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Best Famous Vegetables Poems

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

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Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

To Think of Time

 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive!
 that
 everything was alive! 
To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part! 
To think that we are now here, and bear our part!

2
Not a day passes—not a minute or second, without an accouchement! 
Not a day passes—not a minute or second, without a corpse! 

The dull nights go over, and the dull days also, 
The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, 
The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look for an answer,
The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for, 
Medicines stand unused on the shelf—(the camphor-smell has long pervaded the rooms,) 
The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, 
The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, 
The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,
The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, 
It is palpable as the living are palpable. 

The living look upon the corpse with their eye-sight, 
But without eye-sight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse. 

3
To think the thought of Death, merged in the thought of materials!
To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and fruits ripen, and act upon
 others as
 upon us now—yet not act upon us! 
To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in
 them—and we taking no interest in them! 

To think how eager we are in building our houses! 
To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent! 

(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at
 most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.) 

Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth—they never cease—they are
 the
 burial lines, 
He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried. 

4
A reminiscence of the vulgar fate, 
A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,
Each after his kind: 
Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf—posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in
 the
 streets, a gray, discouraged sky overhead, the short, last daylight of Twelfth-month, 
A hearse and stages—other vehicles give place—the funeral of an old Broadway
 stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers. 

Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is pass’d, the
 new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, 
The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin,
 the
 earth is swiftly shovel’d in,
The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence, 
A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done, 
He is decently put away—is there anything more? 

He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking, able to
 take his
 own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of
 women,
 gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited
 toward
 the last, sicken’d, was help’d by a contribution, died, aged forty-one
 years—and
 that was his funeral. 

Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip
 carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing
 on
 somebody, headway, man before and man behind, good day’s work, bad day’s work,
 pet
 stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night;
To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers—and he there takes no
 interest in them! 

5
The markets, the government, the working-man’s wages—to think what account they
 are
 through our nights and days! 
To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them—yet we make
 little
 or no account! 

The vulgar and the refined—what you call sin, and what you call goodness—to
 think how
 wide a difference! 
To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference.

To think how much pleasure there is! 
Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems? 
Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and
 election? or with your wife and family? 
Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares?

—These also flow onward to others—you and I flow onward,
But in due time, you and I shall take less interest in them. 

Your farm, profits, crops,—to think how engross’d you are! 
To think there will still be farms, profits, crops—yet for you, of what avail? 

6
What will be, will be well—for what is, is well, 
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

The sky continues beautiful, 
The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men,
 nor
 the pleasure from poems, 
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses—these are
 not
 phantasms—they have weight, form, location; 
Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms, 
The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of his life, are
 well-consider’d. 

You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around yourself; 
Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever! 

7
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—it is to
 identify
 you; 
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you, 
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. 

The threads that were spun are gather’d, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is
 systematic. 

The preparations have every one been justified, 
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the baton has given the
 signal.

The guest that was coming—he waited long, for reasons—he is now housed, 
He is one of those who are beautiful and happy—he is one of those that to look upon
 and be
 with is enough. 

The law of the past cannot be eluded, 
The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, 
The law of the living cannot be eluded—it is eternal,
The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded, 
The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded, 
The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons—not one iota thereof can be eluded. 

8
Slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth, 
Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the Atlantic side, and
 they
 on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all over
 the
 earth.

The great masters and kosmos are well as they go—the heroes and good-doers are well, 
The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and distinguish’d, may
 be
 well, 
But there is more account than that—there is strict account of all. 

The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing, 
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
The common people of Europe are not nothing—the American aborigines are not nothing, 
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the murderer or mean person is
 not
 nothing, 
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go, 
The lowest prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of religion is not nothing as he
 goes. 

9
Of and in all these things,
I have dream’d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed, 
I have dream’d that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law, 
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law, 
For I have dream’d that the law they are under now is enough. 

If otherwise, all came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d! 
Then indeed suspicion of death. 

Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now, 
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation? 

10
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good, 
The whole universe indicates that it is good, 
The past and the present indicate that it is good. 

How beautiful and perfect are the animals! 
How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!

What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect, 
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids are perfect; 
Slowly and surely they have pass’d on to this, and slowly and surely they yet pass
 on. 

11
I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal Soul! 
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! 
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is
 for
 it; 
And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and materials are
 altogether
 for it


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Call It Music

 Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,
it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain
had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird
could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what
he saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes,
shook his head, and barked like a dog--just once--
and then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him
he'd be OK. I know this because Howard told me
years later that he thought Bird could
lie down in the hotel room they shared, sleep
for an hour or more, and waken as himself.
The perfect sunlight angles into my little room
above Willow Street. I listen to my breath
come and go and try to catch its curious taste,
part milk, part iron, part blood, as it passes
from me into the world. This is not me,
this is automatic, this entering and exiting,
my body's essential occupation without which
I am a thing. The whole process has a name,
a word I don't know, an elegant word not
in English or Yiddish or Spanish, a word
that means nothing to me. Howard truly believed
what he said that day when he steered
Parker into a cab and drove the silent miles
beside him while the bright world
unfurled around them: filling stations, stands
of fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets
from Mexico and the Philippines. It was all
so actual and Western, it was a new creation
coming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker
someone later called "glad," though that day
I would have said silent, "the silent music
of Charlie Parker." Howard said nothing.
He paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights
to their room, got his boots off, and went out
to let him sleep as the afternoon entered
the history of darkness. I'm not judging
Howard, he did better than I could have
now or then. Then I was 19, working
on the loading docks at Railway Express
coming day by day into the damaged body
of a man while I sang into the filthy air
the Yiddish drinking songs my Zadie taught me
before his breath failed. Now Howard is gone,
eleven long years gone, the sweet voice silenced.
"The subtle bridge between Eldridge and Navarro,"
they later wrote, all that rising passion
a footnote to others. I remember in '85
walking the halls of Cass Tech, the high school
where he taught after his performing days,
when suddenly he took my left hand in his
two hands to tell me it all worked out
for the best. Maybe he'd gotten religion,
maybe he knew how little time was left,
maybe that day he was just worn down
by my questions about Parker. To him Bird
was truly Charlie Parker, a man, a silent note
going out forever on the breath of genius
which now I hear soaring above my own breath
as this bright morning fades into afternoon.
Music, I'll call it music. It's what we need
as the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds
blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,
the calm and endless one I've still to cross.
Written by Kunchan Nambiar | Create an image from this poem

The kingdom of the Gandharaka ruler

The kingdom of the Gandharaka ruler
Has turned into a mere desert.
The land of the Simhala King
Is now filled with lions and leopards.
The lord of the Chera people
Feeds himself on cheap vegetables.
The Chola King has nothing to eat
Except the maize of low quality
The kings of the Kuru house
Have nothing but jackfruit seeds.
The lord of the land of Kashmir
Is busy eating cucumbers.
The ruler of the Champeya land
Eats only tubers and broken rice.
The Konkan prince is about to die
Thinking of his wives' breasts.
Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

Travels With John Hunter

 We who travel between worlds 
lose our muscle and bone. 
I was wheeling a barrow of earth 
when agony bayoneted me. 

I could not sit, or lie down, 
or stand, in Casualty. 
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips, 
I turned yellow as the moon 

and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel 
in a hospital where I met no one 
so much was my liver now my dire 
preoccupation. I was sped down a road. 

of treetops and fishing-rod lightpoles 
towards the three persons of God 
and the three persons of John Hunter 
Hospital. Who said We might lose this one. 

Twenty days or to the heat-death 
of the Universe have the same duration: 
vaguely half a hour. I awoke 
giggling over a joke 

about Paul Kruger in Johannesburg 
and missed the white court stockings 
I half remembered from my prone 
still voyage beyond flesh and bone. 

I asked my friend who got new lungs 
How long were you crazy, coming back? 
Five days, he said. Violent and mad. 
Fictive Afrikaner police were at him, 

not unworldly Oom Paul Kruger. 
Valerie, who had sat the twenty days 
beside me, now gently told me tales 
of my time-warp. The operative canyon 

stretched, stapled, with dry roseate walls 
down my belly. Seaweed gel 
plugged views of my pluck and offal. 
The only poet whose liver 

damage hadn't been self-inflicted, 
grinned my agent. A momentarily 
holed bowel had released flora 
who live in us and will eat us 

when we stop feeding them the earth. 
I had, it did seem, rehearsed 
the private office of the grave, 
ceased excreting, made corpse gases 

all while liana'd in tubes 
and overseen by cockpit instruments 
that beeped or struck up Beethoven's 
Fifth at behests of fluid. 

I also hear when I lay lipless 
and far away I was anointed 
first by a mild metaphoric church 
then by the Church of no metaphors. 

Now I said, signing a Dutch contract 
in a hand I couldn't recognise, 
let's go and eat Chinese soup 
and drive to Lake Macquarie. Was I 

not renewed as we are in Heaven? 
In fact I could hardly endure 
Earth gravity, and stayed weak and cranky 
till the soup came, squid and vegetables, 

pure Yang. And was sane thereafter. 
It seemed I'd also travelled 
in a Spring-in-Winter love-barque of cards, 
of flowers and phone calls and letters, 

concern I'd never dreamed was there 
when black kelp boiled in my head. 
I'd awoken amid my State funeral, 
nevermore to eat my liver 

or feed it to the Black Dog, depression 
which the three Johns Hunter seem 
to have killed with their scalpels: 
it hasn't found its way home, 

where I now dodder and mend 
in thanks for devotion, for the ambulance 
this time, for the hospital fork lift, 
for pethidine, and this face of deity: 

not the foreknowledge of death 
but the project of seeing conscious life 
rescued from death defines and will 
atone for the human.
Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

Ode To an Artichoke

 The artichoke
of delicate heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around it,
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise
tendrils and belfries,
the bulb's agitations;
while under the subsoil
the carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereon rise the vines.
The sedulous cabbage
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in a gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.
Till, on a day,
each by the other,
the artichoke moves
to its dream
of a market place
in the big willow
hoppers:
a battle formation.
Most warlike
of defilades-
with men
in the market stalls,
white shirts
in the soup-greens,
artichoke field marshals,
close-order conclaves,
commands, detonations,
and voices,
a crashing of crate staves.

And
Maria
come
down
with her hamper
to
make trial
of an artichoke:
she reflects, she examines,
she candles them up to the light like an egg,
never flinching;
she bargains,
she tumbles her prize
in a market bag
among shoes and a
cabbage head,
a bottle
of vinegar; is back
in her kitchen.
The artichoke drowns in a pot.

So you have it:
a vegetable, armed,
a profession
(call it an artichoke)
whose end
is millennial.
We taste of that
sweetness,
dismembering scale after scale.
We eat of a halcyon paste:
it is green at the artichoke heart.


Written by Charles Webb | Create an image from this poem

Enthusiasm

  "Don't overdo it," Dad yelled, watching me
Play shortstop, collect stamps and shells,
Roll on the grass laughing until I peed my pants.
"Screw him," I said, and grabbed every cowry

I could find, hogged all the books I could
From Heights Library, wore out the baseball
Diamond dawn to dusk, and—parents in Duluth—
Gorged on bountiful Candy dusk to dawn.

Not until a Committee wrote of my poems,
"Enthusiasm should be tempered,"
Did I change my song. I write now
The way I live: calm and sober, steering

Toward the Golden Mean. The Committee
Was right to withhold funds. I'd have bought
A hundred box turtles with lemon-speckled shells,
Flyfished for rainbows six months straight,

Flown to the Great Barrier Reef and dived
Non-stop among pink coral and marble cones,
Living on chocolate malts, peaches, and barbecue.
I'd have turned into a ski bum, married

Ten women in ten states, written nothing
Poetry would glance at twice, instead
Of rising at 5:00 as I do now, writing
'Til noon about matters serious and deep,

Teaching 'til 6:00, eating a low-fat meal
High in fiber and cruciferous vegetables,
Then bed by 9:00, alarm clock set
Five minutes late: my one indulgence of the day.
Written by Yehuda Amichai | Create an image from this poem

Tourists

 Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.


Once I sat on the steps by agate at David's Tower,
I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists
was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see
that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch
from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."
Written by Kenn Nesbitt | Create an image from this poem

When Frankenstein was just a kid

When Frankenstein was just a kid,
he ate his greens. It’s true. He did!
He ate his spinach, salads, peas,
asparagus, and foods like these,
and with each leaf and lima bean
his skin became a bit more green.
On chives and chard he loved to chew,
and Brussels sprouts and peppers too,
until he ate that fateful bean
that turned his skin completely green.
He turned all green, and stayed that way,
and now he frightens folks away.
Poor Frankenstein, his tale is sad,
but things need not have been so bad.
It’s fair to say, if only he
had eaten much less celery,
avoided cabbage, ate no kale,
why, then, we’d have a different tale.
So, mom and dad, I’m here to say
please take these vegetables away
or my fate could be just as grim.
Yes, I could end up green like him.
So, mom and dad, before we dine,
please give a thought to Frankenstein.

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

XXXIV (You are the daughter of the sea)

 You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.
Written by Ron Padgett | Create an image from this poem

Ladies And Gentlemen In Outer Space

 Here is my philosophy:
Everything changes (the word "everything"
has just changed as the
word "change" has: it now
means "no change") so
quickly that it literally surpasses my belief,
charges right past it
like some of the giant
ideas in this area.
I had no beginning and I shall have
no end: the beam of light
stretches out before and behind
and I cook the vegetables
for a few minutes only,
the fewer the better. Butter
and serve. Here is my
philosophy: butter and serve.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry