Famous Compartment Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Compartment poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous compartment poems. These examples illustrate what a famous compartment poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Refugees

by Randall Jarrell
 In the shabby train no seat is vacant.
The child in the ripped mask
Sprawls undisturbed in the waste
Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant?
They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed
That they were willing to trade for this?
The dried blood sparkles along the mask
Of the child who yesterday possessed
A country welcomer than this.
Did he? All...Read more of this...

gentlemen lift the sea

by Rg Gregory
 on a deformed request in a train lavatory

gentlemen lift the sea
be all of you the modern
muscular mountains
who with a scoop of biceptual crags
swoop down for an armful of ocean
leavening the dreadful pressures
on the valleys of lyonnesse

gentlemen rape air with water
let the submarine nose round the moon
and aeroplane astonished
break wind in the vaults between
the antelope ecstatic on the ocean bed
and...Read more of this...

Seaward

by Joseph Brodsky
Darling you think it's love it's just a midnightjourney.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force 
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh stopit Bernie "
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures 
alias cigars smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches 
and the phones...Read more of this...

I threw my arms about those shoulders..

by Joseph Brodsky
 Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are...Read more of this...

You Asked How (formerly Even Now She Is Turning Saying Everything I Always Wanted Her to Say)

by Nick Flynn
 At the end there were straws
in her glove compartment, I'd split them open
to taste the familiar bitter residue, near the end
I ate all her Percodans, hungry to know
how far they could take me.
A bottle of red wine each night moved her along
as she wrote, I feel too much, again and again. 

You asked how and I said, Suicide, and...Read more of this...

The house where I was born (06)

by Yves Bonnefoy
 I woke up, but I was travelling,
The train had rolled throughout the night,
It was now going toward huge clouds
That were standing, packed together, down there,
Dawn rent from time to time by forks of lightning.
I watched the advent of the world
In the bushes of the embankment; and all at once
That other fire below a field
Of stones and vines. The wind,...Read more of this...

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