Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Randall Jarrell Poems

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

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

See Also:
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Next Day

 Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook.
Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook.
And I am wise If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I've become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.
When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I'd wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children.
Now that I'm old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me.
It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered.
How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life.
Now the boy pats my dog And we start home.
Now I am good.
The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water-- It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don't know .
.
.
Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work--I wish for them.
The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them.
As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate.
Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: "You're old.
" That's all, I'm old.
And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body.
As I think of her and I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I'm anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.


Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Cinderella

 Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up 
In sea-coal satin.
The flame-blue glances, The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes Draw over an old ember --as the mother In a jug of cider-- were a comfort to her.
They sat by the fire and told each other stories.
"What men want.
.
.
" said the godmother softly-- How she went on it is hard for a man to say.
Their eyes, on their Father, were monumental marble.
Then they smiled like two old women, bussed each other, Said, "Gossip, gossip"; and, lapped in each other's looks, Mirror for Mirror, drank a cup of tea.
Of cambric tea.
But there is a reality Under the good silk of the good sisters' Good ball gowns.
She knew.
.
.
Hard-breasted, naked-eyed, She pushed her silk feet into glass, and rose within A gown of imaginary gauze.
The shy prince drank A toast to her in champagne from her slipper And breathed, "Bewitching!" Breathed, "I am bewitched!" --She said to her godmother, "Men!" And, later, looking down to see her flesh Look back up from under lace, the ashy gauze And pulsing marble of a bridal veil, She wished it all a widow's coal-black weeds.
A sullen wife and a reluctant mother, She sat all day in silence by the fire.
Better, later, to stare past her sons' sons, Her daughters' daughter, and tell stories to the fire.
But best, dead, damned, to rock forever Beside Hell's fireside-- to see within the flames The Heaven to whosee gold-gauzed door there comes A little dark old woman, the God's Mother, And cries, "Come in, come in! My son's out now, Out now, will be back soon, may be back never, Who knows, eh? We know what they are--men, men! But come, come in till then! Come in till then!
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Children Selecting Books In A Library

 With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.
The child's head, bent to the book-colored shelves, Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering, Moving in blind grace .
.
.
yet from the mural, Care The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist, Seizes the baby hero by the hair And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children, Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawn But blanched like dawn, with dew.
The children's cries Are to men the cries of crickets, dense with warmth -- But dip a finger into Fafnir, taste it, And all their words are plain as chance and pain.
Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres Because their lives are: the capricious infinite That, like parents, no one has yet escaped Except by luck or magic; and since strength And wit are useless, be kind or stupid, wait Some power's gratitude, the tide of things.
Read meanwhile .
.
.
hunt among the shelves, as dogs do, grasses, And find one cure for Everychild's diseases Beginning: Once upon a time there was A wolf that fed, a mouse that warned, a bear that rode A boy.
Us men, alas! wolves, mice, bears bore.
And yet wolves, mice, bears, children, gods and men In slow preambulation up and down the shelves Of the universe are seeking .
.
.
who knows except themselves? What some escape to, some escape: if we find Swann's Way better than our own, an trudge on at the back Of the north wind to -- to -- somewhere east Of the sun, west of the moon, it is because we live By trading another's sorrow for our own; another's Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own .
.
.
"I am myself still?" For a little while, forget: The world's selves cure that short disease, myself, And we see bending to us, dewy-eyed, the great CHANGE, dear to all things not to themselves endeared.
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Losses

 It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes-- and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend, We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died For us to figure we had died like.
) In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed The ranges by the desert or the shore, Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores-- And turned into replacements and worke up One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died It was not an accident but a mistake (But an easy one for anyone to make.
) We read our mail and counted up our missions-- In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school-- Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, "Our casualties were low.
" The said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.
It was not dying --no, not ever dying; But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead, And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying? We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?"
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

The Woman At The Washington Zoo

 The saris go by me from the embassies.
Cloth from the moon.
Cloth from another planet.
They look back at the leopard like the leopard.
And I.
.
.
.
this print of mine, that has kept its color Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so To my bed, so to my grave, with no Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief, The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief-- Only I complain.
.
.
.
this serviceable Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns, Wavy beneath fountains--small, far-off, shining In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap, Aging, but without knowledge of their age, Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death-- Oh, bars of my own body, open, open! The world goes by my cage and never sees me.
And there come not to me, as come to these, The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas' grain, Pigeons settling on the bears' bread, buzzards Tearing the meat the flies have clouded.
.
.
.
Vulture, When you come for the white rat that the foxes left, Take off the red helmet of your head, the black Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man: The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn, To whose hand of power the great lioness Stalks, purring.
.
.
.
You know what I was, You see what I am: change me, change me!


Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

The Refugees

 In the shabby train no seat is vacant.
The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment.
Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you.
What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of the child who yesterday possessed A country welcomer than this.
Did he? All night into the waste The train moves silently.
The faces are vacant.
Have none of them found the cost extravagant? How could they? They gave what they possessed.
Here all the purses are vacant.
And what else could satisfy the extravagant Tears and wish of the child but this? Impose its canceling terrible mask On the days and faces and lives they waste? What else are their lives but a journey to the vacant Satisfaction of death? And the mask They wear tonight through their waste Is death's rehearsal.
Is it really extravagant To read in their faces: What is there we possessed That we were unwilling to trade for this?
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

The Player Piano

 I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age.
She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus.
" I felt that I had met someone from home.
No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common Like -- like -- the false armistice.
Piano rolls.
She told me her house was the first Pancake House East of the Mississippi, and I showed her A picture of my grandson.
Going home -- Home to the hotel -- I began to hum, "Smile a while, I bid you sad adieu, When the clouds roll back I'll come to you.
" Let's brush our hair before we go to bed, I say to the old friend who lives in my mirror.
I remember how I'd brush my mother's hair Before she bobbed it.
How long has it been Since I hit my funnybone? had a scab on my knee? Here are Mother and Father in a photograph, Father's holding me.
.
.
.
They both look so young.
I'm so much older than they are.
Look at them, Two babies with their baby.
I don't blame you, You weren't old enough to know any better; If I could I'd go back, sit down by you both, And sign our true armistice: you weren't to blame.
I shut my eyes and there's our living room.
The piano's playing something by Chopin, And Mother and Father and their little girl Listen.
Look, the keys go down by themselves! I go over, hold my hands out, play I play -- If only, somehow, I had learned to live! The three of us sit watching, as my waltz Plays itself out a half-inch from my fingers.
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Gunner

 Did they send me away from my cat and my wife
To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth,
To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent?
Did I nod in the flies of the schools?
And the fighters rolled into the tracer like rabbits,
The blood froze over my splints like a scab --
Did I snore, all still and grey in the turret,
Till the palms rose out of the sea with my death?
And the world ends here, in the sand of a grave,
All my wars over? How easy it was to die!
Has my wife a pension of so many mice?
Did the medals go home to my cat?
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

Well Water

 What a girl called "the dailiness of life"
(Adding an errand to your errand.
Saying, "Since you're up .
.
.
" Making you a means to A means to a means to) is well water Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny Inexorable hours.
And yet sometimes The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands And gulp from them the dailiness of life.
Written by Randall Jarrell | Create an image from this poem

The Old And The New Masters

 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree.
When someone suffers, no one else eats Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes As the sufferers watch the sufferer.
In St.
Sebastian Mourned by St.
Irene The flame of one torch is the only light.
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps And covers them with a cloth) are fixed on the shaft Set in his chest like a column; St.
Irene's Hands are spread in the gesture of the Madonna, Revealing, accepting, what she does not understand.
Her hands say: "Lo! Behold!" Beside her a monk's hooded head is bowed, his hands Are put together in the work of mourning.
It is as if they were still looking at the lance Piercing the side of Christ, nailed on his cross.
The same nails pierce all their hands and feet, the same Thin blood, mixed with water, trickles from their sides.
The taste of vinegar is on every tongue That gasps, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" They watch, they are, the one thing in the world.
So, earlier, everything is pointed In van der Goes' Nativity, toward the naked Shining baby, like the needle of a compass.
The different orders and sizes of the world: The angels like Little People, perched in the rafters Or hovering in mid-air like hummingbirds; The shepherds, so big and crude, so plainly adoring; The medium-sized donor, his little family, And their big patron saints; the Virgin who kneels Before her child in worship; the Magi out in the hills With their camels--they ask directions, and have pointed out By a man kneeling, the true way; the ox And the donkey, two heads in the manger So much greater than a human head, who also adore; Even the offerings, a sheaf of wheat, A jar and a glass of flowers, are absolutely still In natural concentration, as they take their part In the salvation of the natural world.
The time of the world concentrates On this one instant: far off in the rocks You can see Mary and Joseph and their donkey Coming to Bethlehem; on the grassy hillside Where their flocks are grazing, the shepherds gesticulate In wonder at the star; and so many hundreds Of years in the future, the donor, his wife, And their children are kneeling, looking: everything That was or will be in the world is fixed On its small, helpless, human center.
After a while the masters show the crucifixion In one corner of the canvas: the men come to see What is important, see that it is not important.
The new masters paint a subject as they please, And Veronese is prosecuted by the Inquisition For the dogs playing at the feet of Christ, The earth is a planet among galaxies.
Later Christ disappears, the dogs disappear: in abstract Understanding, without adoration, the last master puts Colors on canvas, a picture of the universe In which a bright spot somewhere in the corner Is the small radioactive planet men called Earth.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry