Poems from PoemsPoet.com

The Suicide

David Herbert Lawrence — Sat, 5 Dec 2009 8:00:00 +0000

And this, ladies and gentlemen, whom I am not in fact / Conducting, was his office all those minutes ago, / This man you never heard of. These are the bills / In the intray, the ash in the ashtray, the grey memoranda stacked / Against him, the serried ranks of the box-files, the packed / Jury of his unanswered correspondence / Nodding under the paperweight in the breeze / From the window by which he left; and here is the cracked / Receiver that never got mended and here is the jotter / With his last doodle which might be his own digestive tract / Ulcer and all or might be the flowery maze / Through which he had wandered deliciously till he stumbled / Suddenly finally conscious of all he lacked / On a manhole under the hollyhocks. The pencil / Point had obviously broken, yet, when he left this room / By catdrop sleight-of-foot or simple vanishing act, / To those who knew him for all that mess in the street / This man with the shy smile has left behind / Something that was intact. / / -

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There Is A Motionless Tree

Octavio Paz — Sat, 5 Dec 2009 8:00:00 +0000

There is a motionless tree / there is another that moves forward / a river of trees / pounds at my chest / The green swell / of good fortune / / You are dressed in red / you are / the seal of the burning year / carnal firebrand / star of fruit / I eat the sun in you / / The hour rests / on a chasm of clarities / / The birds are a handful of shadows / their beaks build the night / their wings sustain the day / / Rooted at the light's peak / between stability and vertigo / you are / the diaphanous balance. / / -

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The Given Heart

William Johnson Cory — Sat, 5 Dec 2009 8:00:00 +0000

/ I wonder what those lovers mean, who say / They have giv'n their hearts away. / Some good kind lover tell me how; / For mine is but a torment to me now. / / If so it be one place both hearts contain, / For what do they complain? / What courtesy can Love do more, / Than to join hearts that parted were before? / / Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come / Into the self-same room; / 'Twill tear and blow up all within, / Like a granado shot into a magazine. / / Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts, / Of both our broken hearts: / Shall out of both one new one make, / From hers, th' allay; from mine, the metal take. / / For of her heart he from the flames will find / But little left behind: / Mine only will remain entire; / No dross was there, to perish in the fire. /

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Ancestors

William Ernest Henley — Sat, 5 Dec 2009 8:00:00 +0000

We had an island. / Oh we were a stomping old tribe on an island. / Red faces, hairy bodies. / Happy to be hairy / Happy to be hairy / When the breezes tickled / The hairs of our bodies / Happy to be hairy / Happy to be hairy / Next best thing to having feathers -- / That was our national anthem. / Right. Hairy tribe, / Hairy red story-telling, song-singing, dragon-fighting, fire-drinking tribe / / Used to get invaded every other weekend. / Romans, Vikings, Celts -- fire and sword -- / Pushed us back but they never broke us down. / In between invasions we grew spuds and barley, / Took our animals wherever there was a river and some grass. / / When the snows came, we moved south / When the rivers dried, we moved west / When the invaders came, we burnt our crops, moved. / / Until one day we were surrounded by warriors. / The same old fire and sword, but used efficiently. / They slaughtered our warriors, lined up the rest of us / And there were speeches / About law and order, and firm but fair government. / / And this is what they did, / This is government. / You take an island and cut it carefully / With the razorblade called law and order / Into a jigsaw of pieces. / The big, rich-coloured pieces / Go to the big, rich men. / The smaller, paler pieces, / (Five beds two recep barn mooring rights five acres) / Go to the small, rich men. / And nothing at all / Goes to those who have nothing at all. / / Absurd? The many nothing-at-alls / Wouldn't stand back and see their island / Slashed into ten thousand pieces. / They didn't stand back, our hairy ancestors. / Some of them spoke out. Some fought back. / They were slashed down by the giant razorblade. / / And now, and now the rich seldom have to kill / To defend the land they stole from all the tribe -- / Wire fences. Guard Dogs Loose on these Premises. / No Trespassing. / Bailiffs. Security Guards. Police. Magistrates' Courts. / Judges. Prisons -- / Grey prisons where the brain and the flesh turn grey / As the green English years stroll by outside the walls. / So who needs fire and the sword? / The tribe has been tamed / And our island / Our daft green stony gentle rough amazing haven / Entirely surrounded by fish / Has been stolen from the tribe. / It was robbery with most bloody violence. / And that was history, history is about the dead. / Then is our tribe dead? Is our tribe dead? / Is the tribe dead? / / -

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