Famous Leathery Poems by Famous Poets

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

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45 Mercy Street

...ng twenty-eight, or is it forty-five? 
I walk. I walk. 
I hold matches at street signs 
for it is dark, 
as dark as the leathery dead 
and I have lost my green Ford, 
my house in the suburbs, 
two little kids 
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me 
and a husband 
who has wiped off his eyes 
in order not to see my inside out 
and I am walking and looking 
and this is no dream 
just my oily life 
where the people are alibis 
and the street is unfindable for an 
entire lifetime...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


For A Row Of Laurel Shrubs

...itself turned upward at every
 Inconvenient angle you can imagine,
And look, on the ground, the fallen leaves,
 Brown, leathery, as thick as tongues, remain

 Almost what they were, tougher than ever,
Slow to molder, to give in, dead slow to feed
 The earth with themselves, there at the feet
 Of their fathers in the evergreen shade

Of their replacements. Remember, admirers
 Long ago would sometimes weave fresh clippings
 Into crowns and place them squarely on the heads
Of t...Read more of this...
by Wagoner, David

Lui Et Elle

....
His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds not
As her earthen mound moves on,
But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery skin,
Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell,
And drags at these with his beak,
Drags and drags and bites,
While she pulls herself free, and rows her dull mound along....Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

On Boot Hill

...ed dead,
  More than the dreamers who died in bed--
  You old-timers who took your lead
    Under the open sky!

  Leathery knights of the dim old trail,
  Lawful fighters or scamps from jail,
    Dimly your virtues shine.
  Yet who am I that I judge your wars,
  Deeds that my daintier soul abhors,
  Wide-open sins of the wide outdoors,
    Manlier sins than mine.

  Dear old mavericks, customs mend.
  I would not glory to make an end
    Marked like a homemade...Read more of this...
by Clark, Badger

Strange Fruit

...rune-stones for teeth.

They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence....Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus


The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

...ing negligee
of the Kingdom of Flaunt,
that unchallenged aristocracy. 

More plainly climatic, shorts
are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal;
are sailors' and branch bankers' rig,
the crisp golfing style
of our youngest male National Costume. 

Most loosely, they are Scunge,
ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants
worn with a former shirt,
feet, beach sand, hair
and a paucity of signals. 

Scunge, which is real negligee
housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

The Organ-Blower

...rt always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.

Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its b...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Upper Lambourne

...ned Carrara headstone,
Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
He who trained a hundred winners,
Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
Leathery skin from sun and wind,
Leathery breeches, spreading stables,
Shining saddles left behind -
To the down the string of horses
Moving out of sight and mind.

Feathery ash in leathery Lambourne
Waves above the sarsen stone,
And Edwardian plantations
So coniferously moan
As to make the swelling downland,
Far surroundin...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John

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