To ask for your favourite poem

[user365241987]

Just because. Do post the words as well if you can...

The Emperor of Ice Cream

@helpme1011
That’s a wonderful poem, bukowski is brilliant
And I know how he feels, well aside from the being a brilliant famous writer bit

Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Love The Highwayman

I also like
'Tell me the truth about Love' by I can't remember-which is annoying me!

'The sub alterns love song' by John Betjeman

And

'On Waterloo Bridge' by Carol Ann Duffy.

YY for He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

Also, having suffered from depression myself, I have always found this one especially poignant and thought-provoking:

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Tell me the truth about love is by WH Auden

Some say that love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird.
Some say it makes the word go round,
And some say that's absurd.
And when I asked the man next-door,
He looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does it odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to tough as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love?

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or Steinway Grand?
is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't ever there:
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extroadinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I am picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love

Thankyou Hunting... I wanted it for the reading at my wedding-now exh said no... I should have taken it as a sign

I had to study this for a course and it really made an impression on me.

Rising Damp, by U.A. Fanthorpe

At our feet they lie low,
The little ferment underground
Rivers of London
Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet
Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.

These are the Magogs that chewed the day
To the basin that London nestle in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.

They have gone under
Boxed, like the magician’s assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.

They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They infiltrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, cages at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box).
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.
Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet
It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowsers rod bends to the source below.

Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx.

and this one which I just love because it reminds us that important things sometimes just happen without us noticing.

"I wish I could remember that first day"
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know!

So many great poems it's hard to choose but I love this:

This be the verse - Philip Larkin

No Second troy - WB Yeats

Anything by Paddy Kavanagh, but especially Stony Grey Soil.

And a couple of spoken word ones that really made an impact on me.

Wow by hollie poetry

And this one which was a flash mob poetry piece in response to the death of Eric Garner in the USA - and is a great example poetry activism.

Loving this thread.
MrsFrisby the Christina Rosetti one made me cry.

Those spoken word ones were fantastic. It's so great to get exposure to all these amazing work

I remember reading The Two Headed Calf on a thread on here a few months ago, and I've never forgotten it, so beautiful and simple and heartbreaking.

Stealing by Carol Ann Duffy

Read it at high school and recently found it again to read to DD. Forgot how much i love Duffy!

The most unusual thing I ever stole? A snowman.
Midnight. He looked magnificent; a tall, white mute
beneath the winter moon. I wanted him, a mate
with a mind as cold as the slice of ice
within my own brain. I started with the head.

Better off dead than giving in, not taking
what you want. He weighed a ton; his torso,
frozen stiff, hugged to my chest, a fierce chill
piercing my gut. Part of the thrill was knowing
that children would cry in the morning. Life's tough.

Sometimes I steal things I don't need. I joy-ride cars
to nowhere, break into houses just to have a look.
I'm a mucky ghost, leave a mess, maybe pinch a camera.
I watch my gloved hand twisting the doorknob.
A stranger's bedroom. Mirrors. I sigh like this - Aah.
It took some time. Reassembled in the yard,
he didn't look the same. I took a run
and booted him. Again. Again. My breath ripped out
in rags. It seems daft now. Then I was standing
alone among lumps of snow, sick of the world.

Boredom. Mostly I'm so bored I could eat myself.
One time, I stole a guitar and thought I might
learn to play. I nicked a bust of Shakespeare once,
flogged it, but the snowman was the strangest.
You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?

I like this one of hers:

Beattie Is Three
At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand O.K
She gives it to me
How her fist fits my palm
A bunch of consolation
We take our time
Down the steep carpet way
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless

By Adrian Mitchell

If Life Gives You Lemons, Make

your mouth into a trough, a spout
from which that sour sauce will pour,
pulp and spittle swimming down your
chin, eyes pinched shut, each acid thought
welling under the tongue. Thin slice
of pain wedged on the salty rim
of your face, let its tart grace skim
your glass neat: no sugar, no ice
to temper this bite, this slick burst
that cankers your lips. Life gives you
lemons: cut your teeth on their rinds,
tear them with gusto, slake your thirst
with their slavering, jaundiced juice,
swallow hard, leave no seeds behind.

Jennifer Perrine

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)
By William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
1794

@isseywithcats - that's the poem I had to write out at primary school to move from writing in pencil to a pen.

This is a part of a medieval poem called Pearl, which I found in Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England. The 'pearl' that is lost forever is the author's infant daughter Marguerite. It always makes me realise that the parents of 700 years ago were not so different from us.

So round, so radiant in each array,
So small, so smooth her sides were,
Wheresoever I judged gems gay,
I set her singly above them all.
Alas! I lost her in a garden,
Through grass to ground she fell away.
Wounded by love, by love forsaken,
I mourn that pearl without a flaw

The Mock Turtle's Song, from Alice in Wonderland

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle – will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance --
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France --
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

We stopped by a cornfield
Near Shrewsbury
A girl in a sun hat
Smiled at me

Then I was seven
Now sixty-two
Wherever you are
I remember you.

'Girl from a Train' by Gareth Owen

Oh Snailhunter that is beautiful. All teary now.

What a lovely thread for a grey day. Here is my favourite:

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.