favorite poems

I thought it might be nice to have a place to share favorite poems. I quite like poetry but I rarely understand it. But I try to read more and more of it since I figure that's the best way to familiarize myself with poetry. As far as I'm concerned, the poems don't need to be in english but you might need to post a translation if they're not. And you certainly don't need to post an interpretation of the poems but feel free to do so if the mood strikes you.

One of my favorite poems is by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's called God's World and it comes to mind quite often when I am out and about in nature, which happens relatively frequently as my school is in the middle of a forest. I think the poem is just so ecstatic it makes me want to jump up and down with pleasure at the sight of a tree turning colors or a field of wildflowers.

I had never much cared for Walt Whitman when we had to read him in school, but my appreciation for him has really flowered in adulthood. Maybe it's just with greater experience in life I've been able to better relate to some of his themes.

My favorite poem is Song of Myself, particularly this passage:

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I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.

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I am not a huge fan of poetry, but I love I, too, Sing America by Langston Hughes:

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I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

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From Pablo Neruda's "Magellanic Penguin"

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I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.

---

I like penguins and I like Pablo poems.

He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded by Alden Nowlan

I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,
a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band
that was met at the door by a child in a man's body
who asked them, "Are you the surprise they promised us?"

It's Ryan's Fancy, Dermot on guitar,
Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.
In the eyes of this audience, they're everybody
who has ever appeared on TV. I've been telling lies
to a boy who cried because his favorite detective
hadn't come with us; I said he had sent his love
and, no, I didn't think he'd mind if I signed his name

to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,
"Nobody will ever get this away from me,"
in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,
of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places
have been discovered, used to having objects snatched
out of his hands. Weeks from now I'll send him
another autograph, this one genuine
in the sense of having been signed by somebody
on the same payroll as the star.
Then I'll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is singing,
"Old MacDonald had a farm," and I don't know what to do
about the young woman (I call her a woman
because she's twenty-five at least, but think of her
as a little girl, she plays the part so well,
having known no other), about the young woman who
sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.

It's nine o'clock in the morning, not an hour for music.
And, at the best of times, I'm uncomfortable
in situations where I'm ignorant
of the accepted etiquette: it's one thing
to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark. I look around me
for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.
They're all busy elsewhere, "Hold me," she whispers. "Hold me."

I put my arm around her. "Hold me tighter."
I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect
someone in authority to grab her
of me: I can imagine this being remembered
for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer
publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.
"Hold me," she says again. What does it matter
what anybody thinks? I put my arm around her,
rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children,
real children, and of how they say it, "Hold me,"
and of a patient in a geriatric ward
I once heard crying out to his mother, dead
for half a century, "I'm frightened! Hold me!"
and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach
at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy's arms,
of Frieda gripping Lawrence's ankle
until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.

It's what we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss.)

Yet, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.
We are brother and sister, father and daughter,
mother and son, husband and wife.
We are lovers. We are two human beings
huddled together for a little while by the fire
in the Ice Age, two thousand years ago.

I'm not a big fan of poetry, but I've always had a soft spot for Robert Service, and especially "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".

This line in particular:

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When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

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because it reminds me of my Dad, who for some reason that I could never understand, added it to the end of the first verse of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". Also he changed "bear" to "beer". :dub: He was an odd fellow.

My taste in poetry often mirrors my taste in song: I love the quirky ones, like Ogden Nash, or Robert W. Service' most famous ones; but what I love best are the dark, depressing and dismal poems.

A. E. Housman, W. H. Auden, and others all speak to me at the center of myself, and provide scant and scalding comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

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'Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?'

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

'Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?'

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

'Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?'

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

'Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?'

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

---

Note: I've posted the whole poem because I believe it to be in the public domain.



But more than that, it's the final stanza of his poem LXII, 'Terence, this is stupid stuff' that sums things up best in my mind:

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There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

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Originally posted by An Gadaí

He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded by Alden Nowlan

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Well, way to make me cry. I occasionally volunteer at a school for severely mentally handicapped kids and my cousin is nearing 40 with the mind of a 7 year old. Gets me right here.

Okay Rabbitmage, get a grip.

Like Zuul, I've become a fan of Walt Whitman recently. My favorite lines from Song of Myself:

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Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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For some reason I am also very attached to Whitman's As I Lay With My Head In Your Lap Camerado

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AS I lay with my head in your lap camerado,
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open
air I resume,
I know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule,
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

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However, Rudyard Kipling's If is going to be framed and hung in my room somewhere.

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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 imposters 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 wornout 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 breath 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!

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I love to read poetry, but even more? To see poetry performed. It really brings the artform to life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmfkdOAq-xk

That was rather moving, Nrblex. Thank you for sharing. I really liked the overlapping voices.

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Originally posted by Zuul

My favorite poem is Song of Myself, particularly this passage:

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I came here to bring up Song of Myself. My favorite part starting at [44] with:

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It is to to explain myself... let us stand up.

What is known I strip away... I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown.

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I'll skip to my most important part, which seems apprpriate for this message board recently:

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Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or sister?
I am sorry for you... they are not murderous or jealous upon me;
All has been gentle with me... I keep no account with lamentation;
What have I to do with lamentation?

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OtakuLoki brought up WH Auden. Another one of my favorites would have to be Atlantis. (snipped quote)

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Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
That terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Thundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and now, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

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Of course my collection is also filled with Charles Bukowski. I wouldn't have known what to do with myself without his works. Sticks, you want to learn some shit? Yes it's all horrible, in fact, it's worse than you thought. It's often full of humor and the rare chance of honest to goodness self peace in this world. I hate to think that I've "grown" out of Bukowski, but without finding him earlier I don't know how the hell I would have understood this world and wound up as me today.

Here. Have a small piece of Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You:

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we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .

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More Pablo Neruda:

Walking Around.

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Comes a time I'm tired of being a man.
Comes a time I check out the tailor's or the movies
shriveled, impenetrable, like a felt swan
launched into waters of origin and ashes.

A whiff from the barber shops has me wailing.
All I want is a break from rocks and wool,
all I want is to see neither buildings nor gardens,
no shopping centers, no bifocals, no elevators.

Comes a time I'm tired of my feet and my fingernails
and my hair and my shadow.
Comes a time I'm tired of being a man.

Yet how delicious it would be
to shock a notary with a cut lily
or to kill off a nun with a blow to the ear.
How beautiful
to run through the streets with a green knife,
howling until I died of cold.

I don't want to go on like a root in the shadows,
hesitating, feeling forward, trembling with dream,
down down into the dank guts of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want for myself so many misfortunes.
I don't want to keep on as root and tomb,
alone, subterranean, in a vault stuffed with corpses,
frozen stiff, dying of shame.

That's why Monday burns like kerosene
when it sees me show up with my mugshot face,
and it shrieks on its way like a wounded wheel,
trailing hot bloody footprints into the night.

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It continues here.

Mmm, the poem of Auden's I know best is Stop all the clocks. The last stanza really gets to me.

Andrea Gibson's Blue Blanket is another one that needs to be heard to be truly appreciated:

(Warning, may be triggering for victims of sexual assault or abuse.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cEc3aQOP-o

...maybe I should stop posting really downer poem videos, huh?

No, because if you hadn't posted that video, I wouldn't have found this which I liked a lot.

I posted a few in this thread. I especially like The Panther and Prometheus. Unfortunately so far I haven't found a reading of Prometheus that feels completely right, although the linked Will Quadflieg comes close.

"To My Father", by Abdullah Al Anazi

Two years have passed in far-away prisons,
Two years my eyes untouched by kohl.
Two years my heart sending out messages
To the homes where my family dwells,
Where lavender cotton sprouts
For grazing herds that leave well fed.

O Flaij, explain to those who visit our home
How I used to live.
I know your thoughts are swirled as in a whirlwind,
When you hear the voice of my anguished soul.
Send sweet peace and greetings to Bu’mair;
Kiss him on his forehead, for he is my father.
Fate has divided us, like the parting of a parent from a newborn.

O Father, this is a prison of injustice.
Its iniquity makes the mountains weep.
I have committed no crime and am guilty of no offense.
Curved claws have I,
But I have been sold like a fattened sheep.

I have no fellows but the Truth.
They told me to confess, but I am guiltless;
My deeds are all honorable and need no apology.
They tempted me to turn away from the lofty summit of integrity,
To exchange this cage for a pleasant life.
By God, if they were to bind my body in chains,
If all Arabs were to sell their faith, I would not sell mine.

I have composed these lines
For the day when your children have grown old.

O God—who governs creation with providence,
Who is one, singular and self-subsisting,
Who brings comfort and happy tidings,
Whom we worship—
Grant serenity to a heart that beats with oppression,
And release this prisoner from the tight bonds of confinement.

This is another poem I like, since my dad introduced me to it years ago.


A Constable Calls by Seamus heaney

His bicycle stood at the window-sill,
The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher
Skirting the front mudguard,
Its fat black handlegrips

Heating in sunlight, the ‘spud’
Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back,
The pedal treads hanging relieved
Of the boot of the law.

His cap was upside down
On the floor, next his chair.
The line of its pressure ran like a bevel
In his slightly sweating hair.

He had unstrapped
The heavy ledger, and my father
Was making tillage returns
In acres, roods, and perches.

Arithmetic and fear.
I sat staring at the polished holster
With its buttoned flap, the braid cord
Looped into the revolver butt.

‘Any other root crops?
Mangolds? Marrowstems? Anything like that?’
‘No.’ But was there not a line
Of turnips where the seed ran out

In the potato field? I assumed
Small guilts and sat
Imagining the black hole in the barracks.
He stood up, shifted the baton-case

Farther round on his belt,
Closed the domesday book,
Fitted his cap back with two hands,
And looked at me as he said goodbye.

A shadow bobbed in the window.
He was snapping the carrier spring
Over the ledger. His boot pushed off
And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.

A Christmas Childhood
By Patrick Kavanagh

My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east;
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon - the Three Wise Kings.

An old man passing said:
"Can't he make it talk" -
The melodion, I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife's big blade -
There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary's blouse.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come, see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by younder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

The Oxen, by Thomas Hardy.

This always moves me to tears. Always.

That's a lovely poem An Gadai.

They are all lovely. thank you all for posting them.

I am a great Housman fan, myself. Lyric poetry is often sneered at, but not by me.

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Originally posted by vison

That's a lovely poem An Gadai.

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I've known it for years, studied it in school, but I only recently "got" it and it moved me to tears.