So what are your favourite poems, then? This means YOU, Quattro...

[Habbibu]

... and others, but Quattro in particular bemoaned the passing of poetry chat on MN. Anyway, for me I think it would be something by Derek Walcott - these are the poems I'm drawn to again and again - for example:

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

So go on, what else do you like, and why?

Walter de la Mare
The Listeners

?IS there anybody there?? said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ?d the grasses
Of the forest?s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller?s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
?Is there anybody there?? he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Lean?d over and look?d into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex?d and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirr?d and shaken
By the lonely Traveller?s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
?Neath the starr?d and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:?
?Tell them I came, and no one answer?d,
?That I kept my word,? he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

I loved this when I was an undergraduate - a variation on William Carlos Williams' "This is just to say":

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.

We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

In fact, that's just ripe for a MN variation!

And everything by Pablo Neruda.

Ode to The Spirit of Delight

RARELY, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not her.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure; --
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love -- though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee --
Thou art love and life! O come!
Make once more my heart thy home!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

lawyer.
insurance lawyer.
(Stevens)

The owl sits humped. It has a thousand eyes.

And this and many more (including the Turkey one) by the marvellous Benjamin Zephaniah. I saw him perform live recently and he was captivating, sexy and brilliant.

White Comedy

I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic
An white lies,
Branded by a white sheep
I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot
Where I suffered whitewater fever.
Whitelisted as a whiteleg
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death.

People called me white jack
Some hailed me as a white wog,
So I joined de white watch
Trained as a white guard
Lived off the white economy.
Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts
I waz condemned to a white mass,
Don't worry,
I shall be writing to de Black House.

That Seamus Heaney one is absolutely gorgeous.

This is Goodbye, by Alun Lewis. It's not my favourite poem of all time, and it's a bit sentimental, but I still get teary at the last stanza (if you have time to read that far down). I think of it often, those four lines, encapsulating the relationship.

GOODBYE

So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.

I put a final shilling in the gas,
And watch you slip your dress below your knees
And lie so stlil I hear your rustling comb
Modulate the autumn in the trees.

And all the countless things I shall remember
Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head;
I fill the carafe with a drink of water;
You say 'We paid a guinea for this bed,'

And then, 'We'll leave some gas, a little warmth
For the next resident, and these dry flowers,'
And turn your face away, afraid to speak
The big word, that Eternity is ours.

Your kisses close my eyes and yet you stare
As though god struck a child with nameless fears;
Perhaps the water glitters and discloses
Time's chalice and its limpid useless tears.

Everything we renounce except our selves;
Selfishness is the last of all to go;
Our sighs are exhalations of the earth,
Our footprints leave a track across the snow.

We made the universe to be our home,
Our nostrils took the wind to be our breath,
Our hearts are massive towers of delight,
We stride across the seven seas of death.

Yet when all's done you'll keep the emerald
I placed upon your finger in the street;
And I will keep the patches that you sewed
On my old battledress tonight, my sweet.

I'd love to hear Benjamin Zephaniah perform.

By Mhamai on Tue 26-Apr-05 01:08:23
Hi people, I'm fairly new to mn, this is a little offering from moi, please please please! I beg the critics who know their stanza's bacwords and write to form, judge me not too harshly, I am but a mad woman from a small island, not to far away and must stress I only write for personal expression Anyway i hope you enjoy Ps cannot figure out centering, please forgive format.

Howth Island.

Alone she stands head bowed The deep ocean her silent companion.

How many souls have set foot upon her wonderous windswept sands

Awash with salt sea air did somene gaze in awe of her stark barren beauty

She seems to call to me invitingly ner promises nor answers

I am enslaved and entranced
And though armed with ancestorial wisdom

I am as those before me exposed to her silent strenght.

ps
I did some qick editing. I didn't know how to centre back then, I still don't

Another Derek Walcott:

A Far Cry from Africa

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?

Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

Oh yes, that Alun Lewis one. It has been the poem (along with the Millay) that I have used over and over again to pop the numbness with when a relationship has ended.

Thanks, Mhamai - it's lovely.

(Actually the Stevens owl has a "hundred" eyes, not a "thousand". And it's a pineapple anyway, but you knew that.)

If we are doing heart-breaking/love poems, how about Henry King's Exequy - not to be quoted, because too traumatising. Except "But hark! My pulse, like a soft drum/Beats my approach, tells thee I come".

Oh, and Ben Jonson's To His First Son.

I could be here all night, so will duck out before I'm really trapped.

I won't be up be up for any major awards but as I said it's more about self expression but thank you.

I love that someone else likes Goodbye.

What about John Donne? I always think of The Flea when delousing with nit comb in hand

"Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;"

Not exactly what JD meant, but still...

No! Where? link please? Can't stay on much longer, have a Spanish occasional luvva droppin by just after midnight! ds on midterm, dd took him to a carnival earlier and they are spending the night in her friends house! Va Va Voom!!!!!!!!!!