The timeless, touchless song of you
this melody and flowing that you are
comes everytime I reach to catch
the strains of love, and see you opening up
blossomsweet
flowerbright
lilypure
in the light and release you find
as slowly you yield yourself
completely to the love and freedom waiting
in the heart of God for you
and in your own precious self;
and here's the reward that's given to me:
like Auden in his journey toward Atlantis,
to be grateful even to glimpse you in a poetic vision
because you, darling soul, are the gift
waiting to be opened by the fingers
of quickening time, only to reveal the beauty you've always promised
in smiles and sighs and virgin hope, and every way you touch the heart.
No wonder the morning and all of us so completely, deeply, and happily love you.
Christopher M. Swan 2011
i took them in
amongst a pile of other glittering monstrosities
the low-pitched liquid consonants
behind the counter thanked me
and i ran for the doors
really went for it
a year went by and they were there
next to Auden and Pam Ayres
Berryman & Betjeman just down the road
what madness i thought on the way home
and two months later i was in bed, in the dark
listening to the large repertory of Carmen
its immortality is assured by the deft harmonies
and perfectly judged orchestration
like my collections in the charity shop
covered in dust
and high levels of vehicular dredge microwaves
waiting for the apocalypse
“We are all here on Earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.” - W. H. Auden
Everyone wants to be a comedian,
some are better at it than others.
The many types of humour range
from dark & bitter to kind & thought-provoking.
Sometimes there's room for interpretation
where depth of meaning can be found.
Society being an endless source of inspiration,
we won't run out of material any time soon.
Try to find it in your heart to somehow leave your mark
and contribute in positive ways to this world
that is not as tough as it appears to be ~
below the surface it hurts and in much need of healing.
AP: 3rd place 2025
You should check some Brussels, its really a treat
To stroll on, protected by troopers
Fast people in Brussels their cigarettes lit
With ignition key of old Coopers
They serve freshest mussles in Brussels, you must
Leave on a table some fee
And worshiped by Auden Beaux Arts you can pass
If your bag hangs down to the knee
There is no menace in the Grand Market place
NATO patrols are boys the most thin
Their fingers on triggers, would you be amazed
In Brussles its just a routine
Attend darkened bars by the harbour, proceed
A midnight with Chinese lanterns
You’ve come for experience, gone with the weed
That's Brussels, in cheerful abundance.
As we to enter into any relationship
I wonder how beautiful our world would be
If everyone entered echoing the words of W. H Auden:
‘Let the most loving one…be me’
W H Auden 'CHRISTMAS ORATORIO'
{((({}(((}
{(([(•)(•} ]{)))
{)}[ || ] {(((
{)}\(==) /{))))}
{))}\_ _/ })))}
J S Bach
This poem is based upon 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' by Pieter Bruegel
Also inspired by Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden~
No farmer or merchant felt the sound
That Icarus made when he had drowned
Icarus splashed and kicked and flailed!
Dying, crying to those who sailed
“Help me, help me! Direct your course!”
But those merchants felt no remorse
Icarus gave a final wish
To a man attempting to bait fish
Dozy, the fisher went to sleep
Then Icarus died, and no one weeped
And a farmer who had heard his needs
Felt far too busy planting seeds
Since that painting it’s been years long
Yet I find Bruegel was never wrong
No one ever feels the pain
Another Icarus has attained
So where is Icarus now?
We are an Icarus when out with blues
We read of Icarus in sickening news
We see an Icarus in city streets
Begging, craving for food to eat
And though we all are sick of this,
The world won’t stop for Icarus
WH AUDEN night mail
____________
| == |
| == |
| mr auden |
| London |
| EC1 |
|____________|
English playright W H Auden
also poetized with his pen
Famed for his 'Stop the clock'
his.Funeral blues gave many a shock
I was wondering how many renowned gay poets I know—
Like Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and Arthur Rimbaud?
Edna St. Vincent Millay and Alice Walker, I am told,
Both Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein were rather bold.
The “Beat Generation’s” W. H. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot were not free from attack.
Then, there was Paul Verlaine, an exceptional find,
While W. H. Auden and Langston Hughes come to mind.
I wonder what inner conflicts they must have endured
Living in a puritanical society, their sexuality inured.
In compelling verse, they revealed parts of themselves
Some readers carefully hiding their works on the shelves.
Had these marvelous poets not been born out of time
Colorful lives might not have overwhelmed their rhyme.
It is fitting we acknowledge their outstanding contributions
Without undue reference to their personal attributions.
Written March 21, 2021
I the lonely poet whose words
spill out onto the page
like blood spatter at a crime scene
will knock at your door
books in my eyes hoping
you'll want to critique them
while others partake of tradition
I will bring cheese
summer sausage, and wine
quote Auden, Ginsberg, and Dove
'til the aurora strums the horizon
this rhythm inspires the wren
that melody signaling the dawn
US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch
"Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful." - W. H. Auden
Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)
Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times
The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden's love poem "Lullaby." Keywords/Tags: Auden, unisphere, universe, together, lullaby, voice, verse, value, revelation, cryptic, legislate, enumerator, sin, sins, dreams, love, sing, sings, singing, quaint, quaintly, lesser, greater, mortality, beautiful, writing
LIFT ME HIGHER
Please don't allow me in dirges to wallow!
Stay with me, with some French coffee or tea.
To some of e.e.cummings to read,
Or WH. Auden, I plead!
I can only some of my neophyte poetry withstand.
Hardly poetry I would call, over the moon.
Writing by my freshman, pedestrian hand,
I want to erase, as if were all is sand!
Bring on Pablo Neruda, William Shakespeare, men of
depth!
In their words to swim and verily to swoon.
Here, on your lap, swaying, beneath a smiling moon.
Octber 28, 2019
"Let your last thinks be thanks"
W.H. Auden famously wrote
Making Wystan Hugh
My favorite male poet
Note: I have excluded all
of my favorite male
poets on Poetry Soup,
of course! :-)
Do not say you are imperfect or untrue
there is nothing that presides your virtue
despite what age defects and wrinkles
you are a royal vessel loaded with crystals
Once Auden said in glorification of Yeats
he survived every calamity that hard beats
by his talent of poetry that brought him every rarity
healing herb, perfume, Arabian pearls of unique variety.
Grey hairs in your pockets are just a token
For those who were and are by life broken
Maturity and brilliance are great true evidence
Why sorrows and wrinkles have decorated your skin.
Your aches and pains are by your words healed
And also those of who suffer in their lives and dread
Like thin rains, they drizzle hearts so frustrated
And wake the roots of virgin jasmine and pretty marigold
you are not an estate or property of your own
You are a flowing oasis of verse for everyone
a unique sun that lights, fascinates and warms
hearts that are for love so aspiring and greatly athirst..
A Poem by Lateef Shareef Dhmayd. Iraq.
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