Best Famous So Called Poems

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Written by Adrienne Rich | Cartographies of Silence 1. A conversation begins with a lie. and each speaker of the so-called common language feels the ice-floe split, the drift apart as if powerless, as if up against a force of nature A poem can being with a lie. And be torn up. A conversation has other laws recharges itself with its own false energy, Cannot be torn up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself. Inscribes with its unreturning stylus the isolation it denies. 2. The classical music station playing hour upon hour in the apartment the picking up and picking up and again picking up the telephone The syllables uttering the old script over and over The loneliness of the liar living in the formal network of the lie twisting the dials to drown the terror beneath the unsaid word 3. The technology of silence The rituals, etiquette the blurring of terms silence not absence of words or music or even raw sounds Silence can be a plan rigorously executed the blueprint of a life It is a presence it has a history a form Do not confuse it with any kind of absence 4. How calm, how inoffensive these words begin to seem to me though begun in grief and anger Can I break through this film of the abstract without wounding myself or you there is enough pain here This is why the classical of the jazz music station plays? to give a ground of meaning to our pain? 5. The silence strips bare: In Dreyer's Passion of Joan Falconetti's face, hair shorn, a great geography mutely surveyed by the camera If there were a poetry where this could happen not as blank space or as words stretched like skin over meaningsof a night through which two people have talked till dawn. 6. The scream of an illegitimate voice It has ceased to hear itself, therefore it asks itself How do I exist? This was the silence I wanted to break in you I had questions but you would not answer I had answers but you could not use them The is useless to you and perhaps to others 7. It was an old theme even for me: Language cannot do everything- chalk it on the walls where the dead poets lie in their mausoleums If at the will of the poet the poem could turn into a thing a granite flank laid bare, a lifted head alight with dew If it could simply look you in the face with naked eyeballs, not letting you turn till you, and I who long to make this thing, were finally clarified together in its stare 8. No. Let me have this dust, these pale clouds dourly lingering, these words moving with ferocious accuracy like the blind child's fingers or the newborn infant's mouth violent with hunger No one can give me, I have long ago taken this method whether of bran pouring from the loose-woven sack or of the bunsen-flame turned low and blue If from time to time I envy the pure annunciation to the eye the visio beatifica if from time to time I long to turn like the Eleusinian hierophant holding up a single ear of grain for the return to the concrete and everlasting world what in fact I keep choosing are these words, these whispers, conversations from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green.

Written by Rg Gregory | adventure just as the dusk comes hooting down through the shivering black leaves of the swinging trees we (the brave ones swaggering like marshalls through a lynch-mob) crash-bang our way to the door of the so-called haunted house knock knock - kick in a pane of glass and the dusk hoots louder in our ears and the swinging trees ride like a mob with murder in mind - knock knock - the heavy knocker on the solid door shaking the house - knock knock knock knock - louder shaking our brave bodies the heavy knocker of our hearts knock knock - knock knock knock we laugh with a harsh laughter we have never heard before push and shove each other in a boisterous fear lean on heave crash open the door fall in a heap inside - pick ourselves up courageous still giggling and bruised. . . . . shush find words bounce our voices off the walls. . . . shush shush yell catcalls scream shriek roar batter and shatter. . . . . shush shush shush oh shush yourselves no really - shush in the air under the stair what can we hear shush are you getting scared we knew it we knew that if we dared. . . . we can hear noises noises noises in an empty house the sound of our voices echoes in crevices rattles in doorways booms in the hollowness of empty rooms no that isn't all that doesn't explain the tall hooded silence standing in the hall or the whispering smell of dust bristling the floor scurrying like the dried-up bones of mice to the hole in the crumbling wall something snatches our voices away from us too quickly for our voices to be all nonsense the house is dead it can't harm us old bricks and wood you're letting the darkness go to your head shout if you don't believe us shout if anybody's there if anybody's there you won't get us afraid of you whoever you are whoever you are this is what we think of you boo boo boo what's wrong what's wrong tell us what's wrong listen nothing no nothing at all your voices went but they didn't return you called but nothing came back at all there's something there swallowing up words absorbing them into air heavy waiting alert (daddy-longlegs pitch on skin sinister fingers whisper through the roots of our hair. . . . ) . . . . we're not afraid of you nothing nobody we know you're there what is it at the end of the passage in the gloom by the still door eyeing without eyes everything we do sucking us in with its black stare you think it's funny don't you trying to frighten us keeping out of sight come out here if you're anything - we'll show you arms move suddenly along the wall the moon riding hard on foaming clouds stands solid in the door and it's not a good moon at all why did we come we should have stayed home but here we are in an evil room trapped between the witchcraft of an empty house and the cold hard grin of the moon i'm going in you can't i must you'll become air a heavy silence a dance of dust there's nothing there nothing nothing there he gives a brave laugh but a laugh drained of blood and moves down the passage to the masked door hesitates and turns wanting our support frightened to his heart's core steps no - is drawn - backwards into a black space rapidly dissolving in our misted eyes we half-hear a short gasp - no more the moon's grin is louder as (on his restless clouds) he bucks about the sky no one returns to us and in the morning (rooted in fear we could not leave the place but spent the night huddled in one big stack in the frozen hall) and in the morning we find not a single trace of the friend who went as simply as any word into thin air

Written by John Berryman | Dream Song 119: Fresh-shaven past months and a picture in New York Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York of Beard Two, I did have Three took off. Well. . Shadow & act, shadow & act, Better get white or you' get whacked, or keep so-called black & raise new hell. I've had enough of this dying. You've done me a dozen goodnesses; get well. Fight again for our own. Henry felt baffled, in the middle of the thing. He spent his whole time in Ireland on the Book of Kells, the jackass, made of bone. No tremor, no perspire: Heaven is here now, in Minneapolis. It's easier to vomit than it was, beardless. There's always the cruelty of scholarship. I once was a slip.

Written by Imamu Amiri Baraka | Notes For a Speech African blues does not know me. Their steps, in sands of their own land. A country in black & white, newspapers blown down pavements of the world. Does not feel what I am. Strength in the dream, an oblique suckling of nerve, the wind throws up sand, eyes are something locked in hate, of hate, of hate, to walk abroad, they conduct their deaths apart from my own. Those heads, I call my "people." (And who are they. People. To concern myself, ugly man. Who you, to concern the white flat stomachs of maidens, inside houses dying. Black. Peeled moon light on my fingers move under her clothes. Where is her husband. Black words throw up sand to eyes, fingers of their private dead. Whose soul, eyes, in sand. My color is not theirs. Lighter, white man talk. They shy away. My own dead souls, my, so called people. Africa is a foreign place. You are as any other sad man here american.

Written by Robert Burns | 68. The Holy Fair UPON 1 a simmer Sunday morn When Nature’s face is fair, I walked forth to view the corn, An’ snuff the caller air. The rising sun owre Galston muirs Wi’ glorious light was glintin; The hares were hirplin down the furrs, The lav’rocks they were chantin Fu’ sweet that day. As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad, To see a scene sae gay, Three hizzies, early at the road, Cam skelpin up the way. Twa had manteeles o” dolefu’ black, But ane wi’ lyart lining; The third, that gaed a wee a-back, Was in the fashion shining Fu’ gay that day. The twa appear’d like sisters twin, In feature, form, an’ claes; Their visage wither’d, lang an’ thin, An’ sour as only slaes: The third cam up, hap-stap-an’-lowp, As light as ony lambie, An’ wi’a curchie low did stoop, As soon as e’er she saw me, Fu’ kind that day. Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, “Sweet lass, I think ye seem to ken me; I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face But yet I canna name ye. ” Quo’ she, an’ laughin as she spak, An’ taks me by the han’s, “Ye, for my sake, hae gien the feck Of a’ the ten comman’s A screed some day. ” “My name is Fun—your cronie dear, The nearest friend ye hae; An’ this is Superstitution here, An’ that’s Hypocrisy. I’m gaun to Mauchline Holy Fair, To spend an hour in daffin: Gin ye’ll go there, yon runkl’d pair, We will get famous laughin At them this day. ” Quoth I, “Wi’ a’ my heart, I’ll do’t; I’ll get my Sunday’s sark on, An’ meet you on the holy spot; Faith, we’se hae fine remarkin!” Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time, An’ soon I made me ready; For roads were clad, frae side to side, Wi’ mony a weary body In droves that day. Here farmers gash, in ridin graith, Gaed hoddin by their cotters; There swankies young, in braw braid-claith, Are springing owre the gutters. The lasses, skelpin barefit, thrang, In silks an’ scarlets glitter; Wi’ sweet-milk cheese, in mony a whang, An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter, Fu’ crump that day. When by the plate we set our nose, Weel heaped up wi’ ha’pence, A greedy glowr black-bonnet throws, An’ we maun draw our tippence. Then in we go to see the show: On ev’ry side they’re gath’rin; Some carrying dails, some chairs an’ stools, An’ some are busy bleth’rin Right loud that day. Here stands a shed to fend the show’rs, An’ screen our countra gentry; There “Racer Jess, 2 an’ twa-three whores, Are blinkin at the entry. Here sits a raw o’ tittlin jads, Wi’ heaving breast an’ bare neck; An’ there a batch o’ wabster lads, Blackguarding frae Kilmarnock, For fun this day. Here, some are thinkin on their sins, An’ some upo’ their claes; Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins, Anither sighs an’ prays: On this hand sits a chosen swatch, Wi’ screwed-up, grace-proud faces; On that a set o’ chaps, at watch, Thrang winkin on the lasses To chairs that day. O happy is that man, an’ blest! Nae wonder that it pride him! Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best, Comes clinkin down beside him! Wi’ arms repos’d on the chair back, He sweetly does compose him; Which, by degrees, slips round her neck, An’s loof upon her bosom, Unkend that day. Now a’ the congregation o’er Is silent expectation; For Moodie 3 speels the holy door, Wi’ tidings o’ damnation: Should Hornie, as in ancient days, ’Mang sons o’ God present him, The vera sight o’ Moodie’s face, To ’s ain het hame had sent him Wi’ fright that day. Hear how he clears the point o’ faith Wi’ rattlin and wi’ thumpin! Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, He’s stampin, an’ he’s jumpin! His lengthen’d chin, his turned-up snout, His eldritch squeel an’ gestures, O how they fire the heart devout, Like cantharidian plaisters On sic a day! But hark! the tent has chang’d its voice, There’s peace an’ rest nae langer; For a’ the real judges rise, They canna sit for anger, Smith 4 opens out his cauld harangues, On practice and on morals; An’ aff the godly pour in thrangs, To gie the jars an’ barrels A lift that day. What signifies his barren shine, Of moral powers an’ reason? His English style, an’ gesture fine Are a’ clean out o’ season. Like Socrates or Antonine, Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, But ne’er a word o’ faith in That’s right that day. In guid time comes an antidote Against sic poison’d nostrum; For Peebles, 5 frae the water-fit, Ascends the holy rostrum: See, up he’s got, the word o’ God, An’ meek an’ mim has view’d it, While Common-sense has taen the road, An’ aff, an’ up the Cowgate 6 Fast, fast that day. Wee Miller 7 neist the guard relieves, An’ Orthodoxy raibles, Tho’ in his heart he weel believes, An’ thinks it auld wives’ fables: But faith! the birkie wants a manse, So, cannilie he hums them; Altho’ his carnal wit an’ sense Like hafflins-wise o’ercomes him At times that day. Now, butt an’ ben, the change-house fills, Wi’ yill-caup commentators; Here ’s cryin out for bakes and gills, An’ there the pint-stowp clatters; While thick an’ thrang, an’ loud an’ lang, Wi’ logic an’ wi’ scripture, They raise a din, that in the end Is like to breed a rupture O’ wrath that day. Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair Than either school or college; It kindles wit, it waukens lear, It pangs us fou o’ knowledge: Be’t whisky-gill or penny wheep, Or ony stronger potion, It never fails, or drinkin deep, To kittle up our notion, By night or day. The lads an’ lasses, blythely bent To mind baith saul an’ body, Sit round the table, weel content, An’ steer about the toddy: On this ane’s dress, an’ that ane’s leuk, They’re makin observations; While some are cozie i’ the neuk, An’ forming assignations To meet some day. But now the L—’s ain trumpet touts, Till a’ the hills are rairin, And echoes back return the shouts; Black Russell is na sparin: His piercin words, like Highlan’ swords, Divide the joints an’ marrow; His talk o’ Hell, whare devils dwell, Our vera “sauls does harrow” Wi’ fright that day! A vast, unbottom’d, boundless pit, Fill’d fou o’ lowin brunstane, Whase raging flame, an’ scorching heat, Wad melt the hardest whun-stane! The half-asleep start up wi’ fear, An’ think they hear it roarin; When presently it does appear, ’Twas but some neibor snorin Asleep that day. ’Twad be owre lang a tale to tell, How mony stories past; An’ how they crouded to the yill, When they were a’ dismist; How drink gaed round, in cogs an’ caups, Amang the furms an’ benches; An’ cheese an’ bread, frae women’s laps, Was dealt about in lunches An’ dawds that day. In comes a gawsie, gash guidwife, An’ sits down by the fire, Syne draws her kebbuck an’ her knife; The lasses they are shyer: The auld guidmen, about the grace Frae side to side they bother; Till some ane by his bonnet lays, An’ gies them’t like a tether, Fu’ lang that day. Waesucks! for him that gets nae lass, Or lasses that hae naething! Sma’ need has he to say a grace, Or melvie his braw claithing! O wives, be mindfu’ ance yoursel’ How bonie lads ye wanted; An’ dinna for a kebbuck-heel Let lasses be affronted On sic a day! Now Clinkumbell, wi’ rattlin tow, Begins to jow an’ croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi’ faith an’ hope, an’ love an’ drink, They’re a’ in famous tune For crack that day. How mony hearts this day converts O’ sinners and o’ lasses! Their hearts o’ stane, gin night, are gane As saft as ony flesh is: There’s some are fou o’ love divine; There’s some are fou o’ brandy; An’ mony jobs that day begin, May end in houghmagandie Some ither day. Note 1. “Holy Fair” is a common phrase in the west of Scotland for a sacramental occasion. —R. B. [back] Note 2. Racer Jess (d. 1813) was a half-witted daughter of Poosie Nansie. She was a great pedestrian. [back] Note 3. Rev. Alexander Moodie of Riccarton. [back] Note 4. Rev. George Smith of Galston. [back] Note 5. Rev. Wm. Peebles of Newton-upon-Ayr. [back] Note 6. A street so called which faces the tent in Mauchline. —R. B. [back] Note 7. Rev. Alex. Miller, afterward of Kilmaurs. [back]

Written by Czeslaw Milosz | What Does It Mean It does not know it glitters It does not know it flies It does not know it is this not that. And, more and more often, agape, With my Gauloise dying out, Over a glass of red wine, I muse on the meaning of being this not that. Just as long ago, when I was twenty, But then there was a hope I would be everything, Perhaps even a butterfly or a thrush, by magic. Now I see dusty district roads And a town where the postmaster gets drunk every day Melancholy with remaining identical to himself. If only the stars contained me. If only everything kept happening in such a way That the so-called world opposed the so-called flesh. Were I at least not contradictory. Alas.

Written by Amy Clampitt | A Hermit Thrush Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day, the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up the scree-slope of what at high tide will be again an island, to where, a decade since well-being staked the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us back, year after year, lugging the makings of another picnic— the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming seas, the gales of yet another winter may have done. Still there, the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree, the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grass and clover tuffet underneath it, edges frazzled raw but, like our own prolonged attachment, holding. Whatever moral lesson might commend itself, there's no use drawing one, there's nothing here to seize on as exemplifying any so-called virtue (holding on despite adversity, perhaps) or any no-more-than-human tendency— stubborn adherence, say, to a wholly wrongheaded tenet. Though to hold on in any case means taking less and less for granted, some few things seem nearly certain, as that the longest day will come again, will seem to hold its breath, the months-long exhalation of diminishment again begin. Last night you woke me for a look at Jupiter, that vast cinder wheeled unblinking in a bath of galaxies. Watching, we traveled toward an apprehension all but impossible to be held onto— that no point is fixed, that there's no foothold but roams untethered save by such snells, such sailor's knots, such stays and guy wires as are mainly of our own devising. From such an empyrean, aloof seraphic mentors urge us to look down on all attachment, on any bonding, as in the end untenable. Base as it is, from year to year the earth's sore surface mends and rebinds itself, however and as best it can, with thread of cinquefoil, tendril of the magenta beach pea, trammel of bramble; with easings, mulchings, fragrances, the gray-green bayberry's cool poultice— and what can't finally be mended, the salt air proceeds to buff and rarefy: the lopped carnage of the seaward spruce clump weathers lustrous, to wood-silver. Little is certain, other than the tide that circumscribes us that still sets its term to every picnic—today we stayed too long again, and got our feet wet— and all attachment may prove at best, perhaps, a broken, a much-mended thing. Watching the longest day take cover under a monk's-cowl overcast, with thunder, rain and wind, then waiting, we drop everything to listen as a hermit thrush distills its fragmentary, hesitant, in the end unbroken music. From what source (beyond us, or the wells within?) such links perceived arrive— diminished sequences so uninsistingly not even human—there's hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain as we are of so much in this existence, this botched, cumbersome, much-mended, not unsatisfactory thing.

Written by John Clare | Wood Rides Who hath not felt the influence that so calms The weary mind in summers sultry hours When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers That verge the little ride who hath not made A minutes waste of time and sat him down Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile On crowding ferns bluebells and hazel leaves And showers of lady smocks so called by toil When boys sprote gathering sit on stulps and weave Garlands while barkmen pill the fallen tree —Then mid the green variety to start Who hath (not) met that mood from turmoil free And felt a placid joy refreshed at heart

Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Mulligans Mare Oh, Mulligan's bar was the deuce of a place To drink, and to fight, and to gamble and race; The height of choice spirits from near and from far Were all concentrated on Mulligan's bar. There was "Jerry the Swell", and the jockey-boy Ned, "Dog-bite-me" -- so called from the shape of his head -- And a man whom the boys, in their musical slang, Designated the "Gaffer of Mulligan's Gang". Now Mulligan's Gang had a racer to show, A bad un to look at, a good un to go; Whenever they backed her you safely might swear She'd walk in a winner, would Mulligan's mare. But Mulligan, having some radical views, Neglected his business and got on the booze; He took up with runners -- a treacherous troop -- Who gave him away, and he "fell in the soup". And so it turned out on a fine summer day, A bailiff turned up with a writ of "fi. fa. "; He walked to the bar with a manner serene, "I levy," said he, "in the name of the Queen. " Then Mulligan wanted, in spite of the law, To pay out the bailiff with "one on the jaw"; He drew out to hit him; but ere you could wink, He changed his intention and stood him a drink. A great consultation there straightway befell 'Twixt jockey-boy Neddy and Jerry the Swell, And the man with the head, who remarked "Why, you bet! Dog-bite-me!" said he, "but we'll diddle 'em yet. "We'll slip out the mare from her stall in a crack, And put in her place the old broken-down hack; The hack is so like her, I'm ready to swear The bailiff will think he has Mulligan's mare. "So out with the racer and in with the screw, We'll show him what Mulligan's talent can do; And if he gets nasty and dares to say much, I'll knock him as stiff as my grandfather's crutch. " Then off to the town went the mare and the lad; The bailiff came out, never dreamt he was "had"; But marched to the stall with a confident air -- "I levy," said he, "upon Mulligan's mare. " He watched her by day and he watched her by night, She was never an instant let out of his sight, For races were coming away in the West And Mulligan's mare had a chance with the best. "Here's a slant," thought the bailiff, "to serve my own ends, I'll send off a wire to my bookmaking friends: 'Get all you can borrow, beg, snavel or snare And lay the whole lot against Mulligan's mare. '" The races came round, and the crowd on the course Were laying the mare till they made themselves hoarse, And Mulligan's party, with ardour intense, They backed her for pounds and for shillings and pence. But think of the grief of the bookmaking host At the sound of the summons to go to the post -- For down to the start with her thoroughbred air As fit as a fiddle pranced Mulligan's mare! They started, and off went the boy to the front, He cleared out at once, and he made it a hunt; He steadied as rounding the corner they wheeled, Then gave her her head -- and she smothered the field. The race put her owner right clear of his debts; He landed a fortune in stakes and in bets, He paid the old bailiff the whole of his pelf, And gave him a hiding to keep for himself. So all you bold sportsmen take warning, I pray, Keep clear of the running, you'll find it don't pay; For the very best rule that you'll hear in a week Is never to bet on a thing that can speak. And whether you're lucky or whether you lose, Keep clear of the cards and keep clear of the booze, And fortune in season will answer your prayer And send you a flyer like Mulligan's mare.

Written by Marianne Moore | He Digesteth Harde Yron Although the aepyornis or roc that lived in Madagascar, and the moa are extinct, the camel-sparrow, linked with them in size--the large sparrow Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is a symbol of justice. This bird watches his chicks with a maternal concentration-and he's been mothering the eggs at night six weeks--his legs their only weapon of defense. He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard as a hoof; the leopard is not more suspicious. How could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young used even as a riding-beast, respect men hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand making the neck move as if alive and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches might be decoyed and killed!Yes, this is he whose plume was anciently the plume of justice; he whose comic duckling head on its great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness when he stands guard, in S-like foragings as he is preening the down on his leaden-skinned back. The egg piously shown as Leda's very own from which Castor and Pollux hatched, was an ostrich-egg. And what could have been more fit for the Chinese lawn it grazed on as a gift to an emperor who admired strange birds, than this one, who builds his mud-made nest in dust yet will wade in lake or sea till only the head shows. . . . . . . . Six hundred ostrich-brains served at one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent and desert spear, jewel- gorgeous ugly egg-shell goblets, eight pairs of ostriches in harness, dramatize a meaning always missed by the externalist. The power of the visible is the invisible; as even where no tree of freedom grows, so-called brute courage knows. Heroism is exhausting, yet it contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare the harmless solitaire or great auk in its grandeur; unsolicitude having swallowed up all giant birds but an alert gargantuan little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird. This one remaining rebel is the sparrow-camel.