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Best Famous Pedestrians Poems

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

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Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Man Listening To Disc

 This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,

as if he were right beside me
on this clear day in March,
the pavement sparkling with sunlight,
pigeons fluttering off the curb,
nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs.
In fact, I would say my delight at being suffused with phrases from his saxophone -- some like honey, some like vinegar -- is surpassed only by my gratitude to Tommy Potter for taking the time to join us on this breezy afternoon with his most unwieldy bass and to the esteemed Arthur Taylor who is somehow managing to navigate this crowd with his cumbersome drums.
And I bow deeply to Thelonious Monk for figuring out a way to motorize -- or whatever -- his huge piano so he could be with us today.
This music is loud yet so confidential.
I cannot help feeling even more like the center of the universe than usual as I walk along to a rapid little version of "The Way You Look Tonight," and all I can say to my fellow pedestrians, to the woman in the white sweater, the man in the tan raincoat and the heavy glasses, who mistake themselves for the center of the universe -- all I can say is watch your step, because the five of us, instruments and all, are about to angle over to the south side of the street and then, in our own tightly knit way, turn the corner at Sixth Avenue.
And if any of you are curious about where this aggregation, this whole battery-powered crew, is headed, let us just say that the real center of the universe, the only true point of view, is full of hope that he, the hub of the cosmos with his hair blown sideways, will eventually make it all the way downtown.


Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Picnic Lightning

 It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians are flattened by safes falling from rooftops mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery, defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens -- the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.
Then the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds a brighter white, and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone, the small plants singing with lifted faces, and the click of the sundial as one hour sweeps into the next.
Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

Executive

 I am a young executive.
No cuffs than mine are cleaner; I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill The ma?tres d'h?tel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.
You ask me what it is I do.
Well, actually, you know, I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.
R.
O.
Essentially, I integrate the current export drive And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.
For vital off-the-record work - that's talking transport-wise - I've a scarlet Aston-Martin - and does she go? She flies! Pedestrians and dogs and cats, we mark them down for slaughter.
I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.
She's built of fibre-glass, of course.
I call her 'Mandy Jane' After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain - And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.
I do some mild developing.
The sort of place I need Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire - I fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.
And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way - The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.
Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

January 2

 The old war is over the new one has begun
between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday
in New York light is the variable and structure
the content according to Rodrigo Moynihan's
self-portraits at the Robert Miller Gallery where
the painter is serially pictured holding a canvas,
painting his mirror image, shirtless in summer,
with a nude, etc.
, it's two o'clock and I'm walking at top speed from the huddled tourists yearning to be a mass to Les Halles on Park and 28th for a Salade Niçoise I've just watched The Singing Detective all six hours of it and can't get it out of my mind, the scarecrow that turns into Hitler, the sad-eyed father wearing a black arm-band, the yellow umbrellas as Bing Crosby's voice comes out of Michael Gambon's mouth, "you've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, e-lim-inate the negative" advice as sound today as in 1945 though it also remains true that the only thing to do with good advice is pass it on
Written by Osip Mandelstam | Create an image from this poem

This

 Today, my love,
leaves are thrashing the wind
just as pedestrians are erecting again the buildings of this drab
forbidding city,
and our lives, as I lose track of them,
are the lives of others derailing in time and
getting things done.
Impossible to make sense of any one face or mouth, though each distance is clear, and you are miles from here.
Let your pure space crowd my heart, that we might stay awhile longer amid the flying debris.
This moment, I swear it, isn't going anywhere.


Written by Arthur Hugh Clough | Create an image from this poem

Ye Flags of Picadilly

 Ye flags of Piccadilly,
Where I posted up and down,
And wished myself so often
Well away from you and town--

Are the people walking quietly
And steady on their feet,
Cabs and omnibuses plying
Just as usual in the street?

Do the houses look as upright
As of old they used to be,
And does nothing seem affected
By the pitching of the sea?

Through the Green Park iron railings
Do the quick pedestrians pass?
Are the little children playing
Round the plane-tree in the grass?

This squally wild northwester
With which our vessel fights,
Does it merely serve with you to
Carry up some paper kites?

Ye flags of Piccadilly,
Which I hated so, I vow
I could wish with all my heart
You were underneath me now!
Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

The Lay of the Motor-Car

 We're away! and the wind whistles shrewd 
In our whiskers and teeth; 
And the granite-like grey of the road 
Seems to slide underneath.
As an eagle might sweep through the sky, So we sweep through the land; And the pallid pedestrians fly When they hear us at hand.
We outpace, we outlast, we outstrip! Not the fast-fleeing hare, Nor the racehorses under the whip, Nor the birds of the air Can compete with our swiftness sublime, Our ease and our grace.
We annihilate chickens and time And policemen and space.
Do you mind that fat grocer who crossed? How he dropped down to pray In the road when he saw he was lost; How he melted away Underneath, and there rang through the fog His earsplitting squeal As he went -- Is that he or a dog, That stuff on the wheel?