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Famous Long Usa Poems

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

See also: Long Member Poems

 
by Philip Levine

The Negatives

 On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, 
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a 
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent 
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville 
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN: 
from a last camp near St. Remy

 I dig in the soft earth all 
 afternoon, spacing the holes 
 a foot or so from the wall. 
 Tonight we eat potatoes, 
 tomorrow rice and carrots. 
 The earth here is like the earth 
 nowhere, ancient with wood rot. 
 How can anything come forth, 

 I wonder; and the days are 
 all alike, if there is more 
 than one day. If there is more 
 of this I will not endure. 
 I have grown so used to being 
 watched I can no longer sleep 
 without my watcher. The thing 
 I fought against, the dark cape, 

 crimsoned with terror that 
 I so hated comforts me now. 
 Thomas is dead; insanity, 
 prison, cowardice, or slow 
 inner capitulation 
...
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by Langston Hughes

Freedoms Plow

 When a man starts out with nothing,
 When a man starts out with his hands
 Empty, but clean,
 When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.

The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man's dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.

A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!

With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women...
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by Anne Sexton

Hurry Up Please Its Time

 What is death, I ask. 
What is life, you ask. 
I give them both my buttocks, 
my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana. 
They are neat as a wallet, 
opening and closing on their coins, 
the quarters, the nickels, 
straight into the crapper. 
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants 
and moon the executioner 
as well as paste raisins on my breasts? 
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants 
and show my little cunny to Tom 
and Albert? They wee-wee funny. 
I wee-wee like a squaw. 
I have ink but no pen, still 
I dream that I can piss in God's eye. 
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper. 
It's so practical, la de dah. 
The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix, 
is being a little girl in the first place. 
Not all the books of the world will change that. 
I have swallowed an orange, being woman. 
You have swallowed a ruler, being man. 
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing. 
Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe 
before we are both overthrown. 
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah. 
You grow a beard but our drool is identical. 

Forgive us, Father, for we know not....
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by Alice Duer Miller

The White Cliffs

 I 
I have loved England, dearly and deeply, 
Since that first morning, shining and pure, 
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply 
Out of the sea that once made her secure. 
I had no thought then of husband or lover, 
I was a traveller, the guest of a week; 
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover', 
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek. 
I have loved England, and still as a stranger, 
Here is my home and I still am alone. 
Now in her hour of trial and danger, 
Only the English are really her own. 

II 
It happened the first evening I was there. 
Some one was giving a ball in Belgrave Square.
At Belgrave Square, that most Victorian spot.—
Lives there a novel-reader who has not 
At some time wept for those delightful girls, 
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls, 
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques, 
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks 
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those 
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose? 
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill 
Loving against her noble parent's will 
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm 
Feels her...
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by Dante Alighieri

Inferno (Italian)

 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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