Ode for General Washington’s Birthday by Robert Burns
NO Spartan tube, no Attic shell, No lyre Æolian I awake; ’Tis liberty’s bold note I swell, Thy harp, Columbia, let me take! See gathering thousands, while I sing, A broken chain exulting bring, And dash it in a tyrant’s face, And dare him to his very beard, And tell him he no more is […]
Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner by Robert Burns
AULD comrade dear, and brither sinner, How’s a’ the folk about Glenconner? How do you this blae eastlin wind, That’s like to blaw a body blind? For me, my faculties are frozen, My dearest member nearly dozen’d. I’ve sent you here, by Johnie Simson, Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on; Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling, […]
Ballad on the American War by Robert Burns
WHEN Guilford good our pilot stood An’ did our hellim thraw, man, Ae night, at tea, began a plea, Within America, man: Then up they gat the maskin-pat, And in the sea did jaw, man; An’ did nae less, in full congress, Than quite refuse our law, man. Then thro’ the lakes Montgomery takes, I […]
Address to Beelzebub by Robert Burns
Long life, my Lord, an’ health be yours, Unskaithed by hunger’d Highland boors; Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar, Wi’ dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger, May twin auld Scotland o’ a life She likes—as butchers like a knife. Faith you and Applecross were right To keep the Highland hounds in sight: I doubt na! […]
A Dream by Robert Burns
Guid-mornin’ to our Majesty! May Heaven augment your blisses On ev’ry new birth-day ye see, A humble poet wishes. My bardship here, at your Levee On sic a day as this is, Is sure an uncouth sight to see, Amang thae birth-day dresses Sae fine this day. I see ye’re complimented thrang, By mony a […]
The Rhyme of the Three Sealers by Rudyard Kipling
Away by the lands of the Japanee Where the paper lanterns glow And the crews of all the shipping drink In the house of Blood Street Joe, At twilight, when the landward breeze Brings up the harbour noise, And ebb of Yokohama Bay Swigs chattering through the buoys, In Cisco’s Dewdrop Dining-Rooms They tell the […]
The Rhyme of the Three Captains by Rudyard Kipling
This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact. . . . At the close of a winter day, Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to […]
The Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding-House by Rudyard Kipling
‘T was Fultah Fisher’s boarding-house, Where sailor-men reside, And there were men of all the ports From Mississip to Clyde, And regally they spat and smoked, And fearsomely they lied. They lied about the purple Sea That gave them scanty bread, They lied about the Earth beneath, The Heavens overhead, For they had looked too […]
An American by Rudyard Kipling
If the Led Striker call it a strike, Or the papers call it a war, They know not much what I am like, Nor what he is, My Avatar. Throuh many roads, by me possessed, He shambles forth in cosmic guise; He is the Jester and the Jest, And he the Text himself applies. The […]
Untitled by Quincy Troupe
Untitled by Quincy Troupe in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard duke’s place, played after salsa between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound the old white band jammin the music tight & heavy, […]
My Eyes in the Time of Apparition by Rachel McKibbens
Curse the steady mice who feast upon ____________my son’s gray matter— __________________those soft purveyors of wickedness, ____________mutilators of my womb, ______mutilators of an empty chapel. Praise the sirens of widening synapses, ______who beckoned my boy to fall, ____________then drift, upstream __________________to sleep without song & awaken _______________________savant: a piano angel hypnotist, __________________miracle hands ____________fraught with […]
little Sara’s sleep by Raj Arumugam
little Sara’s sleep by Raj Arumugam Mum, says little Sara Yes, darling, says Mum Let’s not sleep tonight. Why, sweetheart? Cos, mom, have you never thought about it? the world might disappear when we sleep and when we wake it may never come back; so let’s watch over the world tonight as everybody else sleeps […]
Bobber by Raymond Carver
On the Columbia River near Vantage, Washington, we fished for whitefish in the winter months; my dad, Swede- Mr. Lindgren-and me. They used belly-reels, pencil-length sinkers, red, yellow, or brown flies baited with maggots. They wanted distance and went clear out there to the edge of the riffle. I fished near shore with a quill […]
American Smooth by Rita Dove
We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride—such perfect agony, one learns to smile through, ecstatic mimicry being the sine qua non of American Smooth. And […]
No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos
No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth that announced the start of its own funeral. Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, the colorful and the charming. I love love, its tenderness and cruelty. My love has only one name, one […]
Dancing by Robert Hass
The radio clicks on—it’s poor swollen America, Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligation Of happiness while intermittently debating whether or not A man who kills fifty people in five minutes With an automatic weapon he has bought for the purpose Is mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Or if terrorists Are mentally ill. […]
Between The Wars by Robert Hass
When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon— midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote, read Polish history, and there was a woman whom I thought about; outside the moody, humid American sublime—late in the afternoon, toward sundown, just as the sky was darkening, the light came up and redwings settled in the cattails. […]
Waking in the Blue by Robert Lowell
Waking in the Blue by Robert Lowell The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore, rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head propped on The Meaning of Meaning. He catwalks down our corridor. Azure day makes my agonized blue window bleaker. Crows maunder on the petrified fairway. Absence! My hearts grows tense as though a harpoon […]
Memories of West Street and Lepke by Robert Lowell
Memories of West Street and Lepke by Robert Lowell Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning, I hog a whole house on Boston’s “hardly passionate Marlborough Street,” where even the man scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, and is […]
Home After Three Months Away by Robert Lowell
Home After Three Months Away by Robert Lowell Gone now the baby’s nurse, a lioness who ruled the roost and made the Mother cry. She used to tie gobbets of porkrind to bowknots of gauze— three months they hung like soggy toast on our eight foot magnolia tree, and helped the English sparrows weather a […]
For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell “Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.” The old South Boston Aquarium stands in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded. The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry. Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand […]
Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel
Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel We’re talking different kinds of vulnerability here. These icicles aren’t going to last for ever Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun. But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning, And the famous American sculptor Who scrambles the world with his tripod […]
Camelot & The Greek Widow by Graham Rowlands
I love you, Jack, she said & I believed she believed it. Why shouldn’t I? The Cold War was always on the hot plate Jack, wasn’t it? You were our noble warrior reading your Ian Fleming. We’d seen the sites in Cuba— waiting on missiles & on your spies & we’d seen the peasant’s boot […]
Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel
Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel We’re talking different kinds of vulnerability here. These icicles aren’t going to last for ever Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun. But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning, And the famous American sculptor Who scrambles the world with his tripod […]
Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney
Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass, Came dazzling around, into the rocks, Came glinting, sifting from the Americas To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush to throw wide arms of rock around a tide That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash? Did sea define the land […]
America, America by Saadi Youssef
God save America, My home, sweet home! We are not hostages, America, and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers… We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods, the gods of bulls, the gods of fires, the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song… We are the […]
The Great Conch Train Robbery by Shel Silverstein
‘Twas sunset down in old Key West The locals all were high. The tourists snapped their photographs And munched their Key Lime pie. And meanwhile down at Sloppy Joe’s The drinks were standin’ tall With Buffett on the jukebox And Hemingway on the wall. Then up spoke Sam the Shrimper: He said, “I’ve been a […]
I’m So Good That I Don’t Have To Brag by Shel Silverstein
Now I’m warnin’ all you women don’t stand too close to me cause you might catch fire Now you’re talkin’ to a man in a whole other kind of bag Well I’m three parts tiger and one part snake I’ll ball you to sleep and I’ll bite you awake And I’m so good that I […]
Bury Me In My Shades by Shel Silverstein
In a pad with no heat, up on Sullivan Street, The last of the hipsters lay dyin’. Wearin’ his shades, so like no one could tell Like whether or not he was cryin’. All the junkies and loners An’ coffee shop owners Were all gathered ’round his bed. He took one last puff Of some […]
Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier
Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier Written for the “Martha Washington Court Journal”. Down cold snow-stretches of our bitter time, When windy shams and the rain-mocking sleet Of Trade have cased us in such icy rime That hearts are scarcely hot enough to beat, Thy fame, O Lady of the lofty eyes, Doth fall along the […]
Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn
Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up with what’s left of heaven, nearby a patch of daffodils rooted down where dirt and stones comprise a kind of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic’s final sentence. What this scene needs is a nude absentmindedly […]
Occupy the Wall Street by Sunil Sharma
They came and occupied the Wall Street, By sitting/camping in Zuccotti Park, New York, September 17 onwards, After the amazing Arab Spring and Anna Hazare corruption crusade, And there was a spring of hope for the underdogs everywhere The protestors fanned out across the capitals of the world, October 9 and onwards, An idea had […]
A Winter’s Tale by Sylvia Plath
On Boston Common a red star Gleams, wired to a tall Ulmus Americana. Magi near The domed State House. Old Joseph holds an alpenstock. Two waxen oxen flank the Child. A black sheep leads the shepherds’ flock. Mary looks mild. Angels-more feminine and douce Than models from Bonwit’s or Jay’s, Haloes lustrous as Sirius- Gilt […]
Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath
(Rock Lake, Canada) In this country there is neither measure nor balance To redress the dominance of rocks and woods, The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds. No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention, No word make them carry water or fire the kindling Like local trolls in the spell of a […]
Three Women by Sylvia Plath
A Poem for Three Voices Setting: A Maternity Ward and round about FIRST VOICE: I am slow as the world. I am very patient, Turning through my time, the suns and stars Regarding me with attention. The moon’s concern is more personal: She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse. Is she sorry for what […]
Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath
From Water-Tower Hill to the brick prison The shingle booms, bickering under The sea’s collapse. Snowcakes break and welter. This year The gritted wave leaps The seawall and drops onto a bier Of quahog chips, Leaving a salty mash of ice to whiten In my grandmother’s sand yard. She is dead, Whose laundry snapped and […]
Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath
From Water-Tower Hill to the brick prison The shingle booms, bickering under The sea’s collapse. Snowcakes break and welter. This year The gritted wave leaps The seawall and drops onto a bier Of quahog chips, Leaving a salty mash of ice to whiten In my grandmother’s sand yard. She is dead, Whose laundry snapped and […]
Candles by Sylvia Plath
They are the last romantics, these candles: Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers, And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes, Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints. It is touching, the way they’ll ignore A whole family of prominent objects Simply to plumb the deeps of an eye In its […]
A Woman Unconscious by Ted Hughes
A Woman Unconscious by Ted Hughes Russia and America circle each other; Threats nudge an act that were without doubt A melting of the mould in the mother, Stones melting about the root. The quick of the earth burned out: The toil of all our ages a loss With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought […]
The Boston Evening Transcript by T. S. Eliot
THE READERS of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod […]