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Famous Markets Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...suburbs where you breathe a fat towel;
babies burst like tomatoes with discomfort
in the cotton-wrapped pointing street markets;
the Lycra-bulging surf drips from non-swimmers
miles from shore, and somehow includes soil.
Skins, touching, soak each other. Skin touching
any surface wets that and itself
in a kind of mutual digestion.
Throbbing heads grow lianas of nonsense. 

It's our annual visit to the latitudes
of rice, kerosene and resignation,
an averted, temporary visit
un...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les



...overnment.
The next for interest sought t'embroil the state,
To sell their duty at a dearer rate;
And make their Jewish markets of the throne;
Pretending public good, to serve their own.
Others thought kings an useless heavy load,
Who cost too much, and did too little good.
These were for laying honest David by,
On principles of pure good husbandry.
With them join'd all th'haranguers of the throng,
That thought to get preferment by the tongue.
Who follow next, a double danger...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John
...e I was born in

Is long gone

Steel and concrete bones

Of a container base

Rise from the ruins.





32



Wholesale markets

Straddle the fields

Of Snakey Lane

By the Red Road

By the Black Road.





33



Footpaths unwalked

Are decked with weeds;

Factories for frozen foods

And car batteries

Edge the silence.





34



The piggeries no more

Than corrugations

Of rust and wood

Sigh in the

Ravening wind.





35



A tethered horse

Is pawing the tired grass

Amo...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...owers as large as trees, wilting, of course,
Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos,
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than
Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which
Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere.
And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty,
Even when inhabited.

Even the houses in Hell are not...Read more of this...
by Brecht, Bertolt
...ered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it's Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston



...n still. One of those days
Is going to be marked with a cross.

THE WORKERS CRY OUT FOR BREAD
The merchants cry out for markets.
The unemployed were hungry. The employed
Are hungry now.
The hands that lay folded are busy again.
They are making shells.

THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into th...Read more of this...
by Brecht, Bertolt
...n still. One of those days
Is going to be marked with a cross.

THE WORKERS CRY OUT FOR BREAD
The merchants cry out for markets.
The unemployed were hungry. The employed
Are hungry now.
The hands that lay folded are busy again.
They are making shells.

THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into th...Read more of this...
by Brecht, Bertolt
...can't love a woman. Besides, she's pregnant."
I can paint- a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a 
lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
and that under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy. . .
men drive cars and paint their houses,
but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
Paris, Louvre.
"I must write Kaiser, though I think he'...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...

On a fair day by accident, after 
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us -- eternally....Read more of this...
by Kavanagh, Patrick
...or love's sake, 
I bless this other death. Oh, not in air -- 
in dirt. Under the rotting veins of its roots, 
under the markets, under the sheep bed where 
the hill is food, under the slippery fruits 
of the vineyard, I go. Unto the bellies and jaws 
of rats I commit my prophecy and fear. 
Far below The Cross, I correct its flaws. 
We have kept the miracle. I will not be here....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...ike these?
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys. 

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do? 

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. 

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. 

Can I but reliv...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...st toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.

Two men have founded here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...ness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its plantarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo
...halers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. 

The shapes arise! 
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; 
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads; 
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, towns, lake and canal craft, river craft. 

The shapes arise! 
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and
 by-place, 
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I cou...Read more of this...
by Ondaatje, Michael
...tsman to the Squire. 

I’d have been prosperous if I’d took a farm 
Of fifty acres, drove my gig and haggled 
At Monday markets; now I’ve squandered all 
My savings; nigh three hundred pound I got 
As testimonial when I’d grown too stiff 
And slow to press a beaten fox. 

The Fleece! 
’Twas the damned Fleece that wore my Emily out, 
The wife of thirty years who served me well; 
(Not like this beldam clattering in the kitchen, 
That never trims a lamp nor sweeps the floor, 
An...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...s boat, I should man her with a
hundred oars, and hoist sails, five or six or seven.
I should never steer her to stupid markets.
I should sail the seven seas and the thirteen rivers of
fairyland.
But, mother, you won't weep for me in a corner.
I am not going into the forest like Ramachandra to come back
only after fourteen years.
I shall become the prince of the story, and fill my boat with
whatever I like.
I shall take my friend Ashu with me. We shall sail merrily
across the...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath
...ach with the treasures of far-distant regions,
High on the mast's lofty head flutters the garland of mirth.
See how yon markets, those centres of life and of gladness, are swarming!
Strange confusion of tongues sounds in the wondering ear.
On to the pile the wealth of the earth is heaped by the merchant,
All that the sun's scorching rays bring forth on Africa's soil,
All that Arabia prepares, that the uttermost Thule produces,
High with heart-gladdening stores fills Amalthea ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...aves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

Within Earth's wide domains
Are markets for men's lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!

All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life's groaning tide!

These are the woes of Sl...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...at night;
To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers—and he there takes no
 interest in them! 

5
The markets, the government, the working-man’s wages—to think what account they
 are
 through our nights and days! 
To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them—yet we make
 little
 or no account! 

The vulgar and the refined—what you call sin, and what you call goodness—to
 think how
 wide a difference! 
To think the difference will s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things