Rabindranath Tagore (May 07, 1861 – August 07, 1941) Mother, the folk who live up in the clouds call out to me- "We play from the time we wake till the day ends. We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon." I ask, "But how am I to get up to …
Nikki Giovanni – Love
Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 -) The night loves the stars as they play about the darkness … the day loves the light caressing the sun … We love … those who do … because we live in a world requiring light and darkness … partnership and solitude … sameness and difference … the familiar …
Billy Collins – Aimless Love
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in …
Derek Walcott – Love After Love
Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 - March 17, 2017) The time will come when with elation, You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, Sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your Self. Give wine. Give …
Henri Cole – Sphere
Henri Cole (May 09, 1956 -) Sir, I don’t have no black tea, the waitress replied, so I ordered Black Label instead. It was summer and the fragrant white flowers of the black locusts had awakened, like faeries or obscure matter. A black bear clothed in thorns made a mess of the bird feeder where …
Fleur Adcock – Weathering
Fleur Adcock (February 10, 1934 -) Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young for ever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy …
Louise Gluck – Walking At Night
Louise Gluck (April 22, 1943 -) Now that she is old, the young men don’t approach her so the nights are free, the streets at dusk that were so dangerous have become as safe as the meadow. By midnight, the town’s quiet. Moonlight reflects off the stone walls; on the pavement, you can hear the …
Barbara Ras – Washing The Elephant
Barbara Ras (1949 -) This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction— And still the sun shines, the sparrows come Each morning to the bakery for crumbs. Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter. Its owner is making …
Richard Blanco – My Father In English
Richard Blanco (February 15, 1968 -) First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax of *las montañas* that lined his village, the rhyme of *sol* with his soul—a Cuban *alma*—that swayed with *las palmas*, the sharp rhythm of his *machete* cutting through *caña*, the syllables of his *canarios* that sung into *la …
Tao Writer – The Crushing Weight Of GoodBye
She told him what had kept her away was Death. But he rejected that excuse—for Death, he said, can never come between lovers. Naguib Mahdouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) I never thought the last time we said, “Good bye,” would be the last time. If I …
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Tracy K Smith – The Man Who Owned Me
Tracy K Smith (April 16, 1972 -) It was a man I’m sure of it. Though I never saw him I felt him rise, climbing up Through me until I bent To a devotion not my own. I felt him in my belly, low In my hips. I carried him Like I carried my own …
Barbara Crooker – Tomorrow
Barbara Crooker there will be sun, scalloped by clouds, ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong. It will be a temperate seventy-five, low humidity. For twenty-four hours, all politicians will be silent. Reality programs will vanish from TV, replaced by the “snow” that used to decorate our screens when reception wasn’t working. Soldiers will toss …
Mary Jo Salter – Complaint For Absolute Divorce
Mary Jo Salter August 15, 1954 -) A little something to endorse: Download attachment, print and sign Complaint for Absolute Divorce, the lawyer wrote with casual force. Yet why complain? The suit was mine. A little something to endorse “Complaint”: sheer poetry, of course, more lofty than Lament or Whine. Complaint for Absolute Divorce: so …
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Nikki Giovanni – Beautiful Black Men
Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 -) (With compliments and apologies to all not mentioned by name) i wanta say just gotta say something bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight black men with they afros walking down the street is the same ol danger but a brand new pleasure sitting on stoops, in bars, going to …
CK Williams – Exhaust
Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams (November 4, 1936 – September 20, 2015) My grandson wants a Ferrari. I buy one for him. Why not? The second a Mercedes. The third a Porsche. Why not? How things change—my grandfather wanted only the pickup one icy Rochester night the year before I was born he skidded through …
Rod McKuen – Absolutes
Rod McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) How true is truth how absolute? If I say love do I mean loving you to the intrusion of all else and of all others? And do I know if I mean that? There are wild roses that have bloomed far into December, seemingly without a …
Toi Derricotte – I Give In To An Old Desire
Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) I lost so much of the world’s beauty, as if I were watching every shining gift on its branch with one eye. Because I was hungry. Because I was waiting to eat, a self crawling about the world in search of small things. I remember a small thing, my …
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WS Merwin – The Solstice
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) They say the sun will come back at midnight after all my one love but we know how the minutes fly out into the dark trees and vanish like the great ‘ohias and the honey creepers and we know how the weeks walk into the shadows …
Twyla Hansen – Trying To Pray
Twyla Hansen (1949 -) With my arms raised in a vee, I gather the heavens and bring my hands down slow together, press palms and bow my head. I try to forget the suffering, the wars, the ravage of land that threatens songbirds, butterflies, and pollinators. The ghosts of their wings flutter past my closed …
Derek Walcott – Bleecker Street, Summer
Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017) Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor, for the eternal idleness of the imagined return, for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin! When I press summer dusks together, it is a month …
Sharon Olds – I Cannot Say I Did Not
Sharon Olds (November 19, 1942 -) I cannot say I did not ask to be born. I asked with my mother’s beauty, and her money. I asked with my father’s desire for his orgasms and for my mother’s money. I asked with the cradle my sister had grown out of. I asked with my mother’s …
Ross Gay – A Small Needful Fact
Ross Gay Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such …
Leonard Cohen – Going Home
Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016) I love to speak with Leonard He’s a sportsman and a shepherd He’s a lazy bastard Living in a suit But he does say what I tell him Even though it isn’t welcome He will never have the freedom To refuse He will speak these …
Anne Sexton – The Sun
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) I have heard of fish coming up for the sun, who stayed forever shoulder to shoulder— avenues of fish that never got back, all their proud spots and solitudes sucked out of them. I think of flies who come from their foul caves out into the …
Frank Ormsby – The Butterfly House
Frank Ormsby One more butterfly in the butterfly house will count as overcrowding. Sun all morning and the heaviness of piped heat draws hundreds to the surface. They spend their days being exquisite in a history without wars. We are able, briefly, to forget the scaly intent, the cold-skinned slither a hundred yards away in …
Robert Bly – Listening to the Koln Concert
After we had loved each other intently, we heard notes tumble together, in late winter, and we heard ice falling from the ends of twigs. The notes abandon so much as they move. They are the food not eaten, the comfort not taken, the lies not spoken. The music is my attention to you. And …
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Marge Piercy – The End Of Days
Almost always with cats, the end comes creeping over the two of you— she stops eating, his back legs no longer support him, she leans to your hand and purrs but cannot rise—sometimes a whimper of pain although they are stoic. They see death clearly though hooded eyes. Then there is the long weepy trip …
Mary Oliver – Needing A Prod: The Fourth Sign Of The Zodiac
I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the …
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Richard Wilbur – Ecclesiastes 11:1
This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction— And still the sun shines, the sparrows come Each morning to the bakery for crumbs. Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter. Its owner is making lunch for his ailing …
Notozake Shange – My Father Is A Retired Magician
my father is a retired magician which accounts for my irregular behavior everythin comes outta magic hats or bottles wit no bottoms & parakeets are as easy to get as a couple a rabbits or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958 my daddy retired from magic & took up another trade cuz this friend of mine …
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Donald Hall – The Things
When I walk in my house I see pictures, bought long ago, framed and hanging —de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore— that I’ve cherished and stared at for years, yet my eyes keep returning to the masters of the trivial: a white stone perfectly round, tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell, a broken …
Jane Kenyon – Having It Out With Melancholy
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) 1 From The Nursery When I was born, you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery, and when we were alone, you lay down on top of me, pressing the bile of desolation into every pore. And from that day on everything …
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Gillian Wegener – Letter to My Husband Far Away
Gillian Wegener The house is not empty without you. It thrums and bumps, the walls relax and sigh. The water heater dutifully comes on, rumbles with heat, waiting for your shower to start. How many times today have I heard your truck in the driveway, the floor creak with your step, felt your breath against …
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