Mine, right now is one about a dog. Here it is,
A Dog on His Master, by Billy Collins (2010)
A DOG ON HIS MASTER
As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.
Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.
And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.
The worlds shortest poem.
Fleas
Adam had 'emon a hill there stood a coo and its not there noooo
How happy is the little stone by emily dikenson and she walks in beauty by lord byron
And anything written by @everhopeful
I like The Road Less Travelled by Robert Frost
I like âThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockâ by T.S. Eliott and âThe Rhyme of the Ancient Marinerâ by Coleridge.
Can you please post the poems guys and girls? So people can read them without searching.
When I was a kid I kinda like that one, âWhen I have fears I cease to beâŚâ
Now I like Linton Kwesi Johnson
A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing oâer lifeâs solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The flower
The park bench was deserted as I sat down to read
beneath the long, straggly branches of an old willow tree.
Disillusioned by life with good reason to frown,
For the world was intent on dragging me down.
And if that werenât enough to ruin my day,
A young boy out of breath approached me, all tired from play.
He stood right before me with his head tilted down
and said with great excitement, âLook what I found!â
In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight,
With its petals all worn - not enough rain, or too little light
Wanting him to take his dead flower and go off and play,
I faked a smile and then shifted away.
But instead of retreating he sat next to my side
and placed the flower to his nose
and declared with overacted surprise,
âIt sure smells pretty and itâs beautiful, too.
Thatâs why I picked it; here, itâs for you.â
The weed before me was dying or dead.
Not vibrant of colors orange, yellow or red.
But I knew I must take it, or he might, never leave
so I reached out for the flower, and replied. âJust what I need.â
But instead of placing the flower in my hand,
He held it mid-air without reason or plan.
It was then that I noticed for the very first time
that weed-toting boy could not see he was blind.
I heard my voice quiver; tears shone in the sun
as I thanked him for picking the very best one.
âYouâre welcome,â he smiled, and then ran off to play,
Unaware of the impact heâd had on my day.
"I sat there and wondered how heâd managed to see
A self-pitying man beneath an old willow tree.
How did he know of my self-indulged plight?
Perhaps from his heart, heâd been blessed with true sight.
Through the eyes of a blind child, at least I could see
The problem was not with the world, the problem was me
And for all those times I myself had been blind,
I vowed to see the beauty in life,
And appreciate every second thatâs mine.
And then I held that wilted flower up to my nose
And breathed in the fragrance of a beautiful rose
And I smiled as I watched that young boy
Another weed in his hand,
About to change the life of another unsuspecting old man.
Auther unknown
Langston Hughes is an excellent African-American poet. Hereâs one of his poems.
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Hereâs another Langston Hughes poem I read ages ago and never forgot.
PhD
He never was a silly little boy
Who whispered in the class or threw spit balls,
Or pulled the hair of silly little girls,
Or disobeyed in any way the laws
That made the school a place of decent order
Where books were read and sums were proven true
And paper maps that showed the land and water
Were held up as the real wide world to you.
Always, he kept his eyes upon his books:
And now he has grown to be a man
He is surprised that everywhere he looks
Life rolls in waves he cannot understand,
And all the human world is vast and strangeâ
And quite beyond his Ph.D.âs small range.
T.S. Eliotâs " The Waste Land" has always been on top.
Sylvia Plathâs " Lady Lazarus" âŚ
And Mayakovskiâs " Cloud in trousers"
Lots of untranslatable Slavs poetry too
Sylvia Plath, Poppies in October
"Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly â
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
Oh my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers."
I donât know why I like it. Maybe because of the line: âOh my God, what am I?â
Well actually my favorite poem is Alfred Lord Tennysonâs Maud but thatâs more like a novel-length poem.
I love Plath, especially back in my angsty, goth teen years in high school.
âLady Lazarus,â âTulips,â and âDaddyâ all struck deep, angsty chords within me. Especially Daddy.
I love Charles Bukowski, too, oddly, enough. His kind of nihilistic existence of poetry, sex, drinking, and work also resonated with me. I have a couple of his collections here, now.
Shout out to Poet Laureate, Juan Filipe Herrera, whose book, âNotebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler,â inspired an art collage I made.
I also love the book, âThe ice worker singsâ by Andres Montoya, and all the poems inside.
Also, William Carlos Williamâs âA Red Wheelbarrowâ is always a great, succinct poem!
Also, Anna Akhmatovaâs Russian poetry is beautiful and I wish I could read it in Cyrillic, rather than having to rely on the translation.
I loved poetry, back when I had an attention span, so I have a ton of favorites!
Oh man, me too.
@wonderdunk and @Hedgehog, and @HulGil ; wow, these likely will lead me to new poems I havenât even dreamed of or imagined. ;D
Thanks.
David Hinton and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
My favorite poet is WisĹawa Szymborska. She was Polish, and simply amazing.
The End and the Beginning
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things wonât
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic itâs not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Weâll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
âŚ
Cat in an empty apartment
translated by StanisĹaw BaraĹczak and Clare Cavanagh
Dieâyou canât do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here
but nothing is the same.
Nothingâs been moved
but thereâs more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.
Footsteps on the staircase,
but theyâre new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.
Something doesnât start
at its usual time.
Something doesnât happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.
Every closetâs been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.
Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.
âŚ
Another Polish poem I like is this, by Jan Twardowski:
We Must Hurry
We must hurry to love people; they leave so quickly
the shoes remain empty and the phone rings on
whatâs unimportant drags on like a cow
the meaningful sudden takes us by surprise
the silence that follows so normal itâs unbearable
like chastity born most simply from despair
when we think of someone whoâs been taken from us.
Donât be sure you have time for thereâs no assurance
as all good fortune security deadens the senses
it comes simultaneously like pathos and humor
like two passions not as strong as one
they leave fast grow silent like a thrush in July
like a sound somewhat clumsy or a polite bow
to truly see they close their eyes
though to be born is more of risk than to die
we love still too little and always too late.
Donât write of it too often but write once and for all
and youâll become like dolphin both gentle and strong.
We must hurry to love people; they leave so quickly
and the ones who donât leave wonât always return
and you never know while speaking of love
if the first one is last or the last one first.
âWe must hurry to love people; they leave so quickly
and the ones who donât leave wonât always return
and you never know while speaking of love
if the first one is last or the last one first.â
I like this poem.
The Greater Cats
The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and different skies,
And night with different stars.
By V. Sackville-West