Written by
Anne Sexton |
There can be certain potions
needled in the clock
for the body's fall from grace,
to untorture and to plead for.
These I have known
and would sell all my furniture
and books and assorted goods
to avoid, and more, more.
But the other pain
I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you
for better of worse
as you marry life
and the love that gets doled out
or doesn't.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year's cupful
and downward into a decade's quart
and downward into a lifetime's ocean.
I alternate treading water
and deadman's float.
The teaspoon ought to be hearable
if it didn't mix into the reruns
and thus enlarge into what it is not,
a sea pest's sting turning promptly
into the shark's neat biting off
of a leg because the soul
wears a magnifying glass.
Kicking the heart
with pain's big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.
Yet one does get out of bed
and start over, plunge into the day
and put on a hopeful look
and does not allow fear to build a wall
between you and an old friend
or a new friend and reach out your hand,
shutting down the thought that
an axe may cut it off unexpectedly.
One learns not to blab about all this
except to yourself or the typewriter keys
who tell no one until they get brave
and crawl off onto the printed page.
I'm getting bored with it,
I tell the typewriter,
this constantly walking around
in wet shoes and then, surprise!
Somehow DECEASED keeps getting
stamped in red over the word HOPE.
And I who keep falling thankfully
into each new pillow of belief,
finding my Mercy Street,
kissing it and tenderly gift-wrapping my love,
am beginning to wonder just what
the planets had in mind on November 9th, 1928.
The pillows are ripped away,
the hand guillotined,
dog **** thrown into the middle of a laugh,
a hornets' nest building into the hi-fi speaker
and leaving me in silence,
where, without music,
I become a cracked orphan.
Well,
one gets out of bed
and the planets don't always hiss
or muck up the day, each day.
As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon,
perhaps it is a medicine
that will cure the soul
of its greed for love
next Thursday.
|
Written by
Sir Philip Sidney |
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber melody.
Now, blessed you bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet:
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed;
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot,
Nor blam'd for blood, nor sham'd for sinful deed;
And that you know I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,--
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.
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Written by
Philip Larkin |
Marrying left yor maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.
Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two,
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it secentless, weightless, strengthless wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you.
Or, since your past and gone,
It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laiden.
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Written by
Anne Kingsmill Finch |
Good Heav'n, I thank thee, since it was design'd
I shou'd be fram'd, but of the weaker kinde,
That yet, my Soul, is rescu'd from the Love
Of all those Trifles, which their Passions move.
Pleasures, and Praise, and Plenty haue with me
But their just value.
If allow'd they be,
Freely, and thankfully as much I tast,
As will not reason, or Religion wast.
If they're deny'd, I on my selfe can Liue,
And slight those aids, unequal chance does give.
When in the Sun, my wings can be display'd,
And in retirement, I can bless the shade.
|
Written by
Sir Philip Sidney |
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber melody.
Now, blessed you bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet:
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed;
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot,
Nor blam'd for blood, nor sham'd for sinful deed;
And that you know I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,--
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
Albert were what you'd call “thwarted”.
He had long had an ambition, which.
.
.
Were to save up and go to Australia,
The saving up that were the hitch.
He'd a red money box on the pot shelf,
A post office thing made of tin,
But with him and his Dad and the bread knife,
It never had anything in.
He were properly held up for bobbins,
As the folk in the mill used to say,
Till he hit on a simple solution -
He'd go as a young stowaway.
He studied the sailing lists daily,
And at last found a ship as would do.
“S.
S.
Tosser:, a freighter from Fleetwood,
Via Cape Horn to Wooloomooloo.
He went off next evening to Fleetwood,
And found her there loaded and coaled,
Slipped over the side in the darkness,
And downstairs and into the hold.
The hold it were choked up with cargo,
He groped with his hands in the gloom,
Squeezed through bars of what felt like a grating,
And found he had plenty of room.
Some straw had been spilled in one corner,
He thankfully threw himself flat,
He thought he could hear someone breathing,
But he were too tired to fret about that.
When he woke they were out in mid-ocean,
He turned and in light which were dim,
Looked straight in the eyes of a lion,
That were lying there looking at him.
His heart came right up in his tonsils,
As he gazed at that big yellow face.
Then it smiled and they both said together,
“Well, isn't the world a small place?”
The lion were none other than Wallace,
He were going to Sydney, too.
To fulfil a short starring engagement
In a cage at Taronga Park Zoo.
As they talked they heard footsteps approaching,
“Someone comes” whispered Wallace, “Quick, hide”.
He opened his mouth to the fullest,
And Albert sprang nimbly inside.
'Twere Captain on morning inspection,
When he saw Wallace shamming to doze,
He picked up a straw from his bedding,
And started to tickle his nose.
Now Wallace could never stand tickling,
He let out a mumbling roar,
And before he could do owt about it,
He'd sneezed Albert out on the floor.
The Captain went white to the wattles,
He said, “I'm a son of a gun”.
He had heard of beasts bringing up children,
But were first time as he'd seen it done.
He soon had the radio crackling,
And flashing the tale far and wide,
Of the lad who'd set out for Australia,
Stowed away in a lion's inside.
The quay it were jammed with reporters,
When they docked on Australian soil.
They didn't pretend to believe it,
But 'twere too good a story to spoil.
And Albert soon picked up the language,
When he first saw the size of the fruit,
There was no more “by gum” now or “Champion”,
It were “Whacko!”, “Too right!” and “You beaut!”.
They gave him a wonderful fortnight,
Then from a subscription they made,
Sent him back as a “Parcel for Britain”,
Carriage forward, and all ex's paid!
|
Written by
Donald Justice |
Now comes the evening of the mind.
Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood;
Here is the shadow moving down the page
Where you sit reading by the garden wall.
Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises,
Shudder and droop.
Your know their voices now,
Faintly the martyred peaches crying out
Your name, the name nobody knows but you.
It is the aura and the coming on.
It is the thing descending, circling, here.
And now it puts a claw out and you take it.
Thankfully in your lap you take it, so.
You said you would not go away again,
You did not want to go away -- and yet,
It is as if you stood out on the dock
Watching a little boat drift out
Beyond the sawgrass shallows, the dead fish .
.
.
And you were in it, skimming past old snags,
Beyond, beyond, under a brazen sky
As soundless as a gong before it's struck --
Suspended how? -- and now they strike it, now
The ether dream of five-years-old repeats, repeats,
And you must wake again to your own blood
And empty spaces in the throat.
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Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
'Twas in the year of 1886, and on the 29th of November,
Which the surviving crew of the "Samuel Crawford" will long remember,
She was bound to Baltimore with a cargo of pine lumber;
But, alas! the crew suffered greatly from cold and hunger.
'Twas on December 3rd when about ten miles south-west
Of Currituck light, and scudding at her best;
That a heavy gale struck her a merciless blow,
Which filled the hearts of the crew with fear and woe.
Then the merciless snow came down, hiding everything from view,
And as the night closed in the wind tempestuous blew;
Still the brave crew reefed the spanker and all the sails,
While not one amongst them with fear bewails.
Still the gallant little schooner ploughed on the seas,
Through the blinding snow and the stormy breeze;
Until it increased to a fearful hurricane,
Yet the crew wrought manfully and didn't complain.
But during the night the wind it harder blew,
And the brave little schooner was hove to;
And on the morning of December the 4th the wind died out,
But it rent the schooner from stem to stern without any doubt.
And the seas were running mountains high,
While the poor sailors, no doubt, heaved many a sigh;
Because they must have felt cold, and the schooner sprung a leak,
Still they wrought while their hearts were like to break.
Then the wind it sprang up in terrific fury again,
But the crew baled out the water with might and main;
But still the water fast on them did gain,
Yet the brave heroes disdained to complain.
On the morning of December the 4th she was scudding before a hurricane,
And the crew were exhausted, but managed the poop to gain;
And the vessel was tossed like a cork on the wave,
While the brave crew expected to meet with a watery grave.
And huge beams and pine planks were washed overboard,
While Captain Tilton looked on and said never a word;
And the crew likewise felt quite content,
Until the fore-and-aft rigging overboard went.
Then loudly for help to God they did cry,
And to their earnest prayer He did draw nigh;
And saved them from a watery grave,
When help from Him they did crave.
Poor souls they expected to be engulfed every hour,
And to appease their hunger they made dough with salt water and flour;
And made a sort of hard cake placed over a griddle hole,
To satisfy their hunger, which, alas! is hard to thole.
And two of these cakes each man got per day,
Which the poor creatures devoured in a ravenous way;
Along with a little fresh water to wash it down,
Which they most thankfully praised God for and didn't frown.
And on the 10th of December when they had burned their last light,
The ship "Orinoco" bound for New York hove in sight;
And they were rescued safely and taken on board,
And they thanked the Captain, and likewise the Lord.
Then the Captain of the "Orinoco" ordered her to be set on fire,
Which was quickly done as he did desire;
Which caused the rescued crew to stare in amaze,
And to take the last look of their schooner in a blaze.
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Written by
Sir Philip Sidney |
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber-melody,--
Now blessed you bear onward blessèd me
To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet;
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully;
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed;
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed;
And that you know I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss!
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