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Best Poems Written by Jan Thie

Below are the all-time best Jan Thie poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Jan Thie Poem

The Servant

From the servant on the mountain
came the song.
The clouds still leaking colours
and the tall grass,
dressed in yellow plumes;
the birds a burst of laughter in between.

This is the glory,
the land;
the rivers that run it,
the trees that forgive it,
the rain and the wind
its applause.

This from the servant,
the master
and heir to the land:
I shall stand here and learn
how to trust and obey.
I will stand here and love you forever.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

Every Time We Say Goodbye

Her hand in my hair and
our bodies now
slowly drifting apart,
while Chet Baker plays,

she says:

We love like the dust
and the hairline
cracks
in old mirrors.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

You Must Remember This

Tonight I’ll disconnect the phone
and lock all doors
and close the curtains.

It will be me and my TV,
some sushi maybe
and some wine.

The couch and comfy cushions
now a small tropical island
in a sea of quiet bliss.

I’ll start with something light
and frothy - something
that will make me smile:

‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ or
‘Beauty and the Beast‘,
‘Great Expectations’ maybe,

before it’s time to brace myself,
to go all-out for perfect bliss -
a box of hankies at the ready.

Yes, for here we are again:
in Paris and in black & white -
and yes of course: it’s raining.

Two people meet and fall in love
while Europe’s burning
and the armies march.

Then, of course, their time runs out
and they must part and say goodbye
amidst the smoke of waiting trains.

(A station is the best farewell:
its sounds and smells so redolent
of love and desolation.)

The camera now shuts its eyes
and when it dares to look again
it is upon a different scene -

another place, another time,
of deserts and of nightclubs,
of Nazi boots and gambling debts:

a place without much hope,
but that for some has now become
their lonely bit of exile.

So, enter Rick into his bar,
a cigarette between his lips,
a hat that’s almost jaunty.

Ah well, you know the story, don’t you? 
Everybody surely knows this movie: 
Casablanca.

Those images of hope and loss,
of grief and laughter - all those
long goodbyes and then those songs:

“You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply as time goes by.”

A perfect movie and a perfect ending.
Sad, of course, for yes,
it’s yet another parting…

But what a world to visit once again,
where everything must always be about
these old, familiar enchantments.

Love and loss – and duty, honour
and the faith that all of this will conquer evil
conquer shadows, conquer time.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

What Lingers

I’d like to be what lingers
while you sleep:
the smell of jasmine

and the drops of rain
that cling
to trembling leaves.

I’d like to stay with you,
when you are far away
on private journeys.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

No Words

“God, or someone, had parted the sea, and who were we
to say we weren't going to walk through it?”
                                                                (Moniza Alvi)



I have no words for this:

The way we climbed this stack of stone -
how sun and shadow chased each other
and the old tar road that had carried us
from the city to your cottage and now here
lay far below us: Black and sluggish,
like the carelessly abandoned skin
of a long dead snake.

I have no words for this:

How silent it was – how sharply
we could see the few surrounding villages,
the meadows and the woods,
the soft and subtle rise and fall
of all the hills around us: And
how unimportant everything
beyond the distance of your touch.

I have no words for this, my love.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

Not Afraid

“Summer broke and drained. Now we are safe.
The days lose confidence, and can be faced
Indoors.”
             (Philip Larkin)


She watches how a single shard of light
passes through the gap between
her grandmother’s old curtains,
touching all it passes, till it finds
the mantelpiece and the hairline cracks
in the Chinese vase she broke,

when she was five years’ old
and not afraid of movement,
not afraid of touching colours,
dancing like the dust – delighted to be
caught by any searching tendril
of the sun’s bright web.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

For That Sharp Pain

“Great stillness reigned in the forest,
and I heard the green leaves dream,
I heard the dream of the bark from which
boats, ships, and sails will arise.”
                                                   (Adam Zagajewski)



There are half-finished statues out in the yard
and almost bald patches of yellow white grass,
where the stone that blossomed stood before
the newly finished work was lifted
by the old gardener and his two sons,
wrapped in blankets, placed, like fragile eggs, in straw
on the back of your old truck -

and you, delivered from obsession,
lover, mother, midwife to whatever
lies awake and waiting, locked inside
the dreaming clay or stone; you, your hair
still wet with sweat and crowned with
tiny shards of dead skin stone; you,
your fingers now slowly unclenching: Letting go.

How I love you in these moments,
when the old truck roars and the forest
holds its breath; when you forsake, for now,
the stone and clay, the chisel of Creation;
when you walk, unburdened, past me, back inside:
You set me free, abandoned me, so long ago,
I have become invisible to you -

but I still love and crave for breath on stone,
for that sharp pain of being born.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

A Fearsome Light

Where the nail meets the wrist
and the tree tops explode
in a firework of birds,
going off in a wild change of heart

and a murmur of clouds
now gets caught in the light
of the razor-sharp wings
of angels, restored to the sky,

there I stand and I sing,
from the rooftops of hurt
and the ashes of dreams
and the emblems of hope:

in this place of truth,
in this fearsome light,
I must turn to you,
till the end of love and time.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

That Night Will Embrace Us

The grain of the wood,
fastened and softened
by time and breath;

these pebbles so smooth,
coated and left with
the silk of dead waves -

and you, all of you, your flesh
so awake to my longing, my touch,
are more beautiful yet

than all these reminders
that night will embrace us
and change us in time.

Details | Jan Thie Poem

Silent and Starving (A Tribute To Neruda)

Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,

Flocks of birds drop from the sky.
They cling to the branches of trees,
replacing fallen leaves with song,
before resuming their long journeys.
(I am tree)

no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia,
busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.

Stars move down the slope of night,
like footprints in the snow, left by children
who were skating on a lake,
before their parents called them home.
(I am lake)

Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero