What poems come to our minds?

[Trilby]

A big Bow to Emily--a truly unique and original American poet:


I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then--



I

[Flint]

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

[Sundae]

It's raining today. Made me think of this.

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--
books
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
cry or laugh
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world
car
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
rearview mirror
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
watch
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
phone
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
having a poo!
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
dreams
Craig Raine
explanations by me (obviously) just in case it wasn't clear

[queequeger]

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days' white.
All night I've held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad--
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye--
and dragged me home alive. . . .Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve:
you were in our twenties, and I,
once hand on glass
and heart in mouth,
outdrank the Rahvs in the heat
of Greenwich Village, fainting at your feet--
too boiled and shy
and poker-faced to make a pass,
while the shrill verve
of your invective scorched the traditional South.

Now twelve years later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to your hollows like a child;
your old-fashioned tirade--
loving, rapid, merciless--
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.

[Sundae]

Realised I hadn't posted this childhood favourite until the IOTD thread bout his moustache. I know most of it by heart, may make an attempt to learn it properly now for the sheer richness I will be committing to memory.

Read it aloud. I was read it when I was ten. It was the first time I realised poetry wasn't just about rhyming. Listen to the syllables in the last verse. There is a good reason this is in every British poetry book for schoolchildren.

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield

[DanaC]

Oh wow, SG that's wonderful!

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

!

[DanaC]

From Tyneside. You're in coal country now Perry....or at least you're in what was coal country before the mining industry collapsed (or was pushed off the edge of a cliff depending on your reading if history).

[Sundae]

Oy! Did you read my posts re pizzas in England?

Back to the poem though, if you ever have to read a poem aloud (in a non-specific situation like wedding or funeral) Google John Masefield - his poems were written to be read out loud.

[DanaC]

I did read that aloud (as per your instruction) and it really is meant to be heard. Lovely.