Other people's poems

Poem of the Day: Defeated

BY SOPHIE JEWETT

When the last fight is lost, the last sword broken;   

The last call sounded, the last order spoken;   

When from the field where braver hearts lie sleeping,

Faint, and athirst, and blinded, I come creeping,

With not one waving shred of palm to bring you,

With not one splendid battle-song to sing you,

O Love, in my dishonor and defeat,

Your measureless compassion will be sweet.

Poem of the Day: I sat in the sun

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

I moved my chair into sun

I sat in the sun

the way hunger is moved when called fasting.

Poem of the Day: Prayer Rug

BY AGHA SHAHID ALI

Those intervals   

between the day's   

five calls to prayer

the women of the house   

pulling thick threads   

through vegetables

rosaries of ginger   

of rustling peppers

in autumn drying for winter

in those intervals this rug   

part of Grandma's dowry   

folded

so the Devil's shadow   

would not desecrate   

Mecca scarlet-woven

with minarets of gold   

but then the sunset   

call to prayer

the servants

their straw mats unrolled   

praying or in the garden

in summer on grass   

the children wanting   

the prayers to end

the women's foreheads   

touching Abraham's   

silk stone of sacrifice

black stone descended   

from Heaven

the pilgrims in white circling it

this year my grandmother   

also a pilgrim   

in Mecca she weeps

as the stone is unveiled   

she weeps holding on   

to the pillars

(for Begum Zafar Ali)

Poem of the Day: Sonnet XXV

BY GEORGE SANTAYANA

As in the midst of battle there is room

For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth;

As gossips whisper of a trinket's worth

Spied by the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom;

As in the crevices of Caesar's tomb

The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth:

So in this great disaster of our birth

We can be happy, and forget our doom.

For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy

Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth,

And evening gently woos us to employ

Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth;

Till from that summer's trance we wake, to find

Despair before us, vanity behind.

Poem of the Day: Seeing for a Moment BY DENISE LEVERTOV I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step    into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young,        the news—always of death,        the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring                and howling, howling, nevertheless I see for a moment    that's not it: it is    the First Things. Word after word floats through the glass.    Towards me. Poem of the Day: The Three-Legged Dog at the Heart of Our Home BY LINDA GREGERSON She dances to the wheeze of my lungs. Were she taller, or had she both hind legs, she would lick my aching knees.    There's nothing like practice I firmly believe. Practice makes the heart grow fond. When the graft heals,    you've apples on a cherry tree, delicious domestic freaks. I had a splendid grandmother, I might have made her up.    She wore cotton dresses, usually blue, and glasses    with thin gold frames and plastic cushions for the nose.    The plastic was slightly pink, intended to blend with the flesh. She never raised her voice.    Her knuckles enlarged, her goiter enlarged. There are ways within ways. A man will go down    displaying himself in a nursing home. The mystery left, and there's more than when we began, has nothing to do with reticence, or safety. Poem of the Day: Self-Mastery BY HENRIETTA CORDELIA RAY To catch the spirit in its wayward flight Through mazes manifold, what task supreme! For when to floods has grown the quiet stream, Much human skill must aid its rage to fight; And when wild winds invade the solemn night, Seems not man's vaunted power but a dream? And still more futile, ay, we e'en must deem This quest to tame the soul, and guide aright Its restless wanderings, – to lure it back To shoals of calm. Full many a moan and sigh Attend the strife; till, effort merged in prayer, Oft uttered, clung to – when of strength the lack Seems direst – brings the answer to our cry: A gift from Him who lifts our ev'ry care. Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997) Poem of the Day: God BY ISAAC ROSENBERG In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned! His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls. The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power, On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry, He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more. But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze, Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws, And he would weigh the heavier on those after. Who rests in God’s mean flattery now? Your wealth Is but his cunning to make death more hard. Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking. And he has made the market for your beauty Too poor to buy, although you die to sell. Only that he has never heard of sleep; And when the cats come out the rats are sly. Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots, And in the morning some pale wonder ceases. Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful. Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost Out of us, but it is as hair of us, And only in the hush no wind stirs it. And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes, And restlessness still shadows the lost ways. The fingers shut on voices that pass through, Where blind farewells are taken easily .... Ah! this miasma of a rotting God! Poem of the Day: After Catullus and Horace BY BERNADETTE MAYER only the manners of centuries ago can teach me how to address you my lover as who you are O Sestius, how could you put up with my children thinking all the while you were bearing me as in your mirror it doesn't matter anymore if spring wreaks its fiery or lamblike dawn on my new-found asceticism, some joke I wouldn't sleep with you or any man if you paid me and most of you poets don't have the cash anyway so please rejoin your fraternal books forever while you miss in your securest sleep Ms. Rosy-fingered dawn who might've been induced to digitalize a part of you were it not for your self-induced revenge of undoneness it's good to live without a refrigerator! why bother to chill the handiwork of Ceres and of Demeter? and of the lonesome Sappho. let's have it warm for now. Poem of the Day: Love in the Valley BY GEORGE MEREDITH Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,        Couched with her arms behind her golden head, Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,        Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,        Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:        Then would she hold me and never let me go? Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,        Swift as the swallow along the river's light Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,        Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,        Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,        Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,        Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,        More love should I have, and much less care. When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,        Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,        I should miss but one for many boys and girls. Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows        Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:        Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure,        Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones        Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping        Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,        Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:        So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,        Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,        Arm in arm, all against the raying West Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,        Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking        Whispered the world was; morning light is she. Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;        Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. Happy happy time, when the white star hovers        Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,        Threading it with colour, as yewberries the yew. Thicker crowd the shades while the grave East deepens        Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;        Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting        Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter        Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. Ay, but shows the South-West a ripple-feathered bosom        Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset        Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window        Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily        Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle        In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily        Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,        Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim, Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,        Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,        Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever        Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;        Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she totters,        Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands. Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,        Coming the rose: and unaware a cry Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,        Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. Kerchiefed head and chin she darts between her tulips,        Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain: Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel        She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gateway:        She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder        Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,        Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones:        O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,        Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,        You are of life's, on the banks that line the way. Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,        Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine        Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest?        Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine        Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;        Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf; Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;        Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf: Green-yellow bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;        Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,        Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. This I may know: her dressing and undressing        Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder        Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl; or on the ocean borders        White sails lean along the waves leaping green. Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight        Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse        Open with the morn, and in a breezy link Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,        Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. Busy in the grass the early sun of summer        Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:        Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats! Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy        Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;        O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher        Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,        Said, "I will kiss you": she laughed and leaned her cheek. Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof        Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway        Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,        Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,        Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!        O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! O the treasure-tresses one another over        Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet        Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, Gathered, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness!        O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops,        Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise,        Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree        Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. Here may life on death or death on life be painted.        Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die! Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber        Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. "When she was a tiny," one aged woman quavers,        Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:        Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy        Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,        Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;        Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,        Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.— Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,        Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names. Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.        Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,        Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.        Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring! Sing from the South-West, bring her back the truants,        Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing. Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April        Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you, Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,        Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:        Fair as in image my seraph love appears Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids:        Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,        I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dog-wood,        Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dog-wood crimson in October;        Streaming like the flag-reed South-West blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted white beam:        All seem to know what is for heaven alone. Poem of the Day: Captains in Captivity BY SETH ABRAMSON She came to see him in the safehouse              to interface    without biography or autobiography.    I am, she told him, the only one here    who cares whether you continue    to live. I care,              he said, but it was formulaic.    His propensity, not a precondition.              The ground beneath his feet    smelled of everything              other men's feet    had ever ground into it. It was blank    for all horrors, all aftermaths. A fly              dazzled in a sunbeam    through the windowpane. Like water,    he seemed to say,              & she agreed with him.    I would like water, he repeated. She    pretended not to hear him,    because that was the sort of slippage              that could save him    & suddenly she was not against it.    He could continue to live    if he could continue to mean himself    or anything              as poorly as he had just then. Poem of the Day: Hawk BY WENDY VIDELOCK The forest is the only place where green is green and blue is blue. Walking the forest I have seen most everything. I've seen a you with yellow eyes and busted wing. And deep in the forest, no one knew. Poem of the Day: One Girl BY SAPPHO I Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, — Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now.                                II Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found, Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound, Until the purple blossom is trodden in the ground. Poem of the Day: Photograph from September 11 BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA They jumped from the burning floors— one, two, a few more, higher, lower. The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them    above the earth toward the earth. Each is still complete, with a particular face and blood well hidden. There's enough time for hair to come loose, for keys and coins to fall from pockets. They're still within the air's reach, within the compass of places that have just now opened. I can do only two things for them— describe this flight and not add a last line. Poem of the Day: A Birthday BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI My heart is like a singing bird                   Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree                   Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell                   That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these                   Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down;                   Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates,                   And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes,                   In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life                   Is come, my love is come to me. Poem of the Day: When I am Gone BY SHEL SILVERSTEIN When I am gone what will you do? Who will write and draw for you? Someone smarter—someone new? Someone better—maybe YOU! Poem of the Day: Moraine for Bob BY JOANNA FUHRMAN You were never a man in the television sense of the word. I was never a wild Slinky in the sex-club sense of a toy. You were never a tobacco store in the Modernist sense of a trope. I was never a snowdrop in the candy store sense of a treat. You were never Day-glo in the fashionista sense of a scarf. I was never withyouwllthetime in the username sense of a self. You were never a strumpet in the toothache sense of an insult. I was never a tooting horn in the childhood sense of a game. You were never a hole-in-my-heart    in the country singer sense of a vista. I was never a paper doll in the pyromaniac sense of a pal. You were never a parenthesis in the phony secret sense of a sign. I was never red lipstick in the pulp novel sense of a threat. You were never a word in the mystic sense of an obstacle. I was never a shaking castanet    in the midnight sense of a song. Poem of the Day: The Pulley BY GEORGE HERBERT When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,    Contract into a span.”    So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,    Rest in the bottom lay.    “For if I should,” said he, “Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;    So both should losers be.    “Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness    May toss him to my breast.” Poem of the Day: The Pulley BY GEORGE HERBERT When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,    Contract into a span.”    So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,    Rest in the bottom lay.    “For if I should,” said he, “Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;    So both should losers be.    “Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness    May toss him to my breast.” Poem of the Day: Peel BY BRIAN SWANN I read that in this famous person's poems "she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self." Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn't know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy's "What is Art?" where he said an artist is different from other people because instead of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why can't he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we'd never seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem. Source: Poetry (November 2010). Poem of the Day: The Pattern BY ROBERT CREELEY As soon as    I speak, I    speaks. It wants to    be free but    impassive lies in the direction    of its words. Let x equal x, x    also equals x. I speak to    hear myself    speak? I had not thought    that some- thing had such undone. It    was an idea    of mine. Poem of the Day: The Dream of a Lacquer Box BY KIMIKO HAHN I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents Japanese — like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone though my braid was lopped off long ago, like an overpowering pine incense or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine, like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key, Hello Kitty stickers or candies, a netsuke in the shape of an octopus, ticket stubs from the Bunraku — or am I wishing for Mother? searching for Sister? just hoping to give something Japanese to my daughters? then again, people can read anything into dreams and I do as well. I wish I possessed my mother's black lacquer box though in my dream it was red, though I wish my heart were content. Poem of the Day: The Secret BY ANONYMOUS We have a secret, just we three, The robin, and I, and the sweet cherry-tree; The bird told the tree, and the tree told me, And nobody knows it but just us three. But of course the robin knows it best, Because she built the—I shan't tell the rest; And laid the four little—something in it— I'm afraid I shall tell it every minute. But if the tree and the robin don't peep, I'll try my best the secret to keep; Though I know when the little birds fly about Then the whole secret will be out. Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947) Poem of the Day: Self-Mastery BY HENRIETTA CORDELIA RAY To catch the spirit in its wayward flight Through mazes manifold, what task supreme! For when to floods has grown the quiet stream, Much human skill must aid its rage to fight; And when wild winds invade the solemn night, Seems not man's vaunted power but a dream? And still more futile, ay, we e'en must deem This quest to tame the soul, and guide aright Its restless wanderings, – to lure it back To shoals of calm. Full many a moan and sigh Attend the strife; till, effort merged in prayer, Oft uttered, clung to – when of strength the lack Seems direst – brings the answer to our cry: A gift from Him who lifts our ev'ry care. Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997) Poem of the Day: Peel BY BRIAN SWANN I read that in this famous person's poems "she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self." Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn't know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy's "What is Art?" where he said an artist is different from other people because instead of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why can't he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we'd never seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem. Source: Poetry (November 2010). Poem of the Day: Peel BY BRIAN SWANN I read that in this famous person's poems "she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self." Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn't know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy's "What is Art?" where he said an artist is different from other people because instead of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why can't he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we'd never seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem. Source: Poetry (November 2010). Poem of the Day: Peel BY BRIAN SWANN I read that in this famous person's poems "she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self." Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn't know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy's "What is Art?" where he said an artist is different from other people because instead of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why can't he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we'd never seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem. Source: Poetry (November 2010).