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Best Famous Siding Poems

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

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Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Late Light

 Rain filled the streets 
once a year, rising almost 
to door and window sills, 
battering walls and roofs 
until it cleaned away the mess 
we'd made. My father told 
me this, he told me it ran 
downtown and spilled into 
the river, which in turn 
emptied finally into the sea. 
He said this only once 
while I sat on the arm 
of his chair and stared out 
at the banks of gray snow 
melting as the March rain 
streaked past. All the rest 
of that day passed on 
into childhood, into nothing, 
or perhaps some portion hung 
on in a tiny corner of thought. 
Perhaps a clot of cinders 
that peppered the front yard 
clung to a spar of old weed 
or the concrete lip of the curb 
and worked its way back under 
the new growth spring brought 
and is a part of that yard 
still. Perhaps light falling 
on distant houses becomes 
those houses, hunching them 
down at dusk like sheep 
browsing on a far hillside, 
or at daybreak gilds 
the roofs until they groan 
under the new weight, or 
after rain lifts haloes 
of steam from the rinsed, 
white aluminum siding, 
and those houses and all 
they contain live that day 
in the sight of heaven. 

II 

In the blue, winking light 
of the International Institute 
of Social Revolution 
I fell asleep one afternoon 
over a book of memoirs 
of a Spanish priest who'd 
served his own private faith 
in a long forgotten war. 
An Anarchist and a Catholic, 
his remembrances moved 
inexplicably from Castilian 
to Catalan, a language I 
couldn't follow. That dust, 
fine and gray, peculiar 
to libraries, slipped 
between the glossy pages 
and my sight, a slow darkness 
calmed me, and I forgot 
the agony of those men 
I'd come to love, forgot 
the battles lost and won, 
forgot the final trek 
over hopeless mountain roads, 
defeat, surrender, the vows 
to live on. I slept until 
the lights came on and off. 
A girl was prodding my arm, 
for the place was closing. 
A slender Indonesian girl 
in sweater and American jeans, 
her black hair falling 
almost to my eyes, she told 
me in perfect English 
that I could come back, 
and she swept up into a folder 
the yellowing newspaper stories 
and photos spilled out before 
me on the desk, the little 
chronicles of death themselves 
curling and blurring 
into death, and took away 
the book still unfinished 
of a man more confused 
even than I, and switched off 
the light, and left me alone. 

III 

In June of 1975 I wakened 
one late afternoon in Amsterdam 
in a dim corner of a library. 
I had fallen asleep over a book 
and was roused by a young girl 
whose hand lay on my hand. 
I turned my head up and stared 
into her brown eyes, deep 
and gleaming. She was crying. 
For a second I was confused 
and started to speak, to offer 
some comfort or aid, but I 
kept still, for she was crying 
for me, for the knowledge 
that I had wakened to a life 
in which loss was final. 
I closed my eyes a moment. 
When I opened them she'd gone, 
the place was dark. I went 
out into the golden sunlight; 
the cobbled streets gleamed 
as after rain, the street cafes 
crowded and alive. Not 
far off the great bell 
of the Westerkirk tolled 
in the early evening. I thought 
of my oldest son, who years 
before had sailed from here 
into an unknown life in Sweden, 
a life which failed, of how 
he'd gone alone to Copenhagen, 
Bremen, where he'd loaded trains, 
Hamburg, Munich, and finally 
-- sick and weary -- he'd returned 
to us. He slept in a corner 
of the living room for days, 
and woke gaunt and quiet, 
still only seventeen, his face 
in its own shadows. I thought 
of my father on the run 
from an older war, and wondered 
had he passed through Amsterdam, 
had he stood, as I did now, 
gazing up at the pale sky, 
distant and opaque, for the sign 
that never comes. Had he drifted 
in the same winds of doubt 
and change to another continent, 
another life, a family, some 
years of peace, an early death. 
I walked on by myself for miles 
and still the light hung on 
as though the day would 
never end. The gray canals 
darkened slowly, the sky 
above the high, narrow houses 
deepened into blue, and one 
by one the stars began 
their singular voyages.


Written by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope | Create an image from this poem

Observation Car

 To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, 
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, 
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket 
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting. 

The present and past were enough. I did not mind having my back 
To the engine. I sat like a spider and spun 
Time backward out of my guts - or rather my eyes - and the track 
Was a Now dwindling off to oblivion. I thought it was fun: 

The telegraph poles slithered up in a sudden crescendo 
As we sliced the hill and scattered its grazing sheep; 
The days were a wheeling delirium that led without end to 
Nights when we plunged into roaring tunnels of sleep. 

But now I am tired of the train. I have learned that one tree 
Is much like another, one hill the dead spit of the next 
I have seen tailing off behind all the various types of country 
Like a clock running down. I am bored and a little perplexed; 

And weak with the effort of endless evacuation 
Of the long monotonous Now, the repetitive, tidy 
Officialdom of each siding, of each little station 
Labelled Monday, Tuesday - and goodness ! what happened to - Friday ? 

And the maddening way the other passengers alter: 
The schoolgirl who goes to the Ladies' comes back to her seat 
A lollipop blonde who leads you on to assault her, 
And you've just got her skirts round her waist and her pants round her feet 

When you find yourself fumbling about the nightmare knees 
Of a pink hippopotamus with a permanent wave 
Who sends you for sandwiches and a couple of teas, 
But by then she has whiskers, no teeth and one foot in the grave. 

I have lost my faith that the ticket tells where we are going. 
There are rumours the driver is mad - we are all being trucked 
To the abattoirs somewhere - the signals are jammed and unknowing 
We aim through the night full speed at a wrecked viaduct. 

But I do not believe them. The future is rumour and drivel; 
Only the past is assured. From the observation car 
I stand looking back and watching the landscape shrivel, 
Wondering where we are going and just where the hell we are, 

Remembering how I planned to break the journey, to drive 
My own car one day, to have choice in my hands and my foot upon power, 
To see through the trumpet throat of vertiginous perspective 
My urgent Now explode continually into flower, 

To be the Eater of Time, a poet and not that sly 
Anus of mind the historian. It was so simple and plain 
To live by the sole, insatiable influx of the eye. 
But something went wrong with the plan: I am still on the train.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Present

 The day comes slowly in the railyard 
behind the ice factory. It broods on 
one cinder after another until each 
glows like lead or the eye of a dog 
possessed of no inner fire, the brown 
and greasy pointer who raises his muzzle 
a moment and sighing lets it thud 
down on the loading dock. In no time 
the day has crossed two sets of tracks, 
a semi-trailer with no tractor, and crawled 
down three stories of the bottling plant 
at the end of the alley. It is now 
less than five hours until mid-day 
when nothing will be left in doubt, 
each scrap of news, each banished carton, 
each forgotten letter, its ink bled of lies, 
will stare back at the one eye that sees 
it all and never blinks. But for now 
there is water settling in a clean glass 
on the shelf beside the razor, the slap 
of bare feet on the floor above. Soon 
the scent of rivers borne across roof 
after roof by winds without names, 
the aroma of opened beds better left 
closed, of mouths without teeth, of light 
rustling among the mice droppings 
at the back of a bin of potatoes. 

* 

The old man who sleeps among the cases 
of empty bottles in a little nest of rags 
and newspapers at the back of the plant 
is not an old man. He is twenty years 
younger than I am now putting this down 
in permanent ink on a yellow legal pad 
during a crisp morning in October. 
When he fell from a high pallet, his sleeve 
caught on a nail and spread his arms 
like a figure out of myth. His head 
tore open on a spear of wood, and he 
swore in French. No, he didn't want 
a doctor. He wanted toilet paper 
and a drink, which were fetched. He used 
the tiny bottle of whisky to straighten 
out his eyes and the toilet paper to clean 
his pants, fouled in the fall, and he did 
both with seven teenage boys looking on 
in wonder and fear. At last the blood 
slowed and caked above his ear, and he 
never once touched the wound. Instead, 
in a voice no one could hear, he spoke 
to himself, probably in French, and smoked 
sitting back against a pallet, his legs 
thrust out on the damp cement floor. 

* 

In his white coveralls, crisp and pressed, 
Teddy the Polack told us a fat tit 
would stop a toothache, two a headache. 
He told it to anyone who asked, and grinned -- 
the small eyes watering at the corners -- 
as Alcibiades might have grinned 
when at last he learned that love leads 
even the body beloved to a moment 
in the present when desire calms, the skin 
glows, the soul takes the light of day, 
even a working day in 1944. 
For Baharozian at seventeen the present 
was a gift. Seeing my ashen face, 
the cold sweats starting, he seated me 
in a corner of the boxcar and did 
both our jobs, stacking the full cases 
neatly row upon row and whistling 
the songs of Kate Smith. In the bathroom 
that night I posed naked before the mirror, 
the new cross of hair staining my chest, 
plunging to my groin. That was Wednesday, 
for every Wednesday ended in darkness. 

* 

One of those teenage boys was my brother. 
That night as we lay in bed, the lights 
out, we spoke of Froggy, of how at first 
we thought he would die and how little 
he seemed to care as the blood rose 
to fill and overflow his ear. Slowly 
the long day came over us and our breath 
quieted and eased at last, and we slept. 
When I close my eyes now his bare legs 
glow before me again, pure and lovely 
in their perfect whiteness, the buttocks 
dimpled and firm. I see again the rope 
of his sex, unwrinkled, flushed and swaying, 
the hard flat belly as he raises his shirt 
to clean himself. He gazes at no one 
or nothing, but seems instead to look off 
into a darkness I hadn't seen, a pool 
of shadow that forms before his eyes, 
in my memory now as solid as onyx. 

* 

I began this poem in the present 
because nothing is past. The ice factory, 
the bottling plant, the cindered yard 
all gave way to a low brick building 
a block wide and windowless where they 
designed gun mounts for personnel carriers 
that never made it to Korea. My brother 
rises early, and on clear days he walks 
to the corner to have toast and coffee. 
Seventeen winters have melted into an earth 
of stone, bottle caps, and old iron to carry 
off the hard remains of Froggy Frenchman 
without a blessing or a stone to bear it. 
A little spar of him the size of a finger, 
pointed and speckled as though blood-flaked, 
washed ashore from Lake Erie near Buffalo 
before the rest slipped down the falls out 
into the St. Lawrence. He could be at sea, 
he could be part of an ocean, by now 
he could even be home. This morning I 
rose later than usual in a great house 
full of sunlight, but I believe it came 
down step by step on each wet sheet 
of wooden siding before it crawled 
from the ceiling and touched my pillow 
to waken me. When I heave myself 
out of this chair with a great groan of age 
and stand shakily, the three mice still 
in the wall. From across the lots 
the wind brings voices I can't make out, 
scraps of song or sea sounds, daylight 
breaking into dust, the perfume of waiting 
rain, of onions and potatoes frying.
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

Boy and Father

 THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

 The rain beats on the windows
 And the raindrops run down the window glass
 And the raindrops slide off the green blinds down the siding.
The boy Alexander dreams of Napoleon in John C. Abbott’s history, Napoleon the grand and lonely man wronged, Napoleon in his life wronged and in his memory wronged.
The boy Alexander dreams of the cat Alice saw, the cat fading off into the dark and leaving the teeth of its Cheshire smile lighting the gloom.

Buffaloes, blizzards, way down in Texas, in the panhandle of Texas snuggling close to New Mexico,
These creep into Alexander’s dreaming by the window when his father talks with strange men about land down in Deaf Smith County.
Alexander’s father tells the strange men: Five years ago we ran a Ford out on the prairie and chased antelopes.

Only once or twice in a long while has Alexander heard his father say “my first wife” so-and-so and such-and-such.
A few times softly the father has told Alexander, “Your mother … was a beautiful woman … but we won’t talk about her.”
Always Alexander listens with a keen listen when he hears his father mention “my first wife” or “Alexander’s mother.”

Alexander’s father smokes a cigar and the Episcopal rector smokes a cigar and the words come often: mystery of life, mystery of life.
These two come into Alexander’s head blurry and gray while the rain beats on the windows and the raindrops run down the window glass and the raindrops slide off the green blinds and down the siding.
These and: There is a God, there must be a God, how can there be rain or sun unless there is a God?

So from the wrongs of Napoleon and the Cheshire cat smile on to the buffaloes and blizzards of Texas and on to his mother and to God, so the blurry gray rain dreams of Alexander have gone on five minutes, maybe ten, keeping slow easy time to the raindrops on the window glass and the raindrops sliding off the green blinds and down the siding.
Written by George Herbert | Create an image from this poem

Love (I)

 Immortal love, authour of this great frame,
Sprung from that beautie which can never fade;
How hath man parcel’d out thy glorious name,
And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made,

While mortall love doth all the title gain!
Which siding with invention, they together
Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain,
(Thy workmanship) and give thee share in neither.

Wit fancies beautie, beautie raiseth wit:
The world is theirs; they two play out the game,
Thou standing by: and though thy glorious name
Wrought our deliverance from th’ infernall pit,

Who sings thy praise? onely a skarf or glove
Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love.


Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

Eurunderee

 There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not, 
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot. 
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze 
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees, 
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange, 
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range. 

Still I see in my fancy the dark-green and blue 
Of the box-covered hills where the five-corners grew; 
And the rugged old sheoaks that sighed in the bend 
O'er the lily-decked pools where the dark ridges end, 
And the scrub-covered spurs running down from the Peak 
To the deep grassy banks of Eurunderee Creek. 

On the knolls where the vineyards and fruit-gardens are 
There's a beauty that even the drought cannot mar; 
For I noticed it oft, in the days that are lost, 
As I trod on the siding where lingered the frost, 
When the shadows of night from the gullies were gone 
And the hills in the background were flushed by the dawn. 

I was there in late years, but there's many a change 
Where the Cudgegong River flows down through the range, 
For the curse of the town with the railroad had come, 
And the goldfields were dead. And the girl and the chum 
And the old home were gone, yet the oaks seemed to speak 
Of the hazy old days on Eurunderee Creek. 

And I stood by that creek, ere the sunset grew cold, 
When the leaves of the sheoaks are traced on the gold, 
And I thought of old things, and I thought of old folks, 
Till I sighed in my heart to the sigh of the oaks; 
For the years waste away like the waters that leak 
Through the pebbles and sand of Eurunderee Creek.
Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

Above Eurunderee

 There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.

Still I see in my fancy the dark-green and blue
Of the box-covered hills where the five-corners grew;
And the rugged old sheoaks that sighed in the bend
O'er the lily-decked pools where the dark ridges end,
And the scrub-covered spurs running down from the Peak
To the deep grassy banks of Eurunderee Creek.

On the knolls where the vineyards and fruit-gardens are
There's a beauty that even the drought cannot mar;
For I noticed it oft, in the days that are lost,
As I trod on the siding where lingered the frost,
When the shadows of night from the gullies were gone
And the hills in the background were flushed by the dawn.

I was there in late years, but there's many a change
Where the Cudgegong River flows down through the range,
For the curse of the town with the railroad had come,
And the goldfields were dead. And the girl and the chum
And the old home were gone, yet the oaks seemed to speak
Of the hazy old days on Eurunderee Creek.

And I stood by that creek, ere the sunset grew cold,
When the leaves of the sheoaks are traced on the gold,
And I thought of old things, and I thought of old folks,
Till I sighed in my heart to the sigh of the oaks;
For the years waste away like the waters that leak
Through the pebbles and sand of Eurunderee Creek.
Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

Past Carin

 Now up and down the siding brown 
The great black crows are flyin', 
And down below the spur, I know, 
Another `milker's' dyin'; 
The crops have withered from the ground, 
The tank's clay bed is glarin', 
But from my heart no tear nor sound, 
For I have gone past carin' -- 
Past worryin' or carin', 
Past feelin' aught or carin'; 
But from my heart no tear nor sound, 
For I have gone past carin'. 

Through Death and Trouble, turn about, 
Through hopeless desolation, 
Through flood and fever, fire and drought, 
And slavery and starvation; 
Through childbirth, sickness, hurt, and blight, 
And nervousness an' scarin', 
Through bein' left alone at night, 
I've got to be past carin'. 
Past botherin' or carin', 
Past feelin' and past carin'; 
Through city cheats and neighbours' spite, 
I've come to be past carin'. 

Our first child took, in days like these, 
A cruel week in dyin', 
All day upon her father's knees, 
Or on my poor breast lyin'; 
The tears we shed -- the prayers we said 
Were awful, wild -- despairin'! 
I've pulled three through, and buried two 
Since then -- and I'm past carin'. 
I've grown to be past carin', 
Past worryin' and wearin'; 
I've pulled three through and buried two 
Since then, and I'm past carin'. 

'Twas ten years first, then came the worst, 
All for a dusty clearin', 
I thought, I thought my heart would burst 
When first my man went shearin'; 
He's drovin' in the great North-west, 
I don't know how he's farin'; 
For I, the one that loved him best, 
Have grown to be past carin'. 
I've grown to be past carin' 
Past lookin' for or carin'; 
The girl that waited long ago, 
Has lived to be past carin'. 

My eyes are dry, I cannot cry, 
I've got no heart for breakin', 
But where it was in days gone by, 
A dull and empty achin'. 
My last boy ran away from me, 
I know my temper's wearin', 
But now I only wish to be 
Beyond all signs of carin'. 
Past wearyin' or carin', 
Past feelin' and despairin'; 
And now I only wish to be 
Beyond all signs of carin'.
Written by Edgar Lee Masters | Create an image from this poem

Father Malloy

 You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill --
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand
From the wastes about the pyramids
And makes them real and Egypt real.
You were a part of and related to a great past,
And yet you were so close to many of us.
You believed in the joy of life.
You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.
You faced life as it is,
And as it changes.
Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,
Seeing how your church had divined the heart,
And provided for it,
Through Peter the Flame,
Peter the Rock.
Written by Jonas Mekas | Create an image from this poem

Villages and Plains the Streams Flow Through

 You too return, along with days gone,
and flow again, my blue rivers,

to carry on the songs of washerwomen,
fishermen's nets and grey wooden bridges.
Clear blue nights, smelling warm,
streams of thin mist off the meadow drift in
with distinct hoof-stomps from a fettered horse.

To carry off rioting spring thaws,
willows torn loose and yellow lily cups,
with children's shrill riots.
The summer heat, its midday simmer:
lillypads crowd, where a riverbed's narrowed,
while mud in the heat smells
of fish and rock-studded shallows.

And even at the peak, when the heat
locked in with no wind appears to shiver and burn,
and barn siding cracks in the sun, even then
this water touches shade, down in the reeds,
so you can feel the pull and crawl,
one cool blue current through your fingers,
and bending over its clear blue flow
make out field smells, shimmering meadows,
other villages passed on the way here,
remote unfamiliar homesteads,
the heavy oakwood tables
heaped with bread, meat, and a soup of cold greens,
the women waiting for the reapers to return.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Book: Reflection on the Important Things