Famous Puddles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Prodigal

...ter drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.

But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth


Elegy On The Death Of A Young Man

...tune still may juggle on,
For her minions blindly look around,--
Man now totter on his staggering throne,
And in dreary puddles now be found!
Blest art thou, within thy narrow cell!
To this stir of tragi-comedy,
To these fortune-waves that madly swell,
To this vain and childish lottery,
To this busy crowd effecting naught,
To this rest with labor teeming o'er,
Brother!--to this heaven with devils--fraught,
Now thine eyes have closed forevermore.

Fare thee well, oh, thou to m...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

Epistle to Neruda

...sters,
 rice, 
he walks with the bread through Valparaiso. 
He says:
 " Eugenio, look!
You see--
 over there, among the puddles and garbage,
standing up under the red lamps
stands Bilbao-with the soul
 of a poet -- in bronze.
Bilbao was a tramp and a rebel.
Originally
 they set up the monument, fenced off
by a chain, with due pomp, right in the center,
although the poet had lived in the slums.
Then there was some minor overthrow or other,
and the poet was thrown out, beyond t...Read more of this...
by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

First Day at School

...out of glass. Imagine.

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea....Read more of this...
by McGough, Roger

I am bound to this Land by blood

...e palm of the school child
I see blood on the statue
Of the Immaculate Mother

I walk through the streets and I see puddles of blood
I see blood on your shoes on your underwear
I see blood on the hands of men
And if I raise my voice to holler
It is because the grasses wither in this deluge of blood
Fishes float on their bellies with their eyes covered
By the sanguine flood

My verse spreads ungathered
In this spill of purple
Mine is the cry of a ram tethered
To...Read more of this...
by Oguibe, Olu


Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

....
It is impossible to tear oneself away from this spectacle.

At midnight those leaving the theaters drink a last soda.
Puddles of rain stand cooling. Poor people scavenge 
bones. In all directions is a labyrinth of trains
suffocated by vaults. There is no hope, your eyes
are not accustomed to seeing such things.

They are starting to evolve an American gait out
of the cautious steps of the Indians on the paths of empty 
Manhattan. Maybe it only seems that way....Read more of this...
by Dillard, Annie

Narcissus Photographer

...en,
and especially, nothingness..."
-- Julio Cortázar, "Blow Up"

Mirror-mad,
he photographed reflections:
sunstorms in puddles,
cities in canals,

double portraits framed
in sunglasses,
the fat phantoms who dance
on the flanks of cars.

Nothing caught his eye
unless it bent
or glistered
over something else.

He trapped clouds in bottles
the way kids
trap grasshoppers.
Then one misty day

he was stopped
by the windshield.
Behind him,
an avenue of trees,

before him,
the mirro...Read more of this...
by Jong, Erica

Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears

...the city dump
The faint scratch of a match. 

The second speaker said
Fear water. Fear drenching rain
Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp
Day and the flush toilet. 

The third speaker said
Fear wind. And it needn't be
A hurricane. Drafts, open
Windows, electric fans. 

The fourth speaker said
Fear knives. Fear any sharp
Thing, machine, shears
Scissors, lawnmowers. 

The fifth speaker said
Hope. Hope for the best
A smooth folder in a steel file....Read more of this...
by Francis, Robert

Part 5 of Trout Fishing in America

...DOCTOR

CALIGARI



Once water bugs were my field. I remember that childhood

spring when I studied the winter-long mud puddles of the

Pacific Northwest. I had a fellowship.

 My books were a pair of Sears Roebuck boots, ones with

green rubber pages. Most of my classrooms were close to

the shore. That's where the important things were happen-

ing and that's where the good things were happening.

 Sometimes as experiments I laid boards out into the mud

puddles, so I could...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

...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 the granite bridge, and white
Without the slightest tinge of gold,
The city shivered in the cold.
All day my thoughts had lain as dead,
Unborn and bursting in my head.
From time to time I wrote a word
Which lines and circles overscore...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The City Bushman

...bags, 
And we couldn't raise a chorus, for the toothache and the cramp, 
While we spent the hours of darkness draining puddles round the camp. 

Would you like to change with Clancy -- go a-droving? tell us true, 
For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you, 
And be something in the city; but 'twould give your muse a shock 
To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock, 
And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the starry dome 
If yo...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

The Coal Picker

...He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock's eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Everlasting Mercy

...d it was there was no knowing 
Whether the clouds or stars were blowing; 
Blown chimney pots and folk blown blind, 
And puddles glimmering in my mind, 
And chinking glass from windows banging, 
And inn signs swung like people hanging, 
And in my heart the drink unpriced, 
The burning cataracts of Christ.

I did not think, I did not strive, 
The deep peace burnt my me alive; 
The bolted door had broken in, 
I knew that I had done with sin. 
I knew that Christ had given me birt...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...nce, he forgot his pail.

Something had changed—but it was not the street—
The street was just the same—it was himself.
Puddles flashed in the sun. In the pawn-shop door
The same old black cat winked green amber eyes;
The butcher stood by his window tying his apron;
The same men walked beside him, smoking pipes,
Reading the morning paper . . .

He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly,
As if he knew for certain he walked to death:
But with his usual pace,—delibera...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 04: Illicit

...s music,
Glimpsing a face in darkness, hearing a cry,
Remembering days forgotten, moods exhausted,
Corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars—;
Until, of a sudden, and least of all suspected,
The thing resolved itself: and I remembered
An April afternoon, eight years ago—
Or was it nine?—no matter—call it nine—
A room in which the last of sunlight faded;
A vase of violets, fragrance in white curtains;
And, she who played the same thing later, playing.

She played this tune...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Old Huntsman

...nd 
A country blinding-white with dazzle of snow. 

The naked stars make men feel lonely, wheeling 
And glinting on the puddles in the road. 

And then you listen to the wind, and wonder 
If folk are quite such bucks as they appear 
When dressed by London tailors, looking down 
Their boots at covert side, and thinking big. 

. . . . 
This world’s a funny place to live in. Soon 
I’ll need to change my country; but I know 
’Tis little enough I’ve understood my life, 
And a powe...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried

The Theory

...loud for me? Perhaps some local hill fulfills
your expectation? 

 No, it's no mistake, it's you; those interconnecting puddles
of flesh pulling at your bones, attempting that world-weary fall
toward the great waters of the world. 

 How you manage against gravity is one of the greater
triumphs of nature. 

 Do you think, said the big one, there's a woman who
would like to marry me? 

 Yes, had such a woman done everything in the world except
marry you, she might think it wor...Read more of this...
by Edson, Russell

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

...
breakfast.
and on the radio
we were told that
school was now
open.
and
soon
there I was
on the way to school,
massive puddles in the 
street,
the sun like a new
world,
my parents back in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, "we won't have our
usual recess, the grounds 
are too wet."
"AW!" most of the boys 
went.
"but we are going to do
something special at
recess," she went on,
"and it will be
fun!"
well, we all wondered
what that wo...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Wednesday

...ernoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books of noble ideas. Through the fervent branches,
carried by momentary breezes of local origin,
the palpable Sublime flickered as motes on broad leaves,
while the Higher Good and the Greater Good contended
as sap on the bark of the maples, and even I
was enabled to witness the truly Existential where it loitered
famously in the shadows as if wa...Read more of this...
by Bell, Marvin

Wild Peaches

...lie upon the grass 
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. 
The misted early mornings will be cold; 
The little puddles will be roofed with glass. 
The sun, which burns from copper into brass, 
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold 
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold 
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; 
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; 
The spring begins before the winter's over. 
B...Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor

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