Poems That You Love

How many poets does it take to change a light bulb?
Antcliff
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Mon Jun 09, 2014 8:40 am

CalebMurdock wrote:Who is Algy?
Algernon Swinburne.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
Richard Wilbur
David
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Tue Jun 10, 2014 5:26 pm

Thomas Campion ...

There is a Garden in her face,
Where Roses and white Lillies grow ;
A heau'nly paradice is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow.
There Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Those Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient Pearle a double row ;
Which when her louely laughter showes,
They look like Rose-buds fill'd with snow.
Yet them nor Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Her Eyes like Angels watch them still ;
Her Browes like bended bowes doe stand,
Threatning with piercing frownes to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred Cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.
CalebMurdock
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Thu Jun 12, 2014 5:53 am

Antcliff wrote:
CalebMurdock wrote:Who is Algy?
Algernon Swinburne.
I should have been able to figure that out.

Here is another one by Richard Wilbur. This is a far moodier and more mysterious poem than most of the poems he has written. I assume that Vinicius de Moraes had a first-born daughter who died (perhaps stillborn?), but that's just a guess.


Vinicius de Moraes: Song

Never take her away,
The daughter whom you gave me,
The gentle, moist, untroubled
Small daughter whom you gave me;
O let her heavenly babbling
Beset me and enslave me.
Don’t take her; let her stay,
Beset my heart, and win me,
That I may put away
The firstborn child within me,
That cold, petrific, dry
Daughter whom death once gave,
Whose life is a long cry
For milk she may not have,
And who, in the night-time, calls me
In the saddest voice that can be
Father, Father, and tells me
Of the love she feels for me.
Don’t let her go away,
Her whom you gave—my daughter—
Lest I should come to favor
That wilder one, that other
Who does not leave me ever.


~
Magpie Jane
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Sat Jun 14, 2014 12:17 am

Snake

by D.H. Lawrence


He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But I must confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth.

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

¤
Everything looks better by candlelight.
Everything sounds more plausible on the shortwave.
k-j
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Sat Jun 14, 2014 5:17 am

David wrote:Thomas Campion ...

There is a Garden in her face,
Where Roses and white Lillies grow ;
A heau'nly paradice is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow.
There Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Those Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient Pearle a double row ;
Which when her louely laughter showes,
They look like Rose-buds fill'd with snow.
Yet them nor Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Her Eyes like Angels watch them still ;
Her Browes like bended bowes doe stand,
Threatning with piercing frownes to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred Cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.
Reminds me of Gareth in The Office - "when cherries are red, they're ready for plucking, when girls are sixteen, they're ready for-"

Sorry. Good poem.
fine words butter no parsnips
k-j
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Sat Jun 14, 2014 5:25 am

Magpie Jane wrote:Snake

by D.H. Lawrence


He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But I must confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth.

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

¤
I have this innate loathing of DHL - he strikes me as such a beardy, creepy sensualist... in this poem it's "mused", "the bowels of the earth" (x2) and especially the fake-humility at the end. He always sets up this false dichotomy between the intellect (bad) and the felt, the sensual... I picture him rubbing his thighs and leering. However, I read some of his short stories a while ago and some of them were rather good. There was one about some girls in wartime who viciously set upon a chap, which I thought was great. But "The Snake", ugh. Kill it or let it be, but make the poem about the snake, not about yourself.
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k-j
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Sat Jun 14, 2014 3:58 pm

An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell

by John Dryden

[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]I

Mark how the lark and linnet sing;
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]With rival notes
[tab][/tab]They strain their warbling throats,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]To welcome in the spring.
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]But in the close of night,
[tab][/tab]When Philomel begins her heavenly lay,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]They cease their mutual spite,
[tab][/tab]Drink in her music with delight,
And, listening and silent and silent and listening,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]and listening and silent obey.

[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]II

So ceased the rival crew when Purcell came;
They sang no more, or only sang his fame.
Struck dumb, they all admired the godlike man:
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]The godlike man,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]Alas! too soon retired,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]As he too late began.
We beg not Hell our Orpheus to restore;
[tab][/tab]Had he been there,
[tab][/tab]Their sovereign's fear
[tab][/tab]Had sent him back before.
The power of harmony too well they know:
He long ere this had tuned their jarring sphere,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]And left no hell below.

[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]III

[tab][/tab]The heavenly choir, who heard his notes from high,
[tab][/tab]Let down the scale of music from the sky;
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]They handed him along,
And all the way he taught, and all the way they sung.
[tab][/tab]Ye brethren of the lyre, and tuneful voice,
[tab][/tab]Lament his lot, but at your own rejoice:
[tab][/tab]Now live secure, and linger out your days;
[tab][/tab]The gods are pleased alone with Purcell's lays,
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]Nor know to mend their choice.
fine words butter no parsnips
David
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Sat Jun 14, 2014 4:03 pm

k-j wrote:
David wrote:Thomas Campion ...

There is a Garden in her face,
Where Roses and white Lillies grow ;
A heau'nly paradice is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow.
There Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Those Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient Pearle a double row ;
Which when her louely laughter showes,
They look like Rose-buds fill'd with snow.
Yet them nor Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.

Her Eyes like Angels watch them still ;
Her Browes like bended bowes doe stand,
Threatning with piercing frownes to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred Cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry ripe themselues doe cry.
Reminds me of Gareth in The Office - "when cherries are red, they're ready for plucking, when girls are sixteen, they're ready for-"

Sorry. Good poem.
No need to apologise! You just summarised a whole strain of 16th-17th century English verse.
k-j
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Sun Jun 15, 2014 5:22 am

Brian -

Thanks for posting those, especially the Beryman, which I loved immediately, and the Lowell which I think I like even more now after several readings. I like the Rich very much, too.

What I love about Skunk Hour is the gradual walking-away of it - it starts out about a person, then it's a "we", but it turns into this solemn communion with the skunks, or the self, "march[ing] on their soles up Main Street." I've spent many late nights and early mornings whiffing the skunks, and sometimes stumbling across them, always with that vague admixture of fear. I already knew I liked Lowell but have never read him properly. So again, thanks. I will check out a Selected immediately.
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k-j
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Sun Jun 15, 2014 6:05 am

A few thoughts on Dryden's ode:

- I love S2, where Dryden reasons that Purcell's genius would have unmade hell had he been sent there. It's great because it doesn't deny that he could indeed have been destined for hell, but instead rests easy in the knowledge that he was stronger than hell and all its tunesmiths! I love the idea of Purcell going to hell, requesting an organ, and playing music so transcendent, or perhaps so decadent, that it puts them all out of business.

- The sheer sonics. Line 1, for example! Mark and lark, and then linnet after lark. The simplest poetic devices, done astoundingly well. And such is the poetic strength of this line, you're waiting straight away for a rhyme with "sing" - but certainly not in the next line, and it arrives perfectly in l4. And this comfortable way with poetics continues throughout. And there is this provencal-like quality of chime and refrain (silent and listening, godlike man, and the indents and perfect metre) that grips you.

- The casualness of the thing. "The rival crew". Brilliant! And the blasphemous insinuation in S3l4 that he might be teaching the heavenly choir, leading the angels themselves in song. And the delightful last line, also blasphemous, absolving the poor gods of responsibility.
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CalebMurdock
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Sun Jun 22, 2014 8:20 am

This is one of my all-time favorite poems. I think that Ransom's name has endured so long mainly because of this poem.


Piazza Piece

— I am a gentleman in a dust coat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dust coat trying.

— I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what gray man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

John Crowe Ransom
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CalebPerry
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Sat Aug 18, 2018 6:20 am

I was looking for a forum where people could post their favorite poems. The "Found Poetry" forum doesn't seem to be it. But I did find this thread from 2014.

I noticed that the poem above is missing a line. Here is the complete poem:


Piazza Piece

— I am a gentleman in a dust coat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men’s whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dust coat trying.

— I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what gray man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

Johne Crowe Ransom


I'd like to start adding to this thread, if that is all right. Is there a better place to post one's favorite poems from other authors?
Last edited by CalebPerry on Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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CalebPerry
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Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:01 pm

This is one of my favorite poems. Everything else that Sexton wrote was in a chaotic free verse, so one wonders if she got help with this poem.


The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

The end of the affair is always death.
She’s my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she’s mine.
She’s not too far. She’s my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute’s speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night alone I marry the bed.

She took you the way a woman takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today’s paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Anne Sexton
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Wed Aug 22, 2018 6:45 am

Perry, thanks a lot for sharing the ballad. :)

The structure of the poem fits masturbation like a glove. Add another person and structure becomes less important to me because there's less predictability and the sex is more organic. It's great to have these kind of conversations. Most of my poems are not about sex btw so I'm not planning to inundate you and that would be annoying. There's one more I'm having an internal debate about sharing because it could be construed as half porno. :|

I prefer to write about mental illness. Here's one of my favourite mental illness poems by an American poet:

The Shoelace by Charles Bukowski

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over
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CalebPerry
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Mon Aug 27, 2018 4:42 pm

It's an interesting poem. Having recently had an ingrown toenail, I can tell you that that alone is enough to drive a person to suicide. Life's trivial problems can certainly weigh one down.

Some of the line breaks make no sense to me.
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Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:48 am

I have a real fondness for Brian Pattern.

Come into the City Maud

Maud, where are you Maud?
With your long dresses and peachcream complexion;
In what cage did you hang that black bat night?
What took place in the garden? Maud, it is over,
You can tell us now.

Still lyrical but much used, you wonder about the suburbs
Watching the buses go past full of young happy people,
Wondering where the garden is, wherever it can be,
And how it can be lost. Maud, it's no use.

Can it be that you got yourself lost
And are living with an out of work musician,
You share a furnished room and have an old wireless
That tells you the latest bad news.
What's happening Maud?

Do you wear a Mary Quant dress
And eat fish and chips alone at night?
Wear make up that tastes of forget-me-nots?
Where are you? and are you very lost,
Very much alone? Do you have stupendous dreams
And wake with one hand on your breast, and
The other on your cunt?
Do you cry for that garden, lost among pornographic suggestions,
Where the concrete flowers neither open nor close;
Who poured weedkiller over your innocence?

We could not find that garden for you,
Even if we tried.

So, come into the city Maud,
Where the flowers are too quickly picked
And the days are murdered as if they were enemies.

Maud, is that you I see
Alone among the office blocks,
Head bowed, young tears singing pop-sorrow
On your cheeks?
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Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:04 pm

My favourite poem to read at this time of year

A Cranefly in September by Ted Hughes

She is struggling through grass-mesh - not flying,
Her wide-winged, stiff, weightless basket-work of limbs
Rocking, like an antique wain, a top-heavy ceremonial cart
Across mountain summits
(Not planing over water, dipping her tail)
But blundering with long strides, long reachings, reelings
And ginger-glistening wings
From collision to collision.
Aimless in no particular direction,
Just exerting her last to escape out of the overwhelming
Of whatever it is, legs, grass,
The garden, the county, the country, the world -

Sometimes she rests long minutes in the grass forest
Like a fairytale hero, only a marvel can help her.
She cannot fathom the mystery of this forest
In which, for instance, this giant watches -
The giant who knows she cannot be helped in any way.

Her jointed bamboo fuselage,
Her lobster shoulders, and her face
Like a pinhead dragon, with its tender moustache,
And the simple colourless church windows of her wings
Will come to an end, in mid-search, quite soon.
Everything about her, every perfected vestment
Is already superfluous.
The monstrous excess of her legs and curly feet
Are a problem beyond her.
The calculus of glucose and chitin inadequate
To plot her through the infinities of the stems.

The frayed apple leaves, the grunting raven, the defunct tractor
Sunk in nettles, wait with their multiplications
Like other galaxies.
The sky’s Northward September procession, the vast
soft armistice,
Like an Empire on the move,
Abandons her, tinily embattled
With her cumbering limbs and cumbered brain
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Mon Sep 17, 2018 9:50 am

Here is a pretty remarkable poem:

Absolution

Bless me, Father,
for I have seen
those fingers clutch
communion wafers.

Bless me, Father,
for I have heard
those lips demand
forbidden favors.

Bless me, Father,
for it has been
how long —
I couldn’t say

Since I could kneel
before my bed,
bow down my head
and pray.

Bless me, Father,
an ocean of holy water
could never wash
it all away.

Yates Young


I'm pretty sure this poem was written about sexual abuse by priests. I searched for this author on the internet (this poem was recently published), but I couldn't find out anything about him or her. (I don't even know if Yates is a man's or woman's name.)
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Wed Sep 19, 2018 8:43 am

This is a poem that I really love by a formalist poet named Rhina Espaillat.

Hearing Again, After a Lapse of Years

Hearing again, after a lapse of years,
your name spoken aloud among old friends,
I think of seventeen, the salt of tears
and the long silence after sorrow ends.
Whether you’ve grown to joy or gone to seed,
middle age taming your long Viking bones,
still dreaming dreams or settling for mere deed,
down to one life, or none — are all unknown.

A wild turn taken, or a fair road missed:
how shall I think of you, after so long?
We promised all we were, but never kissed,
and now it hardly matters, right or wrong.
But once you said, “Whatever else we do,
we will remember this.” And that was true.

Rhina P. Espaillat
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CalebPerry
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Mon Sep 24, 2018 8:53 am

Municipal Gum

Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen --
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?

Oodgeroo Noonuccal
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CalebPerry
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Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:24 am

This poem by Timothy Murphy is a favorite of mine. I just love it.


Epitaph for a Stray

Here lies Bottlebrush the cat,
Who had a friend in every house,
And could reduce a catnip mouse
To fuzz in sixty seconds flat.

Lots of things he didn’t have:
A home, good looks, or many years,
A pedigree or prudent fears,
A collar or a proper grave.

But he had playfulness and pluck,
Street savvy, skill in all the arts
Of drawing and subduing hearts,
And for a while, a run of luck.

The day his luck ran out for good,
The friends he’d made (all strangers) cried,
And for a while, the night he died,
The street became a neighborhood.

Timothy Murphy
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churinga
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Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:31 pm

Another poem by Charlotte Mew, one of the great relgious poems in my opinon.

I Have Been Through The Gates

His heart to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers;
I saw it then as we see things in dreams,--I do not remember how long I slept;
I remember the tress, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the
towers;
The walls are standing to-day, and the gates; I have been through the gates, I have
groped, I have crept
Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood; they are empty; darkness is over
them;
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly
rain, unclean and unswept,
Like the heart of the holy city, old blind, beautiful Jerusalem;
Over which Christ wept
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CalebPerry
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Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:37 pm

After Thirty Years
Helmer’s, Washington Avenue, Hoboken

Carved wooden bar darkened by the weight
of a ponderous century, ornate scroll work
to which the grime of the late Victorian era
still clings: how little changed it all seems
since I lived nearby decades ago, although
the pert, twenty-something bartender says
everything was refurbished after a fire upstairs,
smoke and water having scarred the walls.

I savor again familiar smells of old varnish
and sunlight. The same elegant antique mirror,
silvered crystal brimming with shadows,
runs the length of the counter, behind the bar.
But whose is this stranger’s face, skin wrinkled
and loosening, that peers incredulously back
through the glittering bottles of aged whiskey,
imported tequila, Fernet and Tanqueray?

Robert Lavett Smith


I corresponded with this fellow for a while, a man around my age (in his sixties). He is such a prolific writer that when his muse is with him, he will produce a perfect sonnet every day -- with all the lines rhymed! And here I struggle to write one or two poems a month!
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churinga
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Wed Nov 07, 2018 3:58 pm

Alexandra Leaving

Suddenly the night has grown colder
The god of love preparing to depart
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine

It's not a trick, your senses all deceiving
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost

Even though she sleeps upon your satin
Even though she wakes you with a kiss
Do not say the moment was imagined
Do not stoop to strategies like this

As someone long prepared for this to happen
Go firmly to the window, drink it in
Exquisite music Alexandra laughing
Your first commitments tangible again

And you who had the honor of her evening,
And by the honor had your own restored
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Alexandra leaving with her Lord

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost

Leonard Cohen

This is a song but I think also a poem. Most of the poems I know by heart are in this category. Most written poetry in the same era was free verse which i never found easy to remember.
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CalebPerry
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 5:38 pm

Requiem for a Fisherman
i.m. Bursal Cox, died circa 1969

I remember your smile
as you guided the rod
in my tiny hands,
pointing at a barracuda
I couldn't see
among the corals --
how I heard years later
your body had been
discarded, bullet in your brain,
floating face-down in the shallows
off Miami, mouth leaking
a billowing trail of blood
like a hooked marlin.

Robert Lavett Smith
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