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Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

In the Home Stretch

 SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room, Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people In other chairs, and something, come to look, For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room, And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.
And now and then a smudged, infernal face Looked in a door behind her and addressed Her back.
She always answered without turning.
“Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?” “Put it on top of something that’s on top Of something else,” she laughed.
“Oh, put it where You can to-night, and go.
It’s almost dark; You must be getting started back to town.
” Another blackened face thrust in and looked And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently, “What are you seeing out the window, lady?” “Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady More than so many times make me a lady In common law, I wonder.
” “But I ask, What are you seeing out the window, lady?” “What I’ll be seeing more of in the years To come as here I stand and go the round Of many plates with towels many times.
” “And what is that? You only put me off.
” “Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe; A little stretch of mowing-field for you; Not much of that until I come to woods That end all.
And it’s scarce enough to call A view.
” “And yet you think you like it, dear?” “That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope I like it.
Bang goes something big away Off there upstairs.
The very tread of men As great as those is shattering to the frame Of such a little house.
Once left alone, You and I, dear, will go with softer steps Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands Will ever slam the doors.
” “I think you see More than you like to own to out that window.
” “No; for besides the things I tell you of, I only see the years.
They come and go In alternation with the weeds, the field, The wood.
” “What kind of years?” “Why, latter years— Different from early years.
” “I see them, too.
You didn’t count them?” “No, the further off So ran together that I didn’t try to.
It can scarce be that they would be in number We’d care to know, for we are not young now.
And bang goes something else away off there.
It sounds as if it were the men went down, And every crash meant one less to return To lighted city streets we, too, have known, But now are giving up for country darkness.
” “Come from that window where you see too much for me, And take a livelier view of things from here.
They’re going.
Watch this husky swarming up Over the wheel into the sky-high seat, Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.
” “See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof How dark it’s getting.
Can you tell what time It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon! What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.
A wire she is of silver, as new as we To everything.
Her light won’t last us long.
It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her Night after night and stronger every night To see us through our first two weeks.
But, Joe, The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window; Ask them to help you get it on its feet.
We stand here dreaming.
Hurry! Call them back!” “They’re not gone yet.
” “We’ve got to have the stove, Whatever else we want for.
And a light.
Have we a piece of candle if the lamp And oil are buried out of reach?” Again The house was full of tramping, and the dark, Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall, To which they set it true by eye; and then Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands, So much too light and airy for their strength It almost seemed to come ballooning up, Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
“A fit!” said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.
“It’s good luck when you move in to begin With good luck with your stovepipe.
Never mind, It’s not so bad in the country, settled down, When people ’re getting on in life, You’ll like it.
” Joe said: “You big boys ought to find a farm, And make good farmers, and leave other fellows The city work to do.
There’s not enough For everybody as it is in there.
” “God!” one said wildly, and, when no one spoke: “Say that to Jimmy here.
He needs a farm.
” But Jimmy only made his jaw recede Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say He saw himself a farmer.
Then there was a French boy Who said with seriousness that made them laugh, “Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is you’re ask.
” He doffed his cap and held it with both hands Across his chest to make as ’twere a bow: “We’re giving you our chances on de farm.
” And then they all turned to with deafening boots And put each other bodily out of the house.
“Goodby to them! We puzzle them.
They think— I don’t know what they think we see in what They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems The back some farm presents us; and your woods To northward from your window at the sink, Waiting to steal a step on us whenever We drop our eyes or turn to other things, As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play.
” “Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.
All they could say was ‘God!’ when you proposed Their coming out and making useful farmers.
” “Did they make something lonesome go through you? It would take more than them to sicken you— Us of our bargain.
But they left us so As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.
They almost shook me.
” “It’s all so much What we have always wanted, I confess It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.
It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk.
I never bore it well when people went.
The first night after guests have gone, the house Seems haunted or exposed.
I always take A personal interest in the locking up At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off.
” He fetched a dingy lantern from behind A door.
“There’s that we didn’t lose! And these!”— Some matches he unpocketed.
“For food— The meals we’ve had no one can take from us.
I wish that everything on earth were just As certain as the meals we’ve had.
I wish The meals we haven’t had were, anyway.
What have you you know where to lay your hands on?” “The bread we bought in passing at the store.
There’s butter somewhere, too.
” “Let’s rend the bread.
I’ll light the fire for company for you; You’ll not have any other company Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday To look us over and give us his idea Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.
He’ll know what he would do if he were we, And all at once.
He’ll plan for us and plan To help us, but he’ll take it out in planning.
Well, you can set the table with the loaf.
Let’s see you find your loaf.
I’ll light the fire.
I like chairs occupying other chairs Not offering a lady—” “There again, Joe! You’re tired.
” “I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out; Don’t mind a word I say.
It’s a day’s work To empty one house of all household goods And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away, Although you do no more than dump them down.
” “Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.
” “It’s all so much what I have always wanted, I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.
” “Shouldn’t you like to know?” “I’d like to know If it is what you wanted, then how much You wanted it for me.
” “A troubled conscience! You don’t want me to tell if I don’t know.
” “I don’t want to find out what can’t be known.
But who first said the word to come?” “My dear, It’s who first thought the thought.
You’re searching, Joe, For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.
” “What is this?” “This life? Our sitting here by lantern-light together Amid the wreckage of a former home? You won’t deny the lantern isn’t new.
The stove is not, and you are not to me, Nor I to you.
” “Perhaps you never were?” “It would take me forever to recite All that’s not new in where we find ourselves.
New is a word for fools in towns who think Style upon style in dress and thought at last Must get somewhere.
I’ve heard you say as much.
No, this is no beginning.
” “Then an end?” “End is a gloomy word.
” “Is it too late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn’t lived in? I’ve been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes.
Before we set ourselves to right the house, The first thing in the morning, out we go To go the round of apple, cherry, peach, Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
All of a farm it is.
” “I know this much: I’m going to put you in your bed, if first I have to make you build it.
Come, the light.
” When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, The fire got out through crannies in the stove And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, As much at home as if they’d always danced there.


Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

Death and Fame

 When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St.
Patrick's Cathedral, St.
Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark, Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister- in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan-- Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen -- Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories "He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand day retreat --" "I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me" "I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone" "We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other" "I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor" "Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master" "We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed.
" "He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy" "I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- " "All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist" "He gave great head" So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin- gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!" "I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me.
" "I forgot whether I was straight gay ***** or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly.
on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind" "I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --" Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear "I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to.
.
.
" "He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man.
" "He made sure I came first" This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor-- Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con- ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum- peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto- harp pennywhistles & kazoos Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa- chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio- philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex "I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist" "Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals" "Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest" Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois" "I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- " "He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City" "Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City" "Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982" "I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there" Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo- graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph- hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive February 22, 1997
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Respondez!

 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the
 front and
 speak; 
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions! 
Let the old propositions be postponed! 
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well
 as
 results! 
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?) 
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls! 
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres! 
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other
 spheres!

Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and let one line of my poems
 contradict another!
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their tongues be broken! let their
 eyes
 be discouraged! let none descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love! 
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption! 
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high; 
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around and upon you, O my
 days! my
 lands! 
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the
 atmosphere;)
—Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other
 theory
 would you?) 
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead
 you?)

Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights! let
 slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings! 
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made! 
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let
 the
 heart of the old man be exiled from that of the young man!
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience! let there be
 apathy
 under the stars! 
Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can tyrannize, let him
 tyrannize to his satisfaction! 
Let none but infidels be countenanced! 
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust,
 be
 taken for granted above all! let writers, judges, governments, households, religions,
 philosophies, take such for granted above all! 
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
Let the priest still play at immortality! 
Let death be inaugurated! 
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and
 learn’d and
 polite persons! 
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated! 
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the
 mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of
 these, be
 put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the
 most
 filthy of diseases! 
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools! 
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women among
 themselves talk and think obscenely of men! 
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our
 lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses! 
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon the earth!
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention’d the name of God!

Let there be no God! 
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor,
 dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief! 
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those
 that
 were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?) 
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or
 insane person appear on each of the stands! 
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed
 against
 the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good
 will! 
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the
 earth! 
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach,
 onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission! 
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what
 they
 choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals!

Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of them, not a single
 poet,
 savior, knower, lover! 
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away! 
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him! 
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding faith!
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts!
 (O
 seeming! seeming! seeming!) 
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught! 
Let insanity still have charge of sanity! 
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds! 
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself! 
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons! 
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden
 under
 heel, after all?) 
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! let the things
 themselves
 still continue unstudied! 
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself! 
(What real happiness have you had one single hour through your whole life?) 
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (What do you
 suppose
 death will do, then?)
Written by Eavan Boland | Create an image from this poem

My Country in Darkness

 After the wolves and before the elms
the bardic order ended in Ireland.
Only a few remained to continue a dead art in a dying land: This is a man on the road from Youghal to Cahirmoyle.
He has no comfort, no food and no future.
He has no fire to recite his friendless measures by.
His riddles and flatteries will have no reward.
His patrons sheath their swords in Flanders and Madrid.
Reader of poems, lover of poetry— in case you thought this was a gentle art follow this man on a moonless night to the wretched bed he will have to make: The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree and burns in the rain.
This is its home, its last frail shelter.
All of it— Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before— falters into cadence before he sleeps: He shuts his eyes.
Darkness falls on it.
Written by Nazim Hikmet | Create an image from this poem

Autobiography

 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some about fish
 I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
 I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food
 I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize
 which they did
at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24
in '61 the tomb I visit is his books
they tried to tear me away from my party
 it didn't work
nor was I crushed under the falling idols
in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death
in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart
 waiting to die
I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit
I deceived my women
I never talked my friends' backs
I drank but not every day
I earned my bread money honestly what happiness
out of embarrassment for others I lied
I lied so as not to hurt someone else
 but I also lied for no reason at all
I've ridden in trains planes and cars
most people don't get the chance
I went to opera
 most people haven't even heard of the opera
and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit
 mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
 but I've had my coffee grounds read
my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
 in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothing says it will
I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that
and I wouldn't want such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to the road under diving planes
but I fell in love at almost sixty
in short comrades
even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief
 I can say I've lived like a human being
and who knows
 how much longer I'll live
 what else will happen to me


 This autobiography was written 
 in east Berlin on 11 September 1961


Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Directions

 You know the brick path in the back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window, 
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk into the woods you come 
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of the Ice Age,
and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now
against the light-brown fallen leaves?
And farther on, you know
the small footbridge with the broken railing
and if you go beyond the you arrive
at the bottom of sheep's head hill?
Well, if you start climbing, and you
might have to grab on to a sapling
when the going gets steep,
you will eventually come to a long stone 
ridge with a border of pine trees
which is a high as you can go
and a good enough place to stop.
The best time for this is late afternoon en the sun strobes through the columns of trees as you are hiking up, and when you find an agreeable rock to sit on, you will be able to see the light pouring down into the woods and breaking into the shapes and tones of things and you will hear nothing but a sprig of a birdsong or leafy falling of a cone or t through the trees, and if this is your day you might even spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese driving overhead toward some destination.
But it is hard to speak of these things how the voices of light enter the body and begin to recite their stories how the earth holds us painfully against ts breast made of humus and brambles how we will soon be gone regard the entities that continue to return greener than ever, spring water flowing through a meadow and the shadows of clouds passing over the hills and the ground where we stand in the tremble of thought taking the vast outside into ourselves.
Still, let me know before you set out.
Come knock on my door and I will walk with you as far as the garden with one hand on your shoulder.
I will even watch after you and not turn back to the house until you disappear into the crowd of maple and ash, heading up toward the hill, percing the ground with your stick.
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

Forest Of Europe

 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath of lines from Mandelstam, which you recite, uncoils as visibly as cigarette smoke.
"The rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva.
" Under your exile's tongue, crisp under heel, the gutturals crackle like decaying leaves, the phrase from Mandelstam circles with light in a brown room, in barren Oklahoma.
There is a Gulag Archipelago under this ice, where the salt, mineral spring of the long Trail of Tears runnels these plains as hard and open as a herdsman's face sun-cracked and stubbled with unshaven snow.
Growing in whispers from the Writers' Congress, the snow circles like cossacks round the corpse of a tired Choctaw till it is a blizzard of treaties and white papers as we lose sight of the single human through the cause.
So every spring these branches load their shelves, like libraries with newly published leaves, till waste recycles them—paper to snow— but, at zero of suffering, one mind lasts like this oak with a few brazen leaves.
As the train passed the forest's tortured icons, ths floes clanging like freight yards, then the spires of frozen tears, the stations screeching steam, he drew them in a single winters' breath whose freezing consonants turned into stone.
He saw the poetry in forlorn stations under clouds vast as Asia, through districts that could gulp Oklahoma like a grape, not these tree-shaded prairie halts but space so desolate it mocked destinations.
Who is that dark child on the parapets of Europe, watching the evening river mint its sovereigns stamped with power, not with poets, the Thames and the Neva rustling like banknotes, then, black on gold, the Hudson's silhouettes? >From frozen Neva to the Hudson pours, under the airport domes, the echoing stations, the tributary of emigrants whom exile has made as classless as the common cold, citizens of a language that is now yours, and every February, every "last autumn", you write far from the threshing harvesters folding wheat like a girl plaiting her hair, far from Russia's canals quivering with sunstroke, a man living with English in one room.
The tourist archipelagoes of my South are prisons too, corruptible, and though there is no harder prison than writing verse, what's poetry, if it is worth its salt, but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth? >From hand to mouth, across the centuries, the bread that lasts when systems have decayed, when, in his forest of barbed-wire branches, a prisoner circles, chewing the one phrase whose music will last longer than the leaves, whose condensation is the marble sweat of angels' foreheads, which will never dry till Borealis shuts the peacock lights of its slow fan from L.
A.
to Archangel, and memory needs nothing to repeat.
Frightened and starved, with divine fever Osip Mandelstam shook, and every metaphor shuddered him with ague, each vowel heavier than a boundary stone, "to the rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva," but now that fever is a fire whose glow warms our hands, Joseph, as we grunt like primates exchanging gutturals in this wintry cave of a brown cottage, while in drifts outside mastodons force their systems through the snow.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Ballad Of The Leather Medal

 Only a Leather Medal, hanging there on the wall,
Dingy and frayed and faded, dusty and worn and old;
Yet of my humble treasures I value it most of all,
And I wouldn't part with that medal if you gave me its weight in gold.
Read the inscription: For Valour - presented to Millie MacGee.
Ah! how in mem'ry it takes me back to the "auld lang syne," When Millie and I were sweethearts, and fair as a flower was she - Yet little I dreamt that her bosom held the heart of heroine.
Listen! I'll tell you about it.
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An orphan was Millie MacGee, Living with Billie her brother, under the Yukon sky, Sam, her pa, was cremated in the winter of nineteen-three, As duly and truly related by the pen of an author guy.
A cute little kid was Billie, solemn and silken of hair, The image of Jackie Coogan in the days before movies could speak.
Devoted to him was Millie, with more than a mother's care, And happy were they together in their cabin on Bunker Creek.
'Twas only a mining village, where hearts are simple and true, And Millie MacGee was schoolma'am, loved and admired by all; Yet no one dreamed for a moment she'd do what she dared to do - But wait and I'll try to tell you, as clear as I can recall.
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Christmas Eve in the school-house! A scene of glitter and glee; The children eager and joyful; parents and neighbours too; Right in the forefront, Millie, close to the Christmas Tree.
While Billie, her brother, recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew.
" I reckon you've heard the opus, a ballad of guts and gore; Of a Yukon frail and a frozen trail and a fight in a dringing dive, It's on a par, I figger, with "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor," And the boys who wrote them pieces ought to be skinned alive.
Picture that scene of gladness; the honest faces aglow; The kiddies gaping and spellbound, as Billie strutted his stuff.
The stage with its starry candles, and there in the foremost row, Millie, bright as a fairy, in radient flounce and fluff.
More like an angel I thought her; all she needed was wings, And I sought for a smile seraphic, but her eyes were only for Bill; So there was I longing and loving, and dreaming the craziest things, And Billie shouting and spouting, and everyone rapt and still.
Proud as a prince was Billie, bang in the footlights' glare, And quaking for him was Millie, as she followed every word; Then just as he reached the climax, ranting and sawing the air - Ugh! How it makes me shudder! The horrible thing occurred.
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'Twas the day when frocks were frilly, and skirts were scraping the ground, And the snowy flounces of Millie like sea foam round her swept; Humbly adoring I watched her - when oh, my heart gave a bound! Hoary and scarred and hideous, out from the tree.
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it.
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crept.
A whiskered, beady-eyes monster, grisly and grim of hue; Savage and slinking and silent, born of the dark and dirt; Dazed by the glare and the glitter, it wavered a moment or two - Then like a sinister shadow, it vanished.
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'neath Millie's skirt.
I stared.
had my eyes deceived me? I shivered.
I held my breath.
Surly I must have dreamed it.
I quivered.
I made to rise.
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Then - my God! it was real.
Millie grew pale as death; And oh, such a look of terror woke in her lovely eyes.
Did her scream ring out? Ah no, sir.
It froze at her very lips.
Clenching her teeth she checked it, and I saw her slim hands lock, Grasping and gripping tensely, with desperate finger tips, Something that writhed and wriggled under her dainty frock.
Quick I'd have dashed to her rescue, but fiercely she signalled: "No!" Her eyes were dark with anguish, but her lips were set and grim; Then I knew she was thinking of Billie - the kiddy must have his show, Reap to the full his glory, nothing mattered but him.
So spiked to my chair with horror, there I shuddered and saw Her fingrs frenziedly clutching and squeezing with all their might Something that squirmed and struggled, a deamon of tooth and claw, Fighting with fear and fury, under her garment white.
Oh could I only aid her! But the wide room lay between, And again her eyes besought me: "Steady!" they seamed to say.
"Stay where you are, Bob Simmons; don't let us have a scene, Billie will soon be finished.
Only a moment.
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stay!" A moment! Ah yes, I got her.
I knew how night after night She'd learned him each line of that ballad with patience and pride and glee; With gesture and tone dramatic, she'd taught him how to recite.
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And now at the last to fail him - no, it must never be.
A moment! It seemed like ages.
Why was Billie so slow? He stammered.
Twice he repeated: "The Lady that's known as Lou -" The kiddy was stuck and she knew it.
Her face was frantic with woe.
Could she but come to his rescue? Could she remember the cue? I saw her whispering wildly as she leaned to the frightened boy; But Billie stared like a dummy, and I stifled an anxious curse.
Louder, louder she prompted; then his face illumined with joy, And panting, flushed and exultant, he finished the final verse.
So the youngster would up like a whirlwind, while cheer resounded on cheer; His piece was the hit of the evening.
"Bravo!" I heard them say.
But there in the heart of the racket was one who could not hear - The loving sister who'd coached him; for Millie had fainted away.
I rushed to her side and grabbed her; then others saw her distress, And all were eager to aid me, as I pillowed that golden head, But her arms were tense and rigid, and clutched in the folds of her dress, Unlocking her hands they found it .
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A RAT .
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and the brute was dead.
In silence she'd crushed its life out, rather than scare the crowd, And ***** little Billie's triumph .
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Hey! Mother, what about tea? I've just been telling a story that makes me so mighty proud.
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Stranger, let me present you - my wife, that was Millie MacGee.
Written by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden | Create an image from this poem

In Memory of Sigmund Freud


When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,
of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.
Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished
to think of our life from whose unruliness
so many plausible young futures
with threats or flattery ask obedience,
but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes
upon that last picture, common to us all,
of problems like relatives gathered
puzzled and jealous about our dying.
For about him till the very end were still
those he had studied, the fauna of the night,
and shades that still waited to enter
the bright circle of his recognition
turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he
was taken away from his life interest
to go back to the earth in London,
an important Jew who died in exile.
Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
who think they can be cured by killing
and covering the garden with ashes.
They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets;
all he did was to remember
like the old and be honest like children.
He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
like a poetry lesson till sooner
or later it faltered at the line where
long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
how rich life had been and how silly,
and was life-forgiven and more humble,
able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.
No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
the fall of princes, the collapse of
their lucrative patterns of frustration:
if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
of State be broken and prevented
the co-operation of avengers.
Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,
and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.
If some traces of the autocratic pose,
the paternal strictness he distrusted, still
clung to his utterance and features,
it was a protective coloration
for one who'd lived among enemies so long:
if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives:
Like weather he can only hinder or help,
the proud can still be proud but find it
a little harder, the tyrant tries to
make do with him but doesn't care for him much:
he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth
and extends, till the tired in even
the remotest miserable duchy
have felt the change in their bones and are cheered
till the child, unlucky in his little State,
some hearth where freedom is excluded,
a hive whose honey is fear and worry,
feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,
while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
so many long-forgotten objects
revealed by his undiscouraged shining
are returned to us and made precious again;
games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,
little noises we dared not laugh at,
faces we made when no one was looking.
But he wishes us more than this.
To be free
is often to be lonely.
He would unite
the unequal moieties fractured
by our own well-meaning sense of justice,
would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother's richness of feeling:
but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also
because it needs our love.
With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future
that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of 'Judas',
as he did and all must bear who serve it.
One rational voice is dumb.
Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

Operation Memory

 We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced.
To his separate bed Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred With a needle in his arm.
And there I was, in the middle Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs And apartments and wives.
Nobody told me the gun was loaded.
We'd been drinking since early afternoon.
I was loaded.
The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when I woke up, sweating, in my civvies.
All my friends had jobs As professional liars, and most had partners who were good in bed.
What did I have? Just this feeling of always being in the middle Of things, and the luck of looking younger than fifty.
At dawn I returned to draft headquarters.
I was eighteen And counting backwards.
The interviewer asked one loaded Question after another, such as why I often read the middle Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends.
when Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? "In bed With a broad," I answered, with locker-room bravado.
The truth was, jobs Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job At all.
Unamused, the judge looked at his watch.
It was 1970 By the time he spoke.
Recommending clemency, he ordered me to go to bed At noon and practice my disappearing act.
Someone must have loaded The harmless gun on the wall in Act I when I was asleep.
And there I was, without an alibi, in the middle Of a journey down nameless, snow-covered streets, in the middle Of a mystery--or a muddle.
These were the jobs That saved men's souls, or so I was told, but when The orphans assembled for their annual reunion, ten Years later, on the playing fields of Eton, each unloaded A kit bag full of troubles, and smiled bravely, and went to bed.
Thanks to Operation Memory, each of us woke up in a different bed Or coffin, with a different partner beside him, in the middle Of a war that had never been declared.
No one had time to load His weapon or see to any of the dozen essential jobs Preceding combat duty.
And there I was, dodging bullets, merely one In a million whose lucky number had come up.
When It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up, It was over: I was 38, on the brink of middle age, A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap.

Book: Shattered Sighs