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Best Famous Pretends Poems

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

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Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Love Is A Parallax

 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
 is our life's whole nemesis. 

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
 about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
 implacably from twelve to one. 

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
 and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
 who insists his playmates run. 

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
 like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
 should inflame the sleeping town. 

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
 caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
 playing his prodigal charades. 

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
 blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
 graves all carol in reply. 

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
 brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
 while footlights flare and houselights dim. 

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
 the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
 joins his enemies' recruits. 

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
 there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
 an insight like the flight of birds: 

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
 some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
 cycling phoenix never stops. 

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
 and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
 away our rationed days and weeks. 

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
 in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
 the simple sum of heart plus heart.


Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | Create an image from this poem

Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy

 O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the pressure of another.
Hatred is our first response. And lovers,
are they not forever invading one another's
boundaries? -although they promised space,
hunting and homeland. Then, for a sketch
drawn at a moment's impulse, a ground of contrast
is prepared, painfully, so that we may see.
For they are most exact with us. We do not know
the contours of our feelings. We only know 
what shapes them from the outside. 

Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's
curtain? It lifted and displayed the scenery
of departure. Easy to understand. The well-known
garden swaying just a little. Then came the dancer.
Not he! Enough! However lightly he pretends to move:
he is just disguised, costumed, an ordinary man
who enters through the kitchen when coming home.
I will not have these half-filled human masks;
better the puppet. It at least is full.
I will endure this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance. Here out front
I wait. Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears sist beside me
any longer, not a woman, not even a boy-
he with the brown and squinting eyes-:
I'll still remain. For one can always watch.

Am I not right? You, to whom life would taste
so bitter, Father, after you - for my sake -
slipped of mine, that first muddy infusion
of my necessity. You kept on tasting, Father,
as I kept on growing, troubled by the aftertaste
of my so strange a future as you kept searching
my unfocused gaze -you who, so often since
you died, have been afraid for my well-being,
within my deepest hope, relinquishing that calmness,
the realms of equanimity such as the dead possess
for my so small fate -Am I not right?

And you, my parents, am I not right? You who loved me
for that small beginning of my love for you
from which I always shyly turned away, because
the distance in your features grew, changed,
even while I loved it, into cosmic space
where you no longer were...: and when I feel
inclined to wait before the puppet stage, no,
rather to stare at is so intensely that in the end
to counter-balance my searching gaze, an angel
has to come as an actor, and begin manipulating
the lifeless bodies of the puppets to perform.
Angel and puppet! Now at last there is a play!
Then what we seperate can come together by our
very presence. And only then the entire cycle
of our own life-seasons is revealed and set in motion.
Above, beyond us, the angel plays. Look:
must not the dying notice how unreal, how full
of pretense is all that we accomplish here, where
nothing is to be itself. O hours of childhood,
when behind each shape more that the past lay hidden,
when that which lay before us was not the future.

We grew, of course, and sometimes were impatient
in growing up, half for the sake of pleasing those
with nothing left but their own grown-upness.
Yet, when alone, we entertained ourselves
with what alone endures, we would stand there
in the infinite space that spans the world and toys,
upon a place, which from the first beginnniing
had been prepared to serve a pure event.

Who shows a child just as it stands? Who places him
within his constellation, with the measuring-rod
of distance in his hand. Who makes his death
from gray bread that grows hard, -or leaves
it there inside his rounded mouth, jagged as the core
of a sweet apple?.......The minds of murderers
are easily comprehended. But this: to contain death,
the whole of death, even before life has begun,
to hold it all so gently within oneself,
and not be angry: that is indescribable.
Written by Rabindranath Tagore | Create an image from this poem

Babys Way

 If baby only wanted to, he could fly up to heaven this moment.
It is not for nothing that he does not leave us.
He loves to rest his head on mother's bosom, and cannot ever
bear to lose sight of her.
Baby know all manner of wise words, though few on earth can
understand their meaning.
It is not for nothing that he never wants to speak.
The one thing he wants is to learn mother's words from
mother's lips. That is why he looks so innocent.
Baby had a heap of gold and pearls, yet he came like a beggar
on to this earth.
It is not for nothing he came in such a disguise.
This dear little naked mendicant pretends to be utterly
helpless, so that he may beg for mother's wealth of love.
Baby was so free from every tie in the land of the tiny
crescent moon.
It was not for nothing he gave up his freedom.
He knows that there is room for endless joy in mother's little
corner of a heart, and it is sweeter far than liberty to be caught
and pressed in her dear arms.
Baby never knew how to cry. He dwelt in the land of perfect
bliss.
It is not for nothing he has chosen to shed tears.
Though with the smile of his dear face he draws mother's
yearning heart to him, yet his little cries over tiny troubles
weave the double bond of pity and love.
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

Doors Doors Doors

 1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.

The room will do. All that's left of the old life
is jampacked on shelves from floor to ceiling
like a supermarket: your books, your dead wife
generously fat in her polished frame, the congealing

bowl of cornflakes sagging in their instant milk,
your hot plate and your one luxury, a telephone.
You leave your door open, lounging in maroon silk
and smiling at the other roomers who live alone.
Well, almost alone. Through the old-fashioned wall
the fellow next door has a girl who comes to call.

Twice a week at noon during their lunch hour
they puase by your door to peer into your world.
They speak sadly as if the wine they carry would sour
or as if the mattress would not keep them curled

together, extravagantly young in their tight lock.
Old man, you are their father holding court
in the dingy hall until their alarm clock
rings and unwinds them. You unstopper the quart

of brandy you've saved, examining the small print
in the telephone book. The phone in your lap is all
that's left of your family name. Like a Romanoff prince
you stay the same in your small alcove off the hall.
Castaway, your time is a flat sea that doesn't stop,
with no new land to make for and no new stories to swap.

2. Seamstress

I'm at pains to know what else I could have done
but move him out of his parish, him being my son;

him being the only one at home since his Pa
left us to beat the Japs at Okinawa.

I put the gold star up in the front window
beside the flag. Alterations is what I know

and what I did: hems, gussets and seams.
When my boy had the fever and the bad dreams

I paid for the clinic exam and a pack of lies.
As a youngster his private parts were undersize.

I thought of his Pa, that muscly old laugh he had
and the boy was thin as a moth, but never once bad,

as smart as a rooster! To hear some neighbors tell,
Your kid! He'll go far. He'll marry well.

So when he talked of taking the cloth, I thought
I'd talk him out of it. You're all I got,

I told him. For six years he studied up. I prayed
against God Himself for my boy. But he stayed.

Christ was a hornet inside his head. I guess
I'd better stitch the zipper in this dress.

I guess I'll get along. I always did.
Across the hall from me's an old invalid,

aside of him, a young one -- he carries on
with a girl who pretends she comes to use the john.

The old one with the bad breath and his bed all mussed,
he smiles and talks to them. He's got some crust.

Sure as hell, what else could I have done
but pack up and move in here, him being my son?

3. Young Girl

Dear love, as simple as some distant evil
we walk a little drunk up these three flughts
where you tacked a Dufy print above your army cot.

The thin apartment doors on the way up will
not tell us. We are saying, we have our rights
and let them see the sandwiches and wine we bought

for we do not explain my husband's insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.

Both a little drunk in the afternoon
with the forgotten smart of August on our skin
we hold hands as if we were still children who trudge

up the wooden tower, on up past that close platoon
of doors, past the dear old man who always asks us in
and the one who sews like a wasp and will not budge.

Climbing the dark halls, I ignore their papers and pails,
the twelve coats of rubbish of someone else's dim life.
Tell them need is an excuse for love. Tell them need prevails.
Tell them I remake and smooth your bed and am your wife.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Black Stone On Top Of Nothing

 Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon 
around the apartment building covering the front door. 
He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins 
to untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him 
wondering what's going on. A middle-aged woman carrying 
a loaf of fresh bread asks him to step aside so she 
can enter, ascend the two steep flights to her apartment, 
and begin the daily task of preparing lunch for her Monsieur. 
Vallejo pretends he hears nothing or perhaps he truly 
hears nothing so absorbed is he in this odd task consuming 
his late morning. Did I forget to mention that no one else 
can see the black ribbon or understand why his fingers 
seem so intent on unraveling what is not there? Remember 
when you were only six and on especially hot days you 
would descend the shaky steps to the cellar hoping at first 
that someone, perhaps your mother, would gradually 
become aware of your absence and feel a sudden seizure 
of anxiety or terror. Of course no one noticed. Mother 
sat for hours beside the phone waiting, and now and then 
gazed at summer sunlight blazing through the parlor curtains 
while below, cool and alone, seated on the damp concrete 
you watched the same sunlight filter through the rising dust 
from the two high windows. Beside the furnace a spider 
worked brilliantly downward from the burned-out, overhead bulb 
with a purpose you at that age could still comprehend. 
1937 would last only six more months. It was a Thursday. 
Rain was promised but never arrived. The brown spider worked 
with or without hope, though when the dusty sunlight caught 
in the web you beheld a design so perfect it remained 
in your memory as a model of meaning. César Vallejo 
untangled the black ribbon no one else saw and climbed 
to his attic apartment and gazed out at the sullen rooftops 
stretching southward toward Spain where his heart died. I know this. 
I've walked by the same building year after year in late evening 
when the swallows were settling noiselessly in the few sparse trees
beside the unused canal. I've come when the winter snow 
blinded the distant brooding sky. I've come just after dawn, 
I've come in spring, in autumn, in rain, and he was never there.


Written by William Allingham | Create an image from this poem

The Eviction

 In early morning twilight, raw and chill, 
Damp vapours brooding on the barren hill, 
Through miles of mire in steady grave array 
Threescore well-arm'd police pursue their way;
Each tall and bearded man a rifle swings, 
And under each greatcoat a bayonet clings: 
The Sheriff on his sturdy cob astride 
Talks with the chief, who marches by their side,
And, creeping on behind them, Paudeen Dhu 
Pretends his needful duty much to rue. 
Six big-boned labourers, clad in common frieze,
Walk in the midst, the Sheriff's staunch allies; 
Six crowbar men, from distant county brought, - 
Orange, and glorying in their work, 'tis thought,
But wrongly,- churls of Catholics are they, 
And merely hired at half a crown a day. 

The hamlet clustering on its hill is seen, 
A score of petty homesteads, dark and mean;
Poor always, not despairing until now; 
Long used, as well as poverty knows how, 
With life's oppressive trifles to contend. 
This day will bring its history to an end. 
Moveless and grim against the cottage walls
Lean a few silent men: but someone calls 
Far off; and then a child 'without a stitch' 
Runs out of doors, flies back with piercing screech,
And soon from house to house is heard the cry
Of female sorrow, swelling loud and high, 
Which makes the men blaspheme between their teeth.
Meanwhile, o'er fence and watery field beneath,
The little army moves through drizzling rain;
A 'Crowbar' leads the Sheriff's nag; the lane
Is enter'd, and their plashing tramp draws near,
One instant, outcry holds its breath to hear
"Halt!" - at the doors they form in double line, 
And ranks of polish'd rifles wetly shine. 

The Sheriff's painful duty must be done; 
He begs for quiet-and the work's begun. 
The strong stand ready; now appear the rest, 
Girl, matron, grandsire, baby on the breast, 
And Rosy's thin face on a pallet borne; 
A motley concourse, feeble and forlorn. 
One old man, tears upon his wrinkled cheek, 
Stands trembling on a threshold, tries to speak, 
But, in defect of any word for this, 
Mutely upon the doorpost prints a kiss, 
Then passes out for ever. Through the crowd 
The children run bewilder'd, wailing loud; 
Where needed most, the men combine their aid; 
And, last of all, is Oona forth convey'd, 
Reclined in her accustom'd strawen chair, 
Her aged eyelids closed, her thick white hair 
Escaping from her cap; she feels the chill, 
Looks round and murmurs, then again is still. 
Now bring the remnants of each household fire; 
On the wet ground the hissing coals expire; 
And Paudeen Dhu, with meekly dismal face, 
Receives the full possession of the place.
Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

Sexism

 The happiest moment in a woman's life
Is when she hears the turn of her lover's key
In the lock, and pretends to be asleep
When he enters the room, trying to be
Quiet but clumsy, bumping into things,
And she can smell the liquor on his breath
But forgives him because she has him back
And doesn't have to sleep alone.

The happiest moment is a man's life
Is when he climbs out of bed
With a woman, after an hour's sleep,
After making love, and pulls on
His trousers, and walks outside,
And pees in the bushes, and sees
The high August sky full of stars
And gets in his car and drives home.
Written by Anne Kingsmill Finch | Create an image from this poem

The Spleen

 What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abus'd Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause cou'd find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm. 
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolv'd into a Panick Fear;
On Sleep intruding dost thy Shadows spread,
Thy gloomy Terrours round the silent Bed,
And croud with boading Dreams the Melancholy Head:
Or, when the Midnight Hour is told,
And drooping Lids thou still dost waking hold, 
Thy fond Delusions cheat the Eyes,
Before them antick Spectres dance,
Unusual Fires their pointed Heads advance,
And airy Phantoms rise.
Such was the monstrous Vision seen,
When Brutus (now beneath his Cares opprest,
And all Rome's Fortunes rolling in his Breast,
Before Philippi's latest Field,
Before his Fate did to Octavius lead)
Was vanquish'd by the Spleen. 

Falsly, the Mortal Part we blame
Of our deprest, and pond'rous Frame,
Which, till the First degrading Sin
Let Thee, its dull Attendant, in, 
Still with the Other did comply,
Nor clogg'd the Active Soul, dispos'd to fly,
And range the Mansions of it's native Sky. 
Nor, whilst in his own Heaven he dwelt,
Whilst Man his Paradice possest,
His fertile Garden in the fragrant East,
And all united Odours smelt,
No armed Sweets, until thy Reign,
Cou'd shock the Sense, or in the Face
A flusht, unhandsom Colour place.
Now the Jonquille o'ercomes the feeble Brain;
We faint beneath the Aromatick Pain, {6}
Till some offensive Scent thy Pow'rs appease,
And Pleasure we resign for short, and nauseous Ease. 

In ev'ry One thou dost possess,
New are thy Motions, and thy Dress:
Now in some Grove a list'ning Friend
Thy false Suggestions must attend,
Thy whisper'd Griefs, thy fancy'd Sorrows hear,
Breath'd in a Sigh, and witness'd by a Tear; 
Whilst in the light, and vulgar Croud,
Thy Slaves, more clamorous and loud,
By Laughters unprovok'd, thy Influence too confess.
In the Imperious Wife thou Vapours art,
Which from o'erheated Passions rise
In Clouds to the attractive Brain,
Until descending thence again,
Thro' the o'er-cast, and show'ring Eyes,
Upon her Husband's soften'd Heart,
He the disputed Point must yield,
Something resign of the contested Field;
Til Lordly Man, born to Imperial Sway,
Compounds for Peace, to make that Right away,
And Woman, arm'd with Spleen, do's servilely Obey. 

The Fool, to imitate the Wits,
Complains of thy pretended Fits,
And Dulness, born with him, wou'd lay
Upon thy accidental Sway; 
Because, sometimes, thou dost presume
Into the ablest Heads to come:
That, often, Men of Thoughts refin'd,
Impatient of unequal Sence,
Such slow Returns, where they so much dispense,
Retiring from the Croud, are to thy Shades inclin'd.
O'er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail:
I feel thy Force, whilst I against thee rail; 
I feel my Verse decay, and my crampt Numbers fail.
Thro' thy black Jaundice I all Objects see,
As Dark, and Terrible as Thee,
My Lines decry'd, and my Employment thought
An useless Folly, or presumptuous Fault:
Whilst in the Muses Paths I stray,
Whilst in their Groves, and by their secret Springs
My Hand delights to trace unusual Things,
And deviates from the known, and common way;
Nor will in fading Silks compose
Faintly th' inimitable Rose, 
Fill up an ill-drawn Bird, or paint on Glass 
The Sov'reign's blurr'd and undistinguish'd Face, 
The threatning Angel, and the speaking Ass.

Patron thou art to ev'ry gross Abuse,
The sullen Husband's feign'd Excuse,
When the ill Humour with his Wife he spends,
And bears recruited Wit, and Spirits to his Friends. 
The Son of Bacchus pleads thy Pow'r, 
As to the Glass he still repairs,
Pretends but to remove thy Cares,
Snatch from thy Shades one gay, and smiling Hour,
And drown thy Kingdom in a purple Show'r. 
When the Coquette, whom ev'ry Fool admires,
Wou'd in Variety be Fair,
And, changing hastily the Scene
From Light, Impertinent, and Vain,
Assumes a soft, a melancholy Air, 
And of her Eyes rebates the wand'ring Fires,
The careless Posture, and the Head reclin'd,
The thoughtful, and composed Face,
Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent Mind,
Allows the Fop more liberty to gaze,
Who gently for the tender Cause inquires;
The Cause, indeed, is a Defect in Sense,
Yet is the Spleen alleg'd, and still the dull Pretence.
But these are thy fantastic Harms,
The Tricks of thy pernicious Stage,
Which do the weaker Sort engage;
Worse are the dire Effects of thy more pow'rful Charms.
By Thee Religion, all we know,
That shou'd enlighten here below,
Is veil'd in Darkness, and perplext
With anxious Doubts, with endless Scruples vext,
And some Restraint imply'd from each perverted Text. 

Whilst Touch not, Taste not, what is freely giv'n,
Is but thy niggard Voice, disgracing bounteous Heav'n. 
From Speech restrain'd, by thy Deceits abus'd,
To Desarts banish'd, or in Cells reclus'd,
Mistaken Vot'ries to the Pow'rs Divine, 
Whilst they a purer Sacrifice design,
Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy Shrine. 
In vain to chase thee ev'ry Art we try,
In vain all Remedies apply,
In vain the Indian Leaf infuse,
Or the parch'd Eastern Berry bruise;
Some pass, in vain, those Bounds, and nobler Liquors use.
Now Harmony, in vain, we bring,
Inspire the Flute, and touch the String. 
From Harmony no help is had;
Musick but soothes thee, if too sweetly sad,
And if too light, but turns thee gayly Mad. 

Tho' the Physicians greatest Gains,
Altho' his growing Wealth he sees
Daily increas'd by Ladies Fees,
Yet dost thou baffle all his studious Pains. 
Not skilful Lower thy Source cou'd find,
Or thro' the well-dissected Body trace
The secret, the mysterious ways,
By which thou dost surprize, and prey upon the Mind. 
Tho' in the Search, too deep for Humane Thought,
With unsuccessful Toil he wrought,
'Til thinking Thee to've catch'd, Himself by thee was caught,
Retain'd thy Pris'ner, thy acknowleg'd Slave,
And sunk beneath thy Chain to a lamented Grave.
Written by Fernando Pessoa | Create an image from this poem

Autopsychography

The poet is a faker.
Pretends so completely
That comes to pretend that is pain 
The pain that he really feels.

And those who read what he writes,
In the pain read they feel right ,
Not the two that he had,
But only the one which they have not.

And so on the wheel rails
It spins to entertain the reason,
This train of rope
Called heart.
Written by Henrik Ibsen | Create an image from this poem

With A Water-lily

 SEE, dear, what thy lover brings; 
'Tis the flower with the white wings. 
Buoyed upon the quiet stream 
In the spring it lay adream. 

Homelike to bestow this guest, 
Lodge it, dear one, in thy breast; 
There its leaves the secret keep 
Of a wave both still and deep. 

Child, beware the tarn-fed stream; 
Danger, danger, there to dream! 
Though the sprite pretends to sleep, 
And above the lilies peep. 

Child, thy bosom is the stream; 
Danger, danger, there to dream! 
Though above the lilies peep, 
And the sprite pretends to sleep.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things