Then by Eavan Boland Where are the lives we lived when we were young? Our kisses, the heat of our skin, our bitter words? The first waking to the first child’s cry? With just three questions and four lines, Irish poet Eavan Boland pulls up memories for me so swiftly and so abundantly that the […]
MoreSiren Song BY MARGARET ATWOOD This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls the song nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead, and the others can’t […]
MoreMagna Est Veritas by Coventry Patmore Here, in this little Bay, Full of tumultuous life and great repose, Where, twice a day, The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes, Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, I sit me down. For want of me the world’s course will not fail: When all its […]
MoreThe Overhead Rack By John Updike Worst of all, and most hated by me as I sit docilely crammed into my seat, crammed and strapped like a psychotic in restraints, are these bland-faced complacent graduates of business school, trained to give each other and the rest of the poor world the business, who […]
Morepoem is taped to trashcan Yesterday By W.S. Merwin My friend says I was not a good son you understand I say yes I understand – he says I did not go to see my parents very often you know and I say yes I know – even when I was […]
MoreLot’s Wife by Anna Akhmatova And the just man trailed God’s shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: “It’s not too late, you can still look back – at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, […]
MoreLove Song by William Carlos Williams Sweep the house clean, hang fresh curtains in the windows put on a new dress and come with me! The elm is scattering its little loaves of sweet smells from a white sky! – Who shall hear of us in the time to come? Let him say there was […]
MoreOde to the Maggot by Yusef Komunyakaa Brother of the blowfly & godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork – & flophouses. Yes, you Go to the root of all things. You are sound & mathematical. Jesus, Christ, you’re merciless – With the truth. Ontological & lustrous, You cast spells on […]
MoreThe World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The […]
MoreA BLESSING by James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they […]
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