Probably the wrong place, but your favourite poems

[oohlaalaa]

Here's mine:

Being Boring by Wendy Cope

I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion-I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

Coming Home by Adam Loxley

So here am I, uncertain still
This long, late path has brought me to
This secret place, this lovers room
Where you will lay beside me soon,
Soft and sleepier in white.
Draw down the frame, keep out the night.

With evening falls an amber dusk
Of fading light and Costwold stone
And sodium lamps to guide our way
Our journey’s end, our coming home.
Save the water and drink the wine
Cut the strings and cross the line.

The room holds its breath, and darkens.
The sudden flurry of loves desire
And with me still; you, naked
Arched and free and reaching higher
And me, drowning, deliriously drowning
In undiscovered avenues.

I am on fire tonight.
Dripping vermilion, gentian and tangerine
Breathless and with head thrown back
Raise me to the highest breaking string.

Touch me, for I am yours...
Trace your tongue and raise a river
To trickle the length of my flesh
And place your lips there and drink me
For I am wrapped helpless in your touches.
Put out this aching light.

You have kissed me lifeless.
Laid bare and resonant with dreamy limbs
I watch the ceiling shadows fade
The scent of you still on my skin
And in the soft wake of morning light,
The slow dissolve of loves desire.
Crush the pillow, worlds collide
Life unfolds and love divides.

And now I think of you and me
Oystered on some other beach
Languid, open to the sun and
Dreaming of deeper pools.

I will wait for you forever
and ever.
This will never be undone.

@von1471 Let me Go is lovely. I've never read it before.

Lovely thread, don't care if it's a zombie!

Résumé, by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp

Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live

poetryarchive.org/poem/praise-song-my-mother/

By Grace Nichols

I love the descriptions and the huge sense of positivity and potential ...

@Smartypoppet - love the Loxley poem

By John Clare
I am-yet what I am none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self consumer of my woes
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in loves frenzied stifled throes
and yet I am,and live..

Mine is “I know the truth” by Narina Tsvetaeva. I want it read at my funeral.

Marina. Not Narina.

Fabulous thread.
I have so many but always come back to this, about the little pause in time before the hell of WW1

Adelstrop by Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Loving 'The Orange'. Quite apt for these days.

My latest favourite is (this translation of)
Thank You Note:

I owe so much
to those I don’t love.

The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.

The happiness that I’m not
the wolf to their sheep.
The peace I feel with them,
the freedom –
love can neither give
nor take that away.

I don’t wait for them,
as in window-to-door-and-back.
Almost as patient
as a sundial,
I understand
what love can’t,
and forgive
as love never would.

From a rendezvous to a letter
is just a few days or weeks,
not an eternity.

Trips with them always go smoothly,
concerts are heard,
cathedrals visited,
scenery is seen.

And when seven hills and rivers
come between us,
the hills and rivers
can be found on any map.

They deserve the credit
if I live in three dimensions,
in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space
with a genuine, shifting horizon.

They themselves don’t realize
how much they hold in their empty hands.

“I don’t owe them a thing,”
would be love’s answer
to this open question.

Wislawa Szymborska, translation by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Another Favourite - very poignant...

An April Sunday brings the snow
Making the blossom on the plum trees green,
Not white. An hour or two, and it will go.
Strange that I spend that hour moving between

Cupboard and cupboard, shifting the store
Of jam you made of fruit from these same trees:
Five loads – a hundred pounds or more –
More than enough for all next summer’s teas.

Which now you will not sit and eat.
Behind the glass, underneath the cellophane,
remains your final summer – sweet
And meaningless, and not to come again.

Philip Larkin