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.

I offer this

This poem makes me happy

@Iamerinhansen I love that

Jesus this hits hard

😎

@whereiwanttobe you are right, that is perfect ❤

Being boring by Wendy cope.

It sums up how I wish to live my life after having a difficult and chaotic childhood and early adulthood 🙃

See attached

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

By William Carlos Williams

Now I'm going back to read the whole thread I see that @JaneJeffer already posted this! Such a short and sweet one.

DH grew up in a house on a hill in a very windy northern isle and we live now in a house in a windy spot so I like this one.

I've not heard this one before, it's lovely.

Motorways; So many good ones by Wendy Cope. That one makes me smile.

Whas lovely thread. Some of these are making me cry.

I somehow missed this. This is brilliant.

I love this, both content and form. A masterpiece.

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

That's beautiful and should be posted on every relationship thread where a woman is afraid of the loss of an abusive partner.

@MsFrog I'm crying

@stilldumdedumming Oh, I love Liz Berry's poetry too. This is one of my favourites of hers:

So many.

I love Robert Frost, Wendy Cope, T S Eliot and I read a lot of Dr Seuss to my son. I also remember loads of poems from Please Mrs Butler so I guess my taste is varied!

Whilst we are all adding tear jerkers

The Last Time

The father, reading to his girl
 some little tale they always read
 is unaware that this may be
 the last one that she’ll ever need;
 she’s grown past stories softly read
 by daddy sitting on the bed.
The mother with her muddy son,
 kicking a football in the park,
 cannot sense as they wander home
 through chilly, soft-approaching dark;
 this was the last time they’d come out
 to kick that happy ball about.
How secret, sneaky-soft they come:
 those last times when we’ll kiss it better,
 hold their hand across the road
 or lift them up to post a letter.
 They pass unmarked, un-noticed; for
 we’re not so needed any more.
So they abandon fairy tales,
 and nursery rhymes that mummy sings
 and leave behind soft toys – and us -
and put away their childish things;
 a loss so small. Our loss the greater,
 unmissed, un-mourned, until years later.

By Lucy Berry

Geraniums 😢

I'm a teacher and couldn't teach "Mid Term Break" when it was a set poem as it made me cry.

A poem I love? There are too many. But two short ones I think are brilliant:

Western wind when wilt thou blow
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! That my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again. (It's an anonymous medieval lyric, but feels still so true)

Also "The Bed" by Thom Gunn:
The pulsing stops where time has been,
The garden is snow-bound,
The branches weighed down and the paths filled in,
Drifts quilt the ground.

We lie soft-caught, still now it’s done,
Loose-twined across the bed
Like wrestling statues; but it still goes on
Inside my head.

That poem amazes me!

So many wonderful poems here. What a beautiful thread.

Here is mine

Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night'.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.