Famous Short Birthday Poems

Famous Short Birthday Poems. Short Birthday Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Birthday short poems

Birthday of but a single pang  

 Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come --
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom --

A Birthday Poem  

 Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

A Birthday Candle  

 Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish

Poem For My 43rd Birthday  

 To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room. 
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers... 
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes. 
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985

For K.R. on her Sixtieth Birthday  

 Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.

You who have sounded William Blake,
And the still pool, to Plato's mark,
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark.

Yet, for your friends' benighted sake,
Detain your upward-flying spark;
Get us that wish, though like the lark
You whet your wings till dawn shall break:
Blow out the candles of your cake.

On His Seventy-fifth Birthday  

 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Happy Thirtieth Birthday Carcanet Books  

 Sorry, I almost forgot, but I don't think

Its worth the effort to become a Carcanet poet

With my mug-shot on art gloss paper

In your catalogue as big as Mont Blanc

Easier to imagine, as Benjamin Peret did,

A wind that would unscrew the mountain

Or stars like apricot tarts strolling

Aimlessly along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

On His Eightieth Birthday  

 To my ninth decade I have tottered on, 
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; 
She, who once led me where she would, is gone, 
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

In the Time of Tyrants  

All that the hand may touch;
All that the hand may own;
Crumbles beyond time’s clutch
Down to oblivion.

Fear not the boasts which wound:
Fear not the threats which bind:
Always on broken ground
The seeds fall from the mind.

Always in darkest loam
A birthday is begun;
And from its catacomb
A candle lights the sun.