Famous Film Poems by Famous Poets

Copyright Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to...Read More

 LARA. [1] 

CANTO THE FIRST. 

I. 

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain, [2] 
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord —...Read More

14

One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There's only one recorded,
But both belong to me.

One came the road that I came—
And wore my last year's gown—
The other,...Read More

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude,...Read More

 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...Read More

 Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn 
From his displeasure; in whose look serene, 
When angry most he seemed and most severe, 
What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone?...Read More

 ENDYMION.

A Poetic Romance.

"THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN AN ANTIQUE SONG."
INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON.


Book I


A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will...Read More

 The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right,...Read More

Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry...Read More

 THAT which eludes this verse and any verse, 
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind, 
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, 
And yet...Read More

 I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into...Read More

 The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under...Read More

 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and...Read More

 At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.

I watch you sometimes
when you don't know I'm watching
and I see you. Who you are.

You are...Read More

 A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
Of an old wharf. A watery light
Touched bleak...Read More

 Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the...Read More

 AGAINST THE GRAIN



“Oxford be silent, I this truth must write

Leeds hath for rarities undone thee quite.”

 - William Dawson of Hackney, Nov.7th 1704



“The repressed becomes the poem”

 Louise Bogan





1



Well...Read More

 THE HUNCHBACK TROUT





The creek was made narrow by little green trees that grew

too close together. The creek was like 12, 845 telephone

booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings...Read More

 I had sex with a famous poet last night 
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered 
because I was married to someone else, 
because...Read More

 I was never a film buff, give me Widmark and Wayne any day

Saturday matin?es with Margaret Gardener still hold sway

As my memory veers backwards this temperate Boxing Day-

Westerns and...Read More

 "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that...Read More

 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read,...Read More

 1
FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face; 
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face. 

Crowds of men...Read More

 "O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head:
We're all for love," the violins said.
"Of what avail the rigorous tale
Of bill for...Read More

 There was a hope for poetry in the sixties

And for education and society, teachers free

To do as they wanted: I could and did teach

Poetry and art all day and...Read More