Work poems
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Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons
© Diane Wakoski
The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard,
as if you were walking on the beach
and found a diamond
as big as a shoe;
Shroud of the Gnome
© James Tate
And what amazes me is that none of our modern inventions
surprise or interest him, even a little. I tell him
The Blue Bowl
© Jane Kenyon
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.
Lines Written in Early Spring
© André Breton
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
The Speed of Darkness
© Katha Pollitt
Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis
Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt
Whoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child.
Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The Cave Painters
© Eamon Grennan
Holding only a handful of rushlight
they pressed deeper into the dark, at a crouch
Private Beach
© Jane Kenyon
It is always the dispossessed—
someone driving a huge rusted Dodge
that’s burning oil, and must cost
twenty-five dollars to fill.
[Response to the Loyalty Oath]
© Jack Spicer
We, the Research Assistants and Teaching Assistants of the University of California, wish to register our protest against the new loyalty oath for the following reasons.
1) The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty by forcing every faculty member to sign an oath saying that he has never committed murder.
Northern Farmer: New Style
© Alfred Tennyson
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.
Niagara
© Daniel Nester
Driving westward near Niagara, that transfiguring of the waters,
I was torn—as moon from orbit by a warping of gravitation—
From coercion of the freeway to the cataract’s prodigality,
Had to stand there, breathe its rapture, inebriety of the precipice . . .
Satire III
© John Donne
Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Love’s Philosophy
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
Her
© Billy Collins
There is no noisier place than the suburbs,
someone once said to me
as we were walking along a fairway,
and every day is delighted to offer fresh evidence:
Not to Be Dwelled On
© Heather McHugh
Self-interest cropped up even there,
the day I hoisted three instead of the
two called-for
spades of loam onto
the coffin of my friend.
Cabin
© Anne Waldman
eviction people arrive to haunt me
with descriptions of summer’s wildflowers
how they are carpet of fierce colors
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
