Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER12> Neruda is my favourite.

        I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees.

Here's another one

        Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
        I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

How he is able construct such powerful verse out of simple words and concepts always blows me away. Though it looks easy I've never seen a good imitation of his style.

Then there's this poem by Phillip Larkin that I like.

        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.

Shakespeare's sonnets are good.

        Let me not to the marriage of true minds
        Admit impediments. Love is not love
        Which alters when it alteration finds,
        Or bends with the remover to remove:
        O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
        That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
        It is the star to every wandering bark,
        Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
        Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
        Within his bending sickle's compass come;
        Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
        But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
        If this be error and upon me proved,
        I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Classical poetry is just really hardcore when you consider how hard it is to write within the constraints of rhyme , meter and the chosen form. It's definitely in the hacker spirit of doing things like the JS1K contest , or maybe crazy assembly optimised demos.

Also checkout Charles Bukowski and Coleridge.

Genius.com is a wonderful way to read poetry.

<comment><USER13> "I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees." I've never seen that in english, so I looked it up ([http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/neruda/poema14-sp- en.htm...](http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/neruda/poema14-sp-en.html)) I guess it goes without saying, but english really doesn't do him justice, rhyming trees with kisses is pretty poor compared to cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme. But I suppose poetry is about the most difficult thing to translate b/c of the many levels from phonetical to subtle contextual and semantical differences that are all overlayed and compacted into a few small verses. I certainly wouldn't want to / couldn't translate it.

But yea, in spanish my favorites are Neruda and Borges (see: [http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generaci%C3%B3n_del_45](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generaci%C3%B3n_del_45)). I found this link which has a lot of other good poets IMHO for instance ruben dario or mario benedetti ([http://www.cubaeuropa.com/cubarte/poesia/PoesiaLatinoamerica...](http://www.cubaeuropa.com/cubarte/poesia/PoesiaLatinoamericana.htm)).

In english I just nerd out on the old the stuff and for some reason never really got into anything newer... I like chaucer, spencer, milton, shakespeare, plus just reading through all those in the original is so cool after a couple pages you slip into another world and time, nice escapism.

<comment><USER14> I would like to become more "cultured" and just aware of more words, forming sentences, communicating, and have more to call on for expressing my feelings.

What is the best way to get into poetry more? Read a couple a day or something? I would actually really like to read Shakespeare, but most seem to be of the mind that you really need a class or something to really get the translation.

<comment><USER13> well, if you want to get into the older stuff like shakespeare I would suggest just diving in. At first, just lookup the words you dont know and after maybe one play you should have already learned enough to understand his style and language and "get" his works on their face value.

as far as literary references go - aka john milton - (basically the only reason you'd need a class), I really think you'd just have to read/know most of the greek/roman classics and the bible to be able to get most of them. But no worries, if you enjoy reading the classics are a blast, the hebrew old testament is packed with pretty cool stories (the mad king Nebuchadnezzer) and it doesn't get much better than the iliad and odyssey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love many poets and poetry.Two that I would like to share with HN commuity at this time would be - _Rumi_ and _Gulzar_

Rumi said things like

      Forget safety.
      Live where you fear to live.
      Destroy your reputation.
      Be notorious.

Rumi: Meet you there

      Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
      there is a field.I 'll meet you there.

Rumi: Silence

      There is a way between voice and presence
      where information flows.
      In disciplined silence it opens.
      With wandering talk it closes.

Gulzar: Dil toh bachcha hai ji

      (hindi) Dil toh bachcha hai ji

      (english) Heart is such a child

Gulzar: Your name

      (hindi)
      Nazm uljhi hui hai seene mein
      misare atke hue hain hothon par
      udate phirte hain titaliyon ki tarah
      lafz kaagaz pe baithate hi nahin
      kab se baithaa hun main jaanam
      saade kaagaz pe likh ke naam tera
      bas tera naam hi mukammal hai
      isse behtar bhi nazm kyaa hogi

      (english)
      A poem is entangled in my heart.
      lines are stuck on my lips.
      Fluttering like butterflies,
      words refuse to settle on paper.
      I have labored
      for hours my darling,
      writing your name on this blank sheet of paper.
      Your name itself suffices;
      What other poem can excel that ?

Rumi - [http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Rumi](http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Rumi)

Gulzar - [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10289313-selected- poems](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10289313-selected-poems)

<comment><USER16> I love it, mostly Rumi. It's like motivational poetry, for the nerds from 800 years ago.

      "If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?" - Rumi

      "Sit, be still, and listen,
      because you're drunk
      and we're at
      the edge of the roof."
      ― Rumi

<comment><USER15> And one of the best ones from Rumi

      What you seek is seeking you
      - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love Neruda, specially "No culpes a nadie". It helped me a lot to stop complaining. C&P a possibly wrong translation

            ## Don't Blame Anyone

            Never complain about anyone, nor anything,
    	because basically you have done
    	what you wanted in your life.

            Accept the difficulty of improving yourself
    	and the courage to start changing yourself.
    	The triumph of the true man emerges from
    	the ashes of his mistake.

            Never complain about your loneliness or your
    	luck, face it with courage and accept it.
    	In one way or another it is the outcome of
    	your acts and the thought that you always
    	have to win.

            Don't be embittered by your own failure or
    	blame it on another, accept yourself now or
    	you'll keep making excuses for yourself like a child.
    	Remember that any time is
    	a good time to begin and that nobody
    	is so horrible that they should give up.

            Don't forget that the cause of your present
    	is your past, as well as the cause of your
    	future will be your present.

            Learn from the bold, the strong,
    	those who don't accept situations, who
    	will live in spite of everything. Think less in
    	your problems and more in your work and
    	your problems, without eliminating them, will die.

            Learn how to grow from the pain and to be
    	greater than the greatest of those
    	obstacles. Look at yourself in the mirror
    	and you will be free and strong and you will stop
    	being a puppet of circumstances because you
    	yourself are your own destiny.

            Arise and look at the sun in the mornings
    	and breathe the light of the dawn.
    	You are part of the force of your life;
    	now wake up, fight, get going, be decisive
    	and you will triumph in life. Never think about
    	luck because luck is
    	the pretext of losers.

<comment><USER18> This poem (and the original spanish) is one of my favourites! Thank you for posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Come to the edge," he said.

"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.

"Come to the edge," he said.

"We can't, We will fall!" they responded.

"Come to the edge," he said.

And so they came.

And he pushed them.

And they flew."

― Guillaume Apollinaire

close second:

I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE, there are flavors in my freezer you have never seen before, twenty-eight divine creations too delicious to resist, why not do yourself a favor, try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT

I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE, taste a flavor from my freezer, you will surely ask for more.

\-- Jack Prelutsky

<comment><USER20> Natalie merchant has a wonderful song using the second poem as the lyrics. Enjoy:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJHrc- ABp4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJHrc-ABp4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _One Art_

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - <USER3> ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop))

      The art of losing isn't hard to master;
      so many things seem filled with the intent
      to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

      Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
      of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
      The art of losing isn't hard to master.

      Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
      places, and names, and where it was you meant
      to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

      I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
      next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
      The art of losing isn't hard to master.

      I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
      some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
      I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

      —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
      I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
      the art of losing's not too hard to master
      though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

</comment><comment><USER22> Charles Baudelaire ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire)):

        You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it
        it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden
        of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
        you have to be continually drunk.

        But on what?
        Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

<comment><USER23> Isn't it strange to call that Beaudelaire's? Edna St. Vincent Millay put these words on paper, Beaudelaire wrote only in French...

<comment><USER24> I don't find it strange to claim that this is Baudelaire's work. Of course the style and the rhymes makes it very different compared to the original version. I also think that translation has altered the poem's beauty but the message is still here, the story is the same and it leaves me with the same humbled feelings.

<comment><USER25> Story? There's no story in poetry!

But yes, this is still Baudelaire's poem, I would have recognized it (I know well the French version).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shel Silverstein [0] has been on my bookshelf. I enjoyed reading Falling Up [1] as a way to help my kids understand that poetry is more than rhyming.

From _The Little Boy And the Old Man_ [2]:

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."

Said the old man, "I do that too."

The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."

"I do that too," laughed the little old man.

Said the little boy, "I often cry."

The old man nodded, "So do I."

"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. "I know what you mean," said the little old man.

[0] [http://www.shelsilverstein.com/](http://www.shelsilverstein.com/)

[1] [http://www.shelsilverstein.com/books/falling/](http://www.shelsilverstein.com/books/falling/)

[2] [http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/shel_silverstein](http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/shel_silverstein)

</comment><comment><USER27> As somebody who studied lit, this is an impossible question to answer, so I'll just link to my favorite John Donne ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne) ) poem from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets), number 14 [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets#Holy_Sonnet_14](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets#Holy_Sonnet_14)

      Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
      As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
      That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
      Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
      I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
      Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
      Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
      But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
      Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
      But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
      Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
      Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
      Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
      Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It's set to music in the fantastic _Doctor Atomic_ by John Adams, with a superb recording available from [http://www.metopera.org](http://www.metopera.org)

Edits: still not good at HN formatting, should be good now.

<comment><USER27> And one poet I never appreciated when introduced to her, but love now: Edna St. Vincent Millay [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay)

Renaissance and Other Poems is full of just staggering work: [http://books.google.com/books?id=vxUpAAAAYAAJ](http://books.google.com/books?id=vxUpAAAAYAAJ)

<comment><USER28> Since you studied it - what do you look for in great poetry?

<comment><USER27> Parsimony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29>
      here's a toast to Alan Turing
      born in harsher, darker times
      who thought outside the container
      and loved outside the lines
      and so the code-breaker was broken
      and we're sorry
      yes now the s-word has been spoken
      the official conscience woken
      – very carefully scripted but at least it's not encrypted –
      and the story does suggest
      a part 2 to the Turing Test:
      1. can machines behave like humans?
      2. can we?"

      ― Matt Harvey

</comment><comment><USER30> Belfast man checking in, poetry is one of the main traditions here and has a thriving local community, so I thought I would recommend some of my favourites from this part of the world.

Paul Muldoon,

Maybe something of a "poet's poet" but certainly worth checking out. His style is a casual one, but bursts with sidelong allusions to history, literature, art and etymological punnery. Perhaps of particular interest to people here, might be his novel-length poem Madoc, an hallucinogenic journey through time and place, in which "[he] supposes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey took up their (actual) fancy of founding a Pantisocratic community in North America."

Ciaran Carson,

Took a break from writing through most of the 70s to travel with his wife playing traditional music and steep himself in the Irish storytelling tradition. His books since then have been an, at time excitingly precarious, marriage of traditional storytelling and a modernist mock pedanticism. Worth checking out is his Belfast Confetti, a mix of essays and poems which explore the psychological relationship one has to one's city.

Leontia Flynn, A much younger poet, of the generation of artists who have had to deal with adapting to life and working in the 21st Century. Her last book, from 2011, Profit & Loss is a striking meditation on the changing role of memory in pre- and post- Internet society.

And for something different that I would particularly recommend to the HN crowd,

Sam Riviere,

An English poet of the current generation who deals with the cognitive fallout of the ever varied linguistic and cultural deluge one experiences day to day in 2015. I don't want to say too much about his writing as he is still so young, but certainly seek out his latest book, Kim Kardashian's Marriage.

</comment><comment> anon1986-1 I stumbled across this in a high school magazine left in a youth hostel in Maroochydore, Queensland in 1986, and have never seen another reference to it since. It's attribution was 'anonymous', and googling key lines bring up nothing.

I've always liked it, and posting it here might give it some longevity beyond that of my hard drive.

      Running on the front line
      Leading the way to uncertainty.
      With the shadow of a dream to guide you,
      Following a gleaming ray
      Picked from another's closed mind.
      Why will you lead the way while
      Others show no taste for adventure?
      Alone and self-exiled
      In the midst of a crowd
      Something not quite a thought flickers and is gone
      Leaving just enough to tell it came
      But not enough to remember.
      Somehow it is connected
      To what you don't know
      But must find out.
      Go forward, relish the unusual,
      And question the normal.
      Push yourself always to the edge
      And the edge will move with you.
      A blur of consciousness, knowledge,
      Experience, prediction, guesses and lies
      The elusive unknown and
      The excitingly uncertain.
      -
      Anonymous

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't particularly enjoy poetry (or poets for that matter), but I always liked reading "Algorhyme" by Radia Perlman, the inventor of spanning tree network protocol

        Algorhyme

        I think that I shall never see
        A graph more lovely than a tree.
        A tree whose crucial property
        Is loop-free connectivity.
        A tree that must be sure to span
        So packets can reach every LAN.
        First, the root must be selected.
        By ID, it is elected.
        Least-cost paths from root are traced.
        In the tree, these paths are placed.
        A mesh is made by folks like me,
        Then bridges find a spanning tree.

        - Radia Perlman

<comment><USER27> This is a great one, and one that often comes up when I tutor students. It's even better if you can teach it as a sing-along.

<comment><USER32> What's the tune?

<comment><USER27> I wish I had a better answer than "I make one up as needed", but I have more of a filking ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music) ) background than any actual musical training.

<comment><USER33> nice to see another filker on here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dylan Thomas

        My tears are like the quiet drift
        Of petals from some magic rose;
        And all my grief flows from the rift
        Of unremembered skies and snows.

        I think, that if I touched the earth,
        It would crumble;
        It is so sad and beautiful,
        So tremulously like a dream.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas)

[http://www.poemhunter.com/dylan-thomas/](http://www.poemhunter.com/dylan- thomas/)

<comment><USER35> 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 they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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 sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Aside from Tolkien's poetry in-world poetry, my favorite is probably Tennyson. Ulysses in particular is awesome. This is the final stanza.

        There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
        There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
        Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
        That ever with a frolic welcome took
        The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
        Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
        Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
        Death closes all: but something ere the end,
        Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
        Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
        The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
        The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
        Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
        'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
        Push off, and sitting well in order smite
        The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
        To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
        Of all the western stars, until I die.
        It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
        It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
        And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
        Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
        We are not now that strength which in old days
        Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
        One equal temper of heroic hearts,
        Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
        To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

</comment><comment><USER37> Seamus Heaney - <USER4>

      Between my finger and my thumb
      The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

      Under my window a clean rasping sound
      When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
      My father, digging. I look down

      Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
      Bends low, comes up twenty years away
      Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
      Where he was digging.

      The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
      Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
      He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
      To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
      Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

      By God, the old man could handle a spade.
      Just like his old man.

      My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
      Than any other man on Toner's bog.
      Once I carried him milk in a bottle
      Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
      To drink it, then fell to right away
      Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
      Over his shoulder, digging down and down
      For the good turf. Digging.

      The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
      Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
      Through living roots awaken in my head.
      But I've no spade to follow men like them.

      Between my finger and my thumb
      The squat pen rests.
      I'll dig with it.

<comment><USER38> Great to see Heaney mentioned by several people here! Recently voted Ireland's favourite poet of the last 100 years. This poem is a great example of his talent to document the small but evocative, quintessential elements of Irish experience. I'm having some wonderful childhood flashbacks of days on the bog right now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For me it's Sir John Betjeman. Very English of course. But...

        A man on his own in a car
        Is revenging himself on his wife;
        He open the throttle and bubbles with dottle
        and puffs at his pitiful life

        She's losing her looks very fast,
        she loses her temper all day;
        that lorry won't let me get past,
        this Mini is blocking my way.

        "Why can't you step on it and shift her!
        I can't go on crawling like this!
        At breakfast she said that she wished I was dead-
        Thank heavens we don't have to kiss.

        "I'd like a nice blonde on my knee
        And one who won't argue or nag.
        Who dares to come hooting at me?
        I only give way to a Jag.

        "You're barmy or plastered, I'll pass you, you bastard-
        I will overtake you. I will!"
        As he clenches his pipe, his moment is ripe
        And the corner's accepting its kill.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Passion not spent"

        What's my great fear?
        I'll tell you; come near...
        To lay down in death
        with so much left.

        Passion not spent -
        Oh cowardly regret!
        For fear of others?
        The thousand deaths.

        I'm afraid to die
        With no twinkle in my eye -
        To pass meagerly by
        Yet hidden inside.

        To walk through life
        Not truly alive,
        And to pass in the night
        With an unfelt "goodbye".

<comment><USER41> That's fantastic. Who wrote it?

<comment><USER42> Op it seems. :-)

[http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not- spent/](http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not-spent/)

<comment><USER40> Thanks :) Yes, it's a personal poem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I have this one tacked up on my wall. Not only is it inspirational, but I am impressed by the syllabic structure of the poem (alternating 11/10 syllables, iambic). Having never really studied poetry before, I found this really cool.

If, by Rudyard Kipling

        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;
        If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
        And treat those two impostors just the same;
        If you can bear to hear the truth you've 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 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 minute
        With 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!

</comment><comment><USER44>
                        <comment> The Palace <comment>
                     by Rudyard Kipling, 1902

      When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled --
      I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
      I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
      I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

      There was no worth in the fashion -- there was no wit in the plan --
      Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran --
      Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
      "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."

      Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
      I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
      Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread;
      Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

      Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
      I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart.
      As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand
      The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

      When I was a King and a Mason -- in the open noon of my pride,
      They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.
      They said -- "The end is forbidden." They said -- "Thy use is fulfilled.
      "Thy Palace shall stand as that other's -- the spoil of a King who shall build."

      I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers.
      All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
      Only I cut on the timber -- only I carved on the stone:
      "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> No Mention of the Bard?

        That time of year thou may'st in me behold
        When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
        Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
        Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
        In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
        As after sunset fadeth in the west,
        Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
        Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
        In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
        That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
        As the death-bed whereon it must expire
        Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
            This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
            To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

</comment><comment><USER46> Mario Benedetti:

       Don't Play it Safe

       Don't stand idle
       at the side of the road
       don't hold off on happiness
       don't love with half a heart
       don't play it safe now
       or ever
       don't play it safe
       don't fill up with calm
       don't take cover from the world
       in a quiet corner
       don't let your eyelids come down
       like a weighty sentence
       don't forget you have lips
       don't sleep but to rest
       don't ignore the blood in your veins
       don't think you have no time

       but if
       in any case
       you can't help it
       and hold off on happiness
       and love with half a heart
       and play it safe now
       and fill up with calm
       and take cover from the world
       in a quiet corner
       and let your eyelids come down
       like a weighty sentence
       and dry up without lips
       and sleep not to rest
       and ignore the blood in your veins
       and think you have no time
       and stand idle
       at the side of the road
       and play it safe
       in that case
       don't hold on to me.

</comment><comment><USER47> Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov... Yeah, I'm Russian :-p

Among English poems, I rather like this one by Laurie Lee:

        A golden fish like a pint of wine
        Rolls the sea undergreen,
        Glassily balanced on the tide
        Only the skin between.

        Fish and water lean together,
        Separate and one,
        Till a fatal flash of the instant sun
        Lazily corkscrews down.

        Did fish and water drink each other?
        The reed leans there alone;
        As we, who once drank each other's breath,
        Have emptied the air, and gone.

And of course W.H. Auden:

        ...I and the public know
        What all schoolchildren learn,
        Those to whom evil is done
        Do evil in return.

<comment><USER48> I'm _not_ Russian and I like Lermontov :)

<comment><USER49> Same, but I'm more partial to Pushkin :)

<comment><USER50> [https://youtu.be/FH73RSxaqgU?t=115](https://youtu.be/FH73RSxaqgU?t=115)

<comment><USER50> This was a scene from the movie "Бакенбарды" ("Backenbardy", literary "sideburns") where Pushkin cultists encounter Lermontov fanboys.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099097/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099097/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> So many... but recently...

Shelley, Ozymandias:

        I met a traveller from an antique land
        Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
        Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
        Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
        And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
        Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
        Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
        The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
        And on the pedestal these words appear:
        'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
        Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
        Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
        Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
        The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Yeats, The Second Coming:

        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
        The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
        Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.

        Surely some revelation is at hand;
        Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
        The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
        When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
        Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
        A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
        A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
        Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
        Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

        The darkness drops again but now I know
        That twenty centuries of stony sleep
        Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
        And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
        Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

<comment><USER52> The Second Coming. It is beyond extraordinary. The power of the images is utterly breathtaking.

However, your version does not have the words of the poem as it's generally published. I've never seen your version. Italics below show the more common wording.

"When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight: _somewhere in sands of the desert_ / A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,..."

<comment><USER51> You're right... I copied it from the top search result ([http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html)), which seems to be the 1920 version. There have been others since, and Wikipedia uses the newer wording.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm a fan of Invictus, by William Ernest Henley:

      Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
      I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

      In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
      Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

      Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the Shade,
      And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me, unafraid.

      It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
      I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.

<comment><USER54> I always loved Invictus. it was also my Father's favorite, and I remember how I felt "offended" when I learned Timothy McVeigh had chosen it for his last words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Eminem:

No more games, I'ma change what you call rage

Tear this motherfucking roof off like two dogs caged

I was playing in the beginning, the mood all changed

I've been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage

But I kept rhyming and stepped right into the next cypher

Best believe somebody's paying the pied piper

All the pain inside amplified by the fact

That I can't get by with my 9 to 5

And I can't provide the right type of life for my family

Cause man, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers

And it's no movie, there's no Mekhi Phifer, this is my life

And these times are so hard, and it's getting even harder

Trying to feed and water my seed, plus

Teeter totter caught up between being a father and a prima donna

Baby mama drama's screaming on and

Too much for me to wanna

Stay in one spot, another day of monotony

Has gotten me to the point, I'm like a snail

I've got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot

Success is my only motherfucking option, failure's not

Mom, I love you, but this trailer's got to go

I cannot grow old in Salem's lot

So here I go it's my shot.

Feet, fail me not, this may be the only opportunity that I got

<comment><USER56> Eminem has written some really good lines. His play with words is just fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm not sure who the poet was, but here's an old Chinese poem that I love. My translation doesn't quite do it justice, but...

少小離家老大回 鄉音無改鬢毛衰 兒童相見不相識 笑問客從何處來

I left my hometown as a young boy and returned as an old man.

The local speech hadn't changed, but the hair on my head had.

The children looked at me but recognized me not.

Laughing, they asked from where this visitor had come.

<comment><USER27> Do you mind sharing the original author's name? It sounds gorgeous, but I can only read Japanese, so I'm not sure if I'm just completely wrong in getting the images from the Chinese.

<comment><USER58> Search engine yielded both the rest of the poem and the identity of the author.

少小離家老大回,鄉音無改鬢毛衰。 兒童相見不相識,笑問客從何處來。

 _(as above)_

離別家鄉歲月多,近來人事半消磨。 惟有門前鏡湖水,春風不改舊時波。

 _I have left home for so long, society has lost its meaning. There are only the waters of Mirror Lake before the door, and the spring winds cannot change the ripples of the past._ [my translation]

The author is Hè Zhīzhāng (賀知章), a Tang Dynasty poet. The poem comes from the second part of his book _Images of Homecoming_ (回鄉偶書). He is one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (ie. alcohol-loving Tang poets): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup)

Coming from Japanese or modern Chinese you can use [http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php](http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php) to understand the relationships between words. Also try [http://chinesenotes.com/classical_chinese.php](http://chinesenotes.com/classical_chinese.php) for grammatical background. More Tang poems @ [http://chinesenotes.com/classics.php](http://chinesenotes.com/classics.php)

<comment><USER59> Can you recommend a good English-language collection of his works? The poem you wrote was amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Felix Dennis (†2014)

What's It Like Then, Being Rich?

What's it like then, being rich,

Knitting gold to warm an itch?

            Very much like being poor;

            Wealth is just a key — no more.

Why not share this magic key

To luxury — and start with me!

            Surely better that you earn it;

            Could I trust you to return it?

How does one become your ilk?

Is it bred in mothers' milk?

            Many paths can lead to riches,

            Few in sunlight, most in ditches.

Wherein lies the difference

From us — this odd ambivalence?

            Envy, malice, obligations;

            Toadying from poor relations.

Grown far richer than his neighbour,

Why would any rich man labour?

            Wealth is salt in wine immersed,

            Quaffing but excites the thirst.

Salt my arse! It's filthy greed —

How many homes does one man need?

            For some the trick's in trading it;

            For others, in parading it.

I've seen. But surely, comfort pales

Perched on padded Chippendales?

            When affluence holds no surprise,

            Wonders come in other guise.

Aye, the eyes of tart and whore!

What might you miss, if you were poor?

            Time.  The luxury of choices.

            First editions.  Old Rolls-Royces.

Except his poems, I also recommend his great book on becoming rich [http://www.felixdennis.com/books/how-to-get- rich/](http://www.felixdennis.com/books/how-to-get-rich/)

</comment><comment><USER61>
      Tear It Down

      We find out the heart only by dismantling what
      the heart knows. by redefining the morning,
      we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
      we can break through marriage into marriage.
      by insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
      affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
      we must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
      but going back toward childhood will not help.
      the village is not better than pittsburgh.
      only pittsburgh is more than pittsburgh.
      rome is better than rome in the same way the sound
      of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
      of the garbage tub is more than the stir
      of them in the muck of the garbage. love is not
      enough. we die and are put into the earth forever.
      we should insist while there is still time. we must
      eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
      in our bed to reach the body within the body.

      -Jack Gilbert

<comment><USER62> The poetic reference to Rome being better than Rome reminds me of Edmund Spenser's adaptation of Bellay's poem about Rome. [http://www.bartleby.com/153/23.html](http://www.bartleby.com/153/23.html)

I think the most famous stanza (an excerpt from a much, much longer poem) is

      Thou stranger, which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
      And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv'st at all,
      These same olde walls, olde arches, which thou seest,
      Olde palaces, is that which Rome men call.
      Behold what wreake, what ruine, and what wast,
      And how that she, which with her mightie powre
      Tam'd all the world, hath tam'd herselfe at last,
      The pray of Time, which all things doth devowre.
      Rome now of Rome is th' onely funerall,
      And onely Rome of Rome hath victorie;
      Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall
      Remaines of all: O worlds inconstancie!
       That which is firme doth flit and fall away,
       And that is flitting doth abide and stay.

Bellay (and Spenser) claim that the only city that was ultimately able to conquer ancient Rome is ... modern Rome. I found that a striking observation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Wislawa Syzmborska, for me. When lighthearted, she has depth, and when dark, she keeps a glimmer of light.

      The Joy of Writing

      Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
      For a drink of written water from a spring
      whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
      Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
      Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
      she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
      Silence - this word also rustles across the page
      and parts the boughs
      that have sprouted from the word "woods."

      Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
      are letters up to no good,
      clutches of clauses so subordinate
      they'll never let her get away.

      Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
      of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
      prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
      surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

      They forget that what's here isn't life.
      Other laws, black on white, obtain.
      The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
      and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
      full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
      Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
      Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
      not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

      Is there then a world
      where I rule absolutely on fate?
      A time I bind with chains of signs?
      An existence become endless at my bidding?

      The joy of writing.
      The power of preserving.
      Revenge of a mortal hand.

</comment><comment><USER64> Great thread.

      Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
      Just keep going. No feeling is final.

      - Rainer Rilke

([http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/feature/go- li...](http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/feature/go-limits-your- longing/1448))

</comment><comment><USER65> Cecil Day Lewis:

       Tempt me no more, for I
       Have known the lightning's hour,
       The poet's inward pride,
       The certainty of power.

And, of course being a Scot, Robert Burns:

       What though on hamely fare we dine,
       Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
       Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
       A Man's a Man for a' that:
       For a' that, and a' that,
       Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
       The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
       Is king o' men for a' that.

and:

       By oppression's woes and pains!
       By your sons in servile chains!
       We will drain our dearest veins,
          But they shall be free!

       Lay the proud usurpers low!
       Tyrants fall in every foe!
       Liberty's in every blow!—
          Let us do or die!

[Apologies for the bloodthirsty nature of _Scots Wha Hae_ \- but I was taught this stuff from an early age and it kind of stuck even though it's describing events of 700 years ago.]

Edit:

        Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
        Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
        Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
        Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

        My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
        My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
        Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
        My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

<comment><USER66> Burn's Selkirk Grace is about the only thing I've tried to memorise; I'll check afterwards how far away I was:

      Some hae meat and cannae eat,
      And some wid eat that want it,
      But we hae meat and we can eat,
      And sae the Lord be thankit

<comment><USER66> Not too far off, but it turns out there are several versions.

From [http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_grace.htm](http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_grace.htm):

      Some hae meat and canna eat,
         And some wad eat that want it;
      But we hae meat, and we can eat,
         Sae let the Lord be thankit.

The last line is often varied to read-

      And sae the Lord be thankit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Simon Armitage. Lovely northern English rhythms.

[http://simonarmitage.com/](http://simonarmitage.com/)

My Party Piece from Book of Matches

      My party piece:
      I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick
      conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves
      beyond its means, and dies, I say the story
      of my life -

      dates and places, torches I carried,
      a cast of names and faces, those
      who showed me love, or came close,
      the changes I made, the lessons I learnt -

      then somehow still find time to stall and blush
      before I'm bitten by the flame, and burnt.

      A warning, though, to anyone nursing
      an ounce of sadness, anyone alone:
      don't try this on your own; it's dangerous,
      madness.

</comment><comment><USER68> "Digging" by Seamus Heaney. One of my favorites.

      Between my finger and my thumb
      The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

      Under my window, a clean rasping sound
      When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
      My father, digging. I look down

      Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
      Bends low, comes up twenty years away
      Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
      Where he was digging.

      The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
      Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
      He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
      To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
      Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

      By God, the old man could handle a spade.
      Just like his old man.

      My grandfather cut more turf in a day
      Than any other man on Toner's bog.
      Once I carried him milk in a bottle
      Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
      To drink it, then fell to right away
      Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
      Over his shoulder, going down and down
      For the good turf. Digging.

      The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
      Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
      Through living roots awaken in my head.
      But I've no spade to follow men like them.

      Between my finger and my thumb
      The squat pen rests.
      I'll dig with it.

</comment><comment><USER69> The Little Dog's Day by Rupert Brooke

All in the town were still asleep, When the sun came up with a shout and a leap. In the lonely streets unseen by man, A little dog danced. And the day began.

All his life he'd been good, as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand it no more!

So his prayer he got granted—to do just what he wanted, Prevented by none, for the space of one day. "Jam incipiebo, sedere facebo," In dog-Latin he quoth, "Euge! sophos! hurray!"

He fought with the he-dogs, and winked at the she-dogs, A thing that had never been heard of before. "For the stigma of gluttony, I care not a button!" he Cried, and ate all he could swallow—and more.

He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps, And mangled the errand- boys—when he could get 'em. He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies, And followed the cats up the trees, and then ate 'em!"

They thought 'twas the devil was holding a revel, And sent for the parson to drive him away; For the town never knew such a hullabaloo As that little dog raised—till the end of that day.

When the blood-red sun had gone burning down, And the lights were lit in the little town, Outside, in the gloom of the twilight grey, The little dog died when he'd had his day.

</comment><comment><USER70> Rabindranath Tagore:

 _Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake_

</comment><comment><USER71> Richard Brautigan!!

~All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

      I like to think (and
      the sooner the better!)
      of a cybernetic meadow
      where mammals and computers
      live together in mutually
      programming harmony
      like pure water
      touching clear sky.

      I like to think
      (right now, please!)
      of a cybernetic forest
      filled with pines and electronics
      where deer stroll peacefully
      past computers
      as if they were flowers
      with spinning blossoms.

      I like to think
      (it has to be!)
      of a cybernetic ecology
      where we are free of our labors
      and joined back to nature,
      returned to our mammal
      brothers and sisters,
      and all watched over
      by machines of loving grace.

</comment><comment><USER72> I like George Bacovia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia))

Here is his probably most known one:

       Plumb

       Dormeau adanc sicriele de plumb,
       Si flori de plumb si funerar vesmant -
       Stam singur in cavou ... si era vant ...
       Si scartaiau coroanele de plumb.

       Dormea intors amorul meu de plumb
       Pe flori de plumb, si-am inceput sa-l strig -
       Stam singur langa mort ... si era frig ...
       Si-i atarnau aripile de plumb.

(Translation from: [http://www.aboutromania.com/bacovia1.html](http://www.aboutromania.com/bacovia1.html))

       Lead

       The coffins of lead were lying sound asleep,
       And the lead flowers and the funeral clothes -
       I stood alone in the vault ... and there was wind ...
       And the wreaths of lead creaked.

       Upturned my lead beloved lay asleep
       On the lead flower ... and I began to call -
       I stood alone by the corpse ... and it was cold ...
       And the wings of lead drooped.

Translating poems is pretty hard. That was an ok translation. It doesn't quite sound quite right.

<comment><USER73> Regarding poetry translation (and a lot more), there is this book:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot

By Douglas Hofstadter, that I quite like and recommend!

<comment><USER27> This is (arguably) a better book than GEB ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach) ) for the literature-minded folks out there. I can't recommend it enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> William S. Burroughs

      Dead City Radio (1990)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pn79iNS- Js](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pn79iNS-Js)

      Discipline of Do Easy (1982)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjQ0FNzkLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjQ0FNzkLQ)

      Ah Pook (1979-Poem, 1994-Animation)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3kz4AUHe1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3kz4AUHe1M)

One of the 'beat poets' and pioneer of the "cut up", a semi-randomized collage of slicing, duplicating, and splicing media. The effect seems to create awareness of the medium itself.

      (The Cut Ups, 1966)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_hztHJCM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_hztHJCM4)

      Speaking on his Cut Ups (1983)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NU3dIdqIBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NU3dIdqIBw)

</comment><comment><USER75> Wislawa Szymborska

THE RAILROAD STATION

My nonarrival in the city of N. took place on the dot.

You'd been alerted in my unmailed letter.

You were able not to be there at the agreed-upon time.

The train pulled up at platform 3. A lot of people got out.

My absence joined the throng as it made its way toward the exit.

Several women rushed to take my place in all that rush.

Somebody ran up to one of them. I didn't know him, but she recognized him immediately.

While they kissed with not our lips, a suitcase disappeared, not mine.

The railroad station in the city of N. passed its exam in objective existence with flying colors.

The whole remained in place. Particulars scurried along the designated tracks.

Even a rendezvous took place as planned.

Beyond the reach of our presence.

In the paradise lost of probability.

Somewhere else. Somewhere else. How these little words ring.

</comment><comment><USER54> Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, about poetry itself (sorry, Spanish is my language, still wanted to share):

No digáis que agotado su tesoro, de asuntos falta enmudeció la lira: podrá no haber poetas, pero siempre habrá poesía.

Mientras las ondas de la luz al beso palpiten encendidas, mientras el sol las desgarradas nubes de fuego y oro vista, mientras el aire en su regazo lleve perfumes y armonías, mientras haya en el mundo primavera, ¡habrá poesía!

Mientras la ciencia a descubrir no alcance las fuentes de la vida, y en el mar o en el cielo haya un abismo que al cálculo resista, mientras la humanidad siempre avanzando no sepa a do camina, mientras haya un misterio para el hombre, ¡habrá poesía!

Mientras se sienta que se ríe el alma sin que los labios rían, mientras se llore, sin que el llanto acuda a nublar la pupila, mientras el corazón y la cabeza batallando prosigan, mientras haya esperanzas y recuerdos, ¡habrá poesía!

Mientras haya unos ojos que reflejen los ojos que los miran, mientras responda el labio suspirando al labio que suspira, mientras sentirse puedan en un beso dos almas confundidas, mientras exista una mujer hermosa, ¡habrá poesía!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Henry James made it into the original (for me) Hack FAQ [https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/hacking.faq](https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/hacking.faq)

But also Neruda:

      Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
      I cannot settle on a single one.
      They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
      They have departed for another city.
      When everything seems to be set
      to show me off as a man of intelligence,
      the fool I keep concealed on my person
      takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

<comment><USER27> Is this the same (American) Henry James that I think of as a novelist?

<comment><AUTHOR> This one wrote the middle years [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James) where you can find:

      We work in the dark
      We do what we can
      We give what we have
      Our doubt is our passion,
      and our passion is our task
      The rest is the madness of art.

<comment><USER27> Ah, we were thinking of the same one. It's worth noting that his brother, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James) , wrote some of the most lyrical philosophy and psychology works of the late 19th century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Wallace Stevens is a favorite of mine. His work has been described as "rigorous", which I would agree with. He is an inspiration to me due to his ability to straddle two worlds: his day job was mainly as an insurance executive, but he flowered late and won a Pulitzer for his poetry. I particularly like "The Emperor of Ice Cream":

      Call the roller of big cigars,
      The muscular one, and bid him whip
      In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
      Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
      As they are used to wear, and let the boys
      Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
      Let be be finale of seem.
      The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

      Take from the dresser of deal,
      Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
      On which she embroidered fantails once
      And spread it so as to cover her face.
      If her horny feet protrude, they come
      To show how cold she is, and dumb.
      Let the lamp affix its beam.
      The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

<comment><USER77> The Snow Man is quite good:

      One must have a mind of winter
      To regard the frost and the boughs
      Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

      And have been cold a long time
      To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
      The spruces rough in the distant glitter

      Of the January sun; and not to think
      Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
      In the sound of a few leaves,

      Which is the sound of the land
      Full of the same wind
      That is blowing in the same bare place

      For the listener, who listens in the snow,
      And, nothing himself, beholds
      Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> E.E. Cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

One of Cummings's short poems that I enjoy:

      should this fool die

      let someone fond
      of living lay

      in his left hand

      a flower whose

      glory by no
      mind ever was

      taught how to grow

<comment><USER79> A few mentions of Hopkins in this thread, but too few examples.

So, Heaven Haven:

      I have desired to go
      Where springs not fail,
      To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
      And a few lilies blow.

      And I have asked to be
      Where no storms come,
      Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
      And out of the swing of the sea.

And then: "The Habit of Perfection":

        ELECTED Silence, sing to me
        And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
        Pipe me to pastures still and be
        The music that I care to hear.

        Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
        It is the shut, the curfew sent
        From there where all surrenders come
        Which only makes you eloquent.

        Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
        And find the uncreated light:
        This ruck and reel which you remark
        Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

        Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
        Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
        The can must be so sweet, the crust
        So fresh that come in fasts divine!

        Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
        Upon the stir and keep of pride,
        What relish shall the censers send
        Along the sanctuary side!

        O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
        That want the yield of plushy sward,
        But you shall walk the golden street
        And you unhouse and house the Lord.

        And, Poverty, be thou the bride
        And now the marriage feast begun,
        And lily-coloured clothes provide
        Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Ted Kooser.

[http://tedkooser.net/](http://tedkooser.net/)

He was the US Poet Laureate for a few years. He is from Nebraska, and writes about Midwestern life, among other things. His most recent volume just came out, and I thought it was great.

[http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Order-Ted- Kooser/dp/15565946...](http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Order-Ted- Kooser/dp/1556594690)

From "Splitting an Order":

        I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half
        … and then to see him lift half
        onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
        and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
        while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
        her knife and her fork in their proper places,
        then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
        and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

</comment><comment><USER81> I always come back to Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

      TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
      And sorry I could not travel both
      And be one traveler, long I stood
      And looked down one as far as I could
      To where it bent in the undergrowth;	        5

      Then took the other, as just as fair,
      And having perhaps the better claim,
      Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
      Though as for that the passing there
      Had worn them really about the same,	        10

      And both that morning equally lay
      In leaves no step had trodden black.
      Oh, I kept the first for another day!
      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
      I doubted if I should ever come back.	        15

      I shall be telling this with a sigh
      Somewhere ages and ages hence:
      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
      I took the one less traveled by,
      And that has made all the difference.

<comment><USER82> I'm a Frost fan as well. My favorite is _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening._

      Whose woods these are I think I know.
      His house is in the village though;
      He will not see me stopping here
      To watch his woods fill up with snow.

      My little horse must think it queer
      To stop without a farmhouse near
      Between the woods and frozen lake
      The darkest evening of the year.

      He gives his harness bells a shake
      To ask if there is some mistake.
      The only other sound's the sweep
      Of easy wind and downy flake.

      The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
      But I have promises to keep,
      And miles to go before I sleep,
      And miles to go before I sleep.

<comment><USER83> Mine is:

      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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Omar Khayyam

      "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
      Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
      Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
      Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m)

\--

Thomas Gray

        Presumptuous Maid! with looks intent
        Again she stretch'd, again she bent,
        Nor knew the gulph between;
        (Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.)
        The slippery verge her feet beguil'd;
        She tumbled headlong in.

[http://www.potw.org/archive/potw90.html](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw90.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray)

<comment><USER85> Omar Khayyam is wonderful. I have the first stanza of the Rubaiyat painted and framed in khatam style.

This quatrain makes me think Khayyam was a HN reader:

        Myself when young did eagerly frequent
        Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
        About it and about: but evermore
        Came out by the same door where in I went.

</comment></comment><comment> tech-no-logical not really a favorite poet, but a favorite poem : 'Cat in an empty apartment'

      Die--you can't do that to a cat.
      Since what can a cat do
      in an empty apartment?
      Climb the walls?
      Rub up against the furniture?
      Nothing seems different here
      but nothing is the same.
      Nothing's been moved
      but there's more space.
      And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

      Footsteps on the staircase,
      but they're new ones.
      The hand that puts fish on the saucer
      has changed, too.

      Something doesn't start
      at its usual time.
      Something doesn't happen
      as it should.
      Someone was always, always here,
      then suddenly disappeared
      and stubbornly stays disappeared.

      Every closet's been examined.
      Every shelf has been explored.
      Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
      A commandment was even broken:
      papers scattered everywhere.
      What remains to be done.
      Just sleep and wait.

      Just wait till he turns up,
      just let him show his face.
      Will he ever get a lesson
      on what not to do to a cat.
      Sidle toward him
      as if unwilling
      and ever so slow
      on visibly offended paws,
      and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

      -- Wislawa Szymborska

it never fails to get to me.

<comment><USER86> this, absolutely! My favourite as a kid

      A big locomotive has pulled into town,
      Heavy, humungus, with sweat rolling down,
      A plump jumbo olive.
      Huffing and puffing and panting and smelly,
      Fire belches forth from her fat cast iron belly.

      Poof, how she's burning,
      Oof, how she's boiling,
      Puff, how she's churning,
      Huff, how she's toiling.
      She's fully exhausted and all out of breath,
      Yet the coalman continues to stoke her to death.

      Numerous wagons she tugs down the track:
      Iron and steel monsters hitched up to her back,
      All filled with people and other things too:
      The first carries cattle, then horses not few;
      The third car with corpulent people is filled,
      Eating fat frankfurters all freshly grilled.
      The fourth car is packed to the hilt with bananas,
      The fifth has a cargo of six grand pi-an-as.
      The sixth wagon carries a cannon of steel,
      With heavy iron girders beneath every wheel.
      The seventh has tables, oak cupboards with plates,
      While an elephant, bear, two giraffes fill the eighth.
      The ninth contains nothing but well-fattened swine,
      In the tenth: bags and boxes, now isn't that fine?

      There must be at least forty cars in a row,
      And what they all carry -- I simply don't know:

      But if one thousand athletes, with muscles of steel,
      Each ate one thousand cutlets in one giant meal,
      And each one exerted as much as he could,
      They'd never quite manage to lift such a load.

      First a toot!
      Then a hoot!
      Steam is churning,
      Wheels are turning!

      More slowly - than turtles - with freight - on their - backs,
      The drowsy - steam engine - sets off - down the tracks.
      She chugs and she tugs at her wagons with strain,
      As wheel after wheel slowly turns on the train.
      She doubles her effort and quickens her pace,
      And rambles and scrambles to keep up the race.
      Oh whither, oh whither? go forward at will,
      And chug along over the bridge, up the hill,
      Through mountains and tunnels and meadows and woods,
      Now hurry, now hurry, deliver your goods.
      Keep up your tempo, now push along, push along,
      Chug along, tug along, tug along, chug along
      Lightly and sprightly she carries her freight
      Like a ping-pong ball bouncing without any weight,
      Not heavy equipment exhausted to death,
      But a little tin toy, just a light puff of breath.
      Oh whither, oh whither, you'll tell me, I trust,
      What is it, what is it that gives you your thrust?
      What gives you momentum to roll down the track?
      It's hot steam that gives me my clickety-clack.
      Hot steam from the boiler through tubes to the pistons,
      The pistons then push at the wheels from short distance,
      They drive and they push, and the train starts a-swooshin'
      'Cuz steam on the pistons keeps pushin' and pushin';
      The wheels start a rattlin', clatterin', chatterin'
      Chug along, tug along, chug along, tug along! . . . .

      Julian Tuwim

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Kendrick Lamar:

      If I think and act like you do
      The world would die
      From not seeing something new
      And if I don't speak on how I feel
      The world would lose out on
      What's really real
      And if should die before I wake
      I pray my music will take my place
      The World
      The Relevant

Сергей Есенин and Immortal Technique:

      Love...doesn't need a complicated metaphor
      And sometimes nothing needs to be said at all
      Sometimes a person you with is not your one and only
      And you just fuck with them because you afraid to be lonely
      And when you come back its too late
      So you overcompensate
      Like victims of rape
      Full of self hate
      Lost in the affection to strangers around you
      Instead of the only person that ever gave a fuck about you

</comment><comment><USER88> Ghalib[0], whose every poem is like a heartbreaking Koan, although it's very hard to find good English translations:

        Let awareness spread wide its net of comprehension,
        In my world of words, meaning is a bird of dreams.

        A thousand wishes thus, that each demands a life,
        I've done the best I could, but couldn't do too much.

(My translations)

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghalib](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghalib), [http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index....](http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index.html?#index)

<comment><USER89> And here is a famous one from Ghalib:

       Rekhta k tum he nahi ustaad Ghalib
       Kehte hain Aglay Zamanay mein koi Mir[1] bhi tha

Rough translation:

       You aren't alone the master of Rekhta, Ghalib
       It is said that there was also someone called Mir[1] in the previous era

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Taqi_Mir](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Taqi_Mir)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could 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? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare 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 bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

<comment><USER91> I've always enjoyed Blake's poems. One of my favourites from that collecion is The Fly:

        Little Fly
        Thy summer's play,
        My thoughtless hand
        Has brush'd away.

        Am not I
        A fly like thee?
        Or art not thou
        A man like me?

        For I dance
        And drink & sing;
        Till some blind hand
        Shall brush my wing.

        If thought is life
        And strength & breath;
        And the want
        Of thought is death;

        Then am I
        A happy fly,
        If I live,
        Or if I die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> THAT is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

\- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

…

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

…

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

…

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

\- W B Yeats

<comment><USER93> > _be the singing-masters of my soul_

Those have to be seven of the most powerful words ever written in any language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94>
        Jenny Kissed Me
        by Leigh Hunt

        Jenny kissed me when we met,
        Jumping from the chair she sat in.
        Time, you thief! who love to get
        Sweets into your list, put that in.
        Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
        Say that health and wealth have missed me;
        Say I'm growing old, but add-
        Jenny kissed me!

<comment><USER95> I'm surprised no-one said Keats (which is mine) but Hunt is, in some sense, close enough

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> T.S. Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" perfectly captures the essence of a middle-aged man's insecurities, and Eliot wrote it when he was 23.

<comment><USER27> Eliot is amazing; folks who love his work do themselves a disservice, however, if they aren't also reading Ezra Pound ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound) ) for a very different perspective on most of the same inspirations that made Eliot's early work so powerful.

<comment><USER97> Alec Guinness reading the Wasteland is amazing.

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbunup_t-s-eliot-the- waste-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbunup_t-s-eliot-the-waste-land- alec-guinn_creation)

"Hurry up please, it's time."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Billy Collins [http://www.poemhunter.com/billy- collins/](http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/)

<comment><USER99> I like him in-person even more than on the page.

A couple recordings:

Where Dogs Come From: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4)

A reading from Prairie Home Companion in February, dealing with cats: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxpQCY7df8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxpQCY7df8)

If you get a chance tosee him live, don't miss it. He's delightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100>
        Georgia Dusk (by Jean Toomer)

        The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
           The setting sun, too indolent to hold
           A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
        Passively darkens for night's barbecue,

        A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
           An orgy for some genius of the South
           With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
        Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

        The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
           And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
           Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
        Their early promise of a bumper crop.

        Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
           Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
           Where only chips and stumps are left to show
        The solid proof of former domicile.

        Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
           Race memories of king and caravan,
           High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
        Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

        Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
           Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .
           Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
        Is caroling a vesper to the stars . .

        O singers, resinous and soft your songs
           Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
           Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
        Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

</comment><comment><USER59> I've been reading a lot of Aleksa Šantić for the past few years, but I haven't seen any translations to English that really do him justice (not that I've been looking for them).

        Last night, returning from the warm hamam
        I passed by the garden of the old Imam
        And lo, in the garden, in the shade of a jasmine,
        There with a pitcher in her hand stood Emina.

        What beauty! By iman I could swear,
        She would not be ashamed if she were at the sultan's!
        And the way she walks and her shoulders move...
        -- Not even an Imam's amulet could help me!

        I offered her salaam, but by my dīn,
        Beautiful Emina would not even hear it.
        Instead, scooping water in her silver pitcher,
        Around the garden she went to water the roses.

        A wind blew from the branches down her lovely shoulders
        Unraveling those thick braids of hers.
        Her hair gave off a scent of blue hyacinths,
        Making me giddy and confused!

        I nearly stumbled, I swear by my faith,
        But beautiful Emina did not come to me.
        She only gave me a frowning look,
        Not caring, the naughty one, that I am crazy for her!

This entry contains links to articles explaining some of the more archaic words:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emina_%28poem%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emina_%28poem%29)

</comment><comment><USER62> For people who live in Brooklyn or have connections to it, you might be interested in Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" where he emphasizes his power to, through his poetry, be mentally or spiritually united with future generations crossing the East River:

[http://www.bartleby.com/142/86.html](http://www.bartleby.com/142/86.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_Brooklyn_Ferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_Brooklyn_Ferry)

It's one of the more intensely second-person poems I've come across, with its repeated focus on the reader's presence and what the reader has in common with the poet.

I learned about this poem from the novel _10:04_ by Ben Lerner, in which it figures prominently. The novel is an interesting meditation on nostalgia, modernity, introspection, and being a writer (although I fear readers might like it much less if they don't share some of the author's nostalgias).

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/books/review/1004-by- ben-l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/books/review/1004-by-ben- lerner.html)

</comment><comment><USER101> Patrick Kavanagh - Stony Grey Soil

        O stony grey soil of Monaghan
        The laugh from my love you thieved;
        You took the gay child of my passion
        And gave me your clod-conceived.

        You clogged the feet of my boyhood
        And I believed that my stumble
        Had the poise and stride of Apollo
        And his voice my thick tongued mumble.

        You told me the plough was immortal!
        O green-life conquering plough!
        The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
        In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

        You sang on steaming dunghills
        A song of cowards' brood,
        You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
        You fed me on swinish food

        You flung a ditch on my vision
        Of beauty, love and truth.
        O stony grey soil of Monaghan
        You burgled my bank of youth!

        Lost the long hours of pleasure
        All the women that love young men.
        O can I stilll stroke the monster's back
        Or write with unpoisoned pen.

        His name in these lonely verses
        Or mention the dark fields where
        The first gay flight of my lyric
        Got caught in a peasant's prayer.

        Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
        Wherever I turn I see
        In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
        Dead loves that were born for me.

</comment><comment><USER102> Just had to add my favorite, William Carlos Williams:

      so much depends
      upon

      a red wheel
      barrow

      glazed with rain
      water

      beside the white
      chickens.

You should all subscribe to the writers almanac podcast. A free poem & other good stuff in < 5 minutes every day. [http://writersalmanac.org/podcast/](http://writersalmanac.org/podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER103> Thats a tough question to answer. Between bukowsky , Edgar Alan Poe, Shakespeare, a few of miltons work, Gulzar, Tolkien, you can imagine the choice to be tough! But here is an unlikely candidate I find particularly interesting because of his simplicity and yet intricacy of expression. Vikram Seth. His work "golden gate" is just a masterpiece with so many hidden gems. To have a story spannig a good 700pages in verse itself is astounding. Here are some of his smaller beauties

Awake

        *Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling
        Through the unsettled stillness of the night
        He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling
        That dawn has come and gone and brought no light.*

And this, which happens to be the name of the small book of his selected short poems

        *All you who sleep tonight
        Far from the ones you love,
        No hand to left or right
        And emptiness above -

        Know that you aren't alone
        The whole world shares your tears,
        Some for two nights or one,
        And some for all their years.*

PS: pardon the bad formatting. Long form text entry via a tiny screen is still a pain point :)

</comment><comment><USER104> Poems > Poets

"The Abnormal is Not Courage"

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day.

Question the bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best. It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight, Were mangled.

But I say courage is not the abnormal. Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches. The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment. It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse, And the failure to sustain even small kindness. Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being. Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.

Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh. Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope. The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.

The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding. Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage, Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty That is of many days. Steady and clear.

It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

-Jack Gilbert

<comment><USER105> Minor disclaimer - the incident this poem is about had not happened. It's German war propaganda.

More: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty)

Not that it matters for poetry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I've always enjoyed the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. It is full of emotive gibberish that creates wonderful imagery and feeling out of meaningless sounds. Which is all poetry really is in the end!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker- snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

</comment><comment><USER107> Seamus Heaney & Patrick Kavanagh

Heaney was a literary genius. Kavanagh was a master at capturing the bleak reality of working class Ireland.

Both very different in their own right but both are prime examples of the immense variety within Irish poetry.

</comment><comment><USER108> I've always been fond of Albert Goldbarths' "Budget Travel Through Time and Space". He's an old timer with modern sensibilities, narratives that criss- cross eras with ease and a cosmological perspective. Science is inflected in a lot of his work.

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye"

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

<comment><USER62> It's a lot more metaphorical and more fanciful but there's "Evolution" by Langdon Smith: [https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/int/evolution.html](https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/int/evolution.html)

      When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
      In the Paleozoic time,
      And side by side on the ebbing tide
      We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
      Or skittered with many a caudal flip
      Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
      My heart was rife with the joy of life,
      For I loved you even then. [...]

<comment><USER108> How do I format text like that on HN? Use <pre> tags?

<comment><USER62> Two spaces in front of each line should work.

      One space is not enough,
      Yet two suffice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Georg Trakl, an austrian.

The following was written a few days before his death and is an expression of his experience as a medic after the battle of Gródek in the first world war (translated from german by Eric Plattner & Joseph Suglia):

      Grodek

      This evening the autumn woods are alive
      with exploding arms, the golden fields
      and blue lakes—and above it all the sun
      unfurls the dark. Night surrounds
      the dying men, the unhinged moan
      of crushed mouths.
      And still, in the willows,
      the red cloud, the abiding God, bloodshed itself,
      begins the harvest in mute fury, the moon's coolness.
      All roads rupture into black rot.
      Under the golden spray of night and stars
      the sister's shadow staggers across the acquiescent grove
      to greet the ghosts of heroes, their blossoming skulls.
      And beyond human ears the dark flutes of autumn whisper.
      O noble mourning!—you brazen altars,
      the searing flame of the spirit nurtures a vaster ache,
      the grandsons unborn.

</comment><comment><USER110> Gerard Manley Hopkins: God's Grandeur

      THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

      Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

      Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

        And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

      Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

      And for all this, nature is never spent;

        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

      And though the last lights off the black West went

        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

      Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I don't actually liken the poem to god's grandeur... more the seemingly unending bounty of the world, and its perseverance in spite of a harsh and unforgiving universe.

<comment><USER111> I love this poem. It's also one of my favorites. As a non-religious person, the poem inspires me to always look for hope, no matter what. Thanks for posting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> Wislawa Szymborska.

Until I read her poems, I thought people that fawned over poetry were just making it up.

Here is the one that I read first [http://bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/view- with-a-grain-of-sand...](http://bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/view-with-a-grain- of-sand-wislawa-szymborska.html)

</comment><comment><USER111> I love Kipling, especially his more humorous work. Case in point:

      I go to concert, party, ball --
        What profit is in these?
      I sit alone against the wall
        And strive to look at ease.
      The incense that is mine by right
        They burn before her shrine;
      And that's because I'm seventeen
        And She is forty-nine.

      I cannot check my girlish blush,
        My color comes and goes;
      I redden to my finger-tips,
        And sometimes to my nose.
      But She is white where white should be,
        And red where red should shine.
      The blush that flies at seventeen
        Is fixed at forty-nine.

      I wish I had Her constant cheek;
        I wish that I could sing
      All sorts of funny little songs,
        Not quite the proper thing.
      I'm very gauche and very shy,
        Her jokes aren't in my line;
      And, worst of all, I'm seventeen
        While She is forty-nine.

      The young men come, the young men go
        Each pink and white and neat,
      She's older than their mothers, but
        They grovel at Her feet.
      They walk beside Her 'rickshaw wheels --
        None ever walk by mine;
      And that's because I'm seventeen
        And She is foty-nine.

      She rides with half a dozen men,
        (She calls them "boys" and "mashers")
      I trot along the Mall alone;
        My prettiest frocks and sashes
      Don't help to fill my programme-card,
        And vainly I repine
      From ten to two A.M. Ah me!
        Would I were forty-nine!

      She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,"
        And "sweet retiring maid."
      I'm always at the back, I know,
        She puts me in the shade.
      She introduces me to men,
        "Cast" lovers, I opine,
      For sixty takes to seventeen,
        Nineteen to foty-nine.

      But even She must older grow
        And end Her dancing days,
      She can't go on forever so
        At concerts, balls and plays.
      One ray of priceless hope I see
        Before my footsteps shine;
      Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
        When I am forty-nine.

</comment><comment><USER113> Some really inspiring versification in here, and it would be difficult to surpass the aesthetic and philosophic achievements already mentioned.

However, for sheer technical brilliance, perhaps a word should be said for the ElectroBard from Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, whose verbal virtuosity was such that when challenged:

"compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!"

the response was instant:

        Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
        She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
        Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
        Silently scheming
        Sightlessly seeking
        Some savage, spectacular suicide."

... and if you think that's good, just imagine how great it was before being translated into English! (By Michael Kandel iirc)

</comment><comment><USER114> Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincas_Mykolaitis- Putinas](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincas_Mykolaitis-Putinas)

Goethe is fine too, and some Russian poets.

I'm from England but I gladly concede that the best poetry tends to come from countries east of my own.

</comment><comment><USER115> Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet is by far my favorite. His writings are absolutely riveting and awe-inspiring!! He was so ahead of his time and genius polymath as well.

<comment><USER27> Do you have any particular poems, or collections that you would suggest?

</comment></comment><comment> ely-s Desert Places by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it-it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less- A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars-on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.

Ode by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy.

WE are the music-makers,

      And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

      And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

      Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story

      We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

      Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

      In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

      And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

      To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

      Or one that is coming to birth.

</comment><comment><USER116> Great thread. Emily Dickinson

      I'm nobody! Who are you?
      Are you nobody, too?
      Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
      They'd banish -- you know!

      How dreary to be somebody!
      How public like a frog
      To tell one's name the livelong day
      To an admiring bog!

</comment><comment><USER117> I discovered The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran around 2009 and it quickly became and has remained one of my favorites. I appreciate the descriptiveness and beauty of the language along with the continuing relevance of the advice. It's very easy reading and enjoyable to pick up for a short time and enjoy in small bits or read straight through.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_%28book%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_%28book%29)

A couple favorites of mine are:

On Pain - [http://www.katsandogz.com/onpain.html](http://www.katsandogz.com/onpain.html)

On Reason & Passion - [http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html](http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html)

</comment><comment> V-2 While hardly a pleasant person himself, Berthold Brecht had some compelling ones (especially as an antidote for all the roses and moons and lips ;))

       THE CRUTCHES

       Seven years I could not walk a step.
       When I to the great physician came
       He demanded: Why the crutches?
       And I told him: I am lame.

       He replied: That's not surprising.
       Be so good and try once more.
       If you're lame, it's those contraptions.
       Fall then! Crawl across the floor!

       And he took my lovely crutches
       Laughing with a fiend's grimace
       Broke them both across my back and
       Threw them in the fireplace.

       Well, I'm cured now: I can walk.
       Cured by nothing more than laughter.
       Sometimes, though, when I see sticks
       I walk worse for some hours after.

</comment><comment><USER118> My favorite single book of poetry was actually written by my best friend. It's called God's Livestovk Policy, and it's a completely brilliant commentary on how we relate to each other and power figures. It's brutally funny as well as beatiful language.

[http://www.lesfigues.com/book/gods-livestock- policy/](http://www.lesfigues.com/book/gods-livestock-policy/)

Other than that, I'm a huge fan of romantic era German poetry. Heine's Wenn ich in deine Augen seh is haunting

Wenn ich in deine Augen seh, So schwindet all mein Leid und Weh; Doch wenn ich küsse deinen Mund, So werd ich ganz und gar gerund.

Wenn ich mich lehn an deine Brust, Kommts über mich wie Himmelslust; Doch wenn du sprichst: Ich liebe dich! So muß ich weinen bitterlich.

</comment><comment><USER119> My favourite poet is K. P. Cavafy and my favorite poem is Ithaca:

        As you set out for Ithaka
        hope the voyage is a long one,
        full of adventure, full of discovery.
        Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
        angry Poseidon—don't be afraid of them:
        you'll never find things like that on your way
        as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
        as long as a rare excitement
        stirs your spirit and your body.
        Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
        wild Poseidon—you won't encounter them
        unless you bring them along inside your soul,
        unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

        Hope the voyage is a long one.
        May there be many a summer morning when,
        with what pleasure, what joy,
        you come into harbors seen for the first time;
        may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
        to buy fine things,
        mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
        sensual perfume of every kind—
        as many sensual perfumes as you can;
        and may you visit many Egyptian cities
        to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

        Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
        Arriving there is what you are destined for.
        But do not hurry the journey at all.
        Better if it lasts for years,
        so you are old by the time you reach the island,
        wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
        not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

        Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
        Without her you would not have set out.
        She has nothing left to give you now.

        And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
        Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
        you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

This translation is by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Cavafy is a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria in the beginning of the century. He was very shy, he never sold any of his poets. He made copies and distributed his poetry to friends only. He was a perfectionists. Reports say that he would literally work up to 20 years to a single poem, changing words, syllables or entire lines accordingly. His poetry greatly improved as he grew older. Personally, I enjoyed this version[1] by Sir Sean Connery.

Then I also admire deeply Shakespeare. To me Shakespeare is like a crossroad between, poetry, philosophy, love, wisdom. An unbelievably refreshing, well- made cocktail of thought and art.

Those two poets are the ones that touch my spirit the most :-)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk)

<comment><USER120> As this is my favourite poem as well and you beat me to sharing it, I may as well add some context to it for the people not familiar with names and situations:

Ithaca[1] is where Odysseus[2], one of the greek heroes in the Trojan War, came from. After the war was over he set, along with his crew, to return home but this took him ten whole years and Homer wrote about his adventures and misfortunes in the epic that is known as Odyssey[3].

Now, as this consists of dangerous situations, very bad luck, betrayal and a couple of other bad things, the word "odyssey" has become one with which modern greeks describe a long and difficult period until something (a goal, a destination, etc) is reached. However, Kavafis (greek for Cavafy) turned this around and is describing all the great things that one can benefit from during such journeys: new harbours, Phoenician goods, Egyptian cities - all these pictures are used to demonstrate how rich one will be after an "odyssey" even if he/she has to face Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidons.

In the end, Kavafis tells us about what Ithaca really is about: not reaching your destination but experiencing the journey.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus) [3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER121>
      High Flight
      By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

      Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
      And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
      Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
      Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
      You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
      High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
      I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
      My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

      Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
      I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
      Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
      And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
      The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
      Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

</comment><comment><USER122> Czeslaw Milosz. "Gift" [1] and "A Song on the End of the World" [2].

Philip Larkin. Almost everything he wrote.

Robert Frost.

Ted Hughes. The Birthday Letters. Esp. "You Hated Spain" [3]

T S Elliot. Four Quartets. Preludes.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17245-2004Aug...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17245-2004Aug19_2.html)

[2] [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179559](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179559)

[3] [https://philosopherpoet.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/you- hated-s...](https://philosopherpoet.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/you-hated- spain-%E2%80%93-ted-hughes/)

</comment><comment><USER123> Edna St. Vincent Millay is certainly one of my favorites. Here's one:

      I, being born a woman and distressed
      By all the needs and notions of my kind,
      Am urged by your propinquity to find
      Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
      To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
      So subtly is the fume of life designed,
      To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
      And leave me once again undone, possessed.
      Think not for this, however, the poor treason
      Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
      I shall remember you with love, or season
      My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
      I find this frenzy insufficient reason
      For conversation when we meet again.

</comment><comment> V-2 Zbigniew Herbert.

[http://wchambliss.tumblr.com/post/107743541105/apollo-and- ma...](http://wchambliss.tumblr.com/post/107743541105/apollo-and-marsyas-the- real-duel-of-apollo-with)

[http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/zbigniew-herbert/why- th...](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/zbigniew-herbert/why-the- classics/)

[https://books.google.pl/books?id=nqeWAwAAQBAJ&printsec=front...](https://books.google.pl/books?id=nqeWAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER124> Poetry often goes way beyond just the naked words. Understanding the context around the writer, including background on his or her place and time matters a lot.

In this sense, this amazing iOS app completely changed my understanding of T.S. Eliot and his classic "The Waste of the Land": [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-waste- land/id427434046?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-waste- land/id427434046?mt=8)

Highly recommended. It makes it pretty obvious that there is still so much opportunity to do more things with augmented content.

<comment><USER125> Aehm, it's "The Waste Land".

<comment><USER124> You're right, sorry for the typo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER126> I really don't know what to do with this. It's from a Spanish poet, I discovered it in French and got to prefer the Spanish original. I haven't been able to find the English translation.

        DEDICATORIA

        Más allá de donde
        aún se esconde la vida, queda
        un reino, queda cultivar
        como un rey su agonía,
        hacer florecer como un reino
        la sucia flor de la agonía:
        yo que todo lo prostituí, aún puedo
        prostituir mi muerte y hacer
        de mi cadáver el último poema.

        – Leopoldo María Panero

<comment><USER127> Of course it's Spanish and about sex, indirectly. I think I prefer the German poets and their poems about nature, the human struggle, etc. (I'm sure someone will provide some examples of German poets that write about sex)

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> This is one of my favourite poems.

      Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
      Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight?

      Those "Fabrics of Cashmere—" "to make Me beautiful—"
      "Trinket"—to gem—"Me to adorn—How tell"—tonight?

      I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
      A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

      God's vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
      All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

      Lord, cried out the idols, Don't let us be broken;
      Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

      Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
      multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

      He's freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.
      He's left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

      In the heart's veined temple, all statues have been smashed.
      No priest in saffron's left to toll its knell tonight.

      God, limit these punishments, there's still Judgment Day—
      I'm a mere sinner, I'm no infidel tonight.

      Executioners near the woman at the window.
      Damn you, Elijah, I'll bless Jezebel tonight.

      The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
      fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

      My rivals for your love—you've invited them all?
      This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

      And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
      God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

\- Agha Shahid Ali Khan

</comment><comment><USER129>
      At dawn, the moon,
      like a creature of fantasy,
      stole into my room
      and woke me from some
      lazy and unproductive sleep.
      Her face quickly illuminated
      the underside of my soul
      and my own being stood
      revealed in the naked light.
      Sighing in wonder,
      I faced my Self, which said:
      "Your life so far has chased
      the illusion of control:
      You will not meet me on that path.
      One flash of my glance
      is worth a thousand years of piety."

      Overcome by waste and loss,
      my soul endarkened itself with shame.
      But my moon-faced Self,
      whose radiance equaled the sun,
      filled a cup of Direct Experience
      and urged me to drown my despair:
      "No bouquet... no flavor...
      but this wine can wash away
      your being's whole historical library."

      I finished the cup in one gulp,
      and, intoxicated by its purity,
      fell to the earth.
      Since then I am not sure
      whether I am here or not.
      Neither sober nor drunk,
      sometimes I feel the joy of
      my soul's eyes looking through mine.
      Other times I feel the curl of its hair
      and my life bobs and weaves.
      Sometimes, from sheer habit,
      I'm back on the compost heap.
      And sometimes,
      when that glance finds me again,
      I am back in the Rose Garden.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_Shabistari](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_Shabistari)

</comment><comment><USER130> Some non-English poets:

Faiz: Your feet bleed, Faiz, something surely will bloom as you water the desert simply by walking through it.

Ahmad Faraz: ... All those with outspoken mouths have become torn bodies. Those with unbowed heads have been led to the gallows and the rope.

All the Sufis and saints, every Sheikh and Imam hope to find favour at the court of the rulers. The dignitaries of the law courts wait to take oaths like beggars squatting at the side of the road. ... Look at the principles of those unworldly loyalists who are with you look around! So the condition of saving your life is to place your pen and slate in the killing fields. If not you will be the only target of the archers this time. Therefore surrender your integrity. Seeing the treaty I spoke to the messenger. He does not know what history teaches. When the night martyrs the sun the morning sculpts a new one. ... My pen does not commend that protector who is proud of besieging his own city. My pen is not the bowl of the simple fool who renders praise-poems to the usurpers.

My pen is not the tool of the housebreaker who makes a hole in the roof of his own home. My pen is not the friend of the midnight thief who scales the walls of lamp less houses.

My pen is not the prayer beads of the missionary who always keeps account of his worshipful deeds. My pen is not the scale of the judge who places a double veil over his face.

My pen is the pious gift of my people. My pen is the court of my conscience. ...

</comment><comment><USER131> Walt Whitman ..

        AH POVERTIES, WINCINGS, AND SULKY RETREATS.

        AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
        Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
        (For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the
                old, the incessant war?)
        You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
        You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest
                 of all!)
        You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
        You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of
                 any;)
        You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis!
        Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come
                 forth,
        It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
        It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.

[http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/index.html](http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/index.html)

original manuscripts :: [http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/ind...](http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER132> So many. To name a few:

Marge Piercy (see below)

Robert Frost (if you read him carefully)

Philip Larkin

William Stafford

\---

To be of use – by Marge Piercy

[http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09...](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09..).

      The people I love the best
      jump into work head first
      without dallying in the shallows
      and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
      They seem to become natives of that element,
      the black sleek heads of seals
      bouncing like half-submerged balls.

      I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
      who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
      who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
      who do what has to be done, again and again.

      I want to be with people who submerge
      in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
      and work in a row and pass the bags along,
      who are not parlor generals and field deserters
      but move in a common rhythm
      when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

      The work of the world is common as mud.
      Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
      But the thing worth doing well done
      has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
      Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
      Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
      but you know they were made to be used.
      The pitcher cries for water to carry
      and a person for work that is real.

</comment><comment><USER133> Another good one by Philip Larkin:

Vers de Société

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend. Day comes to an end. The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed. And so Dear Warlock- Williams: I'm afraid—

Funny how hard it is to be alone. I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted, Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted Over to catch the drivel of some bitch Who's read nothing but Which; Just think of all the spare time that has flown

Straight into nothingness by being filled With forks and faces, rather than repaid Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind, And looking out to see the moon thinned To an air-sharpened blade. A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled

All solitude is selfish. No one now Believes the hermit with his gown and dish Talking to God (who's gone too); the big wish Is to have people nice to you, which means Doing it back somehow. Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines

Playing at goodness, like going to church? Something that bores us, something we don't do well (Asking that ass about his fool research) But try to feel, because, however crudely, It shows us what should be? Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,

Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things. Beyond the light stand failure and remorse Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course—

</comment><comment><USER61>
      Lullaby

      W. H. Auden, 1907 - <USER5>

       Lay your sleeping head, my love,
      Human on my faithless arm;
      Time and fevers burn away
      Individual beauty from
      Thoughtful children, and the grave
      Proves the child ephemeral:
      But in my arms till break of day
      Let the living creature lie,
      Mortal, guilty, but to me
      The entirely beautiful.

      Soul and body have no bounds:
      To lovers as they lie upon
      Her tolerant enchanted slope
      In their ordinary swoon,
      Grave the vision Venus sends
      Of supernatural sympathy,
      Universal love and hope;
      While an abstract insight wakes
      Among the glaciers and the rocks
      The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

      Certainty, fidelity
      On the stroke of midnight pass
      Like vibrations of a bell,
      And fashionable madmen raise
      Their pedantic boring cry:
      Every farthing of the cost,
      All the dreaded cards foretell,
      Shall be paid, but from this night
      Not a whisper, not a thought,
      Not a kiss nor look be lost.

      Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
      Let the winds of dawn that blow
      Softly round your dreaming head
      Such a day of welcome show
      Eye and knocking heart may bless,
      Find the mortal world enough;
      Noons of dryness find you fed
      By the involuntary powers,
      Nights of insult let you pass
      Watched by every human love.

</comment><comment><USER134> Recently been into Bukowski, alongside Shelley, Frost and Tennyson remain favs

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

– Percy Shelley

if you're going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don't even start.

if you're going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.

go all the way. it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and you'll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

if you're going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire.

do it, do it, do it. do it.

all the way all the way.

you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, its the only good fight there is.

</comment><comment><USER135> Cavafy! [http://www.cavafy.com/poems/list.asp?cat=1](http://www.cavafy.com/poems/list.asp?cat=1)

<comment><USER93> Thank you so much for reminding me of his writing. I fell in love with a Greek woman on Crete many years ago. It was one of the most painful times of my life when I realized that I could not stay there with her, or she with me. Cavafy's poem _Ithaca_ has haunted me whenever I'm reminded of it:

[http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=74&cat=1](http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=74&cat=1)

I am a muted Ulysses.

[Update] Looks like I'm not the only one who loves this poem. See the follow- on comment for some background.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292200)

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> Henry David Thoreau & Walt Whitman

Nature Poem by Henry David Thoreau

      O Nature! I do not aspire
      To be the highest in thy choir, -
      To be a meteor in thy sky,
      Or comet that may range on high;
      Only a zephyr that may blow
      Among the reeds by the river low;
      Give me thy most privy place
      Where to run my airy race.

      In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
      Let me sigh upon a reed,
      Or in the woods, with leafy din,
      Whisper the still evening in:
      Some still work give me to do, -
      Only - be it near to you!

      For I'd rather be thy child
      And pupil, in the forest wild,
      Than be the king of men elsewhere,
      And most sovereign slave of care;
      To have one moment of thy dawn,
      Than share the city's year forlorn.

Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman

It's a long one so here is the first part:

      COME, my tan-faced children,
      Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
      Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
      Pioneers! O pioneers!

      For we cannot tarry here,
      We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
      We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
      Pioneers! O pioneers! ...

</comment><comment><USER137> I love Bukowski's "Pulled Down Shade"

"what I like about you she told me is that you're crude -- look at you sitting there a beercan in your hand and a cigar in your mouth and look at your dirty hairy belly sticking out from under your shirt. you've got your shoes off and you've got a hole in your right stocking with the big toe sticking out. you haven't shaved in 4 or 5 days. your teeth are yellow and your eyebrows hang down all twisted and you've got enough scars to scare the shit out of anybody. there's always a ring in your bathtub your telephone is covered with grease and half the crap in your refrigerator is rotten. you never wash your car. you've got newspapers a week old on the floor. you read dirty magazines and you don't have a tv but you order deliveries from the liquor store and you tip good. and best of all you don't push a woman to go to bed with you. you seem hardly interested and when I talk to you you don't say anything you just look around the room or scratch your neck like you don't hear me. you've got an old wet towel in the sink and a photo of Mussolini on the wall and you never complain about anything and you never ask questions and I've known you for 6 months but I have no idea who you are. you're like some pulled down shade but that's what I like about you: your crudeness: a woman can drop out of your life and forget you real fast. a woman can't go anywhere but UP after leaving you, honey. you've got to be the best thing that ever happened to a girl who's between one guy and the next and has nothing to do at the moment. this fucking Scotch is great. let's play Scrabble."

Favourite poets: Rumi, Neruda, Herrick, Byron, Keats, Frost...

</comment><comment><USER138> One day somebody sent me this. It still gets me every time.

      I will try to live on earth without you.

      I will try to live on earth without you.

      I will become any object,
      I don't care what—

      I will be this speeding train.
      This smoke
      or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.

      A human body is defenseless
      on earth.

      It's a piece of fire-wood.
      Ocean water hits it.
      Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.

      And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit
      lives
      inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder    of a great dictator.

      But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.

      I will be an eyelash.
      A sponge washing your neck-hairs.
      Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word

      slightly lights your cheek.
      What happened? Nothing.
      Something visited? Nothing.

      What was there you cannot whisper.
      No smoke without fire, they whisper.
      I will be a handful of smoke
      over this lost city of Moscow.

      I will console any man,
      I will sleep with any man,
      under the army's traveling horse carriages.

      -- Polina Barskova

</comment><comment><USER139> Favourite? I don't know... Blake? Poe? Various Japanese classics? Currently reading "Paradise Lost" by Milton. But what I've probably listened to most, lately, is Kate Tempest:

        I know now, first hand,
        That regretting love will empty you
        Of all that makes you love
        And all that lovers pay attention to.

        (Verse from "Best Intentions", Kate Tempest)

It's interesting to see that many seem to have fallen in love with poetry that's been translated to English. While there's nothing wrong with translation, I do think it is a little curious that some seem to prefer translated poetry, to native language authors (Much as it'd be a bit curious to hold up Blake as one's favourite poet in Spanish). At least one should make note of not just the original author, but also the translator -- as the end result is very much a team effort.

[edit: Somewhat apropos, perhaps:

      "Kate Tempest - 13 Commandments"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DktpzYOHTXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DktpzYOHTXo) ]

</comment><comment><USER140> Dambudzo Marechera - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera)

      The lives of small men are like spiders' webs;
      they are studded with minute skeletons of greatness.
      Excerpt from House of Hunger

THE BAR-STOOL EDIBLE WORM

      I'm against everything
      Against war and those against
      War. Against whatever diminishes
      Th' individual's blind impulse.

      Shake the peaches down from
      The summer poem, Rake in ripe
      Luminosity; dust; taste. Lunchtime
      News – pass the Castor Oil, Alice.

THERE'S A DISSIDENT IN THE ELECTION SOUP!

      I have no ear for slogans
      You may as well shut up your arse
      I run when it's I LOVE YOU time
      Don't say it I'll stick around
      I run when it's A LUTA time
      I run when it's FORWARD time
      Don't say it we'll fuck the whole night
      The moon won't come down
      At first awkwardly, excruciatingly embarrassing
      But with Venus ascending, a shout and leap of joy

      When the sheets are at last silent
      Don't ask "What are you thinking?"
      Don't ask "Was it good?"
      Don't feel bad because I'm smoking
      They ask and feel bad who are insecure
      Who say after the act "Tell me a story"
      And you may as well know
      Don't talk of "MARRIAGE" if this reconciliation
      is to last.

SHOCK: FOR BETTINA

      Like meteorites, through my long
      Isolated heart-atmosphere, you
      Burst incandescent over my platinum history.
      My future in earthquake reeled; my present only on
      Seismograph could point to the cataclysm – no
      Evidence of you attached to my stone and flesh,
      Only nightmarish passions which I can still hear
      When you shake your head. Shake it vigorously.
      Nuclear tests of underground love!

</comment><comment><USER141> Bukowski.

[http://hellopoetry.com/charles-bukowski/](http://hellopoetry.com/charles- bukowski/)

</comment><comment><USER142> Not my absolute favorite poem but one I always liked.

        Madame quel est votre mot
        Et sur le mot et sur la chose
        On vous a dit souvent le mot
        On vous a fait souvent la chose

        Ainsi de la chose et du mot
        Vous pouvez dire quelque chose
        Et je gagerais que le mot
        Vous plaît beaucoup moins que la chose

        Pour moi voici quel est mon mot
        Et sur le mot et sur la chose
        J'avouerai que j'aime le mot
        J'avouerai que j'aime la chose

        Mais c'est la chose avec le mot
        Mais c'est le mot avec la chose
        Autrement la chose et le mot
        A mes yeux seraient peu de chose

        Je crois même en faveur du mot
        Pouvoir ajouter quelque chose
        Une chose qui donne au mot
        Tout l'avantage sur la chose

        C'est qu'on peut dire encore le mot
        Alors qu'on ne fait plus la chose
        Et pour peu que vaille le mot
        Mon Dieu c'est toujours quelque chose

        De là je conclus que le mot
        Doit être mis avant la chose
        Qu'il ne faut ajouter au mot
        Qu'autant que l'on peut quelque chose

        Et que pour le jour où le mot
        Viendra seul hélas sans la chose
        Il faut se réserver le mot
        Pour se consoler de la chose

        Pour vous je crois qu'avec le mot
        Vous voyez toujours autre chose
        Vous dites si gaiement le mot
        Vous méritez si bien la chose

        Que pour vous la chose et le mot
        Doivent être la même chose
        Et vous n'avez pas dit le mot
        Qu'on est déjà prêt à la chose

        Mais quand je vous dis que le mot
        Doit être mis avant la chose
        Vous devez me croire à ce mot
        Bien peu connaisseur en la chose

        Et bien voici mon dernier mot
        Et sur le mot et sur la chose
        Madame passez-moi le mot
        Et je vous passerai la chose

It's by an 18th century libertine priest who was called l'Abbé de Lattaignant.

</comment><comment><USER143> MY PRAYER ANSWERED

I asked for Strength,

God gave me difficulties to face.

I asked for Wisdom,

God gave me problems to solve.

I asked for Courage,

God gave me danger to overcome.

I asked for Love,

God gave me troubled people to help.

I asked for Favours,

God gave me opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted;

I received everything I needed.

My PRAYER has been answered.

-Vedanta Kesari

</comment><comment><USER144> Keith Douglas ww2 war poet

"The noble horse with courage in his eye, clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst: away fly the images of the shires but he puts the pipe back in his mouth. Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88; it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance. I saw him crawling on the sand, he said It's most unfair, they've shot my foot off."

</comment><comment><USER145> Thomas Grey ("Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," with its lyric celebration of ordinary life, is arguably the greatest English poem).

TS Elliot, on his good days (Prufrock counts as a good day, as do the Landscape poems. He oversteps in "The Waste Land".)

Tennyson, when in the mood for melancholy.

Robert Herrick, when in the mood for insouciance, contemplation and the poet's struggle.

</comment><comment><USER146> Czesław Miłosz, "Campo di fiori":

      In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
      baskets of olives and lemons,
      cobbles spattered with wine
      and the wreckage of flowers.
      Vendors cover the trestles
      with rose-pink fish;
      armfuls of dark grapes
      heaped on peach-down.

      On this same square
      they burned Giordano Bruno.
      Henchmen kindled the pyre
      close-pressed by the mob.
      Before the flames had died
      the taverns were full again,
      baskets of olives and lemons
      again on the vendors' shoulders.

      I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
      in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
      one clear spring evening
      to the strains of a carnival tune.
      The bright melody drowned
      the salvos from the ghetto wall,
      and couples were flying
      high in the cloudless sky.

      At times wind from the burning
      would drift dark kites along
      and riders on the carousel
      caught petals in midair.
      That same hot wind
      blew open the skirts of the girls
      and the crowds were laughing
      on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

      Someone will read as moral
      that the people of Rome or Warsaw
      haggle, laugh, make love
      as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.
      Someone else will read
      of the passing of things human,
      of the oblivion
      born before the flames have died.

      But that day I thought only
      of the loneliness of the dying,
      of how, when Giordano
      climbed to his burning
      he could not find
      in any human tongue
      words for mankind,
      mankind who live on.

      Already they were back at their wine
      or peddled their white starfish,
      baskets of olives and lemons
      they had shouldered to the fair,
      and he already distanced
      as if centuries had passed
      while they paused just a moment
      for his flying in the fire.

      Those dying here, the lonely
      forgotten by the world,
      our tongue becomes for them
      the language of an ancient planet.
      Until, when all is legend
      and many years have passed,
      on a new Campo dei Fiori
      rage will kindle at a poet's word.

      Warsaw, 1943

</comment><comment><USER147> I'm partial to Larkin and Heaney, but I have to say my favourite poem is this one by Lawrence Raab -

        Attack of the Crab Monsters

        Even from the beach I could sense it---
        lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
        like something in the air, a certain
        lack of sound.  Yesterday
        there was a mountain out there.
        Now it's gone.  And look

        at this radio, each tube neatly
        sliced in half.  Blow the place up!
        That was my advice.
        But after the storm and the earthquake,
        after the tactic of the exploding plane
        and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked

        like fate and I wanted to say, "Don't you see?
        So what if you're a famous biochemist!
        Lost with all hands is an old story."
        Sure, we're on the edge
        of an important breakthrough, everyone
        hearing voices, everyone falling

        into caves, and you're out
        wandering through the jungle
        in the middle of the night in your negligée.
        Yes, we're way out there
        on the edge of science, while the rest
        of the island continues to disappear until

        nothing's left except this
        cliff in the middle of the ocean,
        and you, in your bathing suit,
        crouched behind the scuba tanks.
        I'd like to tell you
        not to be afraid, but I've lost

        my voice. I'm not used to all these
        legs, these claws, these feelers.
        It's the old story, predictable
        as fallout---the re-arrangement of molecules.
        And everyone is surprised
        and no one understands

        why each man tries to kill
        the thing he loves, when the change
        comes over him. So now you know
        what I never found the time to say.
        Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
        You know I always loved you.

Hilarious, sad, and sweet. It wasn't until decades after I first read this that I found out that this wasn't just metaphor, it's pretty much an accurate synopsis of the Roger Corman film of the same name.

</comment><comment><USER148> Did a quick search for a few poets (the usual, Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Lorraine Neidecker, Robert Zukofsky), thinking about trying to champion at least one of them (Neidecker, probably).

Then I remembered, this is hacker news, these are programmers. Before I was a programmer, I was a poet and a poetry teacher. One of the things that started drawing me towards programming and technology were poets like bpNichol and his fantastic "First Screening". He wrote it on an Apple IIe using BASIC in 83-84 and folks have been "translating" it throughout the past 30 years to keep it accessible on newer PCs.

There's a lot of poetry and hacker ethos coming together to keep this little gem alive:

I recommend the .mov[1] version as the Javascript[2] version is a bit too nice (fonts, no flickering, etc), but you can also run the original code[3] in an emulator.

Or, for an entirely different experience, read the source code[4].

Read all about it here: [http://vispo.com/bp/introduction.htm](http://vispo.com/bp/introduction.htm)

1: [http://vispo.com/bp/firstscreening.mov](http://vispo.com/bp/firstscreening.mov)

2: [http://vispo.com/bp/first-screening-javascript- version/first...](http://vispo.com/bp/first-screening-javascript- version/firstscreening.html)

3: [http://vispo.com/bp/emulatedversion.htm](http://vispo.com/bp/emulatedversion.htm)

4: [http://vispo.com/bp/download/FirstScreeningBybpNichol.txt](http://vispo.com/bp/download/FirstScreeningBybpNichol.txt)

</comment><comment><USER149> Desiderata by Max Ehrmann:

        Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
        and remember what peace there may be in silence.
        As far as possible without surrender
        be on good terms with all persons.
        Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
        and listen to others,
        even the dull and the ignorant;
        they too have their story.

        Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
        they are vexations to the spirit.
        If you compare yourself with others,
        you may become vain and bitter;
        for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
        Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

        Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
        it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
        Exercise caution in your business affairs;
        for the world is full of trickery.
        But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
        many persons strive for high ideals;
        and everywhere life is full of heroism.

        Be yourself.
        Especially, do not feign affection.
        Neither be cynical about love;
        for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
        it is as perennial as the grass.

        Take kindly the counsel of the years,
        gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
        Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
        But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
        Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
        Beyond a wholesome discipline,
        be gentle with yourself.

        You are a child of the universe,
        no less than the trees and the stars;
        you have a right to be here.
        And whether or not it is clear to you,
        no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

        Therefore be at peace with God,
        whatever you conceive Him to be,
        and whatever your labors and aspirations,
        in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

        With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
        it is still a beautiful world.
        Be cheerful.
        Strive to be happy.

</comment><comment><USER150> As I age, I grow ever fonder of Tennyson, particularly his "Ulysses", from which:

...Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659)

edit: sorry, can't format correctly

</comment><comment><USER151> L'infinito - Giacomo Leopardi

[http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/poems/leopardi1.html](http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/poems/leopardi1.html)

      Always dear to me was this lonely hill,
      And this hedge, which from me so great a part
      Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze.
      But as I sit and watch, I invent in my mind
      endless spaces beyond, and superhuman
      silences, and profoundest quiet;
      wherefore my heart
      almost loses itself in fear. And as I hear the wind
      rustle through these plants, I compare
      that infinite silence to this voice:
      and I recall to mind eternity,
      And the dead seasons, and the one present
      And alive, and the sound of it. So in this
      Immensity my thinking drowns:
      And to shipwreck is sweet for me in this sea.

</comment><comment><USER152> Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred.

Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the afflicted (by craving). Amidst afflicted men we dwell free from affliction.

Happy indeed we live, free from avarice amidst the avaricious. Amidst the avaricious men we dwell free from avarice.

Happy indeed we live, we who possess nothing. Feeders on joy we shall be, like the Radiant Gods.

Victory begets enmity; the defeated dwell in pain. Happily the peaceful live, discarding both victory and defeat.

There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates (of existence) and no bliss higher than the peace (of Nibbana). [17]

Hunger is the worst disease, conditioned things the worst suffering. Knowing this as it really is, the wise realize Nibbana, the highest bliss.

Health is the most precious gain and contentment the greatest wealth. A trustworthy person is the best kinsman, Nibbana the highest bliss.

Having savored the taste of solitude and peace (of Nibbana), pain-free and stainless he becomes, drinking deep the taste of the bliss of the Truth.

Good is it to see the Noble Ones; to live with them is ever blissful. One will always be happy by not encountering fools.

Indeed, he who moves in the company of fools grieves for longing. Association with fools is ever painful, like partnership with an enemy. But association with the wise is happy, like meeting one's own kinsmen.

Therefore, follow the Noble One, who is steadfast, wise, learned, dutiful and devout. One should follow only such a man, who is truly good and discerning, even as the moon follows the path of the stars.

\-- Sukhavagga: Happiness [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.h...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.html)

</comment><comment><USER153> Stephen Crane

      In the desert
      I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
      Who, squatting upon the ground,
      Held his heart in his hands,
      And ate of it.
      I said, "Is it good, friend?"
      "It is bitter—bitter," he answered;

      "But I like it
      "Because it is bitter,
      "And because it is my heart."

</comment><comment><USER154> I like Rimbaud quite a lot:

      "The star wept rose-colored [. . .]"

      The star wept rose-colored in the heart of your ears,
      The infinite rolled white from your nape to your loins
      The sea turned ruddy at your vermilion nipples
      And Man bled black on your sovereign flank.

Another:

      "The wolf howled under the leaves [. . .]"

      The wolf howled under the leaves
      As he spat out the fine feathers
      Of his meal of fowl:
      Like him I consume myself.

      Lettuce and fruit
      Wait only to be picked;
      But the spider of the hedge
      Eats only violets.

      Let me sleep! Let me boil
      At the altars of Solomon.
      Boiling water courses over the rust,
      And mixes with the Kidron.

These are translated from the French by Wallace Fowlie.

<comment><USER155> Rimbaud: "Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

</comment></comment><comment><USER156> Edwin Arlington Robinson - _Richard Cory_

      Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
      We people on the pavement looked at him:
      He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
      Clean favored, and imperially slim.

      And he was always quietly arrayed,
      And he was always human when he talked;
      But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
      "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

      And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
      And admirably schooled in every grace:
      In fine, we thought that he was everything
      To make us wish that we were in his place.

      So on we worked, and waited for the light,
      And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
      And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
      Went home and put a bullet through his head

</comment><comment><USER157> The recently passed Tomas Tranströmer, I love his writing. He can go from personal headspace to outer space in a cherry blossom in a moment during a car crash:

\--

      After a Death
      (translated by Robert Bly)

      Once there was a shock
      that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
      It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
      It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

      One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
      through brush where a few leaves hang on.
      They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
      Names swallowed by the cold.

      It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
      but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
      The samurai looks insignificant
      beside his armor of black dragon scales.

</comment><comment><USER158> Buddy Wakefield. Slam poet, spoken word. He got be through some really hard times.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLoRyBj0Jzo9rTFW1XGTkG3WF...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLoRyBj0Jzo9rTFW1XGTkG3WFAKf0nBh-r&v=bHX3qtJlmdU)

</comment><comment><USER159> Robinson Jeffers!

You can visit the stone Tor House in Carmel, just 90 minutes south of the SF Bay Area:

[http://www.torhouse.org/](http://www.torhouse.org/)

~ ~ ~ ~

The Beauty of Things

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things — earth, stone and water, Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars — The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions, And unhuman nature its towering reality — For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock And water and sky are constant — to feel Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural Beauty, is the sole business of poetry. The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas, The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

</comment><comment><USER160> Clouds Gathering by Charles Simic

        It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
        Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
        Sunlight in every room.
        The two of us walking by the sea naked.

        Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
        Unsure of what comes next.
        Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,
        With birds circling over our heads,
        The dark pines strangely still,
        Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.

        We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
        Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
        Clouds of almost human appearance
        Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
        With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.

        The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
        You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
        Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
        The dark pines and grasses strangely still.

Japan by Billy Collins

        Today I pass the time reading
        a favorite haiku,
        saying the few words over and over.

        It feels like eating
        the same small, perfect grape
        again and again.

        I walk through the house reciting it
        and leave its letters falling
        through the air of every room.

        I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
        I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
        I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

        I listen to myself saying it,
        then I say it without listening,
        then I hear it without saying it.

        And when the dog looks up at me,
        I kneel down on the floor
        and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

        It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
        with the moth sleeping on its surface,

        and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
        pressure of the moth
        on the surface of the iron bell.

        When I say it at the window,
        the bell is the world
        and I am the moth resting there.

        When I say it at the mirror,
        I am the heavy bell
        and the moth is life with its papery wings.

        And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
        you are the bell,
        and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

        and the moth has flown
        from its line
        and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

</comment><comment><USER161> Almost all of the poetry I know well came from a single audio collection that I was happily exposed to many years ago; it's called Exact Change and each track is still available on the U.Penn web site [0]. All of the poets are well-known in their fields, some well-known enough to be known to the public, and I have wound up taking many to heart. Among my favorites are the ones by Jack Spicer, John Godfrey, and Kamau Brathwaite. Take a moment to listen, it's very revealing to hear a poem read by its author.

[0] [http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Exact- Change.html](http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Exact-Change.html)

</comment><comment><USER162> I adore the nonsense poems of Edward Lear. He's most famous for The Owl and The Pussycat, but The Nutcracker and The Sugartongs is one of my favourites to read aloud: [http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/nutcrackers.html](http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/nutcrackers.html)

When read aloud, the rhythm is impeccable and almost addictive.

Another shout out has to go to A A Milne, particularly for Disobedience, which again is a delight to read aloud: [http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ridge/local/disobedience.html](http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ridge/local/disobedience.html)

</comment><comment><USER163> John Peale Bishop is pretty hilarious:

      Famously she descended, her red hair
      Unbound and bronzed by sea-reflections, caught
      Crinkled with sea-pearls. The fine slender taut
      Knees that let down her feet upon the air,

      Young breasts, slim flanks and golden quarries were
      Odder than when the young distraught
      Unknown Venetian, painting her portrait, thought
      He'd not imagined what he painted there.

      And I too commenced with that golden cloud:
      Lipped her delicious hands and had my ease
      Faring fantastically, perversely proud.

      All loveliness demands our courtesies.
      Since she was dead I praised her as I could
      Silently, among the Barberini bees.

</comment><comment><USER164> This guy reads a lot of poems and I like his voice:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/spokenverse/videos?sort=dd&shel...](https://www.youtube.com/user/spokenverse/videos?sort=dd&shelf_id=1&view=0)

Yes I know that doesn't answer your question. I've been reading and enjoying John Clare the past few days. One of his poems, read by the guy above, is in this video: [https://vimeo.com/121024561](https://vimeo.com/121024561) I love the poem and the music but I don't think the footage connects that well.

</comment><comment><USER165> A Poison Tree

William Blake, 1757 - <USER6>

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears

Night and morning with my tears,

And I sunned it with smiles

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright,

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning, glad, I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

</comment><comment><USER166> I've been reading poetry ever since I read one by Cocteau that physically moved me. Yes, I felt it in my body, not only in my mind. Since then, I've read too many. Here are some of my favorites. Delve deep into the greats and then the lesser known, you'll find the ones that move you.

Fernando Pessoa (if he were a french or english poet, he would be considered, I have absolutely no doubt about it, one of the greatest poets to have ever written)

W.H. Auden

Robert Desnos

Homer

Ovid

I'm not that much of a fan of beat poetry, but I recently got a hold of Mexico City Blues by Kerouac and discovered how much more I like his poetry than his prose.

</comment><comment><USER167> Definitely, Brodsky. Unfortunately, not many of his poems were written in English, and only a few were translated.

      All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
      left in the diary And the beads of quick
      words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
      adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
      Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
      what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
      And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
      queen it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.

</comment><comment><USER168>
       Ek herhaal jou

       Ek herhaal jou
       sonder begin of einde
       herhaal ek jou liggaam
       Die dag het 'n smal skadu
       en die nag geel kruise
       die landskap is sonder aansien
       en die mense 'n ry kerse
       terwyl ek jou herhaal
       met my borste
       wat die holtes van jou hand namaak

\- Ingrid Jonker

The poem is in Afrikaans and the poet is South African.

For those who are interested, an English language Dutch film about her was made a few years ago called Black Butterflies.

I can however not say that I have seen any translations that do justice to the original.

</comment><comment><USER83> All the "classics" have been listed already, so I'll mention someone more modern who I think programmers would enjoy: Christian Bök. Check out Crystallography and Eunoia.

</comment><comment><USER169> I love Edgar Allen Poe, but one particular reason is because of his essay "The Philosophy of Composition".[1] It's a long piece basically describing the methodical and mathematical way he developed The Raven. It's a really cool look at his process for creation.

Plus it pisses off your run-of-the-mill literary types.

1: [http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm](http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm)

</comment><comment><USER170> It's been a long time since my last college English class, but I enjoyed Derek Walcott:

"...I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;

I loved them as poets love the poetry

that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea."

[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177932](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177932)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott)

<comment><USER171> A fellow Walcott fan!

"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..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER172> I think the highest forum of poetry is the double-dactyl ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl)).

Here's one I wrote in 2010 about reddit:

        Hexis-a-plexis, A-
        -lexis Ohanian
        Started a website with
        His best friend Steve.

        Then after selling it,
        Conde Nast management's
        Ultrashortsightedness
        Forced them to leave

<comment><USER62> Don't forget the clerihew.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew)

I once wrote one about Jon Johansen (although that was only my second-best- known poem about him).

</comment></comment><comment><USER173> William Butler Yeats:

        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
        The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
        Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

</comment><comment><USER174> David E. Howerton. He's not well known but one of my favorites.

      tajpe' joj 'oy'wI'Daq
      boS yabwImey
      legh choSmeyDaq
      nuqDaq Hon e'be' pa'
      Qoy ghoghmey tun
      retlh HeH yabmey
      ghIH nuqDaqvIpbe'

And the translation:

      Torn between pains,
      the gathering of my mind,
      seeing shadows move,
      which aren't there.
      Hear the voices whispering
      along the edge of minds
      coming out of nowhere.

<comment><USER175> what on earth language is that?

<comment><USER62> It's Klingon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER176> My ex-girlfriend (not Portuguese) when she wanted to "paper cut me" used to say that every Portuguese is a poet. Seeing Portugal with the distance of an expat this is (un)fortunately true.

The most relevant of _us_ is certainly Fernando Pessoa.[1]

[1] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa)

</comment><comment><USER177> Victor Segalen:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Segalen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Segalen)

In particular, the book of Steles:

[http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/?s...](http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/?s=tag&t=victor- segalen)

</comment><comment><USER178> Mihai Eminescu - "Si Daca" (And If in English)

And if the branches tap my pane And the poplars whisper nightly, It is to make me dream again I hold you to me tightly.

And if the stars shine on the pond And light its sombre shoal, It is to quench my mind's despond And flood with peace my soul.

And if the clouds their tresses part And does the moon outblaze, It is but to remind my heart I long for you always.

</comment><comment><USER179> John Donne. "The Anagram" is probably one of the cleverest poems ever written; I have never seen such an elaborate put-down in any form.

[http://www.online- literature.com/forums/showthread.php?18947...](http://www.online- literature.com/forums/showthread.php?18947-Elegy-II-The-Anagram-by-John-Donne)

</comment><comment><USER25> Houellebecq:

        <comment>
        De jeunes bourgeoises circulent entre les rayonnages
        du Monoprix, élégantes et sexuelles comme des oies.
        Il y a probablement des hommes, aussi; je m'en fiche
        pas mal. On a beau ne plus imaginer de mots possibles
        entre soi et le reste de l'humanité, le vagin reste
        une ouverture.
        <comment>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER180> A physicist's poem:

To wonder as we wander through this world of mysteries many, is to fulfill the purpose of man's creation and destiny; and he who does not wonder, or the mysteries have not moved, should be interred in the dampest earth, for he is dead and never lived. (Source: the author of a very old Penguin book I once had on relativity)

</comment><comment><USER181> THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom? \-- Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less.

~Piet Hein

</comment><comment><USER182> Hovis Presley:

I rely on you

I rely on you

like a Skoda needs suspension

like the aged need a pension

like a trampoline needs tension

like a bungee jump needs apprehension

I rely on you

like a camera needs a shutter

like a gambler needs a flutter

like a golfer needs a putter

like a buttered scone involves some butter

I rely on you

like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve

like a hairpin needs a drastic curve

like an HGV needs endless derv

like an outside left needs a body swerve

I rely on you

like a handyman needs pliers

like an auctioneer needs buyers

like a laundromat needs driers

like The Good Life needed Richard Briers

I rely on you

like a water vole needs water

like a brick outhouse needs mortar

like a lemming to the slaughter

Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter

I rely on you

</comment><comment><USER183> Rumi, Bukowski, Gibran, Poe.

One of my favourite poems is by Charles Bukowski and it has this wonderful recursive quality to it. It's called "Oh Yes".

there are worse things than being along but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late.

</comment><comment><USER184> Loving the discovery of poets here.

I'd like to point out: [http://www.reddit.com/user/Poem_for_your_sprog](http://www.reddit.com/user/Poem_for_your_sprog)

All the comments he/she posts are poems in response to the post or comment. The comments usually are guilded.

</comment><comment><USER185> Lots of good poets already mentioned so I should mention Alexander Blok: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok)

Unfortunately, the English translations are not really as moving as Russian originals.

</comment><comment><USER18> David Huerta is one of my all time favourites. Check out "Abres y Cierras" (Open and Close)[1]

[http://www.beforesaying.com/images2/Open%20and%20Close%20(En...](http://www.beforesaying.com/images2/Open%20and%20Close%20\(English\).jpg)

</comment><comment><USER186> Seems appropriate about now:

Spring, by Edna St Vincent Millay.

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots,

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

</comment><comment><USER187> From Westerners, Raymond Carver, he is just plain raw. I like that. From east, Molana Rumi, Sohrab Sepehri.

</comment><comment><USER188> Didn't see Rumi in the list.

      Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
      there is a field. I will meet you there.
      When the soul lies down in that grass,
      the world is too full to talk about
      language, ideas, even the phrase each other
      doesn't make any sense.

</comment><comment><USER189> Andrew Marvell and John Donne. Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Donne's "The Ecstasy" are both classic love poems.

[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173355](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173355)

</comment><comment><USER73> Jorge Luis Borges

Edgar Allan Poe

Jorge Manrique. This might be the less known so: [http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/POESIA/COPLASEN.HTM](http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/POESIA/COPLASEN.HTM)

It doesn't sound the same in english, though :(

And I can only add another vote for Neruda!

<comment><USER190> Richard Wilbur has done exquisite translations, like this one...

Everness, Jorge Luis Borges

      One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
      God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
      And his prophetic memory guards from loss
      The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
      Everything is: the shadows in the glass
      Which, in between the day's two twilights, you
      Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
      Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
      And everything is part of that diverse
      Crystalline memory, the universe;
      Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
      Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
      And only from the sunset's farther side
      Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER191>
      Don't imitate me;
      it's as boring
      as the two halves of a melon.

poet Matsuo Basho

</comment><comment><USER192> Velimir Chlebnikov, 1885 - 1922. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velimir_Khlebnikov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velimir_Khlebnikov)

My favorite poem:

Once again, once again

I'm a star for

you.

Woe to the sailor who has taken

The wrong angle of the ship

On a star:

He will be shattered on the rocks,

On the underwater sandbanks.

Woe to you also who have taken

The heart's wrong angle on me.

You will be shattered on the rocks,

And rocks will laugh

At you

As you laught

At me.

</comment><comment><USER193> [http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/12/buckminster- fuller-e...](http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/12/buckminster-fuller-ever- rethinking-the-lords-prayer/)

</comment><comment><USER194> Anne Michaels, Skin Divers. I don't think I can publish this poem here (or the collection of poems it refers to), but I love her imagery.

She's also written prose, but she writes it in a way that sounds almost like poetry, full of metaphor and imagery.

</comment><comment><USER195> Leon DeGreiff [http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/literatura/antolo/...](http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/literatura/antolo/antol26.htm)

</comment><comment><USER196> Charles Bukowski: All The Way, one of the most motivational poem i have experienced in life. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6_QUhUPrF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6_QUhUPrF4)

</comment><comment><USER197> Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray [http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi- bin/display.cgi?text=elcc](http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi- bin/display.cgi?text=elcc)

</comment><comment><USER198> Emily Dickinson:

All life to know each other

Whom we can never learn

</comment><comment><USER199> John Milton Thomas Campion Samuel Taylor Coleridge Robert Bridges Ted Hughes Seamus Heaney Charles Baudelaire Paul Verlaine Edgar Allan Poe

... just for fun Clark Ashton Smith for projecting a Lovecraftian view of the cosmos into poetic form.

</comment><comment><USER200> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

      Der Zauberlehrling

      Hat der alte Hexenmeister
      Sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
      Und nun sollen seine Geister
      Auch nach meinem Willen leben.
      Seine Wort´ und Werke
      Merkt ich und den Brauch,
      Und mit Geistesstärke
      Tu ich Wunder auch.

      Walle! walle
      Manche Strecke,
      Daß, zum Zwecke,
      Wasser fließe
      Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
      Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.

      Und nun komm, du alter Besen!
      Nimm die schlechten Lumpenhüllen;
      Bist schon lange Knecht gewesen:
      Nun erfülle meinen Willen!
      Auf zwei Beinen stehe,
      Oben sei ein Kopf,
      Eile nun und gehe
      Mit dem Wassertopf!

      Walle! walle
      Manche Strecke,
      Daß, zum Zwecke,
      Wasser fließe
      Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
      Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.

      Seht, er läuft zum Ufer nieder,
      Wahrlich! ist schon an dem Flusse,
      Und mit Blitzesschnelle wieder
      Ist er hier mit raschem Gusse.
      Schon zum zweiten Male!
      Wie das Becken schwillt!
      Wie sich jede Schale
      Voll mit Wasser füllt!

      Stehe! stehe!
      Denn wir haben
      Deiner Gaben
      Vollgemessen! -
      Ach, ich merk es! Wehe! wehe!
      Hab ich doch das Wort vergessen!

      Ach, das Wort, worauf am Ende
      Er das wird, was er gewesen.
      Ach, er läuft und bringt behende!
      Wärst du doch der alte Besen!
      Immer neue Güsse
      Bringt er schnell herein,
      Ach! und hundert Flüsse
      Stürzen auf mich ein.

      Nein, nicht länger
      Kann ichs lassen;
      Will ihn fassen.
      Das ist Tücke!
      Ach! nun wird mir immer bänger!
      Welche Miene! welche Blicke!

      O, du Ausgeburt der Hölle!
      Soll das ganze Haus ersaufen?
      Seh ich über jede Schwelle
      Doch schon Wasserströme laufen.
      Ein verruchter Besen,
      Der nicht hören will!
      Stock, der du gewesen,
      Steh doch wieder still!

      Willsts am Ende
      Gar nicht lassen?
      Will dich fassen,
      Will dich halten
      Und das alte Holz behende
      Mit dem scharfen Beile spalten.

      Seht, da kommt er schleppend wieder!
      Wie ich mich nur auf dich werfe,
      Gleich, o Kobold, liegst du nieder;
      Krachend trifft die glatte Schärfe.
      Wahrlich! brav getroffen!
      Seht, er ist entzwei!
      Und nun kann ich hoffen,
      Und ich atme frei!

      Wehe! wehe!
      Beide Teile
      Stehn in Eile
      Schon als Knechte
      Völlig fertig in die Höhe!
      Helft mir, ach! ihr hohen Mächte!

      Und sie laufen! Naß und nässer.
      Wirds im Saal und auf den Stufen.
      Welch entsetzliches Gewässer!
      Herr und Meister! hör mich rufen! -
      Ach, da kommt der Meister!
      Herr, die Not ist groß!
      Die ich rief, die Geister
      Werd ich nun nicht los.

      "In die Ecke,
      Besen! Besen!
      Seids gewesen.
      Denn als Geister
      Ruft euch nur, zu seinem Zwecke,
      Erst hervor der alte Meister."

</comment><comment><USER201> I am fond of alliterative poetry, and I think this poem is relevant to HN:

[http://alliteration.net/poetry/website.htm](http://alliteration.net/poetry/website.htm)

</comment><comment><USER202> Noah Warren - [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/248624](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/248624)

</comment><comment><USER203> I like extended figures, but also sumptuous language and formal rigor. Ah heck, I love each poet for their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. Stephen Dobyns. John Bricuth. Wallace Stevens. Weldon Kees.

Shakespeare. Donne. Marvell.

</comment><comment><USER204> Checkout [http://haiku.nytimes.com/](http://haiku.nytimes.com/)

Sample Haiku:

        Gusts of wind rising
        up the chimney face blow his
        feathers the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER205> "Without haste, but without rest."

"The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say, but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

</comment><comment><USER206> Baudelaire, a une passante:

      La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
      Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
      Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse
      Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet ;

      Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
      Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
      Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,
      La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.

      Un éclair... puis la nuit ! - Fugitive beauté
      Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
      Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?

      Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
      Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
      Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !

<comment><USER182> Hovis Presley is my favourite:

I rely on you

I rely on you like a Skoda needs suspension like the aged need a pension like a trampoline needs tension like a bungee jump needs apprehension I rely on you like a camera needs a shutter like a gambler needs a flutter like a golfer needs a putter like a buttered scone involves some butter I rely on you like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve like a hairpin needs a drastic curve like an HGV needs endless derv like an outside left needs a body swerve I rely on you like a handyman needs pliers like an auctioneer needs buyers like a laundromat needs driers like The Good Life needed Richard Briers I rely on you like a water vole needs water like a brick outhouse needs mortar like a lemming to the slaughter Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter I rely on you

</comment></comment><comment><USER207> Sekou Sundiata blew my mind when I was introduced to his work in the mid-90s. To me he's the bridge from Ginsberg, kerouac, Boroughs etc to more modern stuff like Saul Williams, Buddy Wakefield, etc

</comment><comment><USER208> Hart Crane, far and away...

Ted Hughes's Metamorphosis. Such a sick translation of Ovid.

</comment><comment><USER209> WH Auden. I can't quote, but he has a poem in which he is thankful for a well developed super ego. I wanted to find a poem of his for our wedding, but he is too cynical even as he is moral.

</comment><comment><USER210> Images by Tyrone Green

Dark and lonely on a summer's night.

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

Watchdog barking. Do he bite?

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

Slip in his window. Break his neck.

Then his house I start to wreck.

Got no reason. What the heck?

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

C-I-L my land lord!

(as performed by Eddie Murphy on SNL)

</comment><comment><USER211>
        The heart can think of no devotion
        Greater than being shore to ocean -
        Holding the curve of one position,
        Counting an endless repetition.

        Robert Frost

</comment><comment><USER212> The Men Who Don't Fit In - Robert Service

[http://alexmuir.com/the-men-who-dont-fit-in](http://alexmuir.com/the-men-who- dont-fit-in)

</comment><comment><USER213> Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"[..] sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine."

</comment><comment><USER214> Adrienne Rich: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich)

</comment><comment><USER215> Rumi (on Conscience)

This that we are now created the body, cell by cell, like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

... and Allen Ginsberg

</comment><comment><USER216> Langston Hughes is the only poet to get me interested in poetry. I'm surprised that not a single other person here has mentioned him. Perhaps I shouldn't be.

</comment><comment><USER217> Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra and Pablo Picasso (he wrote great prose poems). I also like Fransisco de Quevedo and Miguel de Cervantes (yes, Cervantes was also a poet).

</comment><comment><USER218> As measured by lines remembered, I suppose that Yeats has to top the list. In no particular other order, Eliot, Ransom, Wyatt, Hardy, J.V. Cunningham, Bunting.

</comment><comment><USER219> William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

</comment><comment><USER220> A correspondence:

Python - Robert Frost

Ruby (Matz) - Kay Ryan

Ruby (dhh) - Fred Seidel

JavaScript - e e cummings

Brainfuck - John Ashbery

Java - <USER7>

C - <USER8>

Haskell - Anne Carson

Pascal - <USER9>

</comment><comment><USER221> Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)

"Think and wonder, wonder and think."

</comment><comment><USER222> Robert Frost

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

</comment><comment><USER223> "You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us" ― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women

</comment><comment><USER224> George Herbert, Du Fu, T S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wm Blake, WB Yeats, Li Po, Mallarme, 2 Dylans, Dante, Sappho, Homer

</comment><comment><USER225> I don't pay attention to the world Ending. It has ended for me many Times and began again in the morning.

― Nayyirah Waheed

</comment><comment><USER226> Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen, and a lot of poets in another language that few people on here will know.

</comment><comment><USER227> Dickinson, Tennyson, Yeats, Whitman

</comment><comment><USER228> Hafez, Rumi, Adunis, Paz, Forough, Elliot, Qabbani, Passolini, Lorca, Ginsberg, Blake. :)

</comment><comment><USER229> 1) Catullus 2) Robinson Jeffers 3) Rimbaud 4) Shakespeare

Catullus is the greatest, though.

</comment><comment><USER230> Philip Larkin has been mentioned already in this thread. The following two poems by Larkin inspire me in a backwards sort of way.

This first one, "Next, Please" reminds me that we can't just wait for something amazing to happen in our lives, thinking that some day it surely will all on its own. We need to be proactive and make things happen.

      Next, Please

      Always too eager for the future, we
      Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
      Something is always approaching; every day
      Till then we say,

      Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
      Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
      How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
      Refusing to make haste!

      Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
      Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
      Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
      Each rope distinct,

      Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
      Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
      No sooner present than it turns to past.
      Right to the last

      We think each one will heave to and unload
      All good into our lives, all we are owed
      For waiting so devoutly and so long.
      But we are wrong:

      Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
      Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
      A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
      No waters breed or break.

Second is Larkin's Poem "To Failure", which remindes me that I likely will not fail spectacularly, but slowly everyday, almost without notice, when I let the day slip away without achieving at least one small step towards a goal.

      To Failure

      You do not come dramatically, with dragons
      That rear up with my life between their paws
      And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
      The horses panicking; nor as a clause
      Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
      What out-of-pocket charges must be borne,
      Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
      That's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

      It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
      Instal you at my elbow like a bore.
      The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm
      Aware the days pass quicker than before,
      Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
      They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

Finally, as technical people, we can get so absorbed in what we are doing that we forget the importance of fostering the relationships around us with those we love:

      Without Mercy, the Rains Continued (by David St. John)

      There had been
      A microphone hidden

      Beneath the bed
      Of course I didn't realize it

      At the time & in fact
      Didn't know for years

      Until one day a standard
      Khaki book mailer

      Arrived & within it
      An old

      Stained cassette tape
      Simply labeled in black marker

      "Him / Me / September 1975"
      & as I listened I knew something

      Had been asked of me
      Across the years & loneliness

      To which I simply responded
      With the same barely audible

      Silence that I had chosen then

</comment><comment><USER231> Dean Young. _Elegy on Toy Piano_ is a phenomenal book.

</comment><comment><USER232> Fernando Pessoa (great portuguese language poet)

TOBACCO SHOP - (excerpts)

I'm nothing. I'll allways be nothing. I can't even wish to be something. Aside from that, I've got all the world's dream inside me.

Windows of my room, The room of just one of the millions in the world nobody knows (And what would they know, if they knew that?), You open on the mistery of a street people are constantly crossing, A street blocked off to all though, A street that's real, impossibly real, and right, unconsciously right, With the mistery of things lying under live beings and stones, With death spreading darkness on walls and white hair on heads, With fate driving the cart of everything down nothingness road.

Today I'm bowled over, as though hit by the truth. Today I'm clearheaded, as though I were going to die, Having no more brotherly feeling for things Than to say good-bye, turning this house and this side of the street Into a line of coaches in a long train with its whistle shrieking good-bye From inside my head, And a nerve-wracking, bone-cracking jerk as it moves off.

Today I'm mixed up, like someone who thought something and grasped it, then lost it. Today I'm torn between the allegiance I owe Something real outside me - The Tobacco Shop across the street, And something real inside me - <USER10> feeling that it's all a dream.

I failed in everything. Since I was up to nothing, maybe it was all really nothing. From learning and training for anything useful I escaped By slipping off to the country with great plans, By found only grass and threes there, And when there were people, they were just like any others. I leave the window, sit down in a chair. What should I think about?

[....]

(Eat your chocolates, little girl! Eat your chocolates! Look, there's no metaphysics on earth but chocolates. Look, all religions on earth have nothing more to teach us than a candy store does. Eat, dirty little girl, eat them up! If I could gobble down those chocolates as trustily as you do! But I think, peeling off the silver wrapper, it's only tinfoil, And toss it in the floor, just as I've tossed away my life.)

But at least, out of my bitterness at what I'll never be, There's the quick calligraphy of these lines, The broken archway to the Impossible. And at least I reserve for myself this dry-eyed contempt- Noble, at least, in the great gesture I make Flinging out the dirty clothes I am, with no laundry list, into the drift of things, And stay at home, shirtless.

[....]

</comment><comment><USER233> Plath and Dorothy Parker, never could choose between them.

</comment><comment><USER234> Ogden Nash, for his skill in turning pain into absurdity

</comment><comment><USER235> Jehst and Kate Tempest, for me they're mind bending

</comment><comment><USER236> William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe and Rudyard Kipling

</comment><comment><USER236> Rudyard Kipling, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe

</comment><comment><USER237> Charles Baudelaire.

</comment><comment><USER238> HW Longfellow : Psalm of life Rudyard kipling; If

</comment><comment><USER239> William Blake, especially Auguries of Innocence.

</comment><comment><USER240> Angus O'Reilly O'Patrick McGinney.

</comment><comment><USER105> Adam Asnyk - "Daremne żale"

        Daremne żale - próżny trud,
        Bezsilne złorzeczenia!
        Przeżytych kształtów żaden cud
        Nie wróci do istnienia.

        Świat wam nie odda, idąc wstecz,
        Znikomych mar szeregu -
        Nie zdoła ogień ani miecz
        Powstrzymać myśli w biegu.

        Trzeba z żywymi naprzód iść,
        Po życie sięgać nowe...
        A nie w uwiędłych laurów liść
        Z uporem stroić głowę.

        Wy nie cofniecie życia fal!
        Nic skargi nie pomogą -
        Bezsilne gniewy, próżny żal!
        Świat pójdzie swoją drogą.

I love the rhytm of this poem. My rough translation.

        Useless remorses, toil in vain
        Impotent spells and curses.
        Outlived shapes won't be back.
        There will be no miracles.

        World won't return you,
        going back,
        translucent ghosts and spirits.
        Neither with sword nor with fire
        you'll stop a thought that's running.

        You're to go forward with alive ones
        You're to reach for a new life.
        Instead of wearing stubbornly
        withered crown of laurels.

        You won't turn back the waves of life
        Complains won't be of help.
        Impotent angers, remorse in vain
        World will go its own way.

Also Jacek Kaczmarski songs are great. And I loved the poems in Stanisław Lem "Cyberiad". Translated by Michael Kandel.

        Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
        Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
        Their indices bedecked from one to n,
        Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
        Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
        And every vector dreams of matrices.
        Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
        It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

        In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
        Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
        Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
        We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

        I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
        Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
        And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
        And in our bound partition never part.

        For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
        Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
        Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
        Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

        Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
        Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
        A root or two, a torus and a node:
        The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

        Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!
        The product of our scalars is defined!
        Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
        cuts capers like a happy haversine.

        I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
        I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
        Bernoulli would have been content to die,
        Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!

</comment><comment><USER241> Billy Collins.

</comment><comment><USER33> millay and kipling. very different poets, but both resonate very strongly with me.

</comment><comment><USER242> Philip Larkin. Kate Tempest.

</comment><comment><USER243> Wilfred Owen:

Parable of the Old Man and the Young

      So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
      And took the fire with him, and a knife.
      And as they sojourned both of them together,
      Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
      Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
      But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

      Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
      and builded parapets and trenches there,
      And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
      When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
      Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
      Neither do anything to him. Behold,
      A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

      Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
      But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
      And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

      Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
      Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
      Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
      And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
      Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
      But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
      Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
      Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
      Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
      Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
      But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
      And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
      Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
      As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
      In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
      He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
      If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
      Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
      And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
      His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
      If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
      Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
      Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
      Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
      My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
      To children ardent for some desperate glory,
      The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
      Pro patria mori.

Smile, Smile, Smile

      Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
      Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
      And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
      Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
      For, said the paper, "When this war is done
      The men's first instinct will be making homes.
      Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
      It being certain war has just begun.
      Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, --
      The sons we offered might regret they died
      If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
      We must be solidly indemnified.
      Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
      We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
      Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
      The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
      Who kept this nation in integrity."
      Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe
      But smiled at one another curiously
      Like secret men who know their secret safe.
      This is the thing they know and never speak,
      That England one by one had fled to France
      (Not many elsewhere now save under France).
      Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
      And people in whose voice real feeling rings
      Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.

A more pleasant piece by Sir Philip Sydney:

      My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
      By just exchange one for the other given:
      I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
      There never was a bargain better driven.
      His heart in me keeps me and him in one,
      My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
      He loves my heart for once it was his own;
      I cherish his because in me it bides.
      His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;
      My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
      For as from me on him his hurt did light,
      So still methought in me his hurt did smart:
      Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
      My true love hath my heart and I have his.

</comment><comment><USER40> [anyone lived in a pretty how town] (e.e. cummings):

        anyone lived in a pretty how town
        (with up so floating many bells down)
        spring summer autumn winter
        he sang his didn't he danced his did.

        Women and men(both little and small)
        cared for anyone not at all
        they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
        sun moon stars rain

        children guessed(but only a few
        and down they forgot as up they grew
        autumn winter spring summer)
        that noone loved him more by more

        when by now and tree by leaf
        she laughed his joy she cried his grief
        bird by snow and stir by still
        anyone's any was all to her

        someones married their everyones
        laughed their cryings and did their dance
        (sleep wake hope and then)they
        said their nevers they slept their dream

        stars rain sun moon
        (and only the snow can begin to explain
        how children are apt to forget to remember
        with up so floating many bells down)

        one day anyone died i guess
        (and noone stooped to kiss his face)
        busy folk buried them side by side
        little by little and was by was

        all by all and deep by deep
        and more by more they dream their sleep
        noone and anyone earth by april
        wish by spirit and if by yes.

        Women and men(both dong and ding)
        summer autumn winter spring
        reaped their sowing and went their came
        sun moon stars rain

To One In Paradise (Edgar Allen Poe):

        Thou wast all that to me, love,
        For which my soul did pine-
        A green isle in the sea, love,
        A fountain and a shrine,
        All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
        And all the flowers were mine.

        Ah, dream too bright to last!
        Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
        But to be overcast!
        A voice from out the Future cries,
        "On! on!"- but o'er the Past
        (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
        Mute, motionless, aghast!

        For, alas! alas! me
        The light of Life is o'er!
        "No more- no more- no more-"
        (Such language holds the solemn sea
        To the sands upon the shore)
        Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
        Or the stricken eagle soar!

        And all my days are trances,
        And all my nightly dreams
        Are where thy grey eye glances,
        And where thy footstep gleams-
        In what ethereal dances,
        By what eternal streams.

Do not stand at my grave and weep (by Mary Elizabeth Frye):

        Do not stand at my grave and weep
        I am not there. I do not sleep.
        I am a thousand winds that blow.
        I am the diamond glints on snow.
        I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
        I am the gentle autumn rain.
        When you awaken in the morning's hush
        I am the swift uplifting rush
        Of quiet birds in circled flight.
        I am the soft stars that shine at night.
        Do not stand at my grave and cry;
        I am not there. I did not die.

</comment><comment><USER244> Plenty of great poets mentioned here. Figured I'd add a pair of my favorite contemporary poets, Sarah Lindsay and Paul Guest:

Sarah Lindsay - Elegy for the Quagga ([http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182245](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182245))

      Krakatau split with a blinding noise
      and raised from gutted, steaming rock
      a pulverized black sky, over water walls
      that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
      Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam,
      the last known member of Equus quagga,
      the southernmost subspecies of zebra, died.
      Most of the wild ones, not wild enough,
      grazing near the Cape of Good Hope,
      had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters.

      When a spider walked on cooling Krakatau's skin,
      no quagga walked anywhere. While seeds
      pitched by long winds onto newborn fields
      burst open and rooted, perhaps some thistle
      flourished on the quagga's discarded innards.
      The fractured island greened and hummed again;
      handsome zebras tossed their heads
      in zoos, on hired safari plains.
      Who needs to hear a quagga's voice?
      Or see the warm hide twitch away a fly,

      see the neck turn, curving its cream and chestnut stripes
      that run down to plain dark haunches and plain white legs?
      A kind of horse. Less picturesque than a dodo. Still,
      we mourn what we mourn.
      Even if, when it sank to its irreplaceable knees,
      when its unique throat closed behind a sigh,
      no dust rose to redden a whole year's sunsets,
      no one unwittingly busy
      two thousand miles away jumped at the sound,
      no ashes rained on ships in the merciless sea.

Paul Guest - User's Guide to Physical Debilitation ([http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5874/two-poems-paul- gue...](http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5874/two-poems-paul-guest))

      Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
      last longer than forever or at least until
      your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart
      or the culture of death, which really has it out
      for whoever has seen better days
      but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,
      you, or your beleaguered caregiver
      stirring dark witch's brews of resentment
      inside what had been her happy life,
      should turn to page seven where you can learn,
      assuming higher cognitive functions
      were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,
      how to leave the house for the first time in two years.
      An important first step,
      with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.
      When not an outright impossibility
      or form of neurological science fiction,
      sexual congress will either be with
      tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy,
      performing an act of sadistic charity;
      with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
      or with someone blindly feeling their way
      through an extended power outage
      caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.
      Page twelve instructs you how best
      to be inspiring to Magnus next door
      as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit
      above Alberta. And to Betty
      in her dark charm confiding a misery,
      whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent to yours.
      The curl of her hair that her finger knows
      better and beyond what you will,
      even in the hypothesis of heaven
      when you sleep. This guide is intended
      to prepare you for falling down
      and declaring détente with gravity,
      else you reach the inevitable end
      of scaring small children by your presence alone.
      Someone once said of crushing
      helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.
      We agree with that wisdom
      but gleaming motorcycles are hard
      to turn down or safely stop
      at speeds that melt aluminum. Of special note
      are sections regarding faith
      healing, self-loathing, abstract hobbies
      like theoretical spelunking and extreme atrophy,
      and what to say to loved ones
      who won't stop shrieking
      at Christmas dinner. New to this edition
      is an index of important terms
      such as catheter, pain, blackout,
      pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,
      magnetic resonance imaging,
      loss of friends due to superstitious fear,
      and, of course, amputation
      above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.
      It is our hope that this guide
      will be a valuable resource
      during this long stretch of boredom and dread
      and that it may be of some help,
      however small, to cope with your new life
      and the gradual, bittersweet loss
      of every God damned thing you ever loved.

</comment><comment><USER245> Galway Kinnell

</comment><comment><USER246> Sergei Yesenin

</comment><comment><USER247> John Burroughs

</comment><comment><USER248> Nicanor Parra

</comment><comment><USER249> Edward Gorey

<comment><USER250> Nice! I grew up near him and my dad used to act in his plays. He was such a great artist and interesting person. I like this line "A hissing swarm of hair bugs has got the baby and its rugs" from the evil garden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER251> Goethe (german), here's a translation of the Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)

      That old sorcerer has vanished
      And for once has gone away!
      Spirits called by him, now banished,
      My commands shall soon obey.
      Every step and saying
      That he used, I know,
      And with sprites obeying
      My arts I will show.

        Flow, flow onward
        Stretches many
        Spare not any
        Water rushing,
        Ever streaming fully downward
        Toward the pool in current gushing.

      Come, old broomstick, you are needed,
      Take these rags and wrap them round you!
      Long my orders you have heeded,
      By my wishes now I've bound you.
      Have two legs and stand,
      And a head for you.
      Run, and in your hand
      Hold a bucket too.

        Flow, flow onward
        Stretches many,
        Spare not any
        Water rushing,
        Ever streaming fully downward
        Toward the pool in current gushing.

      See him, toward the shore he's racing
      There, he's at the stream already,
      Back like lightning he is chasing,
      Pouring water fast and steady.
      Once again he hastens!
      How the water spills,
      How the water basins
      Brimming full he fills!

        Stop now, hear me!
        Ample measure
        Of your treasure
        We have gotten!
        Ah, I see it, dear me, dear me.
        Master's word I have forgotten!

      Ah, the word with which the master
      Makes the broom a broom once more!
      Ah, he runs and fetches faster!
      Be a broomstick as before!
      Ever new the torrents
      That by him are fed,
      Ah, a hundred currents
      Pour upon my head!

        No, no longer
        Can I please him,
        I will seize him!
        That is spiteful!
        My misgivings grow the stronger.
        What a mien, his eyes how frightful!

      Brood of hell, you're not a mortal!
      Shall the entire house go under?
      Over threshold over portal
      Streams of water rush and thunder.
      Broom accurst and mean,
      Who will have his will,
      Stick that you have been,
      Once again stand still!

        Can I never, Broom, appease you?
        I will seize you,
        Hold and whack you,
        And your ancient wood
        I'll sever,
        With a whetted axe I'll crack you.

      He returns, more water dragging!
      Now I'll throw myself upon you!
      Soon, 0 goblin, you'll be sagging.
      Crash! The sharp axe has undone you.
      What a good blow, truly!
      There, he's split, I see.
      Hope now rises newly,
      And my breathing's free.

        Woe betide me!
        Both halves scurry
        In a hurry,
        Rise like towers
        There beside me.
        Help me, help, eternal powers!

      Off they run, till wet and wetter
      Hall and steps immersed are Iying.
      What a flood that naught can fetter!
      Lord and master, hear me crying! -
      Ah, he comes excited.
      Sir, my need is sore.
      Spirits that I've cited
      My commands ignore.

        "To the lonely
        Corner, broom!
        Hear your doom.
        As a spirit
        When he wills, your master only
        Calls you, then 'tis time to hear it."

</comment><comment><USER252> Gerard Manley Hopkins[1], G.K. Chesterton[2] and John Bradburne[3].

        Spring and Fall

        to a young child

        Margaret, are you grieving
        Over Goldengrove unleaving?
        Leaves, like the things of man, you
        With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
        Ah! as the heart grows older
        It will come to such sights colder
        By and by, nor spare a sigh
        Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
        And yet you will weep know why.
        Now no matter, child, the name:
        Sorrow's springs are the same.
        Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
        What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
        It is the blight man was born for,
        It is Margaret you mourn for.

        – Hopkins, 1880

        A Little Litany

        When God turned back eternity and was young,
        Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
        (As under the low arch the land is bright)
        Peered through you, gate of heaven—and saw the earth.

        Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
        Built you about him for a house of gold
        To see in pictured walls his storied world
        Return upon him as a tale is told.

        Or found his mirror there; the only glass
        That would not break with that unbearable light
        Till in a corner of the high dark house
        God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.

        Star of his morning; that unfallen star
        In that strange starry overturn of space
        When earth and sky changed places for an hour
        And heaven looked upwards in a human face.

        Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
        Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
        And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
        Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.

        Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
        God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
        Or your tall body climbed the ivory tower
        And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.

        – Chesterton

        Love

        Love is a short disease, a long desire,
        A strong and lasting healing; love is like
        An angler landing fish, a hand at lyre,
        A roadhog flogging home his motor-bike;
        Love is a deep unsleeping thing, leaps time
        And steeps amidst eternity for rest
        And love is like three candles lighting rhyme
        And metre I am making for the best;
        An Alleluiatic sequence shows
        A little of love's eloquence that lasts;
        Love has three lights, one to another glows,
        A third proceeds between: naught overcasts
        True love because it knows that it possesses,
        Being possessed, a zest above distresses.

        – Bradburne, 1971

There are a couple of rare recordings of John Bradburne reciting his own poetry[4]. Much of his work was completely unknown until after his death in 1979 – he wrote about 6,000 poems.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton)

[3] [http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/](http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/)

[4] [http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/love](http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/love)

[&] [http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/mombe](http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/mombe)

</comment><comment><USER253> Lots of other people have suggested Neruda, which makes me happy, because he's fantastic.

I think my favorite poem is probably "Under Milk Wood", by Dylan Thomas (folks have posted some of his other work, which sheepishly I don't really like). I love this poem so much that even hearing it in a VW ad didn't diminish it. It's quite long, but the beginning is my favorite part:

      To begin at the beginning:

      It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-
      black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-
      rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black,
      crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

      The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the
      snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled
      middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the
      Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and
      dumbfound town are sleeping now.

      Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen
      and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the
      undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, \
      policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie
      bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
      bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood.

      The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and
      the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in
      the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed
      yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and
      needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

      You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

      Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

      And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn
      minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the
      Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,
      the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

      Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow
      musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass
      growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in
      Milk Wood.

      Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and
      brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing
      like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in
      the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse
      with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour.

      It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its
      hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and
      trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog
      and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of
      babies.

</comment><comment><USER254> Happy Dust

By Aleister Crowley

For Margot

Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of ineffable things,

Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing future and past,

Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One with the Vast,

The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His measureless cold,

Without being or form or abode, without motion or matter, the fold

Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense nor delusion nor dream,

No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its silence supreme.

I sit, and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless lust

Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust, To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air, To abolish the air with a flash of the final, the fulminant flare.

All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ of my thought;

I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my being to Naught.

Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am? It is lost.

As I utter the Word, I am cleft by the last swift spear of the frost.

Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still; They are perished, the phantoms, and past; they were born of my weariness-will

When I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist

Precurser of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow had kissed,

And brought into life all the shapes that confused the clear space with their marks,

Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of ruinous sparks,

No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in sickness of lust,

Delirium born of disease-ah, whence was the master, the "must"

Imposed on the All? is it true, then, that something in me

Is subject to fate? Are there two, after all, that can be?

I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole.

Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this homologous Whole?

I have stripped every garment from space; I have strangled the secret of Time,

All being is fled from my face, with Motion's inhibited rime.

Stiller and stiller I sit, till even Infinity fades; 'Tis an idol-'tis weakness of wit that breeds, in inanity, shades!

Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and steadiest Naught,

Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought.

Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last,

It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name:

Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim.

I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate!

And Fate determines me "I"; and I have the Will to create. Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the pettiest star. And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are. Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and of Mist.

Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clouds ineluctably dare to exist-

I have made the Voyage of Thought, the Voyage of Vision, I swam

To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of the Spring of I am:

I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the One;

I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None;

But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken its bond;

All's Truth, and all's falsehood as well, and-what of the region beyond?

So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine;

I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine

Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now;

I cease from the effort to cease; I absolve the dead I from its Vow,

I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star,

To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are,

Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive,

If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive. What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious game.

Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same.

Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright

Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night?

I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that beget

Ideas intagible wrought to things less conceivable yet. It may be. Little I reck -but, assume the existence of earth.

Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth?

Am I born to abolish man's guilt? His horrible heritage, awe?

Or a seed in his wantoness spilt by a jester? I care not a straw,

For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the Law.

</comment><comment><USER255> Issa.

<comment><USER256> _this world of dew

just a world of dew

and yet..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER257> elicura chihuailaf

</comment><comment><USER258> Hehehehehe.

</comment><comment><USER259> Please don't turn HN into Quora.

</comment><comment><USER260> cats make great poets

<comment><USER261> Glad people still read poetry! Surprised no one's mentioned Byron yet:

Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands, His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun, With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon; Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon Flashing a far,—and at his iron feet Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done. For on this morn three potent nations meet, To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.

Also only one rapper?

</comment></comment><comment><USER262> God.

Though you probably have to read/hear/understand the Quran in Arabic to fully appreciate its beauty. Nothing worldly has even come close to the poetic and literatural quality of God's word.

<comment><USER263> I'm sorry, but reading the translation of Quran, I can't believe it:

Those who wander from the way of Allah have an awful doom.--38:36

Take them [unbelivers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.--4:91

O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you--9:123

Those who strive against Our revelations, challenging (Us), theirs will be a painful doom of wrath.--34:5

Those who disbelieve will be gathered unto hell.--8:36

A painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.--9:90

As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.-- 2:6-7

We have placed upon their hearts veils, lest they should understand, and in their ears a deafness.---6:25

Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers--3:28

What can be pretty and poetic in that?

<comment><USER262> You are cherry picking verses completely pulled out of their context for the sake of bashing the theological believes of Islam, I was talking about the poetic quality.

Here is a video to illustrate the poetic quality of the Quran:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnS4_kmr0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnS4_kmr0w)

<comment><USER264> acqq may be cherry-picking and bashing islam, but you were proselytising - <USER11> weren't just talking about the poetic quality.

Your video boils down to "it is because it is". It relies on the faulty assumption that a human or collection of humans can't possibly write something that's very beautiful. It's not even an internally consistent argument - somehow humans are able to analyse and critique the poetry in the koran, but yet not able to create it? It simply doesn't follow that because something is beautiful, only a god could have created it.

<comment><USER263> To paraphrase the famous cartoon: if you locked people in a box for a thousand years with 500 still frames of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, by the end they'd be adamant that the pictureas are the prettiest thing ever produced on Earth.

<comment><USER264> I couldn't resist - if you look in the comments to that video, you'll see me listing eight rhetorical devices against Eminem's quoted word "Yo", using the same qualifying standards that the bloke in the video uses (re-using several of the vlogger's own selections).

The video makes a big song and dance about there being so many rhetorical devices, but there's so much padding in that list. The vlogger than quotes a verse from Eminem's _Lose Yourself_ , and states that it only has one rhetorical device - assonance. But you simply can't get assonance without "word choice" and "word arrangement", which the vlogger previously gave as props to his koran verse. It's a pretty cut-and-dried case of stacking the deck.

Anyway, if you're interested, check out the comments to the video to see how I found (at least) eight rhetorical devices in the two-letter word "Yo" that starts the verse. Density of rhetorical devices is the key point of the video; according to the vlogger, such high density either indicates the divinity of the author, or disproves the koran as the word of god.

Despite the lack of logic in the vlogger's arguments, he does have fantastic oration and sounds beautifully melodic as he speaks. I enjoyed the video just for the sound of his talking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>