Famous Short Desert Poems
Famous Short Desert Poems. Short Desert Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Desert short poems
by
Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
by
Yehuda Amichai
Once a great love cut my life in two.
The first part goes on twisting
at some other place like a snake cut in two.
The passing years have calmed me
and brought healing to my heart and rest to my eyes.
And I'm like someone standing in the Judean desert, looking at a sign:
"Sea Level"
He cannot see the sea, but he knows.
Thus I remember your face everywhere
at your "face Level."
by
Emily Dickinson
Put up my lute!
What of -- my Music!
Since the sole ear I cared to charm --
Passive -- as Granite -- laps My Music --
Sobbing -- will suit -- as well as psalm!
Would but the "Memnon" of the Desert --
Teach me the strain
That vanquished Him --
When He -- surrendered to the Sunrise --
Maybe -- that -- would awaken -- them!
by
Emily Dickinson
For this -- accepted Breath --
Through it -- compete with Death --
The fellow cannot touch this Crown --
By it -- my title take --
Ah, what a royal sake
To my necessity -- stooped down!
No Wilderness -- can be
Where this attendeth me --
No Desert Noon --
No fear of frost to come
Haunt the perennial bloom --
But Certain June!
Get Gabriel -- to tell -- the royal syllable --
Get Saints -- with new -- unsteady tongue --
To say what trance below
Most like their glory show --
Fittest the Crown!
by
Yehuda Amichai
A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert,
a drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain.
There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.
And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field.
by
Stephen Crane
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
by
Peter Huchel
Between two nights
the brief day.
The farm is there.
And in the thicket, a snare
the hunter set for us.
Noon’s desert.
It still warms the stone.
Chirping in the wind,
buzz of a guitar
down the hillside.
The slow match
of withered foliage
glows against the wall.
Salt-white air.
Fall’s arrowheads,
the crane’s migration.
In bright tree limbs
the tolling hour has faded.
Upon their clockwork
spiders lay
the veils of dead brides.
by
Stanley Kunitz
My name is Solomon Levi,
the desert is my home,
my mother's breast was thorny,
and father I had none.
The sands whispered, Be separate,
the stones taught me, Be hard.
I dance, for the joy of surviving,
on the edge of the road.
by
Stephen Crane
I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, But --
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."
by
John Matthew
When she smiles she sends happiness
A million pleasant thrills of the heart
To parched souls thirsting for love
In the vast desert of human affairs.
Oh, is there in this world such a heart?
So pure in its expression of joy, smiles
I know not how to thank you dear God
For this wonderful creation of yours.
What makes Muskan’s smile so beautiful?
Is it the deep pain and hurt she is hiding?
Wringing the joys from the sadness of life
Throwing away the bland fiber and rinds.
by
Emily Dickinson
Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds
To drink -- enables Mine
Through Desert or the Wilderness
As bore it Sealed Wine --
To go elastic -- Or as One
The Camel's trait -- attained --
How powerful the Stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind --
by
The Bible
Do not earnestly remember
The former things of the past,
Neither consider the things of old,
Following the same old paths
Behold, I am doing a new thing,
Do you not see it, nor understand?
It springs forth as rivers flowing
Through a desert and barren land
It makes a way in the wilderness
Refreshing those that honour me,
So do not be looking back on the past,
But look forward to what can be.Scripture Poem © Copyright Of M.S.Lowndes
by
Richard Jones
When the writing is going well,
I am a prince in a desert palace,
fountains flowing in the garden.
I lean an elbow on a velvet pillow
and drink from a silver goblet,
poems like a banquet
spread before me on rugs
with rosettes the damask of blood.
But exiled
from the palace, I wander --
crawling on burning sand,
thirsting on barren dunes,
believing a heartless mirage no less true
than palms and pools of the cool oasis.
by
Omar Khayyam
On earth's green carpet many sleepers lie,
And hid beneath it others I descry,
And others, not yet come, or passed away,
People the desert of Nonentity!
by
William Butler Yeats
We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen waked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Give me your self one hour; I do not crave
For any love, or even thought, of me.
Come, as a Sultan may caress a slave
And then forget for ever, utterly.
Come! as west winds, that passing, cool and wet,
O'er desert places, leave them fields in flower
And all my life, for I shall not forget,
Will keep the fragrance of that perfect hour!
by
Emily Dickinson
Until the Desert knows
That Water grows
His Sands suffice
But let him once suspect
That Caspian Fact
Sahara dies
Utmost is relative --
Have not or Have
Adjacent sums
Enough -- the first Abode
On the familiar Road
Galloped in Dreams --
by
Vachel Lindsay
The moon's a brass-hooped water-keg,
A wondrous water-feast.
If I could climb the ridge and drink
And give drink to my beast;
If I could drain that keg, the flies
Would not be biting so,
My burning feet be spry again,
My mule no longer slow.
And I could rise and dig for ore,
And reach my fatherland,
And not be food for ants and hawks
And perish in the sand.
by
Emily Dickinson
I think the Hemlock likes to stand
Upon a Marge of Snow --
It suits his own Austerity --
And satisfies an awe
That men, must slake in Wilderness --
And in the Desert -- cloy --
An instinct for the Hoar, the Bald --
Lapland's -- necessity --
The Hemlock's nature thrives -- on cold --
The Gnash of Northern winds
Is sweetest nutriment -- to him --
His best Norwegian Wines --
To satin Races -- he is nought --
But Children on the Don,
Beneath his Tabernacles, play,
And Dnieper Wrestlers, run.
by
Emily Dickinson
With thee, in the Desert --
With thee in the thirst --
With thee in the Tamarind wood --
Leopard breathes -- at last!
by
Omar Khayyam
Better to make one soul rejoice with glee,
Than plant a desert with a colony;
Rather one freeman bind with chains of love,
Than set a thousand prisoned captives free!
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I HAD a fellow as my guest,
Not knowing he was such a pest,
And gave him just my usual fare;
He ate his fill of what was there,
And for desert my best things swallow'd,
Soon as his meal was o'er, what follow'd?
Led by the Deuce, to a neighbour he went,
And talk'd of my food to his heart's content:
"The soup might surely have had more spice,
The meat was ill-brown'd, and the wine wasn't nice."
A thousand curses alight on his head!
'Tis a critic, I vow! Let the dog be struck dead!
1776.*
by
Omar Khayyam
With a loaf of wheaten bread, two mens of wine and
meat in plenty, and seated in some desert spot with
some young beauty decked with cheeks tinted with the
tulip's blush, man hath a joy not given to any Sultan to
procure.
391
by
Omar Khayyam
How many people that I see upon the surface of the
earth are plunged in sleep [superstition]! How many I
perceive that are already buried in its depths! When I
throw my eyes over this desert of Not-being, how many
people I see who have not yet come—how many who
have already departed!
by
Omar Khayyam
My life lasts but a day or two, and fast
Sweeps by, like torrent stream or desert blast,
Howbeit, of two days I take no heed,—
The day to come, and that already past.