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Best Famous Openings Poems

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

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Written by Amy Clampitt | Create an image from this poem

A Silence

 past parentage or gender
beyond sung vocables
the slipped-between
the so infinitesimal
fault line
a limitless
interiority

beyond the woven
unicorn the maiden
(man-carved worm-eaten)
God at her hip
incipient
the untransfigured
cottontail
bluebell and primrose
growing wild a strawberry
chagrin night terrors
past the earthlit
unearthly masquerade

(we shall be changed)

a silence opens

 *

the larval feeder
naked hairy ravenous
inventing from within
itself its own
raw stuffs'
hooked silk-hung
relinquishment

behind the mask
the milkfat shivering
sinew isinglass
uncrumpling transient
greed to reinvest

 *

names have been
given (revelation
kif nirvana
syncope) for
whatever gift
unasked
gives birth to

torrents
fixities
reincarnations of
the angels
Joseph Smith
enduring
martyrdom

a cavernous
compunction driving
founder-charlatans
who saw in it
the infinite
love of God
and had
(George Fox
was one)
great openings


Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

An April Day

 When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.

From the earth's loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide
Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.

Sweet April! many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life's golden fruit is shed.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Hiawathas Fishing

 Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
With his fishing-line of cedar, 
Of the twisted bark of cedar, 
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 
In his birch canoe exulting 
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water 
He could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depths below him; 
See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, 
Like a sunbeam in the water,
See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, 
Like a spider on the bottom, 
On the white and sandy bottom.
At the stern sat Hiawatha, 
With his fishing-line of cedar; 
In his plumes the breeze of morning 
Played as in the hemlock branches; 
On the bows, with tail erected, 
Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo; 
In his fur the breeze of morning 
Played as in the prairie grasses.
On the white sand of the bottom 
Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma, 
Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes; 
Through his gills he breathed the water, 
With his fins he fanned and winnowed, 
With his tail he swept the sand-floor.
There he lay in all his armor; 
On each side a shield to guard him, 
Plates of bone upon his forehead, 
Down his sides and back and shoulders
Plates of bone with spines projecting 
Painted was he with his war-paints, 
Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, 
Spots of brown and spots of sable; 
And he lay there on the bottom, 
Fanning with his fins of purple, 
As above him Hiawatha 
In his birch canoe came sailing, 
With his fishing-line of cedar.
"Take my bait," cried Hiawatha, 
Dawn into the depths beneath him, 
"Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma! 
Come up from below the water, 
Let us see which is the stronger!" 
And he dropped his line of cedar 
Through the clear, transparent water, 
Waited vainly for an answer, 
Long sat waiting for an answer, 
And repeating loud and louder, 
"Take my bait, O King of Fishes!"
Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Fanning slowly in the water, 
Looking up at Hiawatha, 
Listening to his call and clamor, 
His unnecessary tumult, 
Till he wearied of the shouting; 
And he said to the Kenozha, 
To the pike, the Maskenozha, 
"Take the bait of this rude fellow, 
Break the line of Hiawatha!"
In his fingers Hiawatha 
Felt the loose line jerk and tighten, 
As he drew it in, it tugged so 
That the birch canoe stood endwise, 
Like a birch log in the water, 
With the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Perched and frisking on the summit.
Full of scorn was Hiawatha 
When he saw the fish rise upward, 
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, 
Coming nearer, nearer to him, 
And he shouted through the water, 
"Esa! esa! shame upon you! 
You are but the pike, Kenozha, 
You are not the fish I wanted, 
You are not the King of Fishes!"
Reeling downward to the bottom 
Sank the pike in great confusion, 
And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, 
Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
To the bream, with scales of crimson, 
"Take the bait of this great boaster, 
Break the line of Hiawatha!"
Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, 
Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
Seized the line of Hiawatha, 
Swung with all his weight upon it, 
Made a whirlpool in the water, 
Whirled the birch canoe in circles, 
Round and round in gurgling eddies, 
Till the circles in the water 
Reached the far-off sandy beaches, 
Till the water-flags and rushes 
Nodded on the distant margins.
But when Hiawatha saw him 
Slowly rising through the water, 
Lifting up his disk refulgent, 
Loud he shouted in derision, 
"Esa! esa! shame upon you! 
You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
You are not the fish I wanted, 
You are not the King of Fishes!"
Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming, 
Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
And again the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Heard the shout of Hiawatha,
Heard his challenge of defiance, 
The unnecessary tumult, 
Ringing far across the water.
From the white sand of the bottom 
Up he rose with angry gesture, 
Quivering in each nerve and fibre, 
Clashing all his plates of armor, 
Gleaming bright with all his war-paint; 
In his wrath he darted upward, 
Flashing leaped into the sunshine, 
Opened his great jaws, and swallowed 
Both canoe and Hiawatha.
Down into that darksome cavern 
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, 
As a log on some black river 
Shoots and plunges down the rapids, 
Found himself in utter darkness, 
Groped about in helpless wonder, 
Till he felt a great heart beating, 
Throbbing in that utter darkness.
And he smote it in his anger, 
With his fist, the heart of Nahma, 
Felt the mighty King of Fishes 
Shudder through each nerve and fibre, 
Heard the water gurgle round him 
As he leaped and staggered through it, 
Sick at heart, and faint and weary.
Crosswise then did Hiawatha 
Drag his birch-canoe for safety, 
Lest from out the jaws of Nahma, 
In the turmoil and confusion, 
Forth he might be hurled and perish. 
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Frisked and chatted very gayly, 
Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha 
Till the labor was completed.
Then said Hiawatha to him, 
"O my little friend, the squirrel,
Bravely have you toiled to help me; 
Take the thanks of Hiawatha, 
And the name which now he gives you; 
For hereafter and forever 
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, 
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!"
And again the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Gasped and quivered in the water, 
Then was still, and drifted landward 
Till he grated on the pebbles, 
Till the listening Hiawatha 
Heard him grate upon the margin, 
Felt him strand upon the pebbles, 
Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, 
Lay there dead upon the margin.
Then he heard a clang and flapping, 
As of many wings assembling, 
Heard a screaming and confusion, 
As of birds of prey contending, 
Saw a gleam of light above him, 
Shining through the ribs of Nahma, 
Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, 
Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, 
Gazing at him through the opening, 
Heard them saying to each other, 
"'T is our brother, Hiawatha!"
And he shouted from below them, 
Cried exulting from the caverns: 
"O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! 
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; 
Make the rifts a little larger, 
With your claws the openings widen, 
Set me free from this dark prison, 
And henceforward and forever 
Men shall speak of your achievements, 
Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, 
Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!"
And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls
Toiled with beak and claws together, 
Made the rifts and openings wider 
In the mighty ribs of Nahma, 
And from peril and from prison, 
From the body of the sturgeon, 
From the peril of the water, 
They released my Hiawatha.
He was standing near his wigwam, 
On the margin of the water, 
And he called to old Nokomis, 
Called and beckoned to Nokomis, 
Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Lying lifeless on the pebbles, 
With the sea-gulls feeding on him.
"I have slain the Mishe-Nahma,
Slain the King of Fishes!" said he' 
"Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him,
Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls; 
Drive them not away, Nokomis, 
They have saved me from great peril 
In the body of the sturgeon, 
Wait until their meal is ended, 
Till their craws are full with feasting, 
Till they homeward fly, at sunset, 
To their nests among the marshes; 
Then bring all your pots and kettles, 
And make oil for us in Winter."
And she waited till the sun set, 
Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun, 
Rose above the tranquil water, 
Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls, 
From their banquet rose with clamor, 
And across the fiery sunset 
Winged their way to far-off islands, 
To their nests among the rushes.
To his sleep went Hiawatha, 
And Nokomis to her labor, 
Toiling patient in the moonlight,
Till the sun and moon changed places, 
Till the sky was red with sunrise, 
And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, 
Came back from the reedy islands, 
Clamorous for their morning banquet.
Three whole days and nights alternate 
Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls 
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, 
Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, 
Till the sea-gulls came no longer, 
And upon the sands lay nothing 
But the skeleton of Nahma.
Written by Mark Doty | Create an image from this poem

Demolition

 The intact facade's now almost black 
in the rain; all day they've torn at the back 
of the building, "the oldest concrete structure 
in New England," the newspaper said. By afternoon, 
when the backhoe claw appears above 
three stories of columns and cornices, 

the crowd beneath their massed umbrellas cheer. 
Suddenly the stairs seem to climb down themselves, 
atomized plaster billowing: dust of 1907's 
rooming house, this year's bake shop and florist's, 
the ghosts of their signs faint above the windows 
lined, last week, with loaves and blooms. 

We love disasters that have nothing to do 
with us: the metal scoop seems shy, tentative, 
a Japanese monster tilting its yellow head 
and considering what to topple next. It's a weekday, 
and those of us with the leisure to watch 
are out of work, unemployable or academics, 

joined by a thirst for watching something fall. 
All summer, at loose ends, I've read biographies, 
Wilde and Robert Lowell, and fallen asleep 
over a fallen hero lurching down a Paris boulevard, 
talking his way to dinner or a drink, 
unable to forget the vain and stupid boy 

he allowed to ruin him. And I dreamed 
I was Lowell, in a manic flight of failing 
and ruthless energy, and understood 
how wrong I was with a passionate exactitude 
which had to be like his. A month ago, 
at Saint-Gauden's house, we ran from a startling downpour 

into coincidence: under a loggia built 
for performances on the lawn 
hulked Shaw's monument, splendid 
in its plaster maquette, the ramrod-straight colonel 
high above his black troops. We crouched on wet gravel 
and waited out the squall; the hieratic woman 

-- a wingless angel? -- floating horizontally 
above the soldiers, her robe billowing like plaster dust, 
seemed so far above us, another century's 
allegorical decor, an afterthought 
who'd never descend to the purely physical 
soldiers, the nearly breathing bronze ranks crushed 

into a terrible compression of perspective, 
as if the world hurried them into the ditch. 
"The unreadable," Wilde said, "is what occurs." 
And when the brutish metal rears 
above the wall of unglazed windows --
where, in a week, the kids will skateboard 

in their lovely loops and spray 
their indecipherable ideograms 
across the parking lot -- the single standing wall 
seems Roman, momentarily, an aqueduct, 
all that's left of something difficult 
to understand now, something Oscar 

and Bosie might have posed before, for a photograph. 
Aqueducts and angels, here on Main, 
seem merely souvenirs; the gaps 
where the windows opened once 
into transients' rooms are pure sky. 
It's strange how much more beautiful 

the sky is to us when it's framed 
by these columned openings someone meant us 
to take for stone. The enormous, articulate shovel 
nudges the highest row of moldings 
and the whole thing wavers as though we'd dreamed it, 
our black classic, and it topples all at once.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Longings for Home

 O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! 
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! 
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
 born—the
 grains,
 plants, rivers; 
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
 sands,
 or
 through swamps; 
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee,
 the
 Coosa, and the Sabine;
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again; 
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on the Okeechobee—I cross
 the
 hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests; 
I see the parrots in the woods—I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi; 
Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia—I coast up the Carolinas, 
I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented
 bay-tree, the
 lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision
 inland; 
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! 
The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; 
The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe
 and
 trailing moss, 
The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps
 the
 freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal’d hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by
 reptiles,
 resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the
 wild-cat,
 and
 the whirr of the rattlesnake; 
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the
 moon-lit
 night, 
The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; 
A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn—slender,
 flapping,
 bright
 green with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheath’d in its husk; 
An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart; 
O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian! 
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!


Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Bridge Over The Aire Book 3

 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART





1



The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days

Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two

Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?



I am the mad poet first love

You never got over

You are my blue-eyed

Madonna virgin bride

I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’

On the bark of every 

Wind-bent tree in 

East End Park



2



The park itself will blossom

And grow in chiaroscuro

The Victorian postcard’s view

Of avenue upon avenue

With palms and pagodas

Lakes and waterfalls and

A fountain from Versailles.





3



You shall be my queen

In the Kingdom of Deira

Land of many rivers

Aire the greatest

Isara the strong one

Robed in stillness

Wide, deep and dark.





4



In Middleton Woods

Margaret and I played

Truth or dare

She bared her breasts

To the watching stars.





5



“Milk, milk,

Lemonade, round

The corner

Chocolate spread”

Nancy chanted at

Ten in the binyard

Touching her ****,

Her ****, her bum,

Margaret joined in

Chanting in unison.





6



The skipping rope

Turned faster

And faster, slapping

The hot pavement,

Margaret skipped

In rhythm, never

Missing a beat,

Lifting the pleat

Of her skirt

Whirling and twirling.





7



Giggling and red

Margaret said

In a whisper

“When we were

Playing at Nancy’s

She pushed a spill

Of paper up her

You-know-what

She said she’d

Let you watch

If you wanted.”





8



Margaret, this Saturday morning in June

There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for

The matin?e, down the alley by the blank

Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide

With you, we are counting our picture

Money, I am counting the stars in your

Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb.





9



You have no idea of my need for you

A lifetime long, every wrong decision

I made betrayed my need; forty years on

Hear my song and take my hand and move

Us to the house of love where we belong.





10



Margaret we sat in the cinema dark

Warm with the promise of a secret kiss

The wall lights glowed amber on the



Crumbling plaster, we looked with longing

At the love seats empty in the circle,

Vowing we would share one.



11



There is shouting and echoes

Of wild splashing from York

Road baths; forty years on

It stirs my memory and

Will not be gone.





12



The ghosts of tramtracks

Light up lanes

To nowhere

In Leeds Ten.



Every road

Leads nowhere

In Leeds Nine.



Motorways have cut

The city’s heart

In two; Margaret,

Our home lies buried

Under sixteen feet

Of stone.

13



Our families moved

And we were lost

I was not there to hear

The whispered secret

Of your first period.





14



God is courage’s infinite ground

Tillich said; God, give me enough

To stand another week without her

Every day gets longer, every sleep

Less deep.





15



Why can’t I find you,

Touch you,

Bind your straw-gold hair

The colour of lank

February grass?



16



Under the stone canopy

Of the Grand Arcade

I pass Europa Nightclub;

In black designer glass

I watch the faces pass

But none is like your’s,

No voice, no eyes,

No smile at all

Like your’s.





17



From Kirkstall Lock

The rhubarb crop

To Knostrop’s forcing sheds

The roots ploughed up

Arranged in beds

Of perfect darkness

Where the buds burst

With a pip, rich pink

Stalks and yellow leaves

Hand-picked by

Candle-light to

Keep the colour right

So every night the

Rhubarb train

Could go from Leeds

To Covent Garden.





18



The smell of Saturday morning

Is the smell of freedom

How the bounds may grow

Slowly slowly as I go.



“Rag-bone rag-bone

White donkey stone”

Auntie Nellie scoured

Her door step, polished

The brass knocker

Till I saw my face

Bunched like a fist

Complete with goggles

Grinning like a monkey

In a mile of mirrors.





19



Every door step had a stop

A half-stone iron weight

To hold it back and every 

Step was edged with donkey

Stone in yellow or white

From the ragman or the potman

With his covered cart jingling

Jangling as it jerked hundreds

Of cups on hooks pint and

Half pint mugs and stacks of

Willow-patterned plates

From Burmantofts.





20



We heard him a mile off

Nights in summer when

He trundled round the

Corner over the cobbles

Jamming the wood brake

Blocks whoaing the horses

With their gleaming brasses

And our mams were always

Waiting where he stopped.





21



Double summer-time made

The nights go on for ever

And no-one cared any more

How long we played what

Or where and we were left

Alone and that’s all I wanted

Then or now to be left alone

Never to be called in from

The Hollows never to be

Called from Margaret.





22



City of back-to-backs

From Armley Heights

Laid out in rows

Like trees or grass

I watch you pass.



23



The Aire is slow and almost

Still



In the Bridgefield

The Joshua Tetley clock

Over the Atkinson Grimshaw

Print

Is stopped at nineteen fifty

Four

The year I left.





24



Grimshaw’s home was

Half a mile away

In Knostrop Hall

Margaret and I

Climbed the ruined

Walls her hair was

Blowing in the wind

Her eyes were stars

In the green night

Her hands were holding 

My hands.





25



Half a century later

I look out over Leeds Nine

What little’s left is broken

Or changed Saturday night

Is silent and empty

The paths over the Hollows

Deserted the bell

Of St. Hilda’s still.



26



On a single bush

The yellow roses blush

Pink in the amber light

Night settles on the

Fewstons and the Copperfields

No mothers’ voices calling us.



Lilac and velvet clover

Grew all over the Hollows

It was all the luck

We knew and when we left

Our luck went too.





27



Solid black

Velvet basalt

Polished jet

Millstone grit

Leeds Town Hall

Built with it

Soaks up the fog

Is sealed with smog

Battered buttressed

Blackened plinths

White lions’ paws

Were soft their

Smiles like your’s.

28



Narrow lanes, steep inclines,

Steps, blank walls, tight

And secret openings’

The lanes are your hips

The inclines the lines

Of your thighs, the steps

Your breasts, blank walls

Your buttocks, tight and

Secret openings your

Taut vagina’s lips.





29



There is a keening and a honing

And a winnowing in the wind

I am the surge and flow

In Winwaed’s water the last breath

Of Elmete’s King.



I am Penda crossing the Aire

Camping at Killingbeck

Conquered by Aethalwald

Ruler of Deira.





30



Life is a bird hovering

In the Hall of the King

Between darkness and darkness flickering

The stone of Scone at last lifted

And borne on the wind, Dunedin, take it

Hold it hard and fast its light

Is leaping it is freedom’s

Touchstone and firestone.





31



Eir, Ayer or Aire

I’ll still be there

Your wanderings off course

Old Ea, Old Eye, Dead Eye

Make no difference to me.

Eg-an island - is Aire’s

True source, names

Not places matter

With the risings

Of a river

Ea land-by-water

I’ll make my own way

Free, going down river

To the far-off sea.





32



Poetry is my business, my affair.

My cri-de-coeur, jongleur

Of Mercia and Elmete, Margaret,

Open your door I am heaping

Imbroglios of stars on the floor

Meet me by the Office Lock

At midnight or by the Town Hall Clock.



33



Nennius nine times have I knocked

On the door of your grave, nine times

More have I made Pilgrimage to Elmete’s

Wood where long I lay by beck and bank

Waiting for your tongue to flame

With Pentecostal fire.





34



Margaret you rode in the hollow of my hand

In the harp of my heart, searching for you

I wandered in Kirkgate Market’s midnight

Down avenues of shuttered stalls, our secrets

Kept through all the years.

From the Imperial on Beeston Hill

I watch the city spill glass towers

Of light over the horizon’s rim.





35



The railyard’s straights

Are buckled plates

Red bricks for aggregate

All lost like me

Ledsham and Ledston

Both belong to Leeds

But Ledston Luck

Is where Aire leads.



36



Held of the Crown

By seven thanes

In Saxon times

‘In regione Loidis’

Baeda scripsit

Leeds, Leeds,

You answer

All my needs.





37



A horse shoe stuck for luck

Behind a basement window:

Margaret, now we’ll see

What truth there is

In dreams and poetry!



I am at one with everyone

There is poetry

Falling from the air

And you have put it there.





38



The sign for John Eaton Street

Is planted in the back garden

Of the transport caf? between

The strands of a wire mesh fence

Straddling the cobbles of a street

That is no more, a washing line

And an abandoned caravan.



39



‘This open land to let’

Is what you get on the Hollows

Thousands of half-burned tyres

The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry

Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms,

The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards,

Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School.





40



There is a mermaid singing

On East Street on an IBM poster

Her hair is lack-lustre

Her breasts are facing the camera

Her tail is like a worn-out brush.



Chimney stacks

Blind black walls

Of factories

Grimy glass

Flickering firelight

 In black-leaded grates.





41



Hunslet de Ledes

Hop-scotch, hide and seek,

Bogies-on-wheels

Not one tree in Hunslet

Except in the cemetery

The lake filled in

For fifty years,

The bluebell has rung

Its last perfumed peal.





42



I couldn’t play out on Sunday

Mam and dad thought us a cut

Above the rest, it was another

Test I failed, keeping me and

Margaret apart was like the Aztecs

Tearing the heart from the living flesh.





43



Father, your office job

Didn’t save you

From the drugs

They never gave you.





44



Isaiah, my son,

You made it back

From Balliol to Beeston

At a run via the

Playing fields of Eton.



There is a keening and a honing

And a winnowing in the wind

Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent.
Written by Isaac Watts | Create an image from this poem

Psalm 130

 Pardoning grace.

Out of the deeps of long distress,
The borders of despair,
I sent my cries to seek thy grace,
My groans to move thine ear.

Great God, should thy severer eye,
And thine impartial hand,
Mark and revenge iniquity,
No mortal flesh could stand.

But there are pardons with my God
For crimes of high degree;
Thy Son has bought them with his blood,
To draw us near to thee.

[I wait for thy salvation, Lord,
With strong desires I wait;
My soul, invited by thy word,
Stands watching at thy gate.]

[Just as the guards that keep the night
Long for the morning skies,
Watch the first beams of breaking light,
And meet them with their eyes;

So waits my soul to see thy grace,
And, more intent than they,
Meets the first openings of thy face,
And finds a brighter day.]

[Then in the Lord let Isr'el trust,
Let Isr'el seek his face;
The Lord is good as well as just,
And plenteous is his grace.

There's full redemption at his throne
For sinners long enslaved;
The great Redeemer is his Son,
And Isr'el shall be saved.]
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Passing Out

 The doctor fingers my bruise. 
"Magnificent," he says, "black 
at the edges and purple 
cored." Seated, he spies for clues, 
gingerly probing the slack 
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull 

for air, losing the battle. 
Faced by his aged diploma, 
the heavy head of the X- 
ray, and the iron saddle, 
I grow lonely. He finds my 
secrets common and my sex 

neither objectionable 
nor lovely, though he is on 
the hunt for significance. 
The shelved cutlery twinkles 
behind glass, and I am on 
the way out, "an instance 

of the succumbed through extreme 
fantasy." He is alarmed 
at last, and would raise me, but 
I am floorward in a dream 
of lowered trousers, unarmed 
and weakly fighting to shut 

the window of my drawers. 
There are others in the room, 
voices of women above 
white oxfords; and the old floor, 
the friendly linoleum, 
departs. I whisper, "my love," 

and am safe, tabled, sniffing 
spirits of ammonia 
in the land of my fellows. 
"Open house!" my openings 
sing: pores, nose, anus let go 
their charges, a shameless flow 

into the outer world; 
and the ceiling, equipped with 
intelligence, surveys my 
produce. The doctor is thrilled 
by my display, for he is half 
the slave of necessity; 

I, enormous in my need, 
justify his sciences. 
"We have alternatives," he 
says, "Removal..." (And my blood 
whitens as on their dull trays 
the tubes dance. I must study 

the dark bellows of the gas 
machine, the painless maker.) 
"...and learning to live with it." 
Oh, but I am learning fast 
to live with any pain, ache, 
growth to keep myself intact; 

and in imagination 
I hug my bruise like an old 
Pooh Bear, already attuned 
to its moods. "Oh, my dark one, 
tell of the coming of cold 
and of Kings, ancient and ruined."
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Everything In Its Place

 Desks are straining on all fours, flanks

Heaving to hurl the hunched riders

Down crack and cranny, buck

Finger-snapping lids, consume

Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth.



The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me,

Making my neck prick as it scatters dust

Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clich?,

Anoints its carved channels and cavities

With infinite black ooze and sap.



And I don’t trust that corner cupboard!

Opening its dark doors like the jaws of

Cerberus, shelving its stacks to heave

At my head, ready to snap its quick lock

Round my wrist like a crab.



I watch the windows wink and blink,

Tug at their catches, tempt my fingers

With their openings, crack flying cords

To noose my neck; they eye the bulging roof

Beams, bent like a bow above me.



This whole room has rushed to the world’s edge,

My fingers tip its tottering walls

Braced to hold definition, floorboards

Knotted tight against infinity’s axe, doors

Bolted to contain time and place in time and place together.



I cry ‘help’ as my world whirls,

Is loosed at the single eye of heaven.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

We Two—How Long We were Fool'd

 WE two—how long we were fool’d! 
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes; 
We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now we return; 
We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark; 
We are bedded in the ground—we are rocks;
We are oaks—we grow in the openings side by side; 
We browse—we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any; 
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together; 
We are what the locust blossoms are—we drop scent around the lanes, mornings and
 evenings; 
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals;
We are two predatory hawks—we soar above, and look down; 
We are two resplendent suns—we it is who balance ourselves, orbic and stellar—we
 are as two comets; 
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods—we spring on prey; 
We are two clouds, forenoons and afternoons, driving overhead; 
We are seas mingling—we are two of those cheerful waves, rolling over each other, and
 interwetting each other;
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious: 
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness—we are each product and influence of the globe; 
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again—we two have; 
We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry