Famous Barbed Wire Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Barbed Wire poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous barbed wire poems. These examples illustrate what a famous barbed wire poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer on...Read more of this...
by
Wright, James
...The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.
Beyond, through broken windows one can see
Where the great presses paused between th...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...STANDING IN EDEN
1
Poetry claimed me young on Skegness beach
Before I was born I answered her cry
For a lost child still in the womb still
As the seawave journeying green upon green
Swollen in my mother’s side lashed and
Tongue-tied on a raft of premonition
Trying to survive my birth as the soul
Survives death turned in on the tide high
Wat...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...the rain.
There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.
And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field....Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions
and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the house...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of line...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...raced through the gap
That the rails at the homestead were fastened -- I was caught like a rat in a trap.
Fenced with barbed wire was the paddock -- barbed wire that would cut like a knife --
How was a youngster to clear it that never had jumped in his life?
Bang went a rifle behind me -- the colt gave a spring, he was hit;
Straight at the sliprails I rode him -- I felt him take hold of the bit;
Never a foot to the right or the left did he swerve in his stride,
Awkwar...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek...Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...travelled further out.
Beyond the furthest two-rail fence, Colanne and Nevertire --
Beyond the furthest rabbit-proof, barbed wire and common wire --
Beyond the furthest `Gov'ment' tank, and past the furthest bore --
The Never-Never, No Man's Land, No More, and Nevermore --
Beyond the Land o' Break-o'-Day, and Sunset and the Dawn,
The soul of Marshall and the soul of Marshall's mate have gone
Unto that Loving, Laughing Land where life is fresh and clean --
Where the ri...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
..., can't
harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -
leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;
as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come
to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till
knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.
The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...ord-scarred table which
is not my witness, shares all innocent
objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement
door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys,
an unwrapped icon, too potent to touch....Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...y
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."...Read more of this...
by
Szymborska, Wislawa
...neither tears nor lamentation.
The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
beneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire.
Where this lake is, there was a lake,
where these black pine grow, there grew black pine.
Where there is no teahouse I see a wooden teahouse
and the corpses of those who slept in it.
On the opposite bank of the Ota, a weeping willow
etches its memory of their faces into the water.
Where light touches the face, the character for heart is writ...Read more of this...
by
Forche, Carolyn
...The sheep were shorn and the wool went down
At the time of our local racing;
And I'd earned a spell -- I was burnt and brown --
So I rolled my swag for a trip to town
And a look at the steeplechasing.
Twas rough and ready--an uncleared course
As rough as the blacks had found it;
With barbed-wire fences, topped with gorse,
And a water-jump that woul...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ut there on the shining metalWhere the altar should have been,She saw by his flickering forge-lightQuite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spotWhere bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)And sentries sweated for the day was hot:A crowd of ordinary decent folkWatched from without and neither moved nor spokeAs three pale figures were led forth and boundTo three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, allThat carries weight an...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...your path;
Red, yellow, black the smoky giants rear;
The shrapnel rips, the heavens roar in wrath.
But on you charge. Barbed wire all trampled down.
The ground all gored and rent as by a blast;
Grim heaps of grey where once were heaps of brown;
A ragged ditch -- the Hun first line at last.
All smashed to hell. Their second right ahead,
So on you charge. There's nothing else to do.
More reeking holes, blood, barbed wire, gruesome dead;
(Your puttee strap's undone -- that...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
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