Poems you love and want to share

Wilma - try PoemHunter on the net - or one of the many similar sites. You can dot around in it till you find the sort that appeals to you.

Elrel next time my GS is over, he might get your wonderful Ted Hughes poem instead of a bedtime story! What a gem!

Reading this thread has made me realise I do like poetry, I just didn't know it. Thanks to everyone for sharing and please keep them coming.

One poem that I like to read to myself on Christmas Eve is T.S. Elliott's "The Journey of the Magi". It's too long to quote here, but I would urge you to read it if you don't know it. I also like this one, by W.E Henley:

Madam Life's a piece in bloom".

Madam Life's a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She's the tenant in the room,
He's the ruffian on the stair.

You shall see her as a friend,
You shall bilk him once or twice;
But he'll trap you in the end,
And he'll stick you for her price.

With his kneebones in your chest,
And his knuckles in your throat,
You would reason - plead - protest!
Clutching at her petticoat;

But she's heard it all before,
Well she knows you've had your fun,
Gingerly she gains the door,
And your little job is done.

It makes me smile - I really don't think it should .

Elrel that is so beautiful!

Happy Calf by Ted Hughes

Mother is worried, her low, short moos
Question what is going on. But her calf
Is quite happy, resting on his elbows,
With his wrists folded under, and his precious hind legs
Brought up beside him, his little hooves
Of hardly-used yellow-soled black.
She looms up, to reassure him with heavy lickings.
He wishes she'd go away. He's meditating
Black as a mole and as velvety,
With a white face-mask, and a pink parting,
With black tear-patches, but long
Glamorous white eyelashes. A mild narrowing
Of his eyes, as he lies, testing each breath
For its peculiar flavour of being alive.
Such a pink muzzle, but a black dap
Where he just touched his mother's blackness
With a tentative sniff. He is all quiet
While his mother worries to and fro, grazes a little,
Then looks back, a shapely mass
Against the south sky and the low frieze of hills,
And moos questioning warning. He just stays,
Head slightly tilted, in the mild illness
Of being quite contented, and patient
With all the busyness inside him, the growing,
Getting under way. The wind from the north
Marching the high silvery floor of clouds
Trembles the grass-stalks near him. His head wobbles
Infinitesimally in the pulse of his life.
A buttercup leans on his velvet hip.
He folds his head back little by breathed little
Till it rests on his shoulder, his nose on his ankle,
And he sleeps. Only his ears stay awake.

Had to post this- Poems at Heathrow!
www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3498560/Heathrow-airport-play-poetry-passengers-Easter-weekend.html
And for today -Tony Harrison

Long Distance II
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

Loved reading all those poems. Some I knew, some I didn't. I just wonder if the poems you like reflect your personalities. If so there are some wonderful people on here.
My favourite is" The lake isle of Innisfree" I like a spot of solitude myself

I have always loved Robert Burns and this one, first read when I was a romantic girl has always stayed with me. I thought he wrote it when he was separated from Jean by her father, who didn't think Burns was good enough for her (she had 2 sets of twins by him before they were offiically married). In actual fact he wrote it after they were married and yes I know he had lots of other affairs and children born the wrong side of the blanket. Still this is so heartfelt!

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best:
There wild-woods grow, and rivers row,
And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There's not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.

This poem by Fleur Adcock seems to sum up the responsibilities and conundrums of being a parent. I do not normally like her poems - I think they are somewhat trite - but this one has something to say I think, although I think the "drowned your kittens" phrase is a step to far and detracts from what she is saying:

For a Five-Year-Old
by Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

Trisher - huge thanks for starting this thread, long may it run! A small independent cafe hosts several regular events including a fortnightly Creative Writing Lunch and a weekly hour when we read poems. It is very informal and different every time. Some established local poets come, along with anyone who enjoys poetry and would like to read or listen. We read a mixture of our own work and poems we enjoy, old or new. There is a monthly Spoken Word evening but I've yet to venture to one. These are very popular and numbers limited only by the size of the premises.

I'm so pleased you liked Irina's poem Elrel. I bought her book "No, I'm not afraid" many years ago. She was a human rights activist, and one of so many who suffered greatly under the old Soviet regime, imprisoned for 7 years in a labour camp for writing 'political' poetry.

Kreutzer!

Poetry Lunch? That sounds great how does it work?

At least three poems I hope to read at a tomorrow at Poetry for Lunch. Two Spring poems from Luckygirl and NotTooOld and Indinana's by Irina Ratushinskaya. Thank you!

The Bridgetower by Rita Dove

If was at the Beginning. If
he had been older, if he hadn't been
dark, brown eyes ablaze
in that remarkable face;
if he had not been so gifted, so young
a genius with no time to grow up;
if he hadn't grown up, undistinguished,
to an obscure old age.
If the piece had actually been,
as Kteutzer exclaimed, unplayable - even after
our man had played it, and for years
no one else was able to follow -
so that the composer's fury would have ranged
for naught, and wagging tongues
could keep alive the original dedication
from the title page he shredded.

Thank you so much for all your posts. When I feel really down and things seem terrible I can read these, feel a bit sad, then find a laugh and finish with something that lifts my spirit. Poems are so good for you. Seems appropriate today
Dylan Thomas -And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.

Dead man naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

Juliette - I love that Philip Larkin poem.

How about this bit of Sanskrit verse? I think it's lovely, very evocative. Reminds me of Goldie Hawn for some reason.

With tumbled hair of swarms of bees,
And flower-robes dancing in the breeze,
With sweet, unsteady lotus-glances,
Intoxicated, Spring advances.

It Ain't What You Do, It's What It Does To You

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I

skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone's inertia
spend itself against the water, then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light-aircraft
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the tightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

Simon Armitage

One of my favourites for this week.
The Donkey
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

I used the Philip Larkin one in a short anthology of poems I produced for an adult learning English course in Switzerland. It was met with shocked horror ?! .

I'd love to tell you the first poem I learned by heart when I was about 7. It's not great poetry but has a heartfelt message that has stayed with me all my life:

Snail on the wall
You look so very small
Mind you don't fall -
Bump! That's all.

Snail, if you fell
You'd crack your tiny shell
And then you'd YELL

"This be the verse"

They fuck you up your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats.
Who half the time were soppy stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin.

Not perhaps the greatest poetry in the world but something to ponder when your SO is being somewhat irritating. There is more to love than grand extravagant gestures. Although one would be nice now and again.

There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

U. A. Fanthorpe (1929 - 2009)

On the subject of spring:

I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here; -
The thrushes too -
Because it was these you so liked to hear -
I so liked you.

This year's a different thing, -
I'll not think of you.
But I'll like the Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.

Charlotte Mew

The Pot of Basil by Keats is well worth a look,
but so very long it's more like a book,

my second favorite is linked below,
but make a coffee before you go,

members of gransnet, allow me to share,
Miss Flora Mac Flimsy of Madison Square

www1.assumption.edu/WHW/workshop/NothingToWear.html

I wish there was a 'like' button here!