Tag: poems
In The Summer
In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
– Nizar Qabbani (trans. B. Frangieh & C. Brown)
Oncoming Trains
after the kiss
reading her eyes
for oncoming trains
– Victor Piñeiro
The Colossus
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, Out of the wind,
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
– Sylvia Plath
I Am Going To Carry My Bed…
I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight
complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets;
I am going to push it across three dark highways
or coast along under 600,000 faint stars.
I want to have it with me so I don’t have to beg
for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends.
I want to be as close as possible to my pillow
in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by.
I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape
and wake up dazed and hungry
to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below
and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above.
– Gerald Stern
Do You Recognise Anything?
Do you recognise anything? I said.
Anything familiar?
Yes, you said. The bed.
Better to watch the stream
that flows across the floor
and is made of sunlight,
the forest made of shadows;
better to watch the fireplace
which is now a beach.
– Margaret Atwood
A Fugitive Dream
This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem –
not out into the world of strangers’ eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,
home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,
which like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.
– Billy Collins
memoryhouse 