The White Peacock by Stephen Vincent Benet
The White Peacock by Stephen Vincent Benet (France — Ancient Regime.) I. Go away! Go away; I will not confess to you! His black biretta clings like a hangman’s cap; under his twitching fingers the beads shiver and click, As he mumbles in his corner, the shadow deepens upon him; I will not confess! . […]
The Quality of Courage by Stephen Vincent Benet
The Quality of Courage by Stephen Vincent Benet Black trees against an orange sky, Trees that the wind shook terribly, Like a harsh spume along the road, Quavering up like withered arms, Writhing like streams, like twisted charms Of hot lead flung in snow. Below The iron ice stung like a goad, Slashing the torn […]
The Hemp by Stephen Vincent Benet
The Hemp by Stephen Vincent Benet (A Virginia Legend.) The Planting of the Hemp. Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas (Black is the gap below the plank) From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees (Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank). His fear was on the seaport towns, The weight of his hand […]
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun by Stephen Vincent Benet
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun by Stephen Vincent Benet “Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way.” Letter of George Keats, 18– Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark, Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling […]
Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benet
Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benet There is darkness behind the light — and the pale light drips Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships — And the firelight wavers and changes about the room, As the three logs crackle and burn with a […]
Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua by Stephen Vincent Benet
Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua by Stephen Vincent Benet Next, then, the peacock, gilt With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes Flow in the eyes! And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt Along the back, that like a sea-wave’s crest Scatters soft beauty o’er th’ emblazoned breast! A strange […]
Edmonton, thy cemetery by Stevie Smith
Edmonton, thy cemetery by Stevie Smith Edmonton, thy cemetery In which I love to tread Has roused in me a dreary thought For all the countless dead, Ah me, the countless dead. Yet I believe that one is one And shall for ever be, And while I hold to this belief I walk, oh cemetery, […]
Funeral Day Thoughts by Sudheesh Vs
Your eyes were fixed Staring at nothing, and- Turning into pale blue. The eyes I ever loved For being so serene Lovely or lusty: As they change like tides As they change like seasons. Your voice were thin and lost- Before it’s heard. The voice I ever loved For being so resonant Un-fluttered or breathy: […]
Yadwigha, On A Red Couch, Among Lillies by Sylvia Plath
Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you Came to be lying on this baroque couch Upholstered in red velvet, under the eye Of uncaged tigers and a tropical moon, Set in intricate wilderness of green Heart-shaped leaves, like catalpa leaves, and lillies Of monstrous size, like no well-bred lilies It seems teh consistent critics wanted […]
The Surgeon At 2 A.M. by Sylvia Plath
The white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven. The microbes cannot survive it. They are departing in their transparent garments, turned aside From the scalpels and the rubber hands. The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful. The body under it is in my hands. As usual there is no face. A lump […]
The Courage Of Shutting-Up by Sylvia Plath
The courage of the shut mouth, in spite of artillery! The line pink and quiet, a worm, basking. There are black disks behind it, the disks of outrage, And the outrage of a sky, the lined brain of it. The disks revolve, they ask to be heard- Loaded, as they are, with accounts of bastardies. […]
Temper Of Time by Sylvia Plath
An ill wind is stalking While evil stars whir And all the gold apples Go bad to the core. Black birds of omen Now prowl on the bough; With a hiss of disaster Sibyl’s leaves blow. Through closets of copses Tall skeletons walk; Nightshade and nettles Tangle the track. In the ramshackle meadow Where Kilroy […]
Sonnet To Satan by Sylvia Plath
In darkroom of your eye the moonly mind somersaults to counterfeit eclipse; bright angels black out over logic’s land under shutter of their handicaps. Commanding that corkscrew comet jet forth ink to pitch the white world down in swivelling flood, you overcast all order’s noonday rank and turn god’s radiant photograph to shade. Steepling snake […]
Sleep In The Mojave Desert by Sylvia Plath
Out here there are no hearthstones, Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry. And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly On the mind’s eye erecting a line Of poplars in the middle distance, the only Object beside the mad, straight road One can remember men and houses by. A cool wind should inhabit these leaves […]
Monologue At 3 AM by Sylvia Plath
Better that every fiber crack and fury make head, blood drenching vivid couch, carpet, floor and the snake-figured almanac vouching you are a million green counties from here, than to sit mute, twitching so under prickling stars, with stare, with curse blackening the time goodbyes were said, trains let go, and I, great magnanimous fool, […]
Electra On Azalea Path by Sylvia Plath
The day you died I went into the dirt, Into the lightless hibernaculum Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard. It was good for twenty years, that wintering – As if you never existed, as if I came God-fathered into the world from my […]
Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath
I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard’s study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye’s darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body : I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard’s study. ————— The End […]
Totem by Sylvia Plath
The engine is killing the track, the track is silver, It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless. Its running is useless. At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields, Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs, Swaying slightly in their thick suits, White towers of Smithfield ahead, Fat haunches and blood on […]
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 […]
Stillborn by Sylvia Plath
These poems do not live: it’s a sad diagnosis.They grew their toes and fingers well enough,Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.If they missed out on walking about like peopleIt wasn’t for any lack of mother-love. O I cannot explain what happened to them!They are proper in shape and number and every part.They sit so nicely […]
Snakecharmer by Sylvia Plath
As the gods began one world, and man another, So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water. Pipes water green until green waters waver With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings. And as his notes twine green, the green river Shapes its images around his sons. He […]
Private Ground by Sylvia Plath
First frost, and I walk among the rose-fruit, the marble toes Of the Greek beauties you brought Off Europe’s relic heap To sweeten your neck of the New York woods. Soon each white lady will be boarded up Against the crackling climate. All morning, with smoking breath, the handyman Has been draining the goldfish ponds. […]
Perseus by Sylvia Plath
The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering Head alone shows you in the prodigious act Of digesting what centuries alone digest: The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow, Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time, Rinsing those stables: a […]
Snakecharmer by Sylvia Plath
As the gods began one world, and man another, So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water. Pipes water green until green waters waver With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings. And as his notes twine green, the green river Shapes its images around his sons. He […]
Private Ground by Sylvia Plath
First frost, and I walk among the rose-fruit, the marble toes Of the Greek beauties you brought Off Europe’s relic heap To sweeten your neck of the New York woods. Soon each white lady will be boarded up Against the crackling climate. All morning, with smoking breath, the handyman Has been draining the goldfish ponds. […]
Perseus by Sylvia Plath
The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering Head alone shows you in the prodigious act Of digesting what centuries alone digest: The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow, Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time, Rinsing those stables: a […]
Medallion by Sylvia Plath
By the gate with star and moon Worked into the peeled orange wood The bronze snake lay in the sun Inert as a shoelace; dead But pliable still, his jaw Unhinged and his grin crooked, Tongue a rose-colored arrow. Over my hand I hung him. His little vermilion eye Ignited with a glassed flame As […]
Medallion by Sylvia Plath
By the gate with star and moon Worked into the peeled orange wood The bronze snake lay in the sun Inert as a shoelace; dead But pliable still, his jaw Unhinged and his grin crooked, Tongue a rose-colored arrow. Over my hand I hung him. His little vermilion eye Ignited with a glassed flame As […]
Elm by Sylvia Plath
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root; It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and […]
Eavesdropper by Sylvia Plath
Your brother will trim my hedges! They darken your house, Nosy grower, Mole on my shoulder, To be scratched absently, To bleed, if it comes to that. The stain of the tropics Still urinous on you, a sin. A kind of bush-stink. You may be local, But that yellow! Godawful! Your body one Long nicotine-finger […]
Eclogues by Thomas Chatterton
Eclogues by Thomas Chatterton Eclogue the First. Whanne Englonde, smeethynge from her lethal wounde, From her galled necke dyd twytte the chayne awaie, Kennynge her legeful sonnes falle all arounde, (Myghtie theie fell, ’twas Honoure ledde the fraie,) Thanne inne a dale, bie eve’s dark surcote graie, Twayne lonelie shepsterres dyd abrodden flie, (The rostlyng […]
The Dead Woman by Pablo Neruda, La Muerta
[lwptoc] The Dead Woman (translated by Curtis Bauer) If suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall go on living. Because where a man has no voice, there, my voice Where […]
eclipse_of_love.html
!DOCTYPE html> html> head lang=”en-US”> title>Eclipse of Love by Tanisha Avarsekar/title> /div> div itemprop=”genre” id=”content”> p>Are those tears or fires in my eyes?br /> Reality is being manifested by the thought I most despise.br /> The day I had hoped would never come is here.br /> Taking away my soul and what I hold most […]
Cats by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Cats by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond Cats no less liquid than their shadows Offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes Less than themselves; will not be pinned To rules or routes for journeys; counter Attack with non-resistance; twist Enticing through the curving fingers And leave an angered empty fist. […]
que-sera-sera.html
!DOCTYPE html> html> head lang=”en-US”> title>Que Sera Sera by A. Van Jordan/title> /div> h1 class=”pageTitle”>Que Sera Sera/h1> div class=”entry-content clearfix”> h2 itemprop=”author” class=”author”>by A. Van Jordan/h2> div itemprop=”genre” id=”content”> div class=”taxonomy-images”>a href=”/a-van-jordan/poems.html” class=”taxonomy-image-links”>img itemprop=”image” src=”https://www.best-poems.net/files/imagecache/poet/category_pictures/A.%20Van%20Jordan.jpg” alt=”A. Van Jordan” title=”A. Van Jordan” width=”180″ height=”200″ class=”taxonomy-image-term-11067 taxonomy-image-vid-22″/>/a>/div>p>In my car, driving through Black Mountain,br /> North Carolina, I […]
Echo by Thomas Moore
How sweet the answer Echo makes To music at night, When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes, And far away, o’er lawns and lakes, Goes answering light. Yet Love hath echoes truer far, And far more sweet, Than e’er beneath the moonlight’s star, Of horn or lute, or soft guitar, The songs repeat. ‘Tis […]
Come, Send Round the Wine by Thomas Moore
Come, send round the wine, and leave points of belief To simpleton sages and reasoning fools; This moment’s a flower too fair and brief To be wither’d and stain’d by the dust of the schools. Your glass may be purple, and mine may be blue, But, while they are fill’d from the same bright bowl, […]
Henry Clay’s Mouth by Thomas Lux
Henry Clay’s Mouth by Thomas Lux Senator, statesman, speaker of the House, exceptional dancer, slim, graceful, ugly. Proclaimed, before most, slavery an evil, broker of elections (burned Jackson for Adams), took a pistol ball in the thigh in a duel, delayed, by forty years, with his compromises, the Civil War, gambler (“I have always paid […]
Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn […]
Autumn Leaves by Thomas J Camp
Why, in autumn, do leaves await the morning time? Is there a requirement that the Rooster crow to announce the event? Or does the bustle on the forest floor, Where the deer and rabbit find their way, Need to prepare somehow. Just like we may do, for a holiday? Trotting softly amongst the trees, The […]