Favorite Poems

I don't have a favorite poet, but I do have favorite poems. I thought it might be worthwhile to begin a thread of favorite poems to share.

Share as many as you like. Feel free to state why the poem is a favorite or let the poem speak for itself.

Nurture

BY MAXINE W. KUMIN

From a documentary on marsupials I learn
that a pillowcase makes a fine
substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.
They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,
from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.
Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—
filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called
in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,
given my fireside inked with paw prints,
there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,
might have constructed from sign,
scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

S.O.S. 1995

BY LEONARD COHEN

Take a long time with your anger,
sleepyhead.
Don't waste it in riots.
Don't tangle it with ideas.
The Devil won't let me speak,
Will only let me hint
that you are a slave,
your misery a deliberate policy
of those in whose thrall you suffer,
and who are sustained
by your misfortune.
The atrocities over there,
the interior paralysis over here -
Pleased with the better deal?
You are clamped down.
You are being bred for pain.
The Devil ties my tongue.
I'm speaking to you,
'friend of my scribbled life.'
You have been conquered by those
who know how to conquer invisibly.
The curtains move so beautifully,
lace curtains of some
sweet old intrigue:
the Devil tempting me
to turn away from alarming you.
So I must say it quickly:
Whomever is in your life,
those who harm you,
those who help you:
those whom you know
and those whom you do not know -
let them off the hook,
help them off the hook.
Recognize the hook.
You are listening to Radio Resistance.

Hugo Claus De Moeder (The Mother-English version below)

Ik ben niet, ik ben niet dan in uw aarde.
Toen gij schreeuwde en uw vel beefde
Vatten mijn beenderen vuur.

(Mijn moeder, gevangen in haar vel,
Verandert naar de maat der jaren.

Haar oog is licht, ontsnapt aan de drift
Der jaren door mij aan te zien en mij
Haar blijde zoon te noemen.

Zij was geen stenen bed, geen dierenkoorts,
Haar gewrichten waren jonge katten,

Maar onvergeeflijk blijft mijn huid voor haar
En onbeweeglijk zijn de krekels in mijn stem.

'Je bent mij ontgroeid,' zegt zij traag mijn
Vaders voeten wassend, en zij zwijgt
als een vrouw zonder mond.)

Toen uw vel schreeuwde vatten mijn beenderen vuur.
Gij legde mij neder, nooit kan ik dit beeld herdragen,
Ik was de genode maar de dodende gast.

En nu, later, mannelijk word ik u vreemd.
Gij ziet mij naar u komen, gij denkt: 'Hij is
De zomer, hij maakt mijn vlees en houdt
De honden in mij wakker.'

Terwijl gij elke dag te sterven staat, niet met mij
Samen, ben ik niet, ben ik niet dan in uw aarde.
In mij vergaat uw leven wentelend, gij keert
Niet naar mij terug. van u herstel ik niet.



I am not, I am only in your earth.
When you screamed and your skin quivered
My bones caught fire.

(My mother, caught in her skin,
Changes with the measure of the years.

Her eye is bright, escaped from the urge
Of the years through looking at me and
Calling me her happy son.

She was no stony bed, no animal fever,
Her joints were young cats,

But my skin remains unforgivable to her
And the crickets in my voice are motionless.

‘You have outgrown me,’ she says dully
Washing my father’s feet, and she is silent
Like a woman without a mouth.)

When you screamed my bones caught fire.
You put me down, I can never rebear this picture,
I was the invited but deadly guest.

And now, later, I in my manhood am strange to you.
You see me approach you, you think: ‘He is
The summer, he makes my flesh and keeps
The dogs in me alive.’

While you must die every day, not together
With me, I am not, I am not except in your earth.
In me your life perishes in rotation, you do not
Return to me, from you I do not recover.

bogusagain said:

Hugo Claus De Moeder (The Mother-English version below)

Ik ben niet, ik ben niet dan in uw aarde.
Toen gij schreeuwde en uw vel beefde
Vatten mijn beenderen vuur.

(Mijn moeder, gevangen in haar vel,
Verandert naar de maat der jaren.

Haar oog is licht, ontsnapt aan de drift
Der jaren door mij aan te zien en mij
Haar blijde zoon te noemen.

Zij was geen stenen bed, geen dierenkoorts,
Haar gewrichten waren jonge katten,

Maar onvergeeflijk blijft mijn huid voor haar
En onbeweeglijk zijn de krekels in mijn stem.

'Je bent mij ontgroeid,' zegt zij traag mijn
Vaders voeten wassend, en zij zwijgt
als een vrouw zonder mond.)

Toen uw vel schreeuwde vatten mijn beenderen vuur.
Gij legde mij neder, nooit kan ik dit beeld herdragen,
Ik was de genode maar de dodende gast.

En nu, later, mannelijk word ik u vreemd.
Gij ziet mij naar u komen, gij denkt: 'Hij is
De zomer, hij maakt mijn vlees en houdt
De honden in mij wakker.'

Terwijl gij elke dag te sterven staat, niet met mij
Samen, ben ik niet, ben ik niet dan in uw aarde.
In mij vergaat uw leven wentelend, gij keert
Niet naar mij terug. van u herstel ik niet.



I am not, I am only in your earth.
When you screamed and your skin quivered
My bones caught fire.

(My mother, caught in her skin,
Changes with the measure of the years.

Her eye is bright, escaped from the urge
Of the years through looking at me and
Calling me her happy son.

She was no stony bed, no animal fever,
Her joints were young cats,

But my skin remains unforgivable to her
And the crickets in my voice are motionless.

‘You have outgrown me,’ she says dully
Washing my father’s feet, and she is silent
Like a woman without a mouth.)

When you screamed my bones caught fire.
You put me down, I can never rebear this picture,
I was the invited but deadly guest.

And now, later, I in my manhood am strange to you.
You see me approach you, you think: ‘He is
The summer, he makes my flesh and keeps
The dogs in me alive.’

While you must die every day, not together
With me, I am not, I am not except in your earth.
In me your life perishes in rotation, you do not
Return to me, from you I do not recover.

Click to expand...

Beautiful, powerful stuff! Thanks for sharing this.

By BERTOLT BRECHT

[size=+1]ORGE'S LIST OF WISHES[/size]

Of joys, the unweighed.
Of skins, the unflayed.

Of stories, the incomprehensible.
Of suggestions, the indispensable.

Of girls, the new.
Of women, the untrue.

Of orgasms, the uncoordinated.
Of enmities, the reciprocated.

Of abodes, the impermanent.
Of partings, the unexuberant.

Of arts, the unexploitable.
Of teachers, the forgetable.

Of pleasures, the unsurreptitious.
Of alms, the adventitious.

Of enemies, the delicate.
Of friends, the unsophisticate.

Of greens, the emerald.
Of messages, the herald.

Of the elements, fire.
Of the gods, the higher.

Of the stricken, the deferential.
Of the seasons, the torrential.

Of lives, the lucid.
Of deaths, the rapid.


Note: I am not quite sure but I think Orge was a German actor or play write, or both in the beginning of the 20th century.

My Father's Love Letters
Yusef Komunyakaa

Listen
On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Having read these I notice that there are similarities in the way each poet who posted their favourite piece writes, gm's is full of compassion and a brilliant story, along with undercurrents that are deeper than surface level reading.

Bogus's fav is raw empassioned and very in your face this is what it is, and you can't help but be drawn in by the strength of the writing.

Pelegrinos is rhyme heavy, but is not boring in its structure and full of interesting ideas and phrases

Angeline's is very image centric has a slow reveal and leaves you with lots of questions, but satisfied on top level but need to read and digest some more.


Very, very interesting, I enjoyed all of these by the way. Thanks for sharing, hope to see more soon.

Edited to add should this thread maybe have a companion to stop the two posts already filling it with things that probably would be better served elsewhere?

Wicked Eve is and will always be one of my favorite poets. She has a way of describing people, situations and "things" that I have yet to find any other poet who exceeds her ability to put the reader "there." Except, perhaps, Robert Frost.

Anyway, I am adding a link to one of my favorite poems of hers, she has so many, and she deleted more of her work than could ever be replaced, in my mind. I hope she saved copies, dear goodness, I hoe she saved copies....


Bullwhip Rose

**here is one written by our "own" winged-buzzy lil adorable creature who has an affinity for corndogs

Yes, he claims it, but without speaking to him, I will not put his real name here out of respect for privacy. It is a wonderful piece, I like to entertain the thought he wrote it for me, but then that would be rather assuming....




-----------------------------------------------

Her Request

"Write me a poem," she said,
"of promise
and lust. Put your pen
to paper as you would
put your hand
to me; your fingers

on my slender
neck, your thumb
tight beneath. Push

that slick trail black
and blue on virgin
page and tell me
in words I can hold
in my mouth, savoring

your intents as pulp
between my teeth. Slip
what you want of me
into language that rolls
on my tongue, clings
in spittle to my lip. Write

what you need of me
in latex or lace and pull
the verse tight
about my breasts;
make me inhale
sharply
as I read. Give me

words that knot
in my hair, draw
my face
down
till my whispers barely fit
between me
and your poem."

~~~

by- E.M.

** This poem was published on Clean Sheets back in 2005.**

Meditation on a Grapefruit
BY CRAIG ARNOLD


To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day
have gripped you
To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
To tear the husk
like cotton padding a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully without breaking
a single pearly cell
To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
so sweet
a discipline
precisely pointless a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause a little emptiness

each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without

Source: Poetry (October 2009).

Note: The original displays empty spaces between a fair amount of words in order to slow the recitation or reading of the poem.

......

Man Listening To Disc
Billy Collins

This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music
flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,

as if he were right beside me
on this clear day in March,
the pavement sparkling with sunlight,
pigeons fluttering off the curb,
nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs.

In fact, I would say
my delight at being suffused
with phrases from his saxophone --
some like honey, some like vinegar --
is surpassed only by my gratitude

to Tommy Potter for taking the time
to join us on this breezy afternoon
with his most unwieldy bass
and to the esteemed Arthur Taylor
who is somehow managing to navigate

this crowd with his cumbersome drums.
And I bow deeply to Thelonious Monk
for figuring out a way
to motorize -- or whatever -- his huge piano
so he could be with us today.

This music is loud yet so confidential.
I cannot help feeling even more
like the center of the universe
than usual as I walk along to a rapid
little version of "The Way You Look Tonight,"

and all I can say to my fellow pedestrians,
to the woman in the white sweater,
the man in the tan raincoat and the heavy glasses,
who mistake themselves for the center of the universe --
all I can say is watch your step,

because the five of us, instruments and all,
are about to angle over
to the south side of the street
and then, in our own tightly knit way,
turn the corner at Sixth Avenue.

And if any of you are curious
about where this aggregation,
this whole battery-powered crew,
is headed, let us just say
that the real center of the universe,

the only true point of view,
is full of hope that he,
the hub of the cosmos
with his hair blown sideways,
will eventually make it all the way downtown.

HoneyAdored, That is also one of my best loved sonnets by Neruda. Thanks for reminding it to all of us.

Angeline, what a perfect quartet, (quintet more correctly) on a perfect day!
No words for it.

Angeline said:

Man Listening To Disc
Billy Collins

This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music
flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,

Click to expand...

Aah Billy. How long before 1201 comes along and spoils our middlebrow fun?

A Good Woman Feeling Bad

A Good Woman Feeling Bad
Maya Angelou

The blues may be the life you've led
Or midnight hours in
An empty bed. But persecuting
Blues I've known
Could stalk
Like tigers, break like bone,

Pens like rope in
A gallows tree,
Make me curse
My pedigree,

Bitterness thick on
A rankling tongue,
A psalm to love that's
Left unsung.

Rivers heading north
But ending South,
Funeral music
In a going-home mouth.

All riddles are blues
All blues are sad,
And I'm only mentioning
Some blues I've had.



Sometimes I "count my blessings instead of sheep", and then there are the times I count my blues. I love how Maya counts her blues...

Emigrante
by Corsino Fortes


Todas as tardes o poente dobra
o teu polegar sobre a ilha
E do poente ao polegar
cresce
um progresso de pedra morta
Que a Península
Ainda bebe
Pela taça da colónia
Todo o sangue do teu corpo peregrino

Mas quando a tua voz
for onda no violão da praia
E a terra do rosto E o rosto da terra
Estender-te a palma da mão
Da oral maritima di ilha
De pão & pão feita
Ajunturás a última fome
à tua fome primeira

Do alto virão
rostos-e-proas-da-não-viagem
Assim erva assim mercuro
Arrancar-te as cruzes do corpo

O grito das mães leva-te
agora
À sétima esquina
onde a ilha naufraga
onde a ilha festaja
A sua dor de filha
E a tua dor de parturiente
Que toda a partida É potência na morte
todo o regresso É infância que soletra
Já não esperamos o metabolismo
Polme de boa fruta fruta de boa polpa
A terra
aspira
teu falo verde

E antes que teu pé
seja
árvore na colina

E tua mão
cante
lua nova em meu ventre

Vai E planta
na boca d’Amílcar morto
Este punhado de agrião
E solver golo a golo
uma fonética de frescura
E com as vírgulas da rua
com as sílabas de porta em porta
Varrerás antes da noite
Os caminhos que vão
até às escolas nocturnas
Que toda a partida é alfabeto que nasce
todo o regresso é nação que soletra

Aguardam-te
os cães e os leitões
da casa de Chota
que no quintal emagrecem de morabeza

Aguardam-te
os copos E a semântica das tabernas

Aguardem-te
as alimárias
amordaçadas de aplauso e cana-de-açúcar

Aguardam-te
os rostos que explodem
no sangue das formigas
novos campos de pastorícia

Mas
quando o teu corpo
sangue & lenhite de puro cio

Erguer
Sobre a seara
A tua dor
E o teu orgasmo
Quem não soube
Quem não sabe
Emigrante
Que toda a partida É potência na morte
E todo o regresso É infância que soletra

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Every evening, sunset crooks
its thumb across the island
And from the sunset to the thumb
there grows
a path of dead stone
And this peninsula
Still drinks
All the blood of your wandering body
From a tenant farmer’s cup

But when your voice
becomes a chord on the shore’s guitar
And the earth of the face and the face of the earth
Extend the palm of the hand
From the seaward edge of the island
A palm made of bread
You will merge your final hunger
with your first

From above there will come
The faces and prows of not-voyage
So that herbal and mercury
Extract the crosses from your body

The screaming of mothers carries you
now
To the seventh corner
where the island is shipwrecked
where the island celebrates
Your daughter pain
The pain of a woman in childbirth

So that all parting is power in death
all return a child’s learning to spell

No longer do we wait for the cycle
Pulp from good fruit, fruit from good pulp
The earth
breathes in
your green speech

And there before your feet
should be
a tree on a hill


And your hand
should sing
a new moon in my heart

Go and plant
in dead Amilcar’s mouth
This fistful of watercress
And spread from goal to goal
a fresh phonetics
And with the commas of the street
and syllables from door to door
You will sweep away before the night
The roads that go
as far as the night-schools
For all departure means a growing alphabet
for all return is a nation’s language

They await you
the dogs and the piglets
at Chota’s house
grown thin from the warmth of the welcome

They await you
the cups and semantics of taverns

They await you
the beasts
choking on applause and sugarcane

They await you
faces that explode
on the blood of ants
new pastorals to cultivate

But
when your body
of blood and lignite, on heat

Raises
Over the harvest
Your pain
And your orgasm
Who didn’t know
Who doesn’t know
Emigrant
That all of parting is power in death
And all return is a child learning to spell

http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/112/Emigrant/translated

@Epmd607 I thought you were against prose poetry?

But when your voice becomes a chord on the shore’s guitar and the earth of the face and the face of the earth extend the palm of the hand from the seaward edge of the island. A palm made of bread. You will merge your final hunger with your first

@epmd

A good translation, but lacking in certain points.

Aeolian dialect is more difficult to understand and translate than Ionian or Dorian even for people who study classical Greek for years, simply because less has been written in it and scholars are not equally familiar with it as they are with the other dialects. Here I translate a short surviving fragment of a poem in Aeolian Greek by a poetess who has been called the "Tenth Muse". It is a simple panhuman and beautiful expression of loneliness.

ΨΑΠΦΩ (600 π.Χ.)

ΜΟΝΑ ΚΑΘΕΥΔΩ

ΔΕΔΥΚΕ ΜΕΝ Α ΣΕΛΑΝΑ
ΚΑΙ ΠΛΕΙΑΔΕΣ,
ΜΕΣΑΙ ΔΕ ΝΥΚΤΑΙ,
ΠΑΡΑ Δ' ΕΡΧΕΤ' ΩΡΑ,
ΕΓΩ ΔΕ,
ΜΟΝΑ ΚΑΘΕΥΔΩ.

By SAPPHO (c. 600 BC)

I SLEEP ALONE

The moon has set
and the Pleiades,
it is the middle of the night,
the hours pass by
and I sleep alone.

todski28 said:

Having read these I notice that there are similarities in the way each poet who posted their favourite piece writes, gm's is full of compassion and a brilliant story, along with undercurrents that are deeper than surface level reading.

Bogus's fav is raw empassioned and very in your face this is what it is, and you can't help but be drawn in by the strength of the writing.

Pelegrinos is rhyme heavy, but is not boring in its structure and full of interesting ideas and phrases

Angeline's is very image centric has a slow reveal and leaves you with lots of questions, but satisfied on top level but need to read and digest some more.


Very, very interesting, I enjoyed all of these by the way. Thanks for sharing, hope to see more soon.

Edited to add should this thread maybe have a companion to stop the two posts already filling it with things that probably would be better served elsewhere?

Click to expand...

you getting very good at this, makes me almost afraid to post something

Mit wechselndem Schlüssel
schliesst du das Haus auf, darin
der Schnee des Verschwiegenen treibt.
Je nach dem Blut, das dir quillt
aus Aug oder Mund oder Ohr,
wechselt dein Schlüssel.

Wechselt dein Schlüssel, wechselt das Wort,
das treiben darf mit den Flocken.
Je nach dem Wind, der dich fortstösst,
ballt um das Wort sich der Schnee.

- Paul Celan

With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always that key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.

You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snow ball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you.

trans Michael Hamburger

twelveoone said:

Mit wechselndem Schlüssel
schliesst du das Haus auf, darin
der Schnee des Verschwiegenen treibt.
Je nach dem Blut, das dir quillt
aus Aug oder Mund oder Ohr,
wechselt dein Schlüssel.

Wechselt dein Schlüssel, wechselt das Wort,
das treiben darf mit den Flocken.
Je nach dem Wind, der dich fortstösst,
ballt um das Wort sich der Schnee.

- Paul Celan

With a variable keoy
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always that key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.

You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snow ball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you.

trans Michael Hamburger

Click to expand...

that first line sums you and your poetry up, and the rest of the poem thought provoking and emotional knee jerk reaction invoking, crimson splashed on white like a Rorschach blot, your mood, your experiences, define the way you can read and interpret the piece.

todski28 said:

that first line sums you and your poetry up, and the rest of the poem thought provoking and emotional knee jerk reaction invoking, crimson splashed on white like a Rorschach blot, your mood, your experiences, define the way you can read and interpret the piece.

Click to expand...

how do you know I wasn't leading you?

twelveoone said:

how do you know I wasn't leading you?

Click to expand...

How do I know the translation is correct?
For what it is worth that explains the way I see your writing regardless of leading, or interpretational what ever. Even if you were leading it was already where my head was at. Put my comment to I the shadow, or the wind in the pines my love and tell me it doesn't fit