10 Best Famous Yesterdays Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Yesterdays poems. This is a select list of the best famous Yesterdays poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Yesterdays poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of yesterdays poems.

• All Famous Yesterdays Poems

 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.

The First Elegy


Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me 
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note
Of my dark sobbing. Ah whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels not humans
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at out faces. Whom would it not remain for-that longed-after
mildly disillusioning presence which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
Into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

Yes-the springtime needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past or as you walked
under an open window a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
Distracted by expectation as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing
of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them almost)
who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;
remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was
merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature spent and exhausted takes lovers back
into herself as if there were not enough strength
to create them a second time. Have you imagined
Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl
deserted by her beloved might be inspired
by that fierce example of soaring objectless love
and might say to herself Perhaps I can be like her ?
Shouldn't this most ancient suffering finally grow
more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly
freed ourselves from the beloved and quivering endured:
as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension so that
gathered in the snap of release it can be more than
itself. For there is no place where we can remain.

Voices. Voices. Listen my heart as only
Saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on impossibly
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure
God's voice-far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.
Didn't their fate whenever you stepped into a church
In Naples or Rome quietly come to address you?
Or high up some eulogy entrusted you with a mission
as last year on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance
of injustice about their death-which at times
slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.
Of course it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer
to give up customs one barely had time to learn
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even one's own first name behind forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. -Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it through both realms
forever and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end those who were carried off early no longer need us:
they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys as gently as children
outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we who do need
such great mysteries we for whom grief is so often
the source of our spirit's growth-: could we exist without them?
Is the legend meaningless that tells how in the lament for Linus
the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness;
and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god
had suddenly left forever the Void felt for the first time
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us.

 the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the 
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.

Yes, the springtime were in need of you. Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved? (Where would you find a place
to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts 
coming and going and often staying for the night.)
When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and
desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving
than those gratified. Begin ever new again
the praise you cannot attain; remember:
the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall
was for him only a pretext for achieving
his final birth. But nature, exhausted, takes lovers
back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be
achieved a second time.
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently:

that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel
from that far intenser example of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves
from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,
and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Listen my heart, as only saints
have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
clear off the ground. Yet they went on, impossibly,
kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was
their listening. Not that you could endure
the voice of God -far from it! But listen
to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message
that forms itself out of silence. They sweep
toward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples,
did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently
as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want of me? to quietly remove
the appearance of suffered injustice that,
at times, hinders a little their spirits from
freely proceeding onward.

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire;
not to observe roses and other things that promised
so much in terms of a human future, no longer
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to even discard one's own name as easily as a child
abandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering
so loosely in space. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a
trace of eternity. -Yes, but the liviing make
the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in
its thunderous roar.

In the end the early departed have no longer
need of us. One is gently weaned from things
of this world as a child outgrows the need
of its mother's breast. But we who have need 
of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is
so often the source of spiritual growth,
could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning
in the midst of the mourning for Linos?
the daring first sounds of song piercing
the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,
and the emptiness felt for the first time
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture
and comfort and help us.

 Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, "When this war is done
The men's first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, --
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
(Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.


23rd September 1918.

 Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work
in fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur.
The shop windows snicker
flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford:
you are not pretty enough, not pretty enough.

Blown with yesterday’s papers through the boiled coffee morning
we dream of the stop on the subway without a name,
the door in the heart of the grove of skyscrapers,
that garden where we nestle to the teats of a furry world,
lie in mounds of peony eating grapes,
and need barter ourselves for nothing.
not by the hour, not by the pound, not by the skinful,
that party to which no one will give or sell us the key
though we have all thought briefly we found it
drunk or in bed.

Black girls with thin legs and high necks stalking like herons,
plump girls with blue legs and green eyelids and
 strawberry breasts,
swept off to be frozen in fluorescent cubes,
the vacuum of your jobs sucks your brains dry
and fills you with the ooze of melted comics.
Living is later. This is your rented death.
You grasp at hard commodities and vague lusts
to make up, to pay for each day
which opens like a can and is empty, and then another,
afternoons like dinosaur eggs stuffed with glue.

Girls of the dirty morning, ticketed and spent,
you will be less at forty than at twenty.
Your living is a waste product of somebody’s mill.
I would fix you like buds to a city where people work
to make and do things necessary and good,
where work is real as bread and babies and trees in parks
where we would all blossom slowly and ripen to sound fruit.

 from an officer's diary during the last war

I 

The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. 
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly 
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: 
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, 

Yesterday's napkins, and an opened letter. 
"Your asthma's bad, old man." He doesn't answer, 
And turns to the grey windows and the weather. 
"Don't worry, Stephan, the lungs will go to cancer." 

II 

I speak, "the enemy's exhausted, victory 
Is almost ours..." These twenty new recruits, 
Conscripted for the battles lost already, 
Were once the young, exchanging bitter winks, 

And shuffling when I rose to eloquence, 
Determined not to die and not to show 
The fear that held them in their careless stance, 
And yet they died, how many wars ago? 

Or came back cream puffs, 45, and fat. 
I know that I am touched for my eyes brim 
With tears I had forgotten. Death is not 
For these car salesmen whose only dream 

Is of a small percentage of the take. 
Oh my eternal smilers, weep for death 
Whose harvest withers with your aged aches 
And cannot make the grave for lack of breath. 

III 

Did you wet? Oh no, he had not wet. 
How could he say it, it was hard to say 
Because he did not understand it yet. 
It had to do, maybe, with being away, 

With being here where nothing seemed to matter. 
It will be better, you will see tomorrow, 
I told him, in a while it will be better, 
And all the while staring from the mirror 

I saw those eyes, my eyes devouring me. 
I cannot fire my rifle, I'm aftaid 
Even to aim at what I cannot see. 
This was his voice, or was it mine I heard? 

How do I know that in this foul latrine 
I calmed a soldier, infantile, manic? 
Could he be real with such eyes pinched between 
The immense floating shoulders of his tunic? 

IV 

Around the table where the map is spread 
The officers gather. Now the colonel leans 
Into the blinkered light from overhead 
And with a penknife improvises plans 

For our departure. Plans delivered by 
An old staff courier on his bicycle. 
One looks at him and wonders does he say, 
I lean out and I let my shadow fall 

Shouldering the picture that we call the world 
And there is darkness? Does he say such things? 
Or is there merely silence in his head? 
Or other voices which the silence rings? 

Such a fine skull and forehead, broad and flat, 
The eyes opaque and slightly animal. 
I can come closer to a starving cat, 
I can read hunger in its eyes and feel 

In the irregular motions of its tail 
A need that I could feel. He slips his knife 
Into the terminal where we entrain 
And something seems to issue from my life. 

V 

In the mice-sawed potato fields dusk waits. 
My dull ones march by fours on the playground, 
Kicking up dust; The column hesitates 
As though in answer to the rising wind, 

To darkness and the coldness it must enter. 
Listen, my heroes, my half frozen men, 
The corporal calls us to that distant winter 
Where we will merge the nothingness within. 

And they salute as one and stand at peace. 
Keeping an arm's distance from everything, 
I answer them, knowing they see no face 
Between my helmet and my helmet thong. 

VI 

But three more days and we'll be moving out. 
The cupboard of the state is bare, no one, 
Not God himself, can raise another recruit. 
Drinking my hot tea, listening to the rain, 

I sit while Stephan packs, grumbling a bit. 
He breaks the china that my mother sent, 
Her own first china, as a wedding gift. 
"Now that your wife is dead, Captain, why can't 

The two of us really make love together?" 
I cannot answer. When I lift a plate 
It seems I almost hear my long-dead mother 
Saying, Watch out, the glass is underfoot. 

Stephan is touching me. "Captain, why not? 
Three days from now and this will all be gone. 
It no longer is!" Son, you don't shout, 
In the long run it doesn't help the pain. 

I gather the brittle bits and cut my finger 
On the chipped rim of my wife's favorite glass, 
And cannot make the simple bleeding linger. 
"Captain, Captain, there's no one watching us."

 Since I don't know who will be reading 
this or even if it will be read, I must 
invent someone on the other end 
of eternity, a distant cousin laboring 
under the same faint stars I labored 
all those unnumbered years ago. I make you 
like me in everything I can -- a man 
or woman in middle years who having 
lost whatever faiths he held goes on 
with only the faith that even more 
will be lost. Like me a wanderer, 
someone with a taste for coastal towns 
sparkling in the cold winter sun, boardwalks 
without walkers, perfect beaches shrouded 
in the dense fogs of December, morning cafes 
before the second customer arrives, 
the cats have been fed, and the proprietor 
stops muttering into the cold dishwater. 
I give you the gift of language, my gift 
and no more, so that wherever you go 
words fall around you meaning no more 
than the full force of their making, and you 
translate the clicking of teeth against 
teeth and tongue as morning light spilling 
into the enclosed squares of a white town, 
breath drawn in and held as the ocean 
when no one sees it, the waves still, 
the fishing boats drift in a calm beyond sleep. 
The gift of sleep, too, and the waking 
from it day after day without knowing 
why the small sunlit room with its single bed, 
white counterpane going yellow, and bare floor 
holds itself with such assurance 
while the flaming nebulae of dust 
swirl around you. And the sense not to ask. 
Like me you rise immediately and sit 
on the bed's edge and let whatever dream 
of a childhood home or a rightful place 
you had withdraw into the long shadows 
of the tilted wardrobe and the one chair. 
Before you've even washed your face you 
see it on the bedoilied chiffonier -- there, 
balanced precariously on the orange you bought 
at yesterday's market and saved for now. 
Someone entered soundlessly while you slept 
and left you sleeping and left this postcard 
from me and thought to close the door 
with no more fuss than the moon makes. 
There's your name in black ink in a hand 
as familiar as your own and not 
your own, and the address even you 
didn't know you'd have an hour before 
you got it. When you turn it over, 
there it is, not the photo of a star, 
or the bright sailboats your sister would 
have chosen or the green urban meadows 
my brother painted. What is it? It could be 
another planet just after its birth 
except that at the center the colors 
are earth colors. It could be the cloud 
that formed above the rivers of our blood, 
the one that brought rain to a dry time 
or took wine from a hungry one. It could 
be my way of telling you that I too 
burned and froze by turns and the face I 
came to was more dirt than flame, it 
could be the face I put on everything, 
or it could be my way of saying 
nothing and saying it perfectly.

 We are the vagabonds of time, 
And rove the yellow autumn days, 
When all the roads are gray with rime 
And all the valleys blue with haze. 
We came unlooked for as the wind 
Trooping across the April hills, 
When the brown waking earth had dreams 
Of summer in the Wander Kills. 
How far afield we joyed to fare, 
With June in every blade and tree! 
Now with the sea-wind in our hair 
We turn our faces to the sea. 

We go unheeded as the stream 
That wanders by the hill-wood side, 
Till the great marshes take his hand 
And lead him to the roving tide. 

The roving tide, the sleeping hills, 
These are the borders of that zone 
Where they may fare as fancy wills 
Whom wisdom smiles and calls her own. 

It is a country of the sun, 
Full of forgotten yesterdays, 
When Time takes Summer in his care, 
And fills the distance of her gaze. 

It stretches from the open sea 
To the blue mountains and beyond; 
The world is Vagabondia 
To him who is a vagabond. 

In the beginning God made man 
Out of the wandering dust, men say; 
And in the end his life shall be 
A wandering wind and blown away. 

We are the vagabonds of time, 
Willing to let the world go by, 
With joy supreme, with heart sublime, 
And valor in the kindling eye. 

We have forgotten where we slept, 
And guess not where we sleep to-night, 
Whether among the lonely hills 
In the pale streamers' ghostly light 

We shall lie down and hear the frost 
Walk in the dead leaves restlessly, 
Or somewhere on the iron coast 
Learn the oblivion of the sea. 

It matters not. And yet I dream 
Of dreams fulfilled and rest somewhere 
Before this restless heart is stilled 
And all its fancies blown to air. 

Had I my will! . . . The sun burns down 
And something plucks my garment's hem: 
The robins in their faded brown 
Would lure me to the south with them. 

'Tis time for vagabonds to make 
The nearest inn. Far on I hear 
The voices of the Northern hills 
Gather the vagrants of the year. 

Brave heart, my soul! Let longings be! 
We have another day to wend. 
For dark or waylay what care we 
Who have the lords of time to friend? 

And if we tarry or make haste, 
The wayside sleep can hold no fear. 
Shall fate unpoise, or whim perturb, 
The calm-begirt in dawn austere? 

There is a tavern, I have heard, 
Not far, and frugal, kept by One 
Who knows the children of the Word, 
And welcomes each when day is done. 

Some say the house is lonely set 
In Northern night, and snowdrifts keep 
The silent door; the hearth is cold, 
And all my fellows gone to sleep.... 

Had I my will! I hear the sea 
Thunder a welcome on the shore; 
I know where lies the hostelry 
And who should open me the door.

 I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.
I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been -- alone,
'As all must be,' I said within my heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'
But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,
Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.
And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.
And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'