Poems that you love

[Iliveinanoodie]

Thank you to the poster who uploaded the Wendy Cope poem on another thread. I didn't get time to respond before the thread was taken down.
Anyone got any short poems that they love? Please share.

Me too!

Don't start me off again! I had just tried to distract myself with happy thoughts! I remember studying it as teen, and even then, I was moved by that line.

This hangs in my hall.

The imagery of it is so vivid and typical of what I'm familiar with and the language he uses is so basic, yet he perfectly conveys the utter tragedy of it.
It's not really one for the faint-hearted!

And if you wanted something more lighthearted, I do like this by Charlotte Mitchell

Just in Case

I’m going to the sea for the weekend,
in a couple of days I’ll be back,
so I’ll just take my little brown suit and a blouse
and a beret and carry my mac.

But what if the house is a cold one,
the house where I’m going to stay,
no fires after April, no hot drinks at night
and the windows wide open all day?
I’d better take one – no two cardys
and my long tartan scarf for my head,
and my chaste new pyjamas in case they decide
to bring me my breakfast in bed.
And what about church on the Sunday?
I could wear my beret and suit,
but if it were sunny, it would be a chance
to wear my straw hat with the fruit,
so I’ll just take a silk dress to go with the straw
and a silk scarf to go with the suit.
I’ll just take my jeans and that jumper
in case we go out in the car,
and my Guernsey in case we go out in a boat
and d’you know where my swimming things are?

D’you think I should take that black velvet
in case they’ve booked seats for a play?
And is it still usual to take your own towel
When you go somewhere to stay?
I had thought of just taking slippers,
but they do look disgustingly old,
I’d better take best shoes and sandals and boots
for the church and the heat and the cold.
I daren’t go without my umbrella
in case I’m dressed up and it rains;
I’m bound to need socks and my wellies
for walking down long muddy lanes.

I’d rather not take my old dressing gown,
it is such a business to pack,
but ‘spose they have breakfast before they get dressed
I’d have to have mine in my mac.

I’m going to the sea for the weekend,
In a couple of days I’ll be back,
so I’ll just take my little brown suit and a blouse,
two cardys, my long tartan scarf,
my chaste new pyjamas,
my straw hat with the fruit,
my silk dress, my silk scarf,
my jeans, my jumper,
my Guernsey, my swimming things,
my black velvet, my towel, my
slippers (no one need see them)
my sandals, my boots, my
umbrella, my socks, my wellies,
my dressing gown, no, not
my dressing gown, OK my
dressing gown
and a beret and carry my mac.

hahaha. That's like me packing for one night away!

This is a slow burner that has me in tears every time I read it. Vrt similar to Mid Term Break.

Oh God, don't make me cry!

Also one of my favourites. The aging. It didn't make sense to me until the last 10 years and now it makes sense.

Awww, that just made me cry.

Well that made me cry !
(Mother of daughters).

I think song lyrics are our new poetry.

To this day, while I can sing ANY SONG and I'm usually called upon to sing, I cannot get through the line I've put in bold. I think for anyone who ever emigrated, the lyrics will resonate.

Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
Author: Brendan Graham

On the first day of January Eighteen Ninety-two
They Opened Ellis Island And they let the people through.
And the first to cross the threshold
Of the Isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from Ireland
Who was all of fifteen years.

CHORUS Isle of hope, Isle of tears,
Isle of freedom, Isle of fears,
But it's not the Isle I left behind...
That Isle of hunger, Isle of pain,
Isle you'll never see again
But the Isle of home Is always on your mind.

In her little bag she carried
All her past and history
And her dreams for the future In the land of liberty.
And courage is the passport
When your old world disappears
âCause there's no future in the past
When you're fifteen years.

CHORUS

When they closed down Ellis Island
In Nineteen Forty-three
Seventeen million people Had come there for sanctuary.
And in springtime when I came here
And stepped onto its piers,
I thought of how it must have been
When you're only fifteen years.
CHORUS

Philip Larkin

"If" by Rudyard Kipling - love it!

I like the follow up by Adrian Mitchell

Have always liked this one by Kahlil Gibran

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the

Not cheerful, but hey ho. Rebecca Elson:

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Love Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison and Spike Milligan.

I studied all of them (and many more).

Spike Milligan .... good stuff.

@FuckabethFuckor Mary Oliver wrote that poem purely as an exercise in some technique (I love poetry but don't know all the terminology). How bloody remarkable that it turned out to be so poignant for so many

This poem that my late Auntie sent to us when DH and I got married:

Hold my hand and I'm yours,
And your heart will stay close to mine,
For I know the sun must rise with the dawn,
And at night the stars must shine.

And the wind must wander the ocean
And sing with the waves of the sea;
Just so, I know, I'll be by your side,
And you will be wedded to me.

And you will be wedded to me, my love,
And I will be wedded to you;
For I know the tide must turn with the moon,
And the spring must return ever new.

And the sky must weep that the hillsides
May laugh in the green of their joy;
And the leaves must turn red, brown, and gold
That the earth might their riches employ.

And love like a mad, swollen hunger,
And love like an unending song,
And love like the silent pull of the Earth
Shall be with us all our lives long, my love,
Shall be with us all our lives long.

I Walked a Mile by Robert Browning Hamilton

I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chatted all the way
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say
I walked a mile with sorrow,
Not a word said she,
But oh, the things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.

I loved that poem at at university. I may have got some of the words wrong but that's how I remember it after all these years. It's got me through some difficult times.

A Puppy Called Puberty

It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants
A secret puppy you weren't allowed to show to anyone
Not even your best friend or your worst enemy
You wanted to pat him, stroke him, cuddle him
All the time you weren't supposed to touch him.
He only slept for five minutes at a time
Then he'd suddenly perk up his head
In the middle of school medical inspection
And always on bus rides.
So you had to climb down from the upper deck
All bent double to smuggle the puppy off the bus
Without the buxom conductress spotting
Your wicked and ticketless stowaway.
Jumping up, wet-nosed, eagerly wagging-
He only stopped being a nuisance
When you were alone together
Pretending to be doing your homework
But really gazing at each other
Through hot and lazy daydreams
Of those beautiful schoolgirls on the bus
With kittens bouncing in their sweaters.
By Adrian Mitchell

"I have outlived my pecker."
by Willie Nelson
My nookie days are over,
My pilot light is out.
What used to be my sex appeal,
Is now my water spout.
Time was when, on its own accord,
From my trousers it would spring.
But now I've got a full time job,
To find the f*in' thing.
It used to be embarrassing,
The way it would behave.
For every single morning,
It would stand and watch me shave.
Now as old age approaches,
It sure gives me the blues.
To see it hang its little head,
And watch me tie my shoes!!