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Best Famous Absolved Poems

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Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

The Star-Apple Kingdom

 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, 
and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules 
on the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeat 
in tongues of water and wind and fire, in tongues 
of Mission School pickaninnies, like rivers remembering 
their source, Parish Trelawny, Parish St David, Parish 
St Andrew, the names afflicting the pastures, 
the lime groves and fences of marl stone and the cattle 
with a docile longing, an epochal content. 
And there were, like old wedding lace in an attic, 
among the boas and parasols and the tea-colored 
daguerreotypes, hints of an epochal happiness 
as ordered and infinite to the child 
as the great house road to the Great House 
down a perspective of casuarinas plunging green manes 
in time to the horses, an orderly life 
reduced by lorgnettes day and night, one disc the sun, 
the other the moon, reduced into a pier glass: 
nannies diminished to dolls, mahogany stairways 
no larger than those of an album in which 
the flash of cutlery yellows, as gamboge as 
the piled cakes of teatime on that latticed 
bougainvillea verandah that looked down toward 
a prospect of Cuyp-like Herefords under a sky 
lurid as a porcelain souvenir with these words: 
"Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye." 

Strange, that the rancor of hatred hid in that dream 
of slow rivers and lily-like parasols, in snaps 
of fine old colonial families, curled at the edge 
not from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all, 
but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded 
stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners, 
the tenants, the good ******* down in the village, 
their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream. 
A scream which would open the doors to swing wildly 
all night, that was bringing in heavier clouds, 
more black smoke than cloud, frightening the cattle 
in whose bulging eyes the Great House diminished; 
a scorching wind of a scream 
that began to extinguish the fireflies, 
that dried the water mill creaking to a stop 
as it was about to pronounce Parish Trelawny 
all over, in the ancient pastoral voice, 
a wind that blew all without bending anything, 
neither the leaves of the album nor the lime groves; 
blew Nanny floating back in white from a feather 
to a chimerical, chemical pin speck that shrank 
the drinking Herefords to brown porcelain cows 
on a mantelpiece, Trelawny trembling with dusk, 
the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blew 
far the decent servants and the lifelong cook, 
and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoral 
of dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun 
in Jamaica, making both epochs one. 

He looked out from the Great House windows on 
clouds that still held the fragrance of fire, 
he saw the Botanical Gardens officially drown 
in a formal dusk, where governors had strolled 
and black gardeners had smiled over glinting shears 
at the lilies of parasols on the floating lawns, 
the flame trees obeyed his will and lowered their wicks, 
the flowers tightened their fists in the name of thrift, 
the porcelain lamps of ripe cocoa, the magnolia's jet 
dimmed on the one circuit with the ginger lilies 
and left a lonely bulb on the verandah, 
and, had his mandate extended to that ceiling 
of star-apple candelabra, he would have ordered 
the sky to sleep, saying, I'm tired, 
save the starlight for victories, we can't afford it, 
leave the moon on for one more hour,and that's it. 
But though his power, the given mandate, extended 
from tangerine daybreaks to star-apple dusks, 
his hand could not dam that ceaseless torrent of dust 
that carried the shacks of the poor, to their root-rock music, 
down the gullies of Yallahs and August Town, 
to lodge them on thorns of maca, with their rags 
crucified by cactus, tins, old tires, cartons; 
from the black Warieka Hills the sky glowed fierce as 
the dials of a million radios, 
a throbbing sunset that glowed like a grid 
where the dread beat rose from the jukebox of Kingston. 
He saw the fountains dried of quadrilles, the water-music 
of the country dancers, the fiddlers like fifes 
put aside. He had to heal 
this malarial island in its bath of bay leaves, 
its forests tossing with fever, the dry cattle 
groaning like winches, the grass that kept shaking 
its head to remember its name. No vowels left 
in the mill wheel, the river. Rock stone. Rock stone. 

The mountains rolled like whales through phosphorous stars, 
as he swayed like a stone down fathoms into sleep, 
drawn by that magnet which pulls down half the world 
between a star and a star, by that black power 
that has the assassin dreaming of snow, 
that poleaxes the tyrant to a sleeping child. 
The house is rocking at anchor, but as he falls 
his mind is a mill wheel in moonlight, 
and he hears, in the sleep of his moonlight, the drowned 
bell of Port Royal's cathedral, sees the copper pennies 
of bubbles rising from the empty eye-pockets 
of green buccaneers, the parrot fish floating 
from the frayed shoulders of pirates, sea horses 
drawing gowned ladies in their liquid promenade 
across the moss-green meadows of the sea; 
he heard the drowned choirs under Palisadoes, 
a hymn ascending to earth from a heaven inverted 
by water, a crab climbing the steeple, 
and he climbed from that submarine kingdom 
as the evening lights came on in the institute, 
the scholars lamplit in their own aquarium, 
he saw them mouthing like parrot fish, as he passed 
upward from that baptism, their history lessons, 
the bubbles like ideas which he could not break: 
Jamaica was captured by Penn and Venables, 
Port Royal perished in a cataclysmic earthquake. 

Before the coruscating façades of cathedrals 
from Santiago to Caracas, where penitential archbishops 
washed the feet of paupers (a parenthetical moment 
that made the Caribbean a baptismal font, 
turned butterflies to stone, and whitened like doves 
the buzzards circling municipal garbage), 
the Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin 
in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved 
of a history which they did not commit; 
the slave pardoned his whip, and the dispossessed 
said the rosary of islands for three hundred years, 
a hymn that resounded like the hum of the sea 
inside a sea cave, as their knees turned to stone, 
while the bodies of patriots were melting down walls 
still crusted with mute outcries of La Revolucion! 
"San Salvador, pray for us,St. Thomas, San Domingo, 
ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia 
of no eyes," and when the circular chaplet 
reached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidad 
they began again, their knees drilled into stone, 
where Colon had begun, with San Salvador's bead, 
beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians. 
And while they prayed for an economic miracle, 
ulcers formed on the municipal portraits, 
the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels, 
and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas, 
until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard, 
climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door 
of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole: 
"Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution. 
I am the darker, the older America." 

She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise, 
her voice had the gutturals of machine guns 
across khaki deserts where the cactus flower 
detonates like grenades, her sex was the slit throat 
of an Indian, her hair had the blue-black sheen of the crow. 
She was a black umbrella blown inside out 
by the wind of revolution, La Madre Dolorosa, 
a black rose of sorrow, a black mine of silence, 
raped wife, empty mother, Aztec virgin 
transfixed by arrows from a thousand guitars, 
a stone full of silence, which, if it gave tongue 
to the tortures done in the name of the Father, 
would curdle the blood of the marauding wolf, 
the fountain of generals, poets, and cripples 
who danced without moving over their graves 
with each revolution; her Caesarean was stitched 
by the teeth of machine guns,and every sunset 
she carried the Caribbean's elliptical basin 
as she had once carried the penitential napkins 
to be the footbath of dictators, Trujillo, Machado, 
and those whose faces had yellowed like posters 
on municipal walls. Now she stroked his hair 
until it turned white, but she would not understand 
that he wanted no other power but peace, 
that he wanted a revolution without any bloodshed, 
he wanted a history without any memory, 
streets without statues, 
and a geography without myth. He wanted no armies 
but those regiments of bananas, thick lances of cane, 
and he sobbed,"I am powerless, except for love." 
She faded from him, because he could not kill; 
she shrunk to a bat that hung day and night 
in the back of his brain. He rose in his dream. 
(to be continued)


Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

The Scapegoat

 We have all of us read how the Israelites fled 
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em, 
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup" 
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em. 
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had" 
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad. 
You see he was hated from Jordan to Cairo -- 
Whence comes the expression "to buck against faro". 
For forty long years, 'midst perils and fears 
In deserts with never a famine to follow by, 
The Israelite horde went roaming abroad 
Like so many sundowners "out on the wallaby". 
When Moses, who led 'em, and taught 'em, and fed 'em, 
Was dying, he murmured, "A rorty old hoss you are: 
I give you command of the whole of the band" -- 
And handed the Government over to Joshua. 

But Moses told 'em before he died, 
"Wherever you are, whatever betide, 
Every year as the time draws near 
By lot or by rote choose you a goat, 
And let the high priest confess on the beast 
The sins of the people the worst and the least, 
Lay your sins on the goat! Sure the plan ought to suit yer. 
Because all your sins are 'his troubles' in future. 
Then lead him away to the wilderness black 
To die with the weight of your sins on his back: 
Of thirst let him perish alone and unshriven, 
For thus shall your sins be absolved and forgiven!" 

'Tis needless to say, though it reeked of barbarity 
This scapegoat arrangement gained great popularity. 
By this means a Jew, whate'er he might do, 
Though he burgled, or murdered, or cheated at loo, 
Or meat on Good Friday (a sin most terrific) ate, 
Could get his discharge, like a bankrupt's certificate; 
Just here let us note -- Did they choose their best goat? 
It's food for conjecture, to judge from the picture 
By Hunt in the Gallery close to our door, a 
Man well might suppose that the scapegoat they chose 
Was a long way from being their choicest Angora. 

In fact I should think he was one of their weediest: 
'Tis a rule that obtains, no matter who reigns, 
When making a sacrifice, offer the seediest; 
Which accounts for a theory known to my hearers 
Who live in the wild by the wattle beguiled, 
That a "stag" makes quite good enough mutton for shearers. 
Be that as it may, as each year passed away, 
a scapegoat was led to the desert and freighted 
With sin (the poor brute must have been overweighted) 
And left there -- to die as his fancy dictated. 

The day it has come, with trumpet and drum. 
With pomp and solemnity fit for the tomb 
They lead the old billy-goat off to his doom: 
On every hand a reverend band, 
Prophets and preachers and elders stand 
And the oldest rabbi, with a tear in his eye, 
Delivers a sermon to all standing by. 
(We haven't his name -- whether Cohen or Harris, he 
No doubt was the "poisonest" kind of Pharisee.) 
The sermon was marked by a deal of humility 
And pointed the fact, with no end of ability. 
That being a Gentile's no mark of gentility, 
And, according to Samuel, would certainly d--n you well. 
Then, shedding his coat, he approaches the goat 
And, while a red fillet he carefully pins on him, 
Confesses the whole of the Israelites' sins on him. 
With this eloquent burst he exhorts the accurst -- 
"Go forth in the desert and perish in woe, 
The sins of the people are whiter than snow!" 
Then signs to his pal "for to let the brute go". 
(That "pal" as I've heard, is an elegant word, 
Derived from the Persian "Palaykhur" or "Pallaghur"), 
As the scapegoat strains and tugs at the reins 
The Rabbi yells rapidly, "Let her go, Gallagher!" 

The animal, freed from all restraint 
Lowered his head, made a kind of feint, 
And charged straight at that elderly saint. 
So fierce his attack and so very severe, it 
Quite floored the Rabbi, who, ere he could fly, 
Was rammed on the -- no, not the back -- but just near it. 
The scapegoat he snorted, and wildly cavorted, 
A light-hearted antelope "out on the ramp", 
Then stopped, looked around, got the "lay of the ground", 
And made a beeline back again to the camp. 
The elderly priest, as he noticed the beast 
So gallantly making his way to the east, 
Says he, "From the tents may I never more roam again 
If that there old billy-goat ain't going home again. 
He's hurrying, too! This never will do. 
Can't somebody stop him? I'm all of a stew. 
After all our confessions, so openly granted, 
He's taking our sins back to where they're not wanted. 
We've come all this distance salvation to win agog, 
If he takes home our sins, it'll burst up the Synagogue!" 

He turned to an Acolyte who was making his bacca light, 
A fleet-footed youth who could run like a crack o' light. 
"Run, Abraham, run! Hunt him over the plain, 
And drive back the brute to the desert again. 
The Sphinx is a-watching, the Pyramids will frown on you, 
From those granite tops forty cent'ries look down on you -- 
Run, Abraham, run! I'll bet half-a-crown on you." 
So Abraham ran, like a man did he go for him, 
But the goat made it clear each time he drew near 
That he had what the racing men call "too much toe" for him. 

The crowd with great eagerness studied the race -- 
"Great Scott! isn't Abraham forcing the pace -- 
And don't the goat spiel? It is hard to keep sight on him, 
The sins of the Israelites ride mighty light on him. 
The scapegoat is leading a furlong or more, 
And Abraham's tiring -- I'll lay six to four! 
He rolls in his stride; he's done, there's no question!" 
But here the old Rabbi brought up a suggestion. 
('Twas strange that in racing he showed so much cunning), 
"It's a hard race," said he, "and I think it would be 
A good thing for someone to take up the running." 
As soon said as done, they started to run -- 
The priests and the deacons, strong runners and weak 'uns 
All reckoned ere long to come up with the brute, 
And so the whole boiling set off in pursuit. 
And then it came out, as the rabble and rout 
Streamed over the desert with many a shout -- 
The Rabbi so elderly, grave, and patrician, 
Had been in his youth a bold metallician, 
And offered, in gasps, as they merrily spieled, 
"Any price Abraham! Evens the field!" 
Alas! the whole clan, they raced and they ran, 
And Abraham proved him an "even time" man, 
But the goat -- now a speck they could scarce keep their eyes on -- 
Stretched out in his stride in a style most surprisin' 
And vanished ere long o'er the distant horizon. 

Away in the camp the bill-sticker's tramp 
Is heard as he wanders with paste, brush, and notices, 
And paling and wall he plasters them all, 
"I wonder how's things gettin' on with the goat," he says, 
The pulls out his bills, "Use Solomon's Pills" 
"Great Stoning of Christians! To all devout Jews! you all 
Must each bring a stone -- Great sport will be shown; 
Enormous Attractions! And prices as usual! 
Roll up to the Hall!! Wives, children and all, 
For naught the most delicate feelings to hurt is meant!!" 
Here his eyes opened wide, for close by his side 
Was the scapegoat: And eating his latest advertisement! 
One shriek from him burst -- "You creature accurst!" 
And he ran from the spot like one fearing the worst. 
His language was chaste, as he fled in his haste, 
But the goat stayed behind him -- and "scoffed up" the paste. 

With downcast head, and sorrowful tread, 
The people came back from the desert in dread. 
"The goat -- was he back there? Had anyone heard of him?" 
In very short order they got plenty word of him. 
In fact as they wandered by street, lane and hall, 
"The trail of the serpent was over them all." 
A poor little child knocked out stiff in the gutter 
Proclaimed that the scapegoat was bred for a "butter". 
The bill-sticker's pail told a sorrowful tale, 
The scapegoat had licked it as dry as a nail; 
He raced through their houses, and frightened their spouses, 
But his latest achievement most anger arouses, 
For while they were searching, and scratching their craniums, 
One little Ben Ourbed, who looked in the flow'r-bed, 
Discovered him eating the Rabbi's geraniums. 


Moral 
The moral is patent to all the beholders -- 
Don't shift your own sins on to other folks' shoulders; 
Be kind to dumb creatures and never abuse them, 
Nor curse them nor kick them, nor spitefully use them: 
Take their lives if needs must -- when it comes to the worst, 
But don't let them perish of hunger or thirst. 
Remember, no matter how far you may roam 
That dogs, goats, and chickens, it's simply the dickens, 
Their talent stupendous for "getting back home". 
Your sins, without doubt, will aye find you out, 
And so will a scapegoat, he's bound to achieve it, 
But, die in the wilderness! Don't you believe it!
Written by Stanley Kunitz | Create an image from this poem

The Long Boat

 When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

Break of Day

 There seemed a smell of autumn in the air 
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there 
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, 
Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay 
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, 
Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in 
Under the freedom of that morning sky!’ 
And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din. 

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind, 
That sent a happy dream to him in hell?— 
Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find 
Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie 
In outcast immolation, doomed to die
Far from clean things or any hope of cheer, 
Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims 
And roars into their heads, and they can hear 
Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns. 

He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts),
He’s riding in a dusty Sussex lane 
In quiet September; slowly night departs; 
And he’s a living soul, absolved from pain. 
Beyond the brambled fences where he goes 
Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale; 
Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows; 
And there’s a wall of mist along the vale 
Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves, 
He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
That earth is telling its old peaceful tale; 
He thanks the blessed world that he was born... 
Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn. 

They’re drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate, 
And set Golumpus going on the grass;
He knows the corner where it’s best to wait 
And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass; 
The corner where old foxes make their track 
To the Long Spinney; that’s the place to be. 
The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
And then a cub looks out; and ‘Tally-o-back!’ 
He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,— 
All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood, 
And hunting surging through him like a flood 
In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
While the war drifts away, forgotten at last. 

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim 
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald, 
And the kind, simple country shines revealed 
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light, 
Then stretches down his head to crop the green. 
All things that he has loved are in his sight; 
The places where his happiness has been 
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.

. . . . 
Hark! there’s the horn: they’re drawing the Big Wood.
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

Like eyes that looked on Wastes

 Like eyes that looked on Wastes --
Incredulous of Ought
But Blank -- and steady Wilderness --
Diversified by Night --

Just Infinites of Nought --
As far as it could see --
So looked the face I looked upon --
So looked itself -- on Me --

I offered it no Help --
Because the Cause was Mine --
The Misery a Compact
As hopeless -- as divine --

Neither -- would be absolved --
Neither would be a Queen
Without the Other -- Therefore --
We perish -- tho' We reign --


Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

Song-Books of the War

 In fifty years, when peace outshines
Remembrance of the battle lines,
Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
Proud looks upon the plundered past.
On summer morn or winter's night,
Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
And through the angry marching rhymes
Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
They'll envy us the dazzling times
When sacrifice absolved our earth.

Some ancient man with silver locks
Will lift his weary face to say:
'War was a fiend who stopped our clocks
Although we met him grim and gay.'
And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,
Marvelling that any came alive
Out of the shambles that men built
And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.
But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,
Will think, 'Poor grandad's day is done.'
And dream of lads who fought in France
And lived in time to share the fun.
Written by George William Russell | Create an image from this poem

The Hour of Twilight

 WHEN the unquiet hours depart
And far away their tumults cease,
Within the twilight of the heart
We bathe in peace, are stilled with peace.


The fire that slew us through the day
For angry deed or sin of sense
Now is the star and homeward ray
To us who bow in penitence.


We kiss the lips of bygone pain
And find a secret sweet in them:
The thorns once dripped with shadowy rain
Are bright upon each diadem.


Ceases the old pathetic strife,
The struggle with the scarlet sin:
The mad enchanted laugh of life
Tempts not the soul that sees within.


No riotous and fairy song
Allures the prodigals who bow
Within the home of law, and throng
Before the mystic Father now,


Where faces of the elder years,
High souls absolved from grief and sin,
Leaning from out ancestral spheres
Beckon the wounded spirit in.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry