Some favourite short poems

Submitted by kenji on Wed, 02/09/2005 - 05:47

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ee cummings:
SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what is is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
LORD BYRON: THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
ROBERT BROWNING: HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD
O, To be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
RAINER MARIA RILKE: THIS IS THE CREATURE
This is the creature there has never been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
They loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
Its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.
Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.
And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace
of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only with the possibility of being.
And that was able to confer such strength,
its brow put forth a horn. One horn.
Whitely it stole up to a maid - to be
within the silver mirror and in her.
(Translation from German)
R.S.THOMAS: A MARRIAGE
We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
`Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.
PO CHU-I: BEING ON DUTY ALL NIGHT IN THE PALACE
At the western window i paused from writing rescripts;
The pines and bamboos were all buried in stillness.
The moon rose and a calm wind came;
Suddenly, it was like an evening in the hills.
And so, as i dozed, i dreamed of the South West
And thought i was staying at the Hsien0yu temple.
When i woke and heard the dripping of the Palace clock
I still thought it the murmur of a mountain stream.
(Translation from Chinese)
SEAMUS HEANEY: THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesmally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.
OTOMO NO YAKAMOCHI:
From outside my house,
only the faint distant sound
of gentle breezes
wandering through bamboo leaves
in the long evening silence.
Late evening finally comes:
I unlatch the door
and quietly await the one
who greets me in my dreams.
(Translation from Japanese)
GARY SNYDER: A SPRING NIGHT IN SHOKOKU-JI
Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
WILLIAM BLAKE: THE SICK ROSE
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
EMILY DICKINSON: AS IMPERCEPTIBLY AS GRIEF
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away-
-Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like Perfidy-
-A Quietness distilled,
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon-
-The Dusk drew earlier in-
-The Morning foreign shone-
-A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest who would be gone-
-And thus, without a Wing,
Or service of a Keel,
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
SALVADOR ESPRIU:THE GARDEN OF FIVE TREES
Later, when i was already in great pain and almost all
I could do was smile,
I chose the simplestwords to tell myself
how the sun's momentary gold had crossed the ivy
of the garden of five trees.
Fleeting yellow, of sunset,in winter, while the winding
water's final fingers
fell from the high clouds
and the strange time entered me
in jails of silence.
(Translation from Catalan)

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192203/18/2005

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Some favourite short poems

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