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favorite poems

The Bear
By Susan Mitchell

Tonight the bear
comes to the orchard and, balancing
on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees,
hanging onto their boughs,
dragging their branches down to earth.
Look again. It is not the bear
but some afterimage of her
like the car I once saw in the driveway
after the last guest had gone.
Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground.
Whatever moves in the orchard—
heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind.


The bear is long gone.
Drunk on apples,
she banged over the trash cans that fall night,
then skidded downstream. By now
she must be logged in for the winter.
Unless she is choosy.
I imagine her as very choosy,
sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying
each one on for size,
but always coming out again.


Until tonight.
Tonight sap freezes under her skin.
Her breath leaves white apples in the air.
As she walks she dozes,
listening to the sound of axes chopping wood.
Somewhere she can never catch up to
trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow
When she does find it finally,
the log draws her in as easily as a forest,
and for a while she continues to see,
just ahead of her, the moon
trapped like a salmon in the ice.
 
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them in not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight
it goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?

We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.

They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.

And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.
 
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 
Since Dr Adequate included Houseman in his seagulling a few years ago, let this by Hugh Kingsmill redress the balance.

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Why, if your throat is hard to slit,
Slit your girl's and swing for it!
Like enough you won't be glad
When they come to hang you, lad,
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.
When the blotting pad of night
Sucks the latest drop of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives and think of you.
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
Since Dr Adequate included Houseman in his seagulling a few years ago, let this by Hugh Kingsmill redress the balance.

snip...

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Click to expand...

Housman could write a pretty mean parody himself -


The shades of night were falling fast
And the rain was falling faster,
When through an Alpine village passed
An Alpine village pastor;
A youth who bore mid snow and ice
A bird that wouldn't chirrup,
And a banner, with the strange device —
'Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup. etc


But here's a poem that's been rising to the top of my consciousness on and off for years. It's by Cavafy. I've got even less Greek than Shakespeare had, but it reads well in English translation:

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul, unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter
-with what gratitude, what joy-
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centers,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But do not in the least hurry the journey.
Better that it last for years,
So that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained along the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you will have understood what these Ithakas mean.
 
When I was one and twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away.
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one and twenty
No use to talk to me.

When I was one and twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was ne'er given in vain
Tis paid with sighs aplenty
And sold with endless rue."
And I am two and twenty
And oh, tis true, tis true.
 
Flannan Isle
Though three men dwell on Flannan Isle
To keep the lamp alight,
As we steered under the lee, we caught
No glimmer through the night."

A passing ship at dawn had brought
The news; and quickly we set sail,
To find out what strange thing might ail
The keepers of the deep-sea light.

The Winter day broke blue and bright,
With glancing sun and glancing spray,
As o'er the swell our boat made way,
As gallant as a gull in flight.

But, as we neared the lonely Isle;
And looked up at the naked height;
And saw the lighthouse towering white,
With blinded lantern, that all night
Had never shot a spark
Of comfort through the dark,
So ghostly in the cold sunlight
It seemed, that we were struck the while
With wonder all too dread for words.
And, as into the tiny creek
We stole beneath the hanging crag,
We saw three queer, black, ugly birds—
Too big, by far, in my belief,
For guillemot or shag—
Like seamen sitting bolt-upright
Upon a half-tide reef:
But, as we neared, they plunged from sight,
Without a sound, or spurt of white.

And still to mazed to speak,
We landed; and made fast the boat;
And climbed the track in single file,
Each wishing he was safe afloat,
On any sea, however far,
So it be far from Flannan Isle:
And still we seemed to climb, and climb,
As though we'd lost all count of time,
And so must climb for evermore.
Yet, all too soon, we reached the door—
The black, sun-blistered lighthouse-door,
That gaped for us ajar.

As, on the threshold, for a spell,
We paused, we seemed to breathe the smell
Of limewash and of tar,
Familiar as our daily breath,
As though 't were some strange scent of death:
And so, yet wondering, side by side,
We stood a moment, still tongue-tied:
And each with black foreboding eyed
The door, ere we should fling it wide,
To leave the sunlight for the gloom:
Till, plucking courage up, at last,
Hard on each other's heels we passed,
Into the living-room.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,
We only saw a table, spread
For dinner, meat and cheese and bread;
But, all untouched; and no one there:
As though, when they sat down to eat,
Ere they could even taste,
Alarm had come; and they in haste
Had risen and left the bread and meat:
For at the table-head a chair
Lay tumbled on the floor.

We listened; but we only heard
The feeble cheeping of a bird
That starved upon its perch:
And, listening still, without a word,
We set about our hopeless search.

We hunted high, we hunted low;
And soon ransacked the empty house;
Then o'er the Island, to and fro,
We ranged, to listen and to look
In every cranny, cleft or nook
That might have hid a bird or mouse:
But, though we searched from shore to shore,
We found no sign in any place:
And soon again stood face to face
Before the gaping door:
And stole into the room once more
As frightened children steal.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,
And an overtoppled chair.

And, as we listened in the gloom
Of that forsaken living-room—
A chill clutch on our breath—
We thought how ill-chance came to all
Who kept the Flannan Light:
And how the rock had been the death
Of many a likely lad:
How six had come to a sudden end,
And three had gone stark mad:
And one whom we'd all known as friend
Had leapt from the lantern one still night,
And fallen dead by the lighthouse wall:
And long we thought
On the three we sought,
And of what might yet befall.

Like curs, a glance has brought to heel,
We listened, flinching there:
And looked, and looked, on the untouched meal,
And the overtoppled chair.

We seemed to stand for an endless while,
Though still no word was said,
Three men alive on Flannan Isle,
Who thought, on three men dead.
 
Christopher Isherwood's 'The Common Cormorant'

The common cormorant (or shag)
Lays eggs inside a paper bag.
The reason you will see, no doubt,
Is to keep the lightning out.

But what these unobservant birds
Have failed to notice is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.
 
Wallace Stevens,

"A Postcard from the Volcano"

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill:

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is...Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know.

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
 
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Edgar Allan Poe - "The Conqueror Worm"

Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
 
May I drop in to this thread to ask a question, please? A poster on another forum asked me whether there are any JREF members who are poets. Obviously, that now includes this IS forum too, but the context had a hint of 'atheists can't be poets'. I did a google search for atheist poets which was quite interesting but said I would ask. He himself is almost 100% a sceptic by the way!
Thank you and sorry for the intrusion.
 
I think if you look around you will find there are at least a couple of poets here of varying ability (that is not to count the more numerous authors of doggerel and parody such as myself). I don't recall a lot, but then I think if I were a real poet I would hesitate to toss my work into this lions' den too.
 
There is The Poet's Corner in community.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107118


One of my favorites from literature classes.

Soledad: A Cuban Portrait

By Langston Hughes

The shadows
Of too many nights of love
Have fallen beneath your eyes.
Your eyes,
So full of pain and passion
So full of lies.
So full of pain and passion,
Soledad,
So deeply scarred,
So still with silent cries.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
May I drop in to this thread to ask a question, please? A poster on another forum asked me whether there are any JREF members who are poets. Obviously, that now includes this IS forum too, but the context had a hint of 'atheists can't be poets'. I did a google search for atheist poets which was quite interesting but said I would ask. He himself is almost 100% a sceptic by the way!
Thank you and sorry for the intrusion.
Click to expand...

There's Doctor Adequate, for one, though the JREF wasn't his only place of residence.

Try to track down "This Is The Title" for an example of his work. It's a poem he posted in a couple different forums around the net, and it's fantastic.
 
The Man, Bruto and Nonpareil

Thank you for your help. I'll spend some time today searching around, and actually, that reminds me that - I have one of Dr A's poems stored somewhere in a file on the computer.
 
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I found "This Is The Title", while we're at it. Spoiled for length.

This Is The Title

This is a poem, self-referential:
tricky to write, and reading it's worse;
still, it's a form with massive potential.
This is a line concluding the verse.

Now a new stanza, slickly poetic
takes up the theme the former let drop.
(This is a line that's all parenthetic.)
This is a colon: this is a stop.

This is a comma, this is a clause, and
this are a lines, what's grammar be wrong.
Here's an ellipsis marking a pause ... and
this is a line nine syllables long.

Now it's verse four --- oh what a bonanza!
Thirty-two words, no less and no more
make up the lines that make up the stanza.
This is the sentence ending verse four.

This is a verse explaining the meter
dactyls and trochees make up the feet;
as a refinement, making it neater,
every fourth trochee's left incomplete.

Dactyls and trochees alternate neatly,
but for the beats I happen to miss:
this line breaks the rules of the meter completely
and so, of course, does this.

Poets in times to come are my debtors:
this is a form whose merits are clear.
Here is a line with thirty-one letters.
front. to back got that's line a is Here

This is a verse that's utterly risible,
rather more hard to read than you'd think:
half of this line's com
that's 'cos I used invisible ink.

This was a line that used the wrong tense; and
this is a question, wouldn't you say?
Wurble a flarp that doesn't make sense; and
voici une ligne écrite en français.

This is the thought that ends my recital:
poems like this should start a new trend.
This is the title: "This Is The Title";
this is the line that goes at the end.
 
I remember "This is the Title," and it is clever, but I must mention that a somewhat better known poet, and one of my great favorites, did what might be a somewhat better job of the idea, which I link to here (it's also a bit long to hot link): http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/evaluate.html

And while we're at it, another favorite American poet writes a sonnet that illustrates the sonnet:

Sonnet, by Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Click to expand...
 
*No words of mine could ever convey the same feelings
of deep love, affectation and admiration that is contained in this wonderfully expressive poem…….. I am lost for words! *
*Australian Love Poem
*
*Of course I love ya darlin'
You're a bloody top-notch bird
And when I say you're gorgeous
I mean every f___in' word *

So ya bum is on the big side
I don't mind a bit of flab
It means that when I'm ready
There's somethin' there to grab

So your belly isn't flat no more
I tell ya, I don't care
So long as when I cuddle ya
I can get my arms round there

No Sheila who is your age
Has nice round perky breasts
They just gave in to gravity
But I know ya did ya best

I'm tellin' ya the truth now
I never tell ya lies
I think it’s very sexy
That you've got dimples on ya thighs

I swear on me nanna's grave now
The moment that we met
I thought you was as good as
I was ever gonna get

No matter what u look like
I'll always love ya dear
Now shut up while the cricket’s on
And fetch another beer..*
.
.
*[ Kinda brings a lump to the throat don't it.. !! ]*
 
Anything from e.e. cummings is always appreciated. Some sonnets from "the bard"; Poe, Emily Dickenson, Hart Crane - more Americans- Whitman, Stephen Crane, Ezra Pound; older - Khalil Gibran, Omar Khayyam.
I'm certain there are many others I could name...
including this one guy I can't...
"The soulless cannot be damned, nor can they be redeemed. They're tormented as no mortals known, still revel as none dream."
 
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