Advanced Poem Search

Submit Poem

Contests

Member Poems Poets

Famous Poems Poets Quotes

Fun

Member Area

Member Area
My Poems
My Profile
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Submit Poem

Soup Social

The Wall
Chat Room
Soup Facebook Page
Poetry Forum
Events Calendar
Who is Online
Past Polls (Archives)

Member Poets/Poems

Premium Members For Life
Poets
Poets - New
Poets - by Country
Poets - Top 100 Poems
Poets - Top 100 Popular
Poets - Top 100 Contests
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poems
Poems - Best Poems
Poems - by Country
Poems - Hindi
Poems - Long Poems
Poems - New
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Poem Topics
Poems - Poetry
Poems - Random Poem
Poems - Read Poems
Poems - Search Poems
Poems - Short Poems
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Top 100 Recent
Poems - Unread
Poems - Urdu

Famous Poets/Poems

Famous Poets
Famous Poets - All
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Biographies
Famous Poets - Black
Famous Poets - by Country
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Popular
Famous Poets - Quotes
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Black
Famous Poems - Category
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Random
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Contests

Contests: by PoetrySoup
Contests: by Members
Contest Winners: Soup
Contest Winners: Member
Contest Status: Member

Lyrics

Lyrics
Lyrics - Search

Resources

About PoetrySoup
The Bible
Character Counter
Cliches in Poetry
Common English Words
Copyright Information
Dictionary
eBooks - Poetry
FAQs
Grammar
Haiku Syllable Counter
History of Poetry
Homonyms
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Love Poem Generator
Meter and Foot in Poetry
National Poetry Month
Poet Laureate
Poetics
Poetics of Aristotle
Poetry For Kids
Poetry
Poetry Definitions
Poetry Slam
Poetry Store
Poetry Out Loud
Prose
Publishing
Punctuation in Poetry
Quotes - Quotations
Resources - External
Resources - For Teachers
Rhyming Dictionary
Rhyme in Poetry
Spell Checker
Syllables
Syllable Counter
Syllable Rules
Teaching Prose and Poetry
Thesaurus
Videos: Poetry/Writing
What is Good Poetry?
What is Poetry?
Word Counter

Email Poem

From Email:
To Email:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem	Doors were left open in heaven again: drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town, its last angles caught in sopped newspaper wings and billowing plastic — all this in one American street. Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide recedes, incense is lit, an infant sucks from a nipple, a grenade shrieks, a man buys his first cane. Think of it: the worlds in this world. Yesterday, while a Chinese woman took hours to sew seven silk stitches into a tapestry started generations ago, guards took only seconds to mop up a cannibal’s brain from the floor of a Wisconsin jail, while the man who bashed the killer’s head found no place to hide, and sat sobbing for his mother in a shower stall — the worlds in this world. Or say, one year — say 1916: while my grandfather, a prisoner of war in Holland, sewed perfect, eighteen-buttoned booties for his wife with the skin of a dead dog found in a trench; shrapnel slit Apollinaire's skull, Jesuits brandished crucifixes in Ouagadougou, and the Parthenon was already in ruins. That year, thousands and thousands of Jews from the Holocaust were already — were still ¬— busy living their lives; while gnawed by self-doubt, Rilke couldn’t write a line for weeks inVienna’s Victorgasse, and fishermen drowned off Finnish coasts, and lovers kissed for the very first time, while in Kashmir an old woman fell asleep, her cheek on her good husband's belly. And all along that year the winds kept blowing as they do today, above oceans and steeples, and this one speck of dust was lifted from somewhere to land exactly here, on my desk, and will lift again — into the worlds in this world. Say now, at this instant: one thornless rose opens in a blue jar above that speck, but you — reading this — know nothing of how it came to flower here, and I nothing of who bred it, or where, nothing of my son and daughter’s fate, of what grows in your garden or behind the walls of your chest: is it longing? Fear? Will it matter? Listen to that wind, listen to it ranting The doors of heaven never close, that’s the Curse, that’s the Miracle.
	CAPTCHA Preview Type the characters you see in the picture