Famous Long Persona Poems

Famous Long Persona Poems. Long Persona Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Persona long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the...
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 Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her uterus an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall prick herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew...
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 S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to...
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 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ch? la diritta via era smarrita .

When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.


Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura !

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and difficult,
which even in recall renews my fear:


Tant'? amara che poco ? pi? morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dir? de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte .

so bitter-death is hardly more severe!
But to retell the good discovered there,
I'll also tell the other things I saw.


Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,
tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai .

I cannot clearly say how I had entered
the wood; I was so full of sleep just at
the point where I abandoned the true path.


Ma poi ch'i' fui al pi? d'un colle giunto,
l? dove terminava quella valle
che m'avea di paura il cor compunto ,

But when I'd reached the bottom of a hill-
it rose along the boundary of the valley
that had harassed my heart with so...
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 Per me si va ne la citt? dolente, 
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, 
per me si va tra la perduta gente . 

THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. 


Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: 
fecemi la divina podestate, 
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore . 

JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER; 
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY, 
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. 


Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create 
se non etterne, e io etterno duro. 
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ". 

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS 
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. 
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE. 


Queste parole di colore oscuro 
vid'io scritte al sommo d'una porta; 
per ch'io: «Maestro, il senso lor m'? duro ». 

These words-their aspect was obscure-I read 
inscribed above a gateway, and I said: 
"Master, their meaning is difficult for me." 


Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: 
«Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; 
ogne vilt? convien che qui sia morta . 

And he to me, as one who comprehends: 
"Here one must leave behind all hesitation;...
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 Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aere bruno 
toglieva li animai che sono in terra 
da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno 

The day was now departing; the dark air 
released the living beings of the earth 
from work and weariness; and I myself 


m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra 
s? del cammino e s? de la pietate, 
che ritrarr? la mente che non erra . 

alone prepared to undergo the battle 
both of the journeying and of the pity, 
which memory, mistaking not, shall show. 


O muse, o alto ingegno, or m'aiutate; 
o mente che scrivesti ci? ch'io vidi, 
qui si parr? la tua nobilitate . 

O Muses, o high genius, help me now; 
o memory that set down what I saw, 
here shall your excellence reveal itself! 


Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi, 
guarda la mia virt? s'ell'? possente, 
prima ch'a l'alto passo tu mi fidi . 

I started: "Poet, you who are my guide, 
see if the force in me is strong enough 
before you let me face that rugged pass. 


Tu dici che di Silvio il parente, 
corruttibile ancora, ad immortale 
secolo and?, e fu sensibilmente . 

You say that he who fathered Sylvius, 
while he...
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 Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
looking for friendship or an old love's sleeve
or writing letters to his children, lost,
and to his children's children, and to us.
What was his light? of lamp or moon or sun?
Say that it changed, for better or for worse,
sifted by leaves, sifted by snow; on mulberry silk
a slant of witch-light; on the pure text
a slant of genius; emptying mind and heart
for winecups and more winecups and more words.
What was his time? Say that it was a change,
but constant as a changing thing may be,
from chicory's moon-dark blue down the taut scale
to chicory's tenderest pink, in a pink field
such as imagination dreams of thought.
But of the heart beneath the winecup moon
the tears that fell beneath the winecup moon
for children lost, lost lovers, and lost friends,
what can we say but that it never ends?
Even for us it never ends, only begins.
Yet to spell down the poem on her page,
margining her phrases, parsing forth
the sevenfold prism of meaning, up the scale
from chicory pink to blue, is to assume
Li Po himself: as he before assumed
the poets and the sages who...
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 LA DIVINA COMMEDIA di Dante Alighieri INFERNO


Inferno: Canto I



 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ch? la diritta via era smarrita.

 Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

 Tant'? amara che poco ? pi? morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

dir? de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

 Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,

tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto

che la verace via abbandonai.

 Ma poi ch'i' fui al pi? d'un colle giunto,

l? dove terminava quella valle

che m'avea di paura il cor compunto,

 guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle

vestite gi? de' raggi del pianeta

che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

 Allor fu la paura un poco queta

che nel lago del cor m'era durata

la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta.

 E come quei che con lena affannata

uscito fuor del pelago a la riva

si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata,

 cos? l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva,

si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo

che non lasci? gi? mai persona viva.

 Poi ch'?i posato un poco il corpo lasso,

ripresi via per la piaggia diserta,

s? che 'l pi? fermo sempre era 'l pi? basso.

...
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 LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PARADISO



Paradiso: Canto I

 La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l'universo penetra, e risplende
in una parte pi? e meno altrove.
 Nel ciel che pi? de la sua luce prende
fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire
n? sa n? pu? chi di l? s? discende;
 perch? appressando s? al suo disire,
nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
che dietro la memoria non pu? ire.
 Veramente quant'io del regno santo
ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
sar? ora materia del mio canto.
 O buono Appollo, a l'ultimo lavoro
fammi del tuo valor s? fatto vaso,
come dimandi a dar l'amato alloro.
 Infino a qui l'un giogo di Parnaso
assai mi fu; ma or con amendue
m'? uopo intrar ne l'aringo rimaso.
 Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue
s? come quando Marsia traesti
de la vagina de le membra sue.
 O divina virt?, se mi ti presti
tanto che l'ombra del beato regno
segnata nel mio capo io manifesti,
 vedra'mi al pi? del tuo diletto legno
venire, e coronarmi de le foglie
che la materia e tu mi farai degno.
 S? rade volte, padre, se ne coglie
per triunfare o cesare o poeta,
colpa e vergogna de l'umane voglie,
 che parturir letizia in su la lieta
delfica deit? dovria la fronda
peneia, quando alcun di s?...
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 LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PURGATORIO



Purgatorio: Canto I

 Per correr miglior acque alza le vele
omai la navicella del mio ingegno,
che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele;
 e canterò di quel secondo regno
dove l'umano spirito si purga
e di salire al ciel diventa degno.
 Ma qui la morta poesì resurga,
o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono;
e qui Caliopè alquanto surga,
 seguitando il mio canto con quel suono
di cui le Piche misere sentiro
lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono.
 Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro,
che s'accoglieva nel sereno aspetto
del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro,
 a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto,
tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
che m'avea contristati li occhi e 'l petto.
 Lo bel pianeto che d'amar conforta
faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
velando i Pesci ch'erano in sua scorta.
 I' mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente
a l'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
non viste mai fuor ch'a la prima gente.
 Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle:
oh settentrional vedovo sito,
poi che privato se' di mirar quelle!
 Com'io da loro sguardo fui partito,
un poco me volgendo a l 'altro polo,
là onde il Carro già era sparito,
 vidi presso di me un veglio solo,
degno di tanta reverenza in vista,
che più non dee a padre alcun figliuolo.
...
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