Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Nonsense Poems

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

Search and read the best famous Nonsense poems, articles about Nonsense poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Nonsense poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

See Also:
Written by Linda Pastan | Create an image from this poem

The New Dog

 Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.


Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

A Childs Nightmare

 Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, *****,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."

When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"
Written by John Wilmot | Create an image from this poem

A Satyre Against Mankind

 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five;
And before certain instinct will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err.
Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind,
Which leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wand'ring ways it takes,
Through Error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimsey's, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down,
Into Doubt's boundless sea where, like to drown,
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try
To swim with bladders of Philosophy;
In hopes still to o'ertake the escaping light;
The vapour dances, in his dancing sight,
Till spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, make him to understand,
After a search so painful, and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong:

Huddled In dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
Pride drew him in, as cheats their bubbles catch,
And made him venture; to be made a wretch.
His wisdom did has happiness destroy,
Aiming to know that world he should enjoy;
And Wit was his vain, frivolous pretence
Of pleasing others, at his own expense.
For wits are treated just like common whores,
First they're enjoyed, and then kicked out of doors;
The pleasure past, a threatening doubt remains,
That frights th' enjoyer with succeeding pains:
Women and men of wit are dangerous tools,
And ever fatal to admiring fools.
Pleasure allures, and when the fops escape,
'Tis not that they're beloved, but fortunate,
And therefore what they fear, at heart they hate:

But now, methinks some formal band and beard
Takes me to task; come on sir, I'm prepared:

"Then by your Favour, anything that's writ
Against this jibing, jingling knack called Wit
Likes me abundantly: but you take care
Upon this point not to be too severe.
Perhaps my Muse were fitter for this part,
For I profess I can be very smart
On Wit, which I abhor with all my heart;
I long to lash it in some sharp essay,
But your grand indiscretion bids me stay,
And turns my tide of ink another way.
What rage Torments in your degenerate mind,
To make you rail at reason, and mankind
Blessed glorious man! To whom alone kind heaven
An everlasting soul hath freely given;
Whom his great maker took such care to make,
That from himself he did the image take;
And this fair frame in shining reason dressed,
To dignify his nature above beast.
Reason, by whose aspiring influence
We take a flight beyond material sense,
Dive into mysteries, then soaring pierce
The flaming limits of the universe,
Search heaven and hell, Find out what's acted there,
And give the world true grounds of hope and fear."

Hold mighty man, I cry, all this we know,
From the pathetic pen of Ingelo;
From Patrlck's Pilgrim, Sibbes' Soliloquies,
And 'tis this very reason I despise,
This supernatural gift that makes a mite
Think he's an image of the infinite;
Comparing his short life, void of all rest,
To the eternal, and the ever-blessed.
This busy, pushing stirrer-up of doubt,
That frames deep mysteries, then finds them out;
Filling with frantic crowds of thinking fools
The reverend bedlam's, colleges and schools;
Borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce
The limits of the boundless universe;
So charming ointments make an old witch fly,
And bear a crippled carcass through the sky.
'Tis the exalted power whose business lies
In nonsense and impossibilities.
This made a whimsical philosopher
Before the spacious world his tub prefer,
And we have modern cloistered coxcombs, who
Retire to think 'cause they have nought to do.
But thoughts are given for action's government;
Where action ceases, thought's impertinent:
Our sphere of action is life's happiness,
And he that thinks beyond thinks like an ass.

Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh.
I own right reason, which I would obey:
That reason which distinguishes by sense,
And gives us rules of good and ill from thence;
That bounds desires. with a reforming will
To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill. -
Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,
Renewing appetites yours would destroy.
My reason is my friend, yours is a cheat,
Hunger calls out, my reason bids me eat;
Perversely. yours your appetite does mock:
This asks for food, that answers, 'what's o'clock'
This plain distinction, sir, your doubt secures,
'Tis not true reason I despise, but yours.
Thus I think reason righted, but for man,
I'll ne'er recant, defend him if you can:
For all his pride, and his philosophy,
'Tis evident: beasts are in their own degree
As wise at least, and better far than he.

Those creatures are the wisest who attain. -
By surest means. the ends at which they aim.
If therefore Jowler finds and kills the hares,
Better than Meres supplies committee chairs;
Though one's a statesman, th' other but a hound,
Jowler in justice would be wiser found.
You see how far man's wisdom here extends.
Look next if human nature makes amends;
Whose principles are most generous and just,
- And to whose morals you would sooner trust:

Be judge yourself, I'll bring it to the test,
Which is the basest creature, man or beast
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
But savage man alone does man betray:
Pressed by necessity; they kill for food,
Man undoes man, to do himself no good.
With teeth and claws, by nature armed, they hunt
Nature's allowance, to supply their want.
But man, with smiles, embraces. friendships. Praise,
Inhumanely his fellow's life betrays;
With voluntary pains works his distress,
Not through necessity, but wantonness.
For hunger or for love they bite, or tear,
Whilst wretched man is still in arms for fear.
For fear he arms, and is of arms afraid:
From fear, to fear, successively betrayed.
Base fear, the source whence his best passions came.
His boasted honour, and his dear-bought fame.
The lust of power, to whom he's such a slave,
And for the which alone he dares be brave;
To which his various projects are designed,
Which makes him generous, affable, and kind.
For which he takes such pains to be thought wise,
And screws his actions, in a forced disguise;
Leads a most tedious life in misery,
Under laborious, mean hypocrisy.
Look to the bottom of his vast design,
Wherein man's wisdom, power, and glory join:
The good he acts. the ill he does endure.
'Tis all from fear, to make himself secure.
Merely for safety after fame they thirst,
For all men would be cowards if they durst.
And honesty's against all common sense,
Men must be knaves, 'tis in their own defence.
Mankind's dishonest: if you think it fair
Among known cheats to play upon the square,
You'll be undone.
Nor can weak truth your reputation save,
The knaves will all agree to call you knave.
Wronged shall he live, insulted o'er, oppressed,
Who dares be less a villain than the rest.

Thus sir, you see what human nature craves,
Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves;
The difference lies, as far as I can see.
Not in the thing itself, but the degree;
And all the subject matter of debate
Is only, who's a knave of the first rate

All this with indignation have I hurled
At the pretending part of the proud world,
Who, swollen with selfish vanity, devise,
False freedoms, holy cheats, and formal lies,
Over their fellow slaves to tyrannise.

But if in Court so just a man there be,
(In Court, a just man - yet unknown to me)
Who does his needful flattery direct
Not to oppress and ruin, but protect:
Since flattery, which way soever laid,
Is still a tax: on that unhappy trade.
If so upright a statesman you can find,
Whose passions bend to his unbiased mind,
Who does his arts and policies apply
To raise his country, not his family;
Nor while his pride owned avarice withstands,
Receives close bribes, from friends corrupted hands.

Is there a churchman who on God relies
Whose life, his faith and doctrine justifies
Not one blown up, with vain prelatic pride,
Who for reproofs of sins does man deride;
Whose envious heart makes preaching a pretence
With his obstreperous, saucy eloquence,
To chide at kings, and rail at men of sense;
Who from his pulpit vents more peevlsh lies,
More bitter railings, scandals, calumnies,
Than at a gossiping are thrown about
When the good wives get drunk, and then fall out.
None of that sensual tribe, whose talents lie
In avarice, pride, sloth, and gluttony.
Who hunt good livings; but abhor good lives,
Whose lust exalted, to that height arrives,
They act adultery with their own wives.
And ere a score of years completed be,
Can from the loftiest pulpit proudly see,
Half a large parish their own progeny.
Nor doting bishop, who would be adored
For domineering at the Council board;

A greater fop, in business at fourscore,
Fonder of serious toys, affected more,
Than the gay, glittering fool at twenty proves,
With all his noise, his tawdry clothes and loves.
But a meek, humble man, of honest sense,
Who preaching peace does practise continence;
Whose pious life's a proof he does believe
Mysterious truths which no man can conceive.

If upon Earth there dwell such god-like men,
I'll here recant my paradox to them,
Adores those shrines of virtue, homage pay,
And with the rabble world their laws obey.

If such there are, yet grant me this at least,
Man differs more from man than man from beast.
Written by Edgar Allan Poe | Create an image from this poem

An Enigma

 "Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, 
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. 
Through all the flimsy things we see at once 
As easily as through a Naples bonnet- 
Trash of all trash!- how can a lady don it? 
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff- 
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff 
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." 
And, veritably, Sol is right enough. 
The general tuckermanities are arrant 
Bubbles- ephemeral and so transparent- 
But this is, now- you may depend upon it- 
Stable, opaque, immortal- all by dint 
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't.
Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Child Development

 As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.


Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Marginalia

 Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

Wittgensteins Ladder

 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time I met Wittgenstein, I was 
late. "The traffic was murder," I explained. 
He spent the next forty-five minutes 
analyzing this sentence. Then he was silent. 
I wondered why he had chosen a water tower
for our meeting. I also wondered how
I would leave, since the ladder I had used 
to climb up here had fallen to the ground. 

2. 

Wittgenstein served as a machine-gunner 
in the Austrian Army in World War I. 
Before the war he studied logic in Cambridge 
with Bertrand Russell. Having inherited 
his father's fortune (iron and steel), he 
gave away his money, not to the poor, whom 
it would corrupt, but to relations so rich 
it would not thus affect them. 

3. 

On leave in Vienna in August 1918 
he assembled his notebook entries 
into the Tractatus, Since it provided 
the definitive solution to all the problems 
of philosophy, he decided to broaden 
his interests. He became a schoolteacher, 
then a gardener's assistant at a monastery 
near Vienna. He dabbled in architecture. 

4. 

He returned to Cambridge in 1929, 
receiving his doctorate for the Tractatus, 
"a work of genius," in G. E. Moore's opinion. 
Starting in 1930 he gave a weekly lecture 
and led a weekly discussion group. He spoke 
without notes amid long periods of silence. 
Afterwards, exhausted, he went to the movies 
and sat in the front row. He liked Carmen Miranda. 

5. 

He would visit Russell's rooms at midnight 
and pace back and forth "like a caged tiger. 
On arrival, he would announce that when
he left he would commit suicide. So, in spite 
of getting sleepy, I did not like to turn him out." On 
such a night, after hours of dead silence, Russell said, 
"Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about 
yours sins?" "Both," he said, and resumed his silence.

6. 

Philosophy was an activity, not a doctrine. 
"Solipsism, when its implications are followed out 
strictly, coincides with pure realism," he wrote. 
Dozens of dons wondered what he meant. Asked 
how he knew that "this color is red," he smiled
and said, "because I have learnt English." There 
were no other questions. Wittgenstein let the 
silence gather. Then he said, "this itself is the answer." 

7. 

Religion went beyond the boundaries of language, 
yet the impulse to run against "the walls of our cage," 
though "perfectly, absolutely useless," was not to be 
dismissed. A. J. Ayer, one of Oxford's ablest minds, 
was puzzled. If logic cannot prove a nonsensical 
conclusion, why didn't Wittgenstein abandon it, 
"along with the rest of metaphysics, as not worth 
serious attention, except perhaps for sociologists"? 

8. 

Because God does not reveal himself in this world, and 
"the value of this work," Wittgenstein wrote, "is that 
it shows how little is achieved when these problems 
are solved." When I quoted Gertrude Stein's line 
about Oakland, "there's no there there," he nodded. 
Was there a there, I persisted. His answer: Yes and No.
It was as impossible to feel another's person's pain 
as to suffer another person's toothache.

9. 

At Cambridge the dons quoted him reverently. 
I asked them what they thought was his biggest
contribution to philosophy. "Whereof one cannot 
speak, thereof one must be silent," one said.
Others spoke of his conception of important 
nonsense. But I liked best the answer John 
Wisdom gave: "His asking of the question 
`Can one play chess without the queen?'" 

10. 

Wittgenstein preferred American detective 
stories to British philosophy. He liked lunch 
and didn't care what it was, "so long as it was 
always the same," noted Professor Malcolm 
of Cornell, a former student, in whose house 
in Ithaca Wittgenstein spent hours doing 
handyman chores. He was happy then. 
There was no need to say a word.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

London Bridge

 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us,— 
For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. 
All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, 
And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; 
For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, 
Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top.
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? 
Do you hear the children singing?… God, will you make them stop!” 

“And what now in His holy name have you to do with mountains? 
We’re back to town again, my dear, and we’ve a dance tonight. 
Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and—what the devil!
Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right.” 

“God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, 
Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. 
All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden— 
Well, I met him…. Yes, I met him, and I talked with him—today.”

“You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, 
Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? 
Take a chair; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle. 
Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far 
To go back, and I’m your servant. I’m the lord, but you’re the master.
Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.” 

“Do you mean— 
Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?” 

“I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. 
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore.” 

“Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, 
Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? 
Is it worth a woman’s torture to stand here and have you smiling, 
With only your poor fetish of possession on your side?
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that’s not one to scare me; 
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. 
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials 
Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; 
And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered.
Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? 
Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy—when it leads you 
Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?” 

“Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense 
You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this?
Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic, 
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. 
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; 
And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.” 

“Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?” 

“Think again, 
My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming 
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, 
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention—
Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not, 
That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. 
But I shouldn’t throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. 
Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime 
Don’t go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now.”

“Make believe! 
When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, 
Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? 
How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you 
That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose.
Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….” 

“And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.” 
“If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, 
Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? 
If you save me, and I lose him—I don’t know—it won’t much matter.
I dare say that I’ve lied enough, but now I do not lie.” 

“Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing 
While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? 
Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. 
There you are—piff! presto!”

“When I came into this room, 
It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, 
As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; 
And I told myself before I came to find you, ‘I shall tell him, 
If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.’
And if you say, as I’ve no doubt you will before I finish, 
That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, 
To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, 
Don’t think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; 
For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge
Of how little you found that’s in me and was in me all along. 
I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, 
I’d be half as much as horses,—and it seems that I was wrong; 
I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense 
Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake;
But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it— 
Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. 
I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, 
But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. 
Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories
With a value more elusive than a dollar’s? Are you sure 
That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger 
To endure another like it—and another—till I’m dead?” 

“Has your tame cat sold a picture?—or more likely had a windfall? 
Or for God’s sake, what’s broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head?
A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing 
Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won’t…. 
What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, 
And I’ll say I never heard it…. Oh, you…. If you….” 

“If I don’t?”
“There are men who say there’s reason hidden somewhere in a woman, 
But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung.” 

“He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. 
I wonder if He makes believe that He is growing young; 
I wonder if He makes believe that women who are giving
All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives 
Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible….” 

“Stop—you devil!” 
“…Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. 
If a dollar’s worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together,
Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? 
And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, 
Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass 
That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered 
That I made you into someone else…. Oh!…Well, there are worse ways.
But why aim it at my feet—unless you fear you may be sorry…. 
There are many days ahead of you.” 

“I do not see those days.” 
“I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. 
And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die?
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? 
Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?” 
“Damn the children!” 

“Why? 
What have they done?…Well, then,—do it…. Do it now, and have it over.”
“Oh, you devil!…Oh, you….” 

“No, I’m not a devil, I’m a prophet— 
One who sees the end already of so much that one end more 
Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, 
Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther 
For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. 
Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations 
For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. 
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres,
On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; 
We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, 
And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. 
There!—I’m glad you’ve put it back; for I don’t like it. Shut the drawer now. 
No—no—don’t cancel anything. I’ll dance until I drop.
I can’t walk yet, but I’m going to…. Go away somewhere, and leave me…. 
Oh, you children! Oh, you children!…God, will they never stop!”
Written by Jackie Kay | Create an image from this poem

The Mother Poem (two)

 I always wanted to give birth
Do that incredible natural thing
That women do-I nearly broke down
When I heard we couldn't
And then my man said to me
Well there's always adoption
(we didn't have test tubes and the rest
then) and well even in the early sixties there was something
Scandalous about adopting
Telling the world your secret failure
Bringing up an alien child
Who knew what it would turn out to be?

But I wanted a baby badly
Didn't need to come from my womb
Or his seed for me to love it
And I had sisters who looked just like me
Didn't need carbon copy features
Blueprints for generations
It was my baby a baby a baby I wanted

So I watched my child grow
Always the first to hear her in the night
All this umbilical knot business is
Nonsense-the men can afford deeper sleeps
That's all. I listened to hear her talk
And when she did I heard my voice under hers
And now some of her mannerisms
Crack me up

All them stories could have really had me
Believing unless you are breast fed
You'll never be close and the rest
My daughter's warmth spills over me
Leaves a gap
When she's gone
I think of her mother. She remembers how I read her
All those newspaper and magazine
Cuttings about adoption
She says her head's an encyclopedia
Of sob stories: the ones that were never
Told and committed suicide on their wedding nights

I always believed in the telling anyhow
You can't keep something like that secret
I wanted her to think of her other mother
Out there thinking that child I had will be
Eight today nine today all the way up to
God knows when. I told my daughter;
I bet your mother's never missed your birthday
How could she

Now when people say ah but
It's not like having your own child though is it
I say of course it is what else is it
She's my child I have brought her up
Told her stories wept at losses
Laughed at her pleasures she is mine.

Yes. Well maybe that is why I don't
Like all this talk about her being black
I brought her up as my own
As I would any other child
Colour matters to the nuttters
But she says my daughter says
It matters to her.

I suppose there would have been things
I couldn't have understood with any child
We knew she was coloured
They told us they had no babies at first
And I chanced to say it didn't matter
What colour it was and then they
Said oh well are you sure in that case
We have a baby for you
To think she wasn't even thought of as a baby!
My baby my baby.
Written by Friedrich von Schiller | Create an image from this poem

Shakespeares Ghost - A Parody

 I, too, at length discerned great Hercules' energy mighty,--
Saw his shade. He himself was not, alas, to be seen.
Round him were heard, like the screaming of birds,
the screams of tragedians,
And, with the baying of dogs, barked dramaturgists around.
There stood the giant in all his terrors; his bow was extended,
And the bolt, fixed on the string, steadily aimed at the heart.
"What still hardier action, unhappy one, dost thou now venture,
Thus to descend to the grave of the departed souls here?"--
"'Tis to see Tiresias I come, to ask of the prophet
Where I the buskin of old, that now has vanished, may find?"
"If they believe not in Nature, nor the old Grecian, but vainly
Wilt thou convey up from hence that dramaturgy to them."
"Oh, as for Nature, once more to tread our stage she has ventured,
Ay, and stark-naked beside, so that each rib we count."
"What? Is the buskin of old to be seen in truth on your stage, then,
Which even I came to fetch, out of mid-Tartarus' gloom?"--
"There is now no more of that tragic bustle, for scarcely
Once in a year on the boards moves thy great soul, harness-clad."
"Doubtless 'tis well! Philosophy now has refined your sensations,
And from the humor so bright fly the affections so black."--
"Ay, there is nothing that beats a jest that is stolid and barren,
But then e'en sorrow can please, if 'tis sufficiently moist."
"But do ye also exhibit the graceful dance of Thalia,
Joined to the solemn step with which Melpomene moves?"--
"Neither! For naught we love but what is Christian and moral;
And what is popular, too, homely, domestic, and plain."
"What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now,
Not an Andromache e'en, not an Orestes, my friend?"
"No! there is naught to be seen there but parsons,
and syndics of commerce,
Secretaries perchance, ensigns, and majors of horse."
"But, my good friend, pray tell me, what can such people e'er meet with
That can be truly called great?--what that is great can they do?"
"What? Why they form cabals, they lend upon mortgage, they pocket
Silver spoons, and fear not e'en in the stocks to be placed."
"Whence do ye, then, derive the destiny, great and gigantic,
Which raises man up on high, e'en when it grinds him to dust?"--
"All mere nonsense! Ourselves, our worthy acquaintances also,
And our sorrows and wants, seek we, and find we, too, here."
"But all this ye possess at home both apter and better,--
Wherefore, then, fly from yourselves, if 'tis yourselves that ye seek?"
"Be not offended, great hero, for that is a different question;
Ever is destiny blind,--ever is righteous the bard."
"Then one meets on your stage your own contemptible nature,
While 'tis in vain one seeks there nature enduring and great?"
"There the poet is host, and act the fifth is the reckoning;
And, when crime becomes sick, virtue sits down to the feast!"

Book: Reflection on the Important Things