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Best Famous Ambiguous Poems

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Written by Czeslaw Milosz | Create an image from this poem

Child of Europe

 1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.


Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Tale Of A Tub

 The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and the towel
dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk
in its explicit folds? or when the window,
blind with steam, will not admit the dark
which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow?

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub
bred an ample batch of omens; but now
water faucets spawn no danger; each crab
and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view,
waiting for some accidental break
in ritual, to strike -- is definitely gone;
the authentic sea denies them and will pluck
fantastic flesh down to the honest bone.

We take the plunge; under water our limbs
waver, faintly green, shuddering away
from the genuine color of skin; can our dreams
ever blur the intransigent lines which draw
the shape that shuts us in? absolute fact
intrudes even when the revolted eye
is closed; the tub exists behind our back;
its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

Yet always the ridiculous nude flanks urge
the fabrication of some cloth to cover
such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large:
each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.
In this particular tub, two knees jut up
like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise
on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap
navigates the tidal slosh of seas
breaking on legendary beaches; in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Written by Herman Melville | Create an image from this poem

America

 I

Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice's Hair-
Afloat in broadened bravery there;
With undulating long-drawn flow,
As rolled Brazilian billows go
Voluminously o'er the Line.
The Land reposed in peace below;
The children in their glee
Were folded to the exulting heart
Of young Maternity.

II

Later, and it streamed in fight
When tempest mingled with the fray,
And over the spear-point of the shaft
I saw the ambiguous lightning play.
Valor with Valor strove, and died:
Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride;
And the lorn Mother speechless stood,
Pale at the fury of her brood.


III

Yet later, and the silk did wind
Her fair cold for;
Little availed the shining shroud,
Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm
A watcher looked upon her low, and said-
She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead.
But in that sleep contortion showed
The terror of the vision there-
A silent vision unavowed,
Revealing earth's foundation bare,
And Gorgon in her hidden place.
It was a thing of fear to see
So foul a dream upon so fair a face,
And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud.

IV

But from the trance she sudden broke-
The trance, or death into promoted life;
At her feet a shivered yoke,
And in her aspect turned to heaven
No trace of passion or of strife-
A clear calm look. It spake of pain,
But such as purifies from stain-
Sharp pangs that never come again-
And triumph repressed by knowledge meet,
Power delicate, and hope grown wise,
And youth matured for age's seat-
Law on her brow and empire in her eyes.
So she, with graver air and lifted flag;
While the shadow, chased by light,
Fled along the far-brawn height,
And left her on the crag.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Gauguin In The South Seas

 They have my own fear of the dark,

Tupapau - spirits of the dead they call it;

Returning late with oil I found fear of it

Had spread my vabine naked on the bed.



Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’

Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way

She is afraid; I marvel at a tongue so readily ambiguous,

Lying across her forked thigh.



I buy rum for her ‘many parents’, for her

One cheap dress a month suffices; in return

She gathers fish and wild-fruit from the blue

Mountain groves where no white man walks.

Once when I fished from the long canoes

A fish caught the hook in its lower jaw, laughing

I learnt this meant my vahine was unfaithful :

She answered ‘Beat me’ but I lay down by her side.

I bathe in ‘the stream of life’, naked to offend

The priestly beetles - Cezanne’s ‘red shout’ indeed.

Waiting for mail I accumulate bills, pictures and sores

Side by side, lying down alone in the dark.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Merlin

 “Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, 
So far beyond the faint edge of the world? 
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian, 
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons 
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough 
And hard enough into the feathery west 
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself? 
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady, 
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”

So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight 
Because he loved him as he laughed at him, 
Intoned his idle presence on a day 
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone, 
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot 
Of Merlin’s hushed and all but unconfirmed 
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard 
At first there was a ghost in Arthur’s palace, 
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held 
All tongues from uttering what all glances told— 
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon, 
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot 
Of Merlin’s rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish, 
Had sauntered off with his imagination 
To Merlin’s Rock, where now there was no Merlin 
To meditate upon a whispering town 
Below him in the silence.—Once he said
To Gawaine: “You are young; and that being so, 
Behold the shining city of our dreams 
And of our King.”—“Long live the King,” said Gawaine.— 
“Long live the King,” said Merlin after him; 
“Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King, 
And add, God save him, also, and all kings— 
All kings and queens. I speak in general. 
Kings have I known that were but weary men 
With no stout appetite for more than peace
That was not made for them.”—“Nor were they made 
For kings,” Gawaine said, laughing.—“You are young, 
Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world 
Between your fingers, knowing not what it is 
That you are holding. Better for you and me,
I think, that we shall not be kings.” 

Gawaine, 
Remembering Merlin’s words of long ago, 
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again, 
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
“There’s more afoot and in the air to-day 
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin 
May or may not know all, but he said well 
To say to me that he would not be King. 
Nor more would I be King.” Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it 
A phantom town of many stillnesses, 
Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings 
To reign in, without omens and obscure 
Familiars to bring terror to their days;
For though a knight, and one as hard at arms 
As any, save the fate-begotten few 
That all acknowledged or in envy loathed, 
He felt a foreign sort of creeping up 
And down him, as of moist things in the dark,—
When Dagonet, coming on him unawares, 
Presuming on his title of Sir Fool, 
Addressed him and crooned on till he was done: 
“What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?” 

“Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest
Of all dishonest men, I look through Time, 
For sight of what it is that is to be. 
I look to see it, though I see it not. 
I see a town down there that holds a king, 
And over it I see a few small clouds—
Like feathers in the west, as you observe; 
And I shall see no more this afternoon 
Than what there is around us every day, 
Unless you have a skill that I have not 
To ferret the invisible for rats.”

“If you see what’s around us every day, 
You need no other showing to go mad. 
Remember that and take it home with you; 
And say tonight, ‘I had it of a fool— 
With no immediate obliquity
For this one or for that one, or for me.’” 
Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously: 
“I’ll not forget I had it of a knight, 
Whose only folly is to fool himself; 
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little, 
There’s no great folly there. So keep it up, 
As long as you’ve a legend or a song, 
And have whatever sport of us you like 
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I’ve a guess there may not be so loud 
A sound of laughing here in Camelot 
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave 
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors, 
Men say his beard is gone.”

“Do men say that?” 
A twitch of an impatient weariness 
Played for a moment over the lean face 
Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly: 
“The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight
Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing, 
One of these days.”—Gawaine looked hard at him: 
“If I be too familiar with a fool, 
I’m on the way to be another fool,” 
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
“Yes, Dagonet,” he ventured, with a laugh, 
“Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly, 
And that he shines now as the Lord’s anointed, 
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth 
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace.”

Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head: 
“I grant your valiance of a kind of youth 
To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question; 
For, though I know no more than any churl 
Who pinches any chambermaid soever
In the King’s palace, I look not to Merlin 
For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb 
He comes again to Camelot. Time swings 
A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace 
Goes down before its edge like so much clover.
No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes, 
Without a trumpet—and without a beard, 
If what you say men say of him be true— 
Nor yet for sudden war.” 

Gawaine, for a moment,
Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet, 
And, making nothing of it, looked abroad 
As if at something cheerful on all sides, 
And back again to the fool’s unasking eyes: 
“Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace,
Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,” 
Said he, with admiration for the man 
Whom Folly called a fool: “And we have known him; 
We knew him once when he knew everything.” 

“He knew as much as God would let him know
Until he met the lady Vivian. 
I tell you that, for the world knows all that; 
Also it knows he told the King one day 
That he was to be buried, and alive, 
In Brittany; and that the King should see
The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed 
Away to Vivian in Broceliande, 
Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers 
And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods 
Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.
Wise books of every lore of every land 
Are there to fill his days, if he require them, 
And there are players of all instruments— 
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings 
To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms
And there forgets that any town alive 
Had ever such a name as Camelot. 
So Vivian holds him with her love, they say, 
And he, who has no age, has not grown old. 
I swear to nothing, but that’s what they say.
That’s being buried in Broceliande 
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy. 
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard 
This tale, or many like it, more than once; 
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins, 
Or low and loses. And you say to me, 
‘If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay 
Away from Brittany.’ Gawaine, you are young, 
And Merlin’s in his grave.”

“Merlin said once 
That I was young, and it’s a joy for me 
That I am here to listen while you say it. 
Young or not young, if that be burial, 
May I be buried long before I die.
I might be worse than young; I might be old.”— 
Dagonet answered, and without a smile: 
“Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that; 
A fancy—a mere fancy.” Then he smiled: 
“And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination 
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries 
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord. 
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman, 
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it. 
But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high! 
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,—and her love. 
Gawaine, farewell.” 

“Farewell, Sir Dagonet,
And may the devil take you presently.” 
He followed with a vexed and envious eye, 
And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet’s 
Departure, till his gaunt obscurity 
Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.
“Poor fool!” he murmured. “Or am I the fool? 
With all my fast ascendency in arms, 
That ominous clown is nearer to the King 
Than I am—yet; and God knows what he knows, 
And what his wits infer from what he sees
And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows 
Of Lancelot, or what I might know now, 
Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool 
To springe a friend.… No, I like not this day. 
There’s a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,— 
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany, 
With Vivian and the viols. It’s all too strange.” 

And later, when descending to the city, 
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within, 
Confirming fervidly his own conviction: 
“It’s all too strange, and half the world’s half crazy!”— 
He scowled: “Well, I agree with Lamorak.” 
He frowned, and passed: “And I like not this day.”


Written by A S J Tessimond | Create an image from this poem

Flight Of Stairs

 Stairs fly as straight as hawks;
Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing
At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching. 
Stairs sway at the height of their flight
Like a melody in Tristan;
Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers
Before they close them.

They curiously investigate
The shells of buildings,
A hollow core,
Shell in a shell.

Useless to produce their path to infinity
Or turn it to a moral symbol,
For their flight is ambiguous, upwards or downwards as you please;
Their fountain is frozen,
Their concertina is silent.
Written by Aleister Crowley | Create an image from this poem

The Priestess of Panormita

 Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed it with blood for dew!
After the orange bars
That ribbed the green west dying
Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,
I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.

The ambrosial moon that arose
With breasts slow heaving in splendour
Drops wine from her infinite snows.
Ineffably, utterly, tender. 
O moon! ambrosial moon!
Arise on my desert of sorrow
That the Magical eyes of me swoon
With lust of rain to-morrow!

Ages and ages ago
I stood on the bank of a river
Holy and Holy and holy, I know,
For ever and ever and ever!
A priest in the mystical shrine
I muttered a redeless rune,
Till the waters were redder than wine
In the blush of the harlot moon.

I and my brother priests
Worshipped a wonderful woman
With a body lithe as a beast's
Subtly, horribly human.
Deep in the pit of her eyes
I saw the image of death,
And I drew the water of sighs
From the well of her lullaby breath.

She sitteth veiled for ever
Brooding over the waste.
She hath stirred or spoken never.
She is fiercely, manly chaste!
What madness made me awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her poisonous body held? 

By night I ravished a maid
From her father's camp to the cave.
I bared the beautiful blade;
I dipped her thrice i' the wave;
I slit her throat as a lamb's,
That the fount of blood leapt high
With my clamorous dithyrambs
Like a stain on the shield of the sky.

With blood and censer and song
I rent the mysterious veil:
My eyes gaze long and long
On the deep of that blissful bale.
My cold grey kisses awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her beautiful body held.

But --- God! I was not content
With the blasphemous secret of years;
The veil is hardly rent
While the eyes rain stones for tears.
So I clung to the lips and laughed
As the storms of death abated,
The storms of the grevious graft
By the swing of her soul unsated.

Wherefore reborn as I am
By a stream profane and foul
In the reign of a Tortured Lamb,
In the realm of a sexless Owl, 
I am set apart from the rest
By meed of the mystic rune
That reads in peril and pest
The ambrosial moon --- the moon!

For under the tawny star
That shines in the Bull above
I can rein the riotous car
Of galloping, galloping Love;
And straight to the steady ray
Of the Lion-heart Lord I career,
Pointing my flaming way
With the spasm of night for a spear!

O moon! O secret sweet!
Chalcedony clouds of caresses
About the flame of our feet,
The night of our terrible tresses!
Is it a wonder, then,
If the people are mad with blindness,
And nothing is stranger to men
Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness?

Nay! let him fashion an arrow
Whose heart is sober and stout!
Let him pierce his God to the marrow!
Let the soul of his God flow out!
Whether a snake or a sun
In his horoscope Heaven hath cast,
It is nothing; every one
Shall win to the moon at last. 

The mage hath wrought by his art
A billion shapes in the sun.
Look through to the heart of his heart,
And the many are shapes of one!
An end to the art of the mage,
And the cold grey blank of the prison!
An end to the adamant age!
The ambrosial moon is arisen.

I have bought a lily-white goat
For the price of a crown of thorns,
A collar of gold for its throat,
A scarlet bow for its horns.
I have bought a lark in the lift
For the price of a butt of sherry:
With these, and God for a gift,
It needs no wine to be merry!

I have bought for a wafer of bread
A garden of poppies and clover;
For a water bitter and dead
A foam of fire flowing over.
From the Lamb and his prison fare
And the owl's blind stupor, arise
Be ye wise, and strong, and fair,
And the nectar afloat in your eyes!

Arise, O ambrosial moon
By the strong immemorial spell,
By the subtle veridical rune
That is mighty in heaven and hell! 
Drip thy mystical dews
On the tongues of the tender fauns
In the shade of initiate yews
Remote from the desert dawns!

Satyrs and Fauns, I call.
Bring your beauty to man!
I am the mate for ye all'
I am the passionate Pan.
Come, O come to the dance
Leaping with wonderful whips,
Life on the stroke of a glance,
Death in the stroke of the lips!

I am hidden beyond,
Shed in a secret sinew
Smitten through by the fond
Folly of wisdom in you!
Come, while the moon (the moon!)
Sheds her ambrosial splendour,
Reels in the redeless rune
Ineffably, utterly, tender!
Hark! the appealing cry
Of deadly hurt in the hollow: ---
Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Ay!
Smitten to death by Apollo.
Swift, O maiden moon,
Send thy ray-dews after;
Turn the dolorous tune
To soft ambiguous laughter! 

Mourn, O Maenads, mourn!
Surely your comfort is over:
All we laugh at you lorn.
Ours are the poppies and clover!
O that mouth and eyes,
Mischevious, male, alluring!
O that twitch of the thighs
Dorian past enduring!

Where is wisdom now?
Where the sage and his doubt?
Surely the sweat of the brow
Hath driven the demon out.
Surely the scented sleep
That crowns the equal war
Is wiser than only to weep ---
To weep for evermore!

Now, at the crown of the year,
The decadent days of October,
I come to thee, God, without fear;
Pious, chaste, and sober.
I solemnly sacrifice
This first-fruit flower of wine
For a vehicle of thy vice
As I am Thine to be mine.

For five in the year gone by
I pray Thee give to me one;
A love stronger than I,
A moon to swallow the sun! 
May he be like a lily-white goat
Crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for his throat,
A scarlet bow for his horns!

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry