Please tell me your favourite poem(s)

[NotAFabergeEgg]

I love poetry but don't have many friends IRL who like it, so please can you enrich my brain with your favourite(s).

I have loads, but for brevity I'll share "If people disapprove of you" by Sophie Hannah

"Make being disapproved of your hobby.
Make being disapproved of your aim.
Devise new ways of scoring points
In the Being Disapproved Of Game.

Let them disapprove in their dozens.
Let them disapprove in their hordes.
You’ll find that being disapproved of
Builds character, brings rewards.

Just like any form of striving
Don't be arrogant; don't coast
On your high disapproval rating.
Try to be disapproved of most.

At this point, if it's useful,
Draw a pie chart or a graph.
Show it to someone who disapproves.
When they disapprove, just laugh.

Count the emotions you provoke:
Anger, suspicion, shock.
One point for each of these
And two for each boat you rock.

Feel yourself warming to your task -
You do it bloody well.
At last you've found an area
In which you can excel.

Savour the thrill of risk without
The fear of getting caught.
Whether they sulk or scream or pout,
Enjoy your new-found sport.

Meanwhile all those who disapprove
While you are having fun
Won't even know your game exists
So tell yourself you've won."

Thank you. I have never heard of it before, but loved it. Genuinely charming and laugh out loud amusing.

The Peace of Wild Thngs by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

JOHN DONNE
Stay, O Sweet

STAY, O sweet, and do not rise!
The light that shines come from thine eyes;
The day breaks not: it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay! or else my joys will die
And perish in their infancy.

’Tis true, ’tis day: what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ’tis light?
Did we lie down because ’twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye.
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say:—
That, being well, I fain would stay,
And that I lov’d my heart and honour so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worse disease of love!
The poor, the fool, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He, which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

In Flanders Fields
BY JOHN MCCRAE

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

What a lovely thread. So many old favourites on here and many new poets to explore.
Mary Oliver has already been mentioned. Another of her poems that I love is 'Summer day'

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

A new poet who has a book of his current poetry due out this month is Lucas Jones. I first heard him reading his poem”I met God in a supermarket”. I find his poems so moving and current.

I just came on to recommend both Lucas Jones
https://linktr.ee/lucassjoness?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=dec0ecb3-b5d4-4279-9f46-99c4a852afee

and Harry Baker
https://linktr.ee/harrybae?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=61b8eaca-d8cc-43f6-a932-bdf25ca76367

Oh god 😢

My reply has been hidden as I linked to 2 poets - Lucas Jones, and Harry Baker.
they’re both on Instagram and I love their take on life. Great to hear the poems read by the actual poets too

Edited to correct typos

This is such a lovely thread . . . thanks for starting it OP

"I Am!" by John Clare

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,

The grass below; above the vaulted sky.

Why has it been hidden? Are they particularly controversial?

I love Liz Berry. I've had the pleasure of meeting her and she is wonderful.

I'd add this one of hers too.

Birmingham Roller
by Liz Berry
We spent our lives down in the blackness… those birds brought us up
to the light. – Jim Showell,

Tumbling Pigeons and the Black Country
Wench, yowm the colour of ower town:
concrete, steel, oily rainbow of the cut.

Ower streets am in yer wings,
ower factory chimdeys plumes on yer chest,

yer heart’s the china ower owd girls dust
in their tranklement cabinets.

Bred to dazzlin in backyards by men
whose onds grew soft as feathers

just to touch you, cradle you from egg
through each jeth-defying tumble.

Little acrobat of the terraces,
we’m winged when we gaze at you
jimmucking the breeze,

somersaulting through
the white breathed prayer of January
and rolling back up like a babby’s yo-yo
caught by the open donny of the clouds.

Black Country / Standard
wench / affectionate name for a female
yowm / you are
cut / canal
owd / old
tranklement / bits & bobs or ornaments
onds / hands
jeth / death
jimmucking / shaking
babby / little child
donny / hand

Absolutely not controversial, really great poetry. I think it’s the fact I added links that’s caused the delay.

I can remember reading this poem by Vera Brittain when I was a teenager (a few decades ago) and weeping at the poignancy of it. My DGM lost her 1st husband during WW1 and it helped me understand something of what she went through

Perhaps (1916)
(To R.A.L.)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue.
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of Spring seem gay.
And I shall find the white May blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.

But, though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire;
And all those ships were certainly so old
Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun,
Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges,
The pirate Genoese
Hell-raked them till they rolled
Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold.
But now through friendly seas they softly run,
Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green,
Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.

But I have seen,
Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn
And image tumbed on a rose-swept bay,
A drowsy ship of some yet older day;
And, wonder's breath indrawn,
Thought I - who knows - who knows - but in that same
(Fished up beyond Ææa, patched up new

• Stern painted brighter blue -

That talkative, bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson shore, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.

It was so old a ship - who knows, who knows?

• And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain

To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

James Elroy Flecker.

There was a man from Peru
Who once met a big kangaroo
It jumped on his back
He said ‘cut me some slack’
And now it’s in at the zoo

Another vote for If - Rudyard Kipling. We have the print on our living room wall.

I also really love ‘Dust’ by Harry Baker. He’s a spoken word poet I follow on TikTok and he has the most beautiful one about being in love with his partner that I wish we’d had as a reading at our wedding.
It’s not the flowers,It’s the weeding in the mud with you.It’s not the champagne,It’s the cuppa in that favourite mug you use.It’s not the chocolate -Okay yes it is, but not just one or two,it is becoming Bruce Bogtrotter and Augustus Gloop.It’s voting frozen pizza over fancy grub with you.Because some nights, nothing can beat a slice of comfort food.It’s knowing anything I eatwill include some for you.Because you’re not hungryBut you might just have a couple spoons.It’s not the dreaming, it’s the waking up with you.I want to be here long enough to gather dust with you.For us love isn’t in the air,that is just where we found it.All this is built uponwhat we have done to ground it.It’s not the spark when we first met,it is the lifetime built around it. It’s by small amounts that mounds amount to mountainsI need not justify, adjust, or fear I’m judged by you.Such is the glorious consistency of loving you.My heart’s not skipped a beat it just constantly thuds for you.Such is the everyday magnificence of loving youIt’s not something we fell into so much as stumbled through.It’s the spectacular normality of loving youIt’s not the dreaming it’s the waking up with youI want to be here long enough to gather dust with you.Harry Baker

Some days were running legs

Some days were running legs and joy
and old men telling tomorrow would be
a fine day surely: for sky was red
at setting of sun between the hills.

Some nights were parting at the gates
with day’s companions: and dew falling
on heads clear of ambition except light
returning and throwing stones at sticks.

Some days were rain flooding forever the green
pasture: and horses turning to the wind
bare smooth backs. The toothed rocks rising
sharp and grey out of the ancient sea.

Some nights were shawling mirrors lest the lightning
strike with eel’s speed out of the storm.
Black the roman rooks came from the left squawking
and the evening flowed back around their wings.

Iain Crichton Smith

You Are At the Bottom of My Mind
by Iain Crichton Smith

Without my knowing it you are at the bottom of my mind like a visitor to the bottom of the sea with his helmet and his two large eyes, and I do not rightly know your appearance or your manner after five years of showers of time pouring between me and you: nameless mountains of water pouring between me hauling you on board and your appearance and manner in my weak hands.

You went astray among the mysterious plants of the sea-bed in the green half-light without love,

and you will never rise to the surface through my hands are hauling ceaselessly, and I do not know your way at all, you in the half-light of your sleep
haunting the bed of the sea without ceasing and I hauling and hauling on the surface.

AFTER THE LUNCH

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
the head does its best but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I am halfway across

Wendy Cope

Shameless bump for the teatime crowd... and because this thread is joyous...

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

@Maddi1234 - beautiful poem ! 🥰
Thank you.

I love poetry especially anything by Robert Burns - but this one 'Epitaph on my own Friend' is probably my favourite - and my mantra for life. We read it out at my Dad's funeral. It's just beautiful and perfect to celebrate someone who lived a wonderful and full life.

An honest man here lies at rest,
As e’er God with His image blest:
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

Hedauville
(November 1915)

The sunshine on the long white road
That ribboned down the hill,
The velvet clematis that clung
Around your window-sill,
Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break
In dimples round your feet,
And when the thrush sings in your wood,
Unknowing you may meet
Another stranger, Sweet.

And if he is not quite so old
As the boy you used to know,
And less proud, too, and worthier,
You may not let him go--
(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)
It will be better so.

by Roland Aubrey Leighton ♥️

I was going to post this. Beautiful.
written for a girlfriend who died, and then passed to a colleague to be literally used as code. 💔