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Famous Absences Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Absences poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous absences poems. These examples illustrate what a famous absences poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Justice, Donald
...It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano--outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,
Like ...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...ple know all about plants some about fish
 I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
 I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food
 I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize
 which they did
at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I n...Read more of this...

by Soyinka, Wole
...ogynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.

Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats...Read more of this...

by ,
...ndrogynous.
The hovering notes caress the night 
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.

Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze 
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

This music's plaint forgives, redeems 
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The br...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...and books,

The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, 

A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil

My duties as a carer, unending phone calls

And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best complainer,

"Treading on toes or keeping people on their toes"

Also a warm and welcoming vagina, an insatiable need

For ******** and cunnilingus, a bed with clean sheets

I can retire to by five with a hot water bottle 

To calm my chur...Read more of this...



by O'Hara, Frank
...much 
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures:
departures absences.

And you are still on the dock 
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows 
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up 
While two girls cry in the last row.

I think they got laid last night.
But who didn't? it was a spring night.
Probably George did too.

And now the ship has gone
beyo...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...primal waters 
The final toilet of time 

Hardly a memory remains 
the dried-up well of virtue 
In the long, oppressive absences 
One surrenders to tender flesh 
Under the spell of weakness 

III. As deep as the silence 

As deep as the silence 
Of a corpse under ground 
With nothing but darkness in mind 

As dull and deaf 
As autumn by the pond 
Covered with stale shame 

Poison, deprived of its flower 
And of its golden beasts 
out its night onto man 

IV. Patience ...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...I view 
Any room containing you. 
In fact I care not where you be, 
Just as long as it's with me. 
In all your absences I glimpse 
Fire and flood and trolls and imps. 
Is your train a minute slothful? 
I goad the stationmaster wrothful. 
When with friends to bridge you drive 
I never know if you're alive, 
And when you linger late in shops 
I long to telephone the cops. 
Yet how worth the waiting for, 
To see you coming through the door. 
Somehow, I c...Read more of this...

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