POETS ON THIS PAGE:
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS * CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI * SYLVIA PLATH * W. S. MERWIN * DUDLEY RANDALL * A. E. HOUSMAN * DEREK WALCOTT * ROBERT PENN WARREN * REETIKA VAZIRANI * ROBERT FROST
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The Dolls
A doll in the doll-maker's house Looks at the cradle and bawls: 'That is an insult to us.' But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although There's not a man can report Evil of this place, The man and the woman bring Hither, to our disgrace, A noisy and filthy thing.' Hearing him groan and stretch The doll-maker's wife is aware Her husband has heard the wretch, And crouched by the arm of his chair, She murmurs into his ear, Head upon shoulder leant: 'My dear, my dear, O dear, It was an accident.'
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
Text to the above video:
Sailing To Byzantium
I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. III O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
The Lady’s First Song
I turn round Like a dumb beast in a show. Neither know what I am Nor where I go, My language beaten Into one name; I am in love And that is my shame. What hurts the soul My soul adores, No better than a beast Upon all fours.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
Read by Jean Aked:
The Cap And Bells
The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale night-gown; She drew in the heavy casement And pushed the latches down. He bade his heart go to her, When the owls called out no more; In a red and quivering garment It sang to her through the door. It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming Of a flutter of flower-like hair; But she took up her fan from the table And waved it off on the air. 'I have cap and bells,' he pondered, 'I will send them to her and die'; And when the morning whitened He left them where she went by. She laid them upon her bosom, Under a cloud of her hair, And her red lips sang them a love-song Till stars grew out of the air. She opened her door and her window, And the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue. They set up a noise like crickets, A chattering wise and sweet, And her hair was a folded flower And the quiet of love in her feet.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
Adam’s Curse
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, “To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.”
I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.”
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939 This poem is in the public domain.
As read by actor Michael Gambon:
As sung by Donovan:
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
The following song is based on W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
Read by Rupert Graves:
“Never give all the Heart”
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
by William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
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INDIAN MOVIE, NEW JERSEY
Not like the white filmstars, all rib
and gaunt cheekbone, the Indian sex-goddess
smiles plumply from behind a flowery
branch. Below her brief red skirt, her thighs
are satisfying-solid, redeeming
as tree trunks. She swings her hips
and the men-viewers whistle. The lover-hero
dances in to a song, his lip-sync
a little off, but no matter, we
know the words already and sing along.
It is safe here, the day
golden and cool so no one sweats,
roses on every bush and the Dal Lake
clean again.
The sex-goddess switches
to thickened English to emphasize
a joke. We laugh and clap. Here
we need not be embarrassed by words
dropping like lead pellets into foreign ears.
The flickering movie-light
wipes from our faces years of America, sons
who want mohawks and refuse to run
the family store, daughters who date
on the sly.
When at the end the hero
dies for his friend who also
loves the sex-goddess and now can marry her,
we weep, understanding. Even the men
clear their throats to say, "What qurbani!*
What dosti!"# After, we mill around
unwilling to leave, exchange greetings
and good news: a new gold chain, a trip
to India. We do not speak
of motel raids, canceled permits, stones
thrown through glass windows, daughters and sons
raped by Dotbusters.<
In this dim foyer
we can pull around us the faint, comforting smell
of incense and pakoras,^ can arrange
our children's marriages with hometown boys and girls,
open a franchise, win a million
in the mail. We can retire
in India, a yellow two-storied house
with wrought-iron gates, our own
Ambassador car. Or at least
move to a rich white suburb, Summerfield
or Fort Lee, with neighbors that will
talk to us. Here while the film-songs still echo
in the corridors and restrooms, we can trust
in movie truths: sacrifice, success, love and luck,
the America that was supposed to be.
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 1956-
NOTES: *qurbani: sacrifice # dosti: friendship <Dotbusters: New Jersey gangs that attack Indians ^pakoras: fried appetizers
TIGER MASK RITUAL
When you put on the mask the thunder starts. Through the nostril’s orange you can smell the far hope of rain. Up in the Nilgiris, glisten of eucalyptus, drip of pine, spiders tumbling from their silver webs. The mask is raw and red as bark against your facebones. You finger the stripes ridged like weals out of your childhood. A wind is rising in the north, a scarlet light like a fire in the sky. When you look through the eyeholes it is like falling. Night gauzes you in black. You are blind as in the beginning of the world. Sniff. Seek the moon. After a while you will know that creased musky smell is rising from your skin. Once you locate the ears the drums begin. Your fur stiffens. A roar from the distant left, like monsoon water. You swivel your sightless head. Under your sheathed paw the ground shifts wet. What is that small wild sound sheltering in your skull against the circle that always closes in just before dawn?
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 1956-
Note: The above poem refers to a ritual performed by some Rajasthani hill tribes in India to ensure rain and a good harvest.
From Leaving Yuba City. Copyright © 1997 by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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Plath reads her poem:
The Moon and the Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place. Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky — Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection At the end, they soberly bong out their names. The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness – The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars Inside the church, the saints will all be blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness–-blackness and silence.
by Sylvia Plath
DADDY
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
by Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?—— The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot—— The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. It’s the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash— You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.
by Sylvia Plath
from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Plath reads 13 of her poems (audio only):
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For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what
by W. S. Merwin
from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by W. S. Merwin.
THE LAST ONE
Well they’d made up their minds to be everywhere because why not. Everywhere was theirs because they thought so. They with two leaves they whom the birds despise. In the middle of stones they made up their minds. They started to cut. Well they cut everything because why not. Everything was theirs because they thought so. It fell into its shadows and they took both away. Some to have some for burning. Well cutting everything they came to water. They came to the end of the day there was one left standing. They would cut it tomorrow they went away. The night gathered in the last branches. The shadow of the night gathered in the shadow on the water. The night and the shadow put on the same head. And it said Now. Well in the morning they cut the last one. Like the others the last one fell into its shadow. It fell into its shadow on the water. They took it away its shadow stayed on the water. Well they shrugged they started trying to get the shadow away. They cut right to the ground the shadow stayed whole. They laid boards on it the shadow came out on top. They shone lights on it the shadow got blacker and clearer. They exploded the water the shadow rocked. They built a huge fire on the roots. They sent up black smoke between the shadow and the sun. The new shadow flowed without changing the old one. They shrugged they went away to get stones. They came back the shadow was growing. They started setting up stones it was growing. They looked the other way it went on growing. They decided they would make a stone out of it. They took stones to the water they poured them into the shadow. They poured them in they poured them in the stones vanished. The shadow was not filled it went on growing. That was one day. The next day was just the same it went on growing. They did all the same things it was just the same. They decided to take its water from under it. They took away water they took it away the water went down. The shadow stayed where it was before. It went on growing it grew onto the land. They started to scrape the shadow with machines. When it touched the machines it stayed on them. That was another day. Well the next day started about the same it went on growing. They pushed lights into the shadow. Where the shadow got onto them they went out. They began to stomp on the edge it got their feet. And when it got their feet they fell down. It got into eyes the eyes went blind. The ones that fell down it grew over and they vanished. The ones that went blind and walked into it vanished. The ones that could see and stood still It swallowed their shadows. Then it swallowed them too and they vanished. Well the others ran. The ones that were left went away to live if it would let them. They went as far as they could. The lucky ones with their shadows.
by W. S. Merwin
from The Lice (Macmillan, 1967) and The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1992)
For a Coming Extinction
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks Empty of you Tell him that we were made On another day The bewilderment will diminish like an echo Winding along your inner mountains Unheard by us And find its way out Leaving behind it the future Dead And ours When you will not see again The whale calves trying the light Consider what you will find in the black garden And its court The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless And fore-ordaining as stars Our sacrifices Join your word to theirs Tell him That it is we who are important
by W. S. Merwin
from The Lice. Copyright © 1967 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc..Source: The Lice (Atheneum Publishers, 1967)
The Judgment of Paris
for Anthony Hecht Long afterwards the intelligent could deduce what had been offered and not recognized and they suggest that bitterness should be confined to the fact that the gods chose for their arbiter a mind and character so ordinary albeit a prince and brought up as a shepherd a calling he must have liked for he had returned to it when they stood before him the three naked feminine deathless and he realized that he was clothed in nothing but mortality the strap of his quiver of arrows crossing between his nipples making it seem stranger and he knew he must choose and on that day the one with the gray eyes spoke first and whatever she said he kept thinking he remembered but remembered it woven with confusion and fear the two faces that he called father the first sight of the palace where the brothers were strangers and the dogs watched him and refused to know him she made everything clear she was dazzling she offered it to him to have for his own but what he saw was the scorn above her eyes and her words of which he understood few all said to him Take wisdom take power you will forget anyway the one with the dark eyes spoke and everything she said he imagined he had once wished for but in confusion and cowardice the crown of his father the crowns the crowns bowing to him his name everywhere like grass only he and the sea triumphant she made everything sound possible she was dazzling she offered it to him to hold high but what he saw was the cruelty around her mouth and her words of which he understood more all said to him Take pride take glory you will suffer anyway the third one the color of whose eyes later he could not remember spoke last and slowly and of desire and it was his though up until then he had been happy with his river nymph here was his mind filled utterly with one girl gathering yellow flowers and no one like her the words made everything seem present almost present present they said to him Take her you will lose her anyway it was only when he reached out to the voice as though he could take the speaker herself that his hand filled with something to give but to give to only one of the three an apple as it is told discord itself in a single fruit its skin already carved To the fairest then a mason working above the gates of Troy in the sunlight thought he felt the stone shiver in the quiver on Paris’s back the head of the arrow for Achilles’ heel smiled in its sleep and Helen stepped from the palace to gather as she would do every day in that season from the grove the yellow ray flowers tall as herself whose roots are said to dispel pain
by W. S. Merwin
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BALLAD OF BIRMINGHAM
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963) “Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March today?” “No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are fierce and wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and jails Aren’t good for a little child.” “But, mother, I won’t be alone. Other children will go with me, And march the streets of Birmingham To make our country free.” “No, baby, no, you may not go, For I fear those guns will fire. But you may go to church instead And sing in the children’s choir.” She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet. The mother smiled to know her child Was in the sacred place, But that smile was the last smile To come upon her face. For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew wet and wild. She raced through the streets of Birmingham Calling for her child. She clawed through bits of glass and brick, Then lifted out a shoe. “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?”
by Dudley Randall, from Cities Burning. Copyright © 1968 by Dudley Randall. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Dudley Randall.
To see Dudley Randall’s poem “Booker T. [Washington] and W. E. B [Dubois]” [CLICK HERE]
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INTO MY HEART AN AIR THAT KILLS
Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.
by A. E. Houseman
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's.
by A. E. Housman
MORE POEMS, XIV [The Farms of home lie lost in even]
The farms of home lie lost in even,* I see far off the steeple stand; West and away from here to heaven Still is the land. There if I go no girl will greet me, No comrade hollo^ from the hill, No dog run down the yard to meet me: The land is still. The land is still by farm and steeple, And still for me the land may stay: There I was friends with perished people, And there lie they.
by A. E. Housman
* even = evening
^ hollo = 1: to call or cry hollo to. 2 : to utter loudly : holler
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Born on the island of Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, poet and playwright DEREK WALCOTT was trained as a painter but turned to writing as a young man… In 1992, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
A City’s Death By Fire
After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;
Under a candle's eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like
wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.
by Derek Walcott
After The Storm
There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall, and so it always was,
on one hand Venus, on the other Mars;
fall, and are one, just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea. Now, is my last.
I stop talking now. I work, then I read,
cotching* under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work, I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me, and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door, and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea.
by Derek Walcott
*cotching = relaxing
**********ROBERT PENN WARREN**********
Read by Tom O’Bedlam:
Read by Patrick Doyle:
Evening Hawk
From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds, Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding The last tumultuous avalanche of Light above pines and the guttural gorge, The hawk comes. His wing Scythes down another day, his motion Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear The crashless fall of stalks of Time. The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. Look! Look! he is climbing the last light Who knows neither Time nor error, and under Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings Into shadow. Long now, The last thrush is still, the last bat Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom Is ancient, too, and immense. The star Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain. If there were no wind we might, we think, hear The earth grind on its axis, or history Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.
by Robert Penn Warren
Copyright © 1985. From New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 (1985)
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Independence
Mussoorie, Uttar Pradesh, India, l947 When I am nine, the British quit India. Headmaster says, "The Great Mutiny started it." We repeat, The Great Mutiny of 1857 in our booming voices. Even Akbar was Great, even Catherine, Great! We titter over History. His back turns: we see his pink spotty neck. Sorry, the British leaving? we beg. "This is hardly a joke or a quiz -- sit up and stay alert," he spits. "It is about the trains and ships you love and city names. As for me, I'm old, I'll end in a library, I began in trade." But you must stay, we tell him. He lived here as we have lived but longer. He says he was alive in Calcutta in 1890. He didn't have a rich father. A third son, he came with the Tea Company: we saw a statement in his office. The company built the railroads to take the tea "home to England" so that Darjeeling and Assam could be sipped by everyone, us and them. They sold our southern neighbor Ceylon, silk, pepper, diamonds, cotton. We make a trade of course. In England there is only wool and salt and snobs and foggy weather, Shakespeare.
IT’S ME, I’M NOT HOME
It’s late in the city and I’m asleep.
You will call again? Did I hear
(please leave a message after the beep)
Chekhov? A loves B. I clap
for joy. B loves C. C won’t answer.
In the city it’s late, I’m asleep,
and if your face nears me like a familiar map
of homelessness: old world, new hemisphere
(it’s me leave a message after the beep),
then romance flies in the final lap
of the relay, I pass the baton you disappear
into the city, it’s late and I’m asleep
with marriages again, they tend to drop
by, faithful to us for about a year,
leave a message after the beep,
I’ll leave a key for you, play the tape
when you come in, or pick up the receiver.
It’s late in the city and I’m asleep.
Please leave a message after the beep.
by Reetika Vazirani, 1962-2003
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Best-known poem by ROBERT FROST?:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
by Robert Frost, 1874–1963
THE SILKEN TENT
She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when a sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to owe naught to any single cord, But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one’s going slightly taut, In the capriciousness of summer air, Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
by Robert Frost, 1874–1963
Acquainted With The Night
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-by; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
by Robert Frost
DESIGN
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963
TREE AT MY WINDOW
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me. Vague dream head lifted out of the ground, And thing next most diffuse to cloud, Not all your light tongues talking aloud Could be profound. But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed, And if you have seen me when I slept, You have seen me when I was taken and swept And all but lost. That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963
NEVER AGAIN WOULD BIRD’ SONG BE THE SAME
He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words. Admittedly an eloquence so soft Could only have had an influence on birds When call or laughter carried it aloft. Be that as may be, she was in their song. Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed Had now persisted in the woods so long That probably it never would be lost. Never again would birds’ song be the same. And to do that to birds was why she came.
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963
THE DRAFT HORSE
With a lantern that wouldn’t burn In too frail a buggy we drove Behind too heavy a horse Through a pitch-dark limitless grove. And a man came out of the trees And took our horse by the head And reaching back to his ribs Deliberately stabbed him dead. The ponderous beast went down With a crack of a broken shaft. And the night drew through the trees In one long invidious draft. The most unquestioning pair That ever accepted fate And the least disposed to ascribe Any more than we had to to hate, We assumed that the man himself Or someone he had to obey Wanted us to get down And walk the rest of the way.
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963
BIRCHES
When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows— Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
by Robert Frost, 1874-1963
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969)
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Jeff Grinnell's Poetry Platform 