lay of Clorinda]

© Mary Sidney Herbert

Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain,

That may compassion my impatient grief?

Paradise Lost: Book I

© Patrick Kavanagh

So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:

Atlantis

© Mark Doty

“I’ve been having these
awful dreams, each a little different,
though the core’s the same—

Paradise Lost: Book VII (1674)

© Patrick Kavanagh

DEscend from Heav'n Urania, by that name

If rightly thou art call'd, whose Voice divine

Sway

© Louis Simpson

Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye
Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname:
there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex,
and, from the slogan of a popular orchestra,
two sisters, Swing and Sway.

Making Money: Drought Year in Minkler, California

© Gary Soto

“It’s a ’49,” Rhinehardt said, and slammed

The screen door, then worked his way around

The House of Rest

I will build a house of rest,
Square the corners every one:
At each angle on his breast
Shall a cherub take the sun;
Rising, risen, sinking, down,
Weaving day’s unequal crown.