Poems for Analysis – Honours 9 ‘Mother to Son’ By Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

‘Fire and Ice’ By Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

‘The Bird’ By Patrick Lane

The bird you captured is dead. I told you it would die

but you would not learn from my telling. You wanted to cage a bird in yours hands and learn to fly.

Listen again. You must not handle birds. They cannot fly through your fingers. You are not a nest and a feather is not made of blood and bone.

Only words can fly for you like birds on the wall of the sun. A bird is a poem that talks about the end of cages.

‘Ghost of a Chance’

by Adrienne Rich

You see a man

trying to think.

You want to say

to everything:

Keep off! Give him room!

But you only watch,

terrified

the old consolations

will get him at last

like a fish

half-dead from flopping

and almost crawling

across the shingle

almost breathing

the raw, agonizing

air

till a wave

pulls it back blind into the triumphant

sea.

‘Praxis’

by Sharon Thesen

Unable to imagine a future,

imagine a future better

than now, us creatures weeping in the abattoir

only make noise & do

not transform a single fact.

So stop crying. Get up. Go out. Leap

the mossy garden wall

the steel fence or whatever

the case may be & crash

through painted arcadias,

fragments of bliss & roses

decorating your fists.

‘Sonnet XVIII’

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

From ‘The Prophet’

by Kahlil Gibran

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the

shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one

cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not

from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but

let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone

though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's

keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your

hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near

together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not

in each other's shadow.

‘Famous and Infamous Footprints’

by Martin Kiszko

First creature to crept to land from the brine

Dinosaur ones in the fossils of time.

First baby kick on the wall of the womb.

First human stride in the lava or stone.

The claim of new land by an intrepid sole.

The snowshoe track that reached the Pole.

Hillary’s heel on Everest’s peak.

Hollywood stars foot-printing concrete.

First foot to float in the frontier of space.

The gold-medal-toe in a world record race.

The diver who first walked the bed of an ocean.

Neil Armstrong’s boot setting moon dust in

motion.

If Adam walked Eden, his foot in the garden.

Humankind’s clodhopping footprint of carbon.