Poems

And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap it two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on their seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun break down,
And death shall have no dominion.

XXX by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplane circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one:
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

iii

On a precipice stony and steep,
King Aegeus gazed on the deep.
 "If my son's sail are black,
 Then he ain't coming back!"
And he looked before taking a leap.

ii

The poor fellow never suspects
That there's something all wrong with the sex --
 To affairs of that kind
 He has always been blind.
All he touches, that Oedipus wrecks.

i

Lady Circe declared, "Men are swine--
For when you invite them to dine,
 They smack while they eat,
 Plus, their small, cloven feet
Cannot open a bottle of wine."

Manntje, Manntje, Timpe Te,
Buttje, Buttje inne See,
myne Fru de Ilsebill
will nich so, as ik wol will.

It vanished, got no notice and nothing. Posted one yesterday.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair’d the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear, their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Dead Language Lesson by A.E. Stallings

They life their half-closed eyes out of the grammar.

What is the object of love ? You,
Singular. The subject? I.

Aeneas has nothing to say for himself.
Even the boys confess that he
Didn't intend to come back, the girls
Already know the tale by heart.

They wheedle me for tangents, for
Anything not in a book,
Even though it's all from books:
The many-wiled Penelope,
Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

I confiscate a note in which
The author writes, "who do you love"?--
An agony past all correction.

I think, as they wait for the bell,
Blessed are the young for whom
All languages are dead: the girl
Who twines her golden hair, like Circe,
Turning glib boys into swine.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time By Robert Herrick

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, 
Old Time is still a-flying; 
And this same flower that smiles today 
Tomorrow will be dying. 

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
The higher he’s a-getting, 
The sooner will his race be run, 
And nearer he’s to setting. 

That age is best which is the first, 
When youth and blood are warmer; 
But being spent, the worse, and worst 
Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time, 
And while ye may, go marry; 
For having lost but once your prime, 
You may forever tarry.

The Fisherman by Anis Mojgani

The fisherman

throws his nets

At night, when he eats, he sits alone

His plate round as the moon

He lights one candle on his table

He cuts the fish with his fork and his knife

Peeling back its skin like a bed sheet

Most mornings he wakes before the sun

For the fish, they don't sleep long

On some nights, when he's been drinking heavily

He goes down to the rocks and he reads to the fish

He reads to them poems, poems from books

Poems about the human condition, about the muscles inside of him

That question and quiver and shiver in sleep

Bottle in one hand, book in the other

Books clutching poems like they were their mother

Too afraid to let their children out into the soft fear of the electric night

And he was the wild one to show them this world

His mother will never hold him like that again, he thinks

I'm too big

Book in one hand, bottle in the other

While the storms flock behind him like gathering ballooning corpses

He screams these poems, screaming out the words

Like they were teeth he no longer needed or cared for

He slurs his screams like a drunk preacher cutting a rope

Picking up poems like they were stones to fling at the foot of God's throne

Hurling word, after word, after word

Waiting for some door in some black cloud, but nothing happens

The rain falls, the waves swing, and the fish sleep

And awake, and sleep, and awake, and again and again

In the rocking of the ocean

He stands above them like a Noah surrounded by bucket after overflowing bucket

And all he has left to catch this wet lightning is this open mouth

So he reads to them

He reads to them about things that none of them will ever see

About flowers opening

About birds as large as cliffs, holding heroes between their silver wings

Carrying these warriors into the open grace of the gods

And a mighty providence this fisherman stands inside of

Their shields and shoulders polished hard enough to blind the sun right back

He empties himself and the waves swing

He goes home, falls into bed, sleeps all the next day

Night comes through his window like a dream, like a fever

Like a mother to hold him close to her

He wakes inside of her arms, goes to his kitchen

Lights his candle, cooks his audience

And peels back its skin like a bed sheet before crawling inside

They Feed They Lion By Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,

Out of black bean and wet slate bread,

Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,

Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,

They Lion grow.

                           Out of the gray hills

Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,

West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,

Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,

Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to 
stretch,   

They Lion grow.

                          Earth is eating trees, fence posts,

Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,

“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,

From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,

From the furred ear and the full jowl come

The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose

They Lion grow.

                          From the sweet glues of the trotters

Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower

Of the hams the thorax of caves,

From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”

Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,

The grained arm that pulls the hands,

They Lion grow.

                           From my five arms and all my hands,

From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,

From my car passing under the stars,

They Lion, from my children inherit,

From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,

From they sack and they belly opened

And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth

They feed they Lion and he comes.

Because the birds sculpted the air with their song — 

I sent that flash across the sea. Candle in a paper lantern,

the flame rose and dipped.

I’ve been hiding from my father.

Fog-damp pall over the city. I ink this bruise onto paper.

Years ago, in Highland Park, we’d picnic in the backyard.

We slept in the living room. I clung to my beautiful mother.

Flipped the pillow and pressed against its coolness.

I held grudges like tiny fists of sand, then, let go.

I kissed the fog and sky and the ocean’s cobalt hue.

You. I hadn’t yet met you.

Murky alphabet — 

I falter the letter, I elide the gaps. If the opalescent dew meant anything,

it meant that one day I’d be lifted above my feelings.

You’d become less than a feeling, the way every lover I’ve known

no longer hurts me. Those old charges detonated.

Here and now, I make room for joy. Birds ribbon the air with their singing.

Bird voices riot up. The planes with their hulking engines — 

they fly too. The jags of each cliff head —  Your lips — I uninterrupt.

I charley horse and miracle ride your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean.

Puddle of salt water, shivering wound. Seaweed, we sing of losses.

Cold under this blanket, I wait for my alarm to sing.

I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife. I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave

with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick of history dragging behind me.

Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father has retreated into silence and the lashes

across his back have not healed, and my mother tells me he could have killed

himself that night and we’d be blamed. Call the police, she said.

We stood barefoot on the street, listening to him throw things

against the garage walls, detonations of only what we could imagine.

I hurl stones into the ether. I wash my hands in ink.

The lost in the fog body borne of matter, history-less, untethered.

Better to be alive and bewildered. At least I can name the thing.

To love my father is to love his wounds.

In times like these, we present our hurts like old toys we polish up

to show each other who we used to be.

Elder Sister by Sharon Olds from In The Dead and the Living: Poems by Sharon Olds. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked


for some time for the Parks and Rec.


Horticultural Department, which means,


perhaps, that with his very large hands,


perhaps, in all likelihood,


he put gently into the earth


some plants which, most likely,


some of them, in all likelihood,


continue to grow, continue


to do what such plants do, like house


and feed small and necessary creatures,


like being pleasant to touch and smell,


like converting sunlight


into food, like making it easier


for us to breathe.