10 Best Famous Hostages Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Hostages poems. This is a select list of the best famous Hostages poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Hostages poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of hostages poems.

• All Famous Hostages Poems

 Over the terminal,
 the arms and chest
 of the god

brightened by snow.
 Formerly mercury,
 formerly silver,

surface yellowed
 by atmospheric sulphurs
 acid exhalations,

and now the shining
 thing's descendant.
 Obscure passages,

dim apertures:
 these clouded windows
 show a few faces

or some empty car's
 filmstrip of lit flames
 --remember them

from school,
 how they were supposed
 to teach us something?--

waxy light hurrying
 inches away from the phantom
 smudge of us, vague

in spattered glass. Then
 daylight's soft charcoal
 lusters stone walls

and we ascend to what
 passes for brightness,
 this February,

scumbled sky
 above graduated zones
 of decline:

dead rowhouses,
 charred windows'
 wet frames

around empty space,
 a few chipboard polemics
 nailed over the gaps,

speeches too long
 and obsessive for anyone
 on this train to read,

sealing the hollowed interiors
 --some of them grand once,
 you can tell by

the fillips of decoration,
 stone leaves, the frieze
 of sunflowers.

Desolate fields--open spaces,
 in a city where you
 can hardly turn around!--

seem to center
 on little flames,
 something always burning

in a barrel or can
 As if to represent
 inextinguishable,

dogged persistence?
 Though whether what burns
 is will or rage or

harsh amalgam
 I couldn't say.
 But I can tell you this,

what I've seen that
 won my allegiance most,
 though it was also

the hallmark of our ruin,
 and quick as anything
 seen in transit:

where Manhattan ends
 in the narrowing
 geographical equivalent

of a sigh (asphalt,
 arc of trestle, dull-witted
 industrial tanks

and scaffoldings, ancient now,
 visited by no one)
 on the concrete

embankment just
 above the river,
 a sudden density

and concentration
 of trash, so much
 I couldn't pick out

any one thing
 from our rising track
 as it arced onto the bridge

over the fantastic
 accumulation of jetsam
 and contraband

strewn under
 the uncompromising
 vault of heaven.

An unbelievable mess,
 so heaped and scattered
 it seemed the core

of chaos itself--
 but no, the junk was arranged
 in rough aisles,

someone's intimate
 clutter and collection,
 no walls but still

a kind of apartment
 and a fire ribboned out
 of a ruined stove,

and white plates
 were laid out
 on the table beside it.

White china! Something
 was moving, and
 --you understand

it takes longer to tell this
 than to see it, only
 a train window's worth

of actuality--
 I knew what moved
 was an arm,

the arm of the (man
 or woman?) in the center
 of that hapless welter

in layer upon layer
 of coats blankets scarves
 until the form

constituted one more
 gray unreadable;
 whoever

was lifting a hammer,
 and bringing it down
 again, tapping at

what work
 I couldn't say;
 whoever, under

the great exhausted dome
 of winter light,
 which the steep

and steel surfaces of the city
 made both more soft
 and more severe,

was making something,
 or repairing,
 was in the act

(sheer stubborn nerve of it)
 of putting together.
 Who knows what.

(And there was more,
 more I'd take all spring
 to see. I'd pick my seat

and set my paper down
 to study him again
 --he, yes, some days not

at home though usually
 in, huddled
 by the smoldering,

and when my eye wandered
 --five-second increments
 of apprehension--I saw

he had a dog!
 Who lay half in
 half out his doghouse

in the rain, golden head
 resting on splayed paws.
 He had a ruined car,

and heaps of clothes,
 and things to read--
 was no emblem,

in other words,
 but a citizen,
 who'd built a citizen's

household, even
 on the literal edge,
 while I watched

from my quick,
 high place, hurtling
 over his encampment

by the waters of Babylon.)
 Then we were gone,
 in the heat and draft

of our silver, rattling
 over the river
 into the South Bronx,

against whose greasy
 skyline rose that neoned
 billboard for cigarettes

which hostages
 my attention, always,
 as it is meant to do,

its motto ruby
 in the dark morning:
 ALIVE WITH PLEASURE.

 I 

Like a gaunt, scraggly pine 
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills; 
And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence, 
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow. 

Ungainly, labouring, huge, 
The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches; 
Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunderclouds ring the horizon, 
A nation of men shall rest beneath its shade. 
And it shall protect them all, 
Hold everyone safe there, watching aloof in silence; 
Until at last one mad stray bolt from the zenith 
Shall strike it in an instant down to earth. 

II 

There was a darkness in this man; an immense and hollow darkness, 
Of which we may not speak, nor share with him, nor enter; 
A darkness through which strong roots stretched downwards into the earth 
Towards old things: 

Towards the herdman-kings who walked the earth and spoke with God, 
Towards the wanderers who sought for they knew not what, and found their goal 
 at last; 
Towards the men who waited, only waited patiently when all seemed lost, 
Many bitter winters of defeat; 

Down to the granite of patience 
These roots swept, knotted fibrous roots, prying, piercing, seeking, 
And drew from the living rock and the living waters about it 
The red sap to carry upwards to the sun. 

Not proud, but humble, 
Only to serve and pass on, to endure to the end through service; 
For the ax is laid at the roots of the trees, and all that bring not forth 
 good fruit 
Shall be cut down on the day to come and cast into the fire. 

III 

There is a silence abroad in the land to-day, 
And in the hearts of men, a deep and anxious silence; 
And, because we are still at last, those bronze lips slowly open, 
Those hollow and weary eyes take on a gleam of light. 

Slowly a patient, firm-syllabled voice cuts through the endless silence 
Like labouring oxen that drag a plow through the chaos of rude clay-fields: 
"I went forward as the light goes forward in early spring, 
But there were also many things which I left behind. 

"Tombs that were quiet; 
One, of a mother, whose brief light went out in the darkness, 
One, of a loved one, the snow on whose grave is long falling, 
One, only of a child, but it was mine. 

"Have you forgot your graves? Go, question them in anguish, 
Listen long to their unstirred lips. From your hostages to silence, 
Learn there is no life without death, no dawn without sun-setting, 
No victory but to him who has given all." 

IV 

The clamour of cannon dies down, the furnace-mouth of the battle is silent. 
The midwinter sun dips and descends, the earth takes on afresh 
 its bright colours. 
But he whom we mocked and obeyed not, he whom we scorned and mistrusted, 
He has descended, like a god, to his rest. 

Over the uproar of cities, 
Over the million intricate threads of life wavering and crossing, 
In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, perplexing, ensnaring, 
Rises one white tomb alone. 

Beam over it, stars, 
Wrap it round, stripes -- stripes red for the pain that he bore for you -- 
Enfold it forever, O flag, rent, soiled, but repaired through your anguish; 
Long as you keep him there safe, the nations shall bow to your law. 

Strew over him flowers: 
Blue forget-me-nots from the north, and the bright pink arbutus 
From the east, and from the west rich orange blossom, 
And from the heart of the land take the passion-flower; 

Rayed, violet, dim, 
With the nails that pierced, the cross that he bore and the circlet, 
And beside it there lay also one lonely snow-white magnolia, 
Bitter for remembrance of the healing which has passed.

 In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity--the ordered life
our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face
annihilation unless all citizens get in line."

I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.

 Third Avenue in sunlight. Nature's error.
Already the bars are filled and John is there.
Beneath a plentiful lady over the mirror
He tilts his glass in the mild mahogany air.
I think of him when he first got out of college,
Serious, thin, unlikely to succeed;
For several months he hung around the Village,
Boldly T-shirtet, unfettered but unfreed.

Now he confides to a stranger, "I was first scout,
And kept my glimmers peeled till after dark.
Our outfit had as its sign a bloody knout,
We met behind the museum in Central Park.

Of course, we were kids." But still those savages,
War-painted, a flap of leather at the loins,
File silently against him. Hostages
Are never taken. One summer, in Des Moines,

They entered his hotel room, tomahawks
Flashing like barracuda. He tried to pray.
Three years of treatment. Occasionally he talks
About how he almost didn't get away.

Daily the prowling sunlight whets its knife
Along the sidewalk. We almost never meet.
In the Rembrandt dark he lifts his amber life.
My bar is somewhat further down the street.

 Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig,
bred when he was brittle, bred when big,
how he's sweating to support them.
Which birthday of the brighter darker man,
the Goya of the Globe & Blackfriars, whom-”
our full earth smiled on him

squeezing his old heart with a daughter loose
(hostages they áre)-”the world's produced,
so far, alarms, alarms.
Fancy the chill & fatigue four hundred years
award a warm one. All we know is ears.
My slab lifts up its arms

in a solicitude entire, too late.
Of brutal revelry gap your mouth to state:
Front back & backside go bare!
Cats' blackness, booze,blows, grunts, grand groans.
Yo-bad yõm i-oowaled bo v'ha'l lail awmer h're gawber!
-”Now, now, poor Bones.

 The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting on her knee;
The shadow of her husband's head was dancing on the wall;
She looked with staring eyes at it, she looked yet did not see.
She only saw a childish face that topped the table rim,
A little wistful ghost that smiled and vanished quick away;
And then because her tender eyes were flooding to the brim,
She lowered her head. . . . "Don't sorrow, dear," she heard him softly say;
"It's over now. We'll try to be as happy as before
(Ah! they who little children have, grant hostages to pain).
We gave Life chance to wound us once, but never, never more. . . ."
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe fled through the night again.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went wildered in the dark;
Like termagants the winds tore down and whirled it with the snow.
And then amid the writhing storm it saw a tiny spark,
A window broad, a spacious room all goldenly aglow,
A woman slim and Paris-gowned and exquisitely fair,
Who smiled with rapture as she watched her jewels catch the blaze;
A man in faultless evening dress, young, handsome, debonnaire,
Who smoked his cigarette and looked with frank admiring gaze.
"Oh, we are happy, sweet," said he; "youth, health, and wealth are ours.
What if a thousand toil and sweat that we may live at ease!
What if the hands are worn and torn that strew our path with flowers!
Ah, well! we did not make the world; let us not think of these.
Let's seek the beauty-spots of earth, Dear Heart, just you and I;
Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain.
Above our door we'll hang the sign: `No children need apply. . . .'"
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe sped through the night again.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went whirling on and on;
It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum;
It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone;
It peered in through a window-pane and lo! a voice said: "Come!"
And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din,
And lived in spite of everything, for life is ordered so;
A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin,
A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow.
And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame,
And gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years;
And when God comes to weigh it all, ah! whose shall be the blame
For all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears?
For oh, it is not what we do, but what we have not done!
And on that day of reckoning, when all is plain and clear,
What if we stand before the Throne, blood-guilty every one? . . .
Maybe the blackest sins of all are Selfishness and Fear.

 DAyly when I do seeke and sew for peace,
And hostages doe offer for my truth:
she cruell warriour doth her selfe addresse,
to battell, and the weary war renew'th.
Ne wilbe moou'd with reason or with rewth,
to graunt small respit to my restlesse toile:
but greedily her fell intent poursewth,
Of my poore life to make vnpitteid spoile.
Yet my poore life, all sorrowes to assoyle,
I would her yield, her wrath to pacify:
but then she seekes with torment and turmoyle,
to force me liue and will not let me dy.
All paine hath end and euery war hath peace,
but mine no price nor prayer may surcease.