a selection of famous, modern poems

7/30/2019 a selection of famous, modern poems

1/21

Adams Curse By William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summers end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.I said, A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moments thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymenThe martyrs call the world.

And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

Theres many a one shall find out all heartacheOn finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, To be born woman is to knowAlthough they do not talk of it at school

That we must labour to be beautiful.

I said, Its certain there is no fine thing

Since Adams fall but needs much labouring.There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looksPrecedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shellWashed by times waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no ones but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;That it had all seemed happy, and yet wed grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

18791955
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2/21

The animals in that country By Margaret Atwood

In that country the animalshave the faces of people:

the ceremonialcats possessing the streets

the fox runpolitely to earth, the huntsmenstanding around him, fixedin their tapestry of manners

the bull, embroideredwith blood and givenan elegant death, trumpets, his namestamped on him, heraldic brandbecause

(when he rolled

on the sand, sword in his heart, the teethin his blue mouth were human)

he is really a man

even the wolves, holding resonantconversations in theirforests thickened with legend.

In this country the animalshave the faces ofanimals.

Their eyesflash once in car headlightsand are gone.

Their deaths are not elegant.

They have the faces ofno-one.

Margaret Atwood, The animals in that country from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright 1974, 1976 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rightsreserved.

Source: Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976)

Poet Bio
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3/21

Margaret Atwood

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"Each year I am stunned by the magic that can be created by one high school student alone on a stage,

embodying complete understanding of a poemmeaning, metaphor and meterand offering it to us, theaudience."

Mimi HermannNC POL Coordinator Read more Copyright 2011 Poetry Foundation andThe National Endowment for the Arts

The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

T. S. EliotSio credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo

Questa fiamma staria senza pi scosse.

Ma perciocch giammai di questo fondo

Non torn vivo alcun, si'odo il vero,

Senza tema dinfamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question

Oh, do not ask, What is it?

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
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4/21

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, Do I dare? and, Do I dare?

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair

(They will say: How his hair is growing thin!)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin

(They will say: But how his arms and legs are thin!)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep tired or it malingers,

Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in

upon a platter,

I am no prophetand heres no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.


5/21

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail

along the floor

And this, and so much more?

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:

That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Online text 1998-2012 Poetry X. All rights reserved.From Prufrock, and Other Observations | The Egoist, 1917


6/21

If

Rudyard KiplingIf you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, dont deal in lies,

Or being hated dont give way to hating,

And yet dont look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dreamand not make dreams your master;

If you can thinkand not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kingsnor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,

Andwhich is moreyoull be a Man, my son!

Online text 1998-2012 Poetry X. All rights reserved.

She Walks in Beauty

by Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and brightMeets in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellow'd to that tender lightWhich Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless graceWhich waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express
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7/21

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,A heart whose love is innocent.

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman (1819 1892)

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won;The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;Rise upfor you the flag is flungfor you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbond wreathsfor you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;It is some dream that on the deck,Youve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchord safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Epilogue By Robert Browning

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to whereby death, fools think, imprisonedLow he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,

Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
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8/21

What had I on earth to doWith the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel

Beingwho?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-timeGreet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,fight on, fare ever

There as here!"

Poet Bio

Robert Browning

18121889

Fern Hill By Dylan ThomasNow as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple townsAnd once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barleyDown the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barnsAbout the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calvesSang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowlyIn the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
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9/21

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was airAnd playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horsesFlashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer whiteWith the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.So it must have been after the birth of the simple lightIn the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stableOn to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,In the sun born over and over,I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hayAnd nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allowsIn all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and goldenFollow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take meUp to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleepI should hear him fly with the high fieldsAnd wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dyingThough I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright 1939, 1946 by NewDirections Publishing Corporation. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions PublishingCorporation.

Source: The Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1946)

Poet Bio
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poet/dylan-thomas


10/21

Dylan Thomas

19141953

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons

Shudders hell thro' all its regions.

A dog starv'd at his master's gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road

Calls to heaven for human blood.

Each outcry of the hunted hareA fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,

A cherubim does cease to sing.

The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight

Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl

Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,

Keeps the human soul from care.

The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,

And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve

Has left the brain that won't believe.

The owl that calls upon the night

Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren

Shall never be belov'd by men.

He who the ox to wrath has mov'd

Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly

Shall feel the spider's enmity.He who torments the chafer's sprite

Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf

Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.

Kill not the moth nor butterfly,

For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war

Shall never pass the polar bar.

The beggar's dog and widow's cat,

Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
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11/21

The gnat that sings his summer's song

Poison gets from slander's tongue.

The poison of the snake and newt

Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee

Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags

Are toadstools on the miser's bags.

A truth that's told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine.

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;

Every farmer understands.

Every tear from every eye

Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,

And return'd to its own delight.

The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,

Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath

Writes revenge in realms of death.

The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,

Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,

Palsied strikes the summer's sun.

The poor man's farthing is worth more

Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands

Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;

Or, if protected from on high,

Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith

Shall be mock'd in age and death.He who shall teach the child to doubt

The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith

Triumphs over hell and death.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons

Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,

Shall never know how to reply.

He who replies to words of doubt

Doth put the light of knowledge out.


12/21

The strongest poison ever known

Came from Caesar's laurel crown.

Nought can deform the human race

Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,

To peaceful arts shall envy bow.

A riddle, or the cricket's cry,

Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile

Make lame philosophy to smile.

He who doubts from what he sees

Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,

They'd immediately go out.

To be in a passion you good may do,

But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state

Licensed, build that nation's fate.

The harlot's cry from street to streetShall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,

Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see not thro' the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in night;

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

Living in Sin

She had thought the studio would keep itself;no dust upon the furniture of love.

Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,

the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat

stalking the picturesque amusing mouse

had risen at his urging.Not that at five each separate stair would writhe


13/21

under the milkman's tramp; that morning lightso coldly would delineate the scraps

of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;

that on the kitchen shelf among the saucersa pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own---

envoy from some village in the moldings . . .

Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,

declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;while she, jeered by the minor demons,

pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found

a towel to dust the table-top,

and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.By evening she was back in love again,

though not so wholly but throughout the night

she woke sometimes to feel the daylight cominglike a relentless milkman up the stairs.

Adrienne Rich

What Kind of Times Are TheseBy Adrienne RichThere's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphilland the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadowsnear a meeting-house abandoned by the persecutedwho disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooledthis isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woodsmeeting the unmarked strip of lightghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell youanything? Because you still listen, because in times like theseto have you listen at all, it's necessaryto talk about trees.

Diving Into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
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14/21

I put onthe body-armor of black rubber

the absurd flippers

the grave and awkward mask.

I am having to do this

not like Cousteau with hisassiduous team

abroad the sun-flooded schoonerbut here alone.There is a ladder

The ladder is always there

hanging innocently

close to the side of the schooner.We know what it is for,

we who have used it.

Otherwiseit's a piece of maritime floss

some sundry equipment.

I go down.

Rung after rung and still

the oxygen immerses me

the blue lightthe clear atoms

of our human air.

I go down.My flippers cripple me,

I crawl like an insect down the ladder

and there is no one

to tell me when the oceanwill begin.

First the air is blue and then

it is bluer and then green and then

black I am blacking out and yet

my mask is powerfulit pumps my blood with power

the sea is another story

the sea is not a question of powerI have to learn alone

to turn my body without forcein the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget

what I came for

among so many who have alwayslived here

swaying their crenellated fans

between the reefsand besides

you breathe differently down here.


15/21

I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

I stroke the beam of my lampslowly along the flank

of something more permanentthan fish or week

the thing I came for:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck

the thing itself and not the myththe drowned face always staring

toward the sun

the evidence of damageworn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty

the ribs of the disaster

curving their assertionamong the tentative haunters.

This is the place.

and I am here, the mermaid whose dark hairstreams black, the merman in his armored body

We circle silently

about the wreckwe dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose breasts still bear the stresswhose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

Obscurely inside barrelshalf-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten logthe fouled compass

We are, I am, you areby cowardice or courage

the one who find our wayback to the scenecarrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

Adrienne Rich


16/21

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,


Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,


And you, my father, there on that sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William BlakeTyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?


17/21

What the anvil? what dread graspDare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story - GwendolynBrooks

WHEN YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN SUNDAY: THE LOVE STORY

And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,And most especially when you have forgotten SundayWhen you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoonLooking off down the long streetTo nowhere,Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectationAnd nothing-I-have-to-do and Im-happy-why?And if-Monday-never-had-to-comeWhen you have forgotten that, I say,And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwestcornerTo Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodlesOr chicken and riceAnd salad and rye bread and teaAnd chocolate chip cookiesI say, when you have forgotten that,When you have forgotten my little presentimentThat the war would be over before they got to you;And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-endBright bedclothes,Then gently folded into each otherWhen you have, I say, forgotten all that,Then you may tell,Then I may believeYou have forgotten me well.

Gwendolyn BrooksSekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of War by Margaret Atwood


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He was the sort of manwho wouldn't hurt a fly.Many flies are now alivewhile he is not.He was not my patron.He preferred full granaries, I battle.My roar meant slaughter.Yet here we are togetherin the same museum.That's not what I see, though, the fitfulcrowds of staring childrenlearning the lesson of multi-cultural obliteration, sic transitand so on.

I see the temple where I was bornor built, where I held power.I see the desert beyond,where the hot conical tombs, that lookfrom a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,hide my jokes: the dried-out fleshand bones, the wooden boatsin which the dead sail endlesslyin no direction.

What did you expect from godswith animal heads?Though come to think of itthe ones made later, who were fully humanwere not such good news either.Favour me and give me riches,destroy my enemies.That seems to be the gist.Oh yes: And save me from death.In return we're given bloodand bread, flowers and prayer,and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of thisI missed. But if it's selfless

love you're looking for,you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her mouthand the soft body of a woman,and lick you clean of fever,and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckand caress you into darkness and paradise.

The Moment by Margaret AtwoodThe moment when, after many yearsof hard work and a long voyageyou stand in the centre of your room,house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,knowing at last how you got there,and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloosetheir soft arms from around you,the birds take back their language,the cliffs fissure and collapse,the air moves back from you like a wave


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and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.You were a visitor, time after timeclimbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.We never belonged to you.You never found us.It was always the other way round.

Siren Song by Margaret AtwoodThis is the one song everyonewould like to learn: the songthat is irresistible:

the song that forces mento leap overboard in squadronseven though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knowsbecause anyone who has heard itis dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secretand if I do, will you get meout of this bird suit?

I don'y enjoy it heresquatting on this islandlooking picturesque and mythical

with these two faethery maniacs,I don't enjoy singingthis trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,to you, only to you.Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alasit is a boring songbut it works every time.

IF.....

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;


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If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

LEONARD COHEN

"Dance Me To The End Of Love"

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward doveDance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are goneLet me feel you moving like they do in Babylon

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of loveDance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on

Dance me very tenderly and dance me very longWe're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above



Dance me to the children who are asking to be born

Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn


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a selection of famous, modern poems

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