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Best Famous Seriously Poems

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Written by Paul Eluard | Create an image from this poem

The Human Face

 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost recesses 
So that I would meet someone 

I don’t listen to monsters 
I know them and all that they say 
I see only beautiful faces 
Good faces, sure of themselves 
Certain soon to ruin their masters 

II. The women’s role 

As they sing, the maids dash forward 
To tidy up the killing fields 
Well-powdered girls, quickly to their knees 

Their hands -- reaching for the fresh air -- 
Are blue like never before 
What a glorious day! 

Look at their hands, the dead 
Look at their liquid eyes 

This is the toilet of transience 
The final toilet of life 
Stones sink and disappear 
In the vast, primal waters 
The final toilet of time 

Hardly a memory remains 
the dried-up well of virtue 
In the long, oppressive absences 
One surrenders to tender flesh 
Under the spell of weakness 

III. As deep as the silence 

As deep as the silence 
Of a corpse under ground 
With nothing but darkness in mind 

As dull and deaf 
As autumn by the pond 
Covered with stale shame 

Poison, deprived of its flower 
And of its golden beasts 
out its night onto man 

IV. Patience 

You, my patient one 
My patience 
My parent 
Head held high and proudly 
Organ of the sluggish night 
Bow down 
Concealing all of heaven 
And its favor 
Prepare for vengeance 
A bed where I'll be born 

V. First march, the voice of another 

Laughing at sky and planets 
Drunk with their confidence 
The wise men wish for sons 
And for sons from their sons 

Until they all perish in vain 
Time burdens only fools 
While Hell alone prospers 
And the wise men are absurd 

VI. A wolf 

Day surprises me and night scares me 
haunts me and winter follows me 
An animal walking on the snow has placed 
Its paws in the sand or in the mud 

Its paws have traveled 
From further afar than my own steps 
On a path where death 
Has the imprints of life 

VII. A flawless fire 

The threat under the red sky 
Came from below -- jaws 
And scales and links 
Of a slippery, heavy chain 

Life was spread about generously 
So that death took seriously 
The debt it was paid without a thought 

Death was the God of love 
And the conquerors in a kiss 
Swooned upon their victims 
Corruption gained courage 

And yet, beneath the red sky 
Under the appetites for blood 
Under the dismal starvation 
The cavern closed 

The kind earth filled 
The graves dug in advance 
Children were no longer afraid 
Of maternal depths 

And madness and stupidity 
And vulgarity make way 
For humankind and brotherhood 
No longer fighting against life -- 
For an everlasting humankind 

VIII. Liberty 

On my school notebooks 
On my desk, on the trees 
On the sand, on the snow 
I write your name 
On all the read pages 
On all the empty pages 
Stone, blood, paper or ash 
I write your name 

On the golden images 
On the weapons of warriors 
On the crown of kings 
I write your name 

On the jungle and the desert 
On the nests, on the broom 
On the echo of my childhood 
I write your name 

On the wonders of nights 
On the white bread of days 
On the seasons betrothed 
I write your name 

d'azur On all my blue rags 
On the sun-molded pond 
On the moon-enlivened lake 
I write your name 

On the fields, on the horizon 
On the wings of birds 
And on the mill of shadows 
I write your name 

On every burst of dawn 
On the sea, on the boats 
On the insane mountain 
I write your name 

On the foam of clouds 
On the sweat of the storm 
On the rain, thick and insipid 
I write your name 

On the shimmering shapes 
On the colorful bells 
On the physical truth 
I write your name

On the alert pathways 
On the wide-spread roads 
On the overflowing places 
I write your name 

On the lamp that is ignited 
On the lamp that is dimmed 
On my reunited houses 
I write your name 

On the fruit cut in two 
Of the mirror and of my room 
On my bed, an empty shell 
I write your name 

On my dog, young and greedy 
On his pricked-up ears 
On his clumsy paw 
I write your name 

On the springboard of my door 
On the familiar objects 
On the wave of blessed fire 
I write your name 

On all harmonious flesh 
On the face of my friends 
On every out-stretched hand 
I write your name 

On the window-pane of surprises 
On the careful lips 
Well-above silence 
I write your name 

On my destroyed shelter 
On my collapsed beacon 
On the walls of my weariness 
I write your name 

On absence without want 
On naked solitude 
On the steps of death 
I write your name 

On regained health 
On vanished risk 
On hope free from memory 
I write your name 

And by the power of one word 
I begin my life again 
I am born to know you 

To call you by name: Liberty!


Written by Jorge Luis Borges | Create an image from this poem

Instants

 If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed,
I'll be more full - than I am now,
In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygenic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary
 ones,
I was one of those people who live
 prudent and prolific lives -
 each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
 if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,

If you don't know - thats what life is made of,
Don't lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywhere
 without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
 and without an umberella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
 at the beginning of spring till
 the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live - but now I am 85,
 - and I know that I am dying ...
Written by Nazim Hikmet | Create an image from this poem

On Living

 I

Living is no laughing matter:
 you must live with great seriousness
 like a squirrel, for example--
 I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
 I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
 you must take it seriously,
 so much so and to such a degree
 that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
 your back to the wall,
 or else in a laboratory
 in your white coat and safety glasses,
 you can die for people--
 even for people whose faces you've never seen,
 even though you know living
 is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
 I mean, you must take living so seriously
 that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
 and not for your children, either,
 but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
 because living, I mean, weighs heavier.


 II

Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get
 from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
 about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
 for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front--
 for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
 we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
 but we'll still worry ourselves to death
 about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say, 
 before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
 I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
 we must live as if we will never die.


 III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
 and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
 I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
 in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
 if you're going to say "I lived" ...
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

from crossing the line

 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as soft as the shine on velvet

the whole nation stretched up into the dusty attic for its medals and black ties
 and prayers
and seriously polished its black uncomfortable shoes
and no one dared creak in the wrong places

anybody who thought he was everybody
except those who were nearly dying themselves
wanted to come to the funeral
and in its mourning the nation rejoiced to think
that once again it had cut into the world's time
with its own sick longing for the past

the great man and the great nation
had the same bulldog vision of each other's face
and neither of them had barked convincingly for a very long time

so the nation turned out on a cold bleak day
and attended its own funeral with uncanny reverence
and the other nations put tears over their laughing eyes
v-signs and rude gestures spoke with the same fingers


(2) aden

tourists dream of bombs 
that will not kill them

into the rock
the sand-claws
the winking eye
and harsh shell
of aden

waiting for the pinch

jagged sun
lumps of heat
bumping on the stunned ship
knuckledustered rock
clenched over steamer point

waiting for the sun to stagger
loaded down the hill
before we bunch ashore

calm
eyes within their windows
we walk
(a town must live
must have its acre of normality
let hate sport
its bright shirt in the shadows)
we shop
collect our duty-murdered goods
compare bargains
laugh grieve
at benefit or loss
aden dead-pan
leans against our words
which hand invisible
knows how to print a bomb
ejaculate a knife
does tourist greed embroil us in
or shelter us from guilt

backstreet
a sailor drunk
gyrates within a wall of adenese
collapses spews
they roll about him
in a dark pool

the sun moves off
as we do

streets squashed with shops
criss-cross of customers
a rush of people nightwards
a white woman
striding like a cliff
dirt - goats in the gutter
crunched beggars
a small to breed a fungus
cafes with open mouths
men like broken teeth
or way back in the dark
like tonsils

an air of shapeless threat
fluffs in our pulse
a boundary crossed
the rules are not the same
brushed by eyes
the touch is silent
silence breeds
we feel the breath of fury
(soon to roar)
retreat within our skins
return to broader streets

bazaars glower
almost at candlelight
we clutch our goods
a dim delusion of festivity
a christ neurotic
dying to explode

how much of this is aden
how much our masterpiece
all atmospheres are inbuilt

an armoured car looms by

the ship like mother
brooding in the sea
receives us with a sigh
aden winks and ogles in the dark
the sport of hate released

slowly away at midnight
rumours of bombs and riots
in the long wake
a disappointed sleep

nothing to write home about
except the heat


(3) crossing the line (xii)

  give me not england
in its glory dead nightmared with rotting seed
palmerston's perverted gunboat up the
yangtse's **** - lloyd george and winston churchill
rubbing men like salt into surly wounds
(we won those wars and neatly fucked ourselves)
eden at suez a jacked-up piece of wool
macmillan sprinkling cliches where the black
blood boils (the ashes of his kind) - home
as wan as godot (shagged by birth) wilson
for whom the wind blew sharply once or twice
sailing eastwards in the giant's stetson hat
saving jims from the red long john
   give me
not england but the world with england in it
with people as promiscuous as planes (the colours
shuffled)
 don't ask for wars to end or men
to have their deaths wrapped up as christmas gifts
expect myself to die a coward - proclaim no lives
as kisses - offer no roses to the blind
no sanctions to the damned - will not shake hands 
with him who rapes my wife or chokes my daughter
only when drunk or mad will think myself
the master of my purse - will lust for ease
seek to assuage my griefs in others' tears
will make more chaos than i put to rights

but in my fracture i shall strive to stand
a ruined arch whose limbs stretch half
towards a point that drew me upwards - that
ungot intercourse in space that prickless star
is what i ache for (what i want in man
and thus i give him)
  the image of that cross
is grit within him - the arch reflects in
microscopic waves through fleshly aeons
beaming messages to nerves and typing fingers

both ends of me are broken - in frantic storms
hanging over cliffs i fight to mend them
the job cannot be done - i die though
if i stop
 how cynical i may be (how apt
with metaphor or joke to thrust my fate
grotesquely into print) the fact is that
i live until i stop - i can't sit down then
crying let me die or death is good
(the freedom from myself my bones are seeking)

i must go on - tread every road that comes
risk every plague because i must believe
the end is bright (however filled with vomit
every brook) - if not for me then for
those who clamber on my bones
   my hope
is what i owe them - they owe their life to me
Written by Annie Dillard | Create an image from this poem

Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

 New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

Bridges leap over the train with increasing frequency.

At each stop an additional story grows
onto the roofs. Finally houses with squares
and dots of windows rise up. No matter how far
you throw back your head, there are no tops.

Time and again, the telegraph poles are made
of wood. Maybe it only seems that way.

In the narrow canyons between the buildings, a sort
of adventurer-wind howls and runs away
along the versts of the ten avenues. Below 
flows a solid human mass. Only their yellow
waterproof slickers hiss like samovars and blaze.
The construction rises and with it the crane, as if 
the building were being lifted up off the ground
by its pigtail. It is hard to take it seriously.

The buildings are glowing with electricity; their evenly 
cut-out windows are like a stencil. Under awnings
the papers lie in heaps, delivered by trucks.
It is impossible to tear oneself away from this spectacle.

At midnight those leaving the theaters drink a last soda.
Puddles of rain stand cooling. Poor people scavenge 
bones. In all directions is a labyrinth of trains
suffocated by vaults. There is no hope, your eyes
are not accustomed to seeing such things.

They are starting to evolve an American gait out
of the cautious steps of the Indians on the paths of empty 
Manhattan. Maybe it only seems that way.


Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

A Fountain a Bottle a Donkeys Ears and Some Books

 Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,
The early Mormons made a settlement
And built a stone baptismal font outdoors—
But Smith, or someone, called them off the mountain
To go West to a worse fight with the desert.
You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font.
Well, take me there."

 Someday I will."

 "Today."

"Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?
Let's talk about it."

 "Let's go see the place."

'To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer,
And both of our united strengths, to do it."

"You've lost it, then?"

 "Not so but I can find it.
No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it.
The mountain may have shifted since I saw it
In eighty-five."

 "As long ago as that?"

"If I remember rightly, it had sprung
A leak and emptied then. And forty years
Can do a good deal to bad masonry.
You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.
But you have said it, and we're off to find it.
Old as I am, I'm going to let myself
Be dragged by you all over everywhere——"
"I thought you were a guide.”

 "I am a guide,
And that's why I can't decently refuse you."

We made a day of it out of the world,
Ascending to descend to reascend.
The old man seriously took his bearings,
And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced
A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,
Or stained by vegetation from above,
A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

"Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain,
At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle."

"I won't accept the substitute. It's empty.”

"So's everything."

"I want my fountain."

"I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty.
And anyway this tells me where I am.”

"Hadn't you long suspected where you were?"

"You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?
Look here, you treat your guide with due respect
If you don't want to spend the night outdoors.
I vow we must be near the place from where
The two converging slides, the avalanches,
On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.
We may as well see that and save the day."

"Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?"

"For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?
You don't like nature. All you like is books.
What signify a donkey's cars and bottle,
However natural? Give you your books!
Well then, right here is where I show you books.
Come straight down off this mountain just as fast
As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.
It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather."

Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.

We struck a road I didn't recognize,
But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes
In dust once more. We followed this a mile,
Perhaps, to where it ended at a house
I didn't know was there. It was the kind
To bring me to for broad-board paneling.
I never saw so good a house deserted.

"Excuse me if I ask you in a window
That happens to be broken, Davis said.
"The outside doors as yet have held against us.
I want to introduce you to the people
Who used to live here. They were Robinsons.
You must have heard of Clara Robinson,
The poetess who wrote the book of verses
And had it published. It was all about
The posies on her inner windowsill,
And the birds on her outer windowsill,
And how she tended both, or had them tended:
She never tended anything herself.
She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her whole
Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.
I'll show You how she had her sills extended
To entertain the birds and hold the flowers.
Our business first's up attic with her books."

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass
Through a house stripped of everything
Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say!—-if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light
Where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library—
Unfortunately all of one kind, though.
They bad been brought home from some publisher
And taken thus into the family.
Boys and bad hunters had known what to do
With stone and lead to unprotected glass:
Shatter it inward on the unswept floors.
How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?
By being invisible for what it was,
Or else by some remoteness that defied them
To find out what to do to hurt a poem.
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,
To send it sailing out the attic window
Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,
Tried to improve on sailing like a tile
By flying like a bird (silent in flight,
But all the burden of its body song),
Only to tumble like a stricken bird,
And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.
Books were not thrown irreverently about.
They simply lay where someone now and then,
Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet
And left it lying where it fell rejected.
Here were all those the poetess's life
Had been too short to sell or give away.

"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three?"

 "Take all you want."
Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh
In virgin wrapper from deep in the box,
And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.
He read in one and I read in another,
Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket. It was there.
The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven
At having eased her heart of one more copy—
Legitimately. My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books.
Written by Marvin Bell | Create an image from this poem

I or Someone Like Me

 In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing
through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes,
and the prospect of a string bass inside the wood,
I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision.
As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos
topped first one tree, then another and another,
till the work of sight was forced to go lower
into a dark lair of fallen logs and fungi.

His was the wordless death of words, worse
for he remembered exactly where the words were
on his tongue, and before that how they fell
effortlessly from the brainpan behind his eyes.
But the music continued and the valley of forest floor
became itself an interval in a natural melody
attuned to the wind, embedded in the bass of boughs,
the tenor of branches, the percussion of twigs.

He, or someone like him, laughed at first,
dismissing what had happened as the incandescence
of youthful metabolism, as the slight fermentation
of the last of the wine, or as each excuse of love.
Learning then the constancy of music and of mind,
now he takes seriously that visionary wood
where he saw his being and his future underfoot
and someone like me listening for a resolution.
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

natural therapy

 the great thing about the tall white daisy
is that it knows how to laugh at itself

some flowers for all their rich displays
won't preen themselves without a primness

in their sap - nor let their stalks abide
bending this way that way in the thick wind

the large daisy is happy to be slapdash
is not snooty about the company it keeps

it does have a flair for being noticed
it's the way it lets its petals out (ragged

and not wanting everyone the same)
that appeals to nervous garden sufferers

(weary with pretending flowers per se are
god's gift to the dull earth and somehow 

the human race is privileged to be there)
the daisy knows everything there is to know

about not taking yourself too seriously - about 
relaxation and how to be naturally yogic

how to be part of the rough common stock
yet have a whiff of the immortal about you

a patch of such daisies growing artlessly
contains the dreams of all good health
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Robert William Service - Laughter

 I Laugh at Life: its antics make for me a giddy games,
Where only foolish fellows take themselves with solemn aim.
I laugh at pomp and vanity, at riches, rank and pride;
At social inanity, at swager, swank and side.
At poets, pastry-cooks and kings, at folk sublime and small,
Who fuss about a thousand things that matter not at all;
At those who dream of name and fame, at those who scheme for pelf. . . .
But best of all the laughing game - is laughing at myself.

Some poet chap had labelled man the noblest work of God:
I see myself a charlatan, a humbug and a fraud.
Yea, 'spite of show and shallow wit, an sentimental drool,
I know myself a hypocrite, a coward and a fool.
And though I kick myself with glee profoundly on the pants,
I'm little worse, it seems to me, than other human ants.
For if you probe your private mind, impervious to shame,
Oh, Gentle Reader, you may find you're much about the same.

Then let us mock with ancient mirth this comic, cosmic plan;
The stars are laughing at the earth; God's greatest joke is man.
For laughter is a buckler bright, and scorn a shining spear;
So let us laugh with all our might at folly, fraud and fear.
Yet on our sorry selves be spent our most sardonic glee.
Oh don't pay life a compliment to take is seriously.
For he who can himself despise, be surgeon to the bone,
May win to worth in others' eyes, to wisdom in his own.
Written by William Carlos (WCW) Williams | Create an image from this poem

The Crowd At The Ball Game

 The crowd at the ball game 
is moved uniformly 
by a spirit of uselessness 
which delights them— 

all the exciting detail 
of the chase 

and the escape, the error 
the flash of genius— 

all to no end save beauty 
the eternal— 

So in detail they, the crowd, 
are beautiful 

for this 
to be warned against 

saluted and defied— 
It is alive, venomous 

it smiles grimly 
its words cut— 

The flashy female with her 
mother, gets it— 

The Jew gets it straight— it 
is deadly, terrifying— 

It is the Inquisition, the 
Revolution 

It is beauty itself 
that lives 

day by day in them 
idly— 

This is 
the power of their faces 

It is summer, it is the solstice 
the crowd is 

cheering, the crowd is laughing 
in detail 

permanently, seriously 
without thought

Book: Reflection on the Important Things