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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Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears

by Robert Francis
 The first speaker said
Fear fire. Fear furnaces
Incinerators, 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...Read more of this...

The Coal Picker

by Amy Lowell
 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...Read more of this...

Wednesday

by Marvin Bell
 Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
Into this sodden, nourishing afternoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books...Read more of this...

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

by Charles Bukowski
 call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the 
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 02: The Fulfilled Dream

by Conrad Aiken
 More towers must yet be built—more towers destroyed—
Great rocks hoisted in air;
And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight
With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes . . .
And so he did not mention his dream of falling
But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears
That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his...Read more of this...

I am bound to this Land by blood

by Olu Oguibe
I am bound to this land by blood
That's why my vision is blurred
I am rooted in its soil
And its streams flood my veins
I smell the sweat of its men
And the million feet that plod
The dust of its streets
Leave their prints on my soul
I have walked the footpaths of this land
Climbed the snake-routes of its hills
I have known the heat of...Read more of this...

First Day at School

by Roger McGough
 A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep...Read more of this...

Epistle to Neruda

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
 Superb,
 Like a seasoned lion,
Neruda buys bread in the shop.
He asks for it to be wrapped in paper
And solemly puts it under his arm:
"Let someone at least think
that at some time
 I bought a book…"
Waving his hand in farewell,
like a Roman
 rather dreamily royal, 
in the air scented with mollusks, 
 oysters,
 rice, 
he walks with the bread through...Read more of this...

March Evening

by Amy Lowell
 Blue through the window burns the twilight;
Heavy, through trees, blows the warm south wind.
Glistening, against the chill, gray sky light,
Wet, black branches are barred and entwined.
Sodden and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot
Dents into pools where a foot has been.
Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not
Of water, but steel, with its cold, hard sheen.
Faint fades the fire on...Read more of this...

Narcissus Photographer

by Erica Jong
 "...a frozen memory, like any photo,
where nothing is missing, not even,
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...Read more of this...

A Prodigal

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after...Read more of this...

The City Bushman

by Henry Lawson
 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade...Read more of this...

The Theory

by Russell Edson
 The big one went to sleep as to die and dreamed he
became a tiny one. So tiny as to have lost all substance. To have
become as theoretical as a point. 

 Then someone said, get up, big one, you're not doing
yourself any good. You puddle and stagnate in your weight.
Best to be up and toward. It irrigates you. 

...Read more of this...

Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

by Annie Dillard
 New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

Bridges leap over the train...Read more of this...

in search of milk and paradise

by Rg Gregory
 heeley (sheffield) autumn 1988

dodging the broken bottles
dog-**** the pavement spew
i wheel my young son matthew
through the heeley streets
shop to shop this early
morning (short of milk)
unsettled day - the sun
comes through the clouds in
ragged strips where windy
rain has had the night
to puff and piddle

puddles idle in
the dips of surfaces
neglected for decades

another place where caring's
lost a public vision
only detritus of hope
dares...Read more of this...

After Long Drought

by Mark Van Doren
 After long drought, commotion in the sky; 
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes, 
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums 
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry 
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh 
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums 
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums 
And asters when the summer thought...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 04: Illicit

by Conrad Aiken
 Of what she said to me that night—no matter.
The strange thing came next day.
My brain was full of music—something she played me—;
I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it
Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
Seeking for something, trying to tell me something,
Urging to restlessness: verging on grief.
I tried to play the tune, from memory,—
But memory failed: the chords and...Read more of this...

Wild Peaches

by Elinor Wylie
 1

When the world turns completely upside down 
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore 
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; 
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, 
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown 
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour. 
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, 
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter...Read more of this...

The Old Huntsman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed 
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece. 
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough 
It cost me, what with my daft management, 
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me, 
And backing losers; and the local bucks 
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...

Elegy On The Death Of A Young Man

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Mournful groans, as when a tempest lowers,
Echo from the dreary house of woe;
Death-notes rise from yonder minster's towers!
Bearing out a youth, they slowly go;
Yes! a youth--unripe yet for the bier,
Gathered in the spring-time of his days,
Thrilling yet with pulses strong and clear,
With the flame that in his bright eye plays--
Yes, a son--the idol of his mother,
(Oh, her mournful sigh...Read more of this...

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