Continuing to live — that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries —
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise —
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it’s chess.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
And what’s the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- I Sing The Body Electric by Philip Levine
- Let Him Free by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Низами Гянджеви – Слышишь, звякнул бубенцами
- Orlando Furioso Canto 20 by Ludovico Ariosto
- As the Bell Clinks by Rudyard Kipling
- Adam’s Curse by William Butler Yeats
- Омар Хайям – Небо кушак, что облек изнуренный мой стан
- Владимир Маяковский – В РСФСР 130 миллионов населения (Агитплакаты)
- Last Turn Of The Morning Carousel/Forever Turn The Midnight Carousel by Matthew Abuelo
- William Stafford – William Stafford
- A Message from my Lodge at Wangchuan to Pei Di by Wang Wei
- Grief An’ Gladness by William Barnes
- At Oxford by William Lisle Bowles
- A Fable by William Cowper
- Валерий Брюсов – Из тихих бездн
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.