Favorite Poets Poems

eeCummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,

my dear;

and whatever is done by only me is your doing,

my darling)

i fear

not fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)

i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud

of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

love is a place…(58)

love is a place

& through this place of

love move(with brightness of peace)all places

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live(skilfully curled)all worlds

i have found what you are like

i have found what you are like
the rain,

        (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                              with thinned

newfragile yellows

                  lurch and.press

-in the woods
             which
                  stutter
                         and

                            sing

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
               your kiss
		

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet IX: There where the waves shatter

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks

the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,

and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,

to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,

magnetic transient whose death blooms

and vanishes–being, nothingness–forever:

broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence,

while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,

collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,

galloping water, incessant sand,

we make the only permanent tenderness.

Canto XII: from The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.

Give me your hand out of the depths

sown by your sorrows.

You will not return from these stone fastnesses.

You will not emerge from subterranean time.

Your rasping voice will not come back,

nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,

tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,

groom of totemic guanacos,

mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,

iceman of Andean tears,

jeweler with crushed fingers,

farmer anxious among his seedlings,

potter wasted among his clays–

bring to the cup of this new life

your ancient buried sorrows.

Show me your blood and your furrow;

say to me: here I was scourged

because a gem was dull or because the earth

failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.

Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,

the wood they used to crucify your body.

Strike the old flints

to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips

glued to your wounds throughout the centuries

and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth

let dead lips congregate,

out of the depths spin this long night to me

as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,

and link by link, and step by step;

sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,

thrust them into my breast, into my hands,

like a torrent of sunbursts,

an Amazon of buried jaguars,

and leave me cry: hours, days

and years,

blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Rumi

Be Melting Snow

Totally Conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.

Is someone here? I ask.

The moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street.

I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening.

We’re looking up at the sky.

My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.

Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.

It’s midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out

in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back.

The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,

Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.

No one pays attention.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,

God is in the look of your eyes,

in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,

or things that have happened to you

There’s no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.

Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.

Let your tongue become that flower.

The Gift of Water

Someone who doesn’t know the Tigris River exists

brings the caliph who lives near the river

a jar of fresh water. The caliph accepts, thanks him,

and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.

“Since this man has come through the desert,

he should return by water.” Taken out by another door,

the man steps into a waiting boat

and sees the wide freshwater of the Tigris.

He bows his head, “What wonderful kindness

that he took my gift.”

Every object and being in the universe is

a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty,

a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained

by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth

more shining, as though covered in satin.

If the man had seen even a tributary

of the great river, he wouldn’t have brought

the innocence of the gift.

Those that stay and live by the Tigris

grow so ecstatic that they throw rocks at the jugs,

and the jugs become perfect! They shatter.

The pieces dance, and water… Do you see?

Neither jar, nor water, nor stone, nothing.

You knock at the door of reality,

shake your thought-wings, loosen

your shoulders, and open.

Noel Frederick McInnis

Flow

Be,

as water is,

without friction.

Flow around the edges

of those within your path.

Surround within your ever-moving depths

those who come to rest there—

enfold them, while never for a moment holding on.

Accept whatever distance

others are moved within your flow.

Be with them gently

as far as they allow your strength to take them,

and fill with your own being

the remaining space when they are left behind.

When dropping down life’s rapids,

froth and bubble into fragments if you must,

knowing that the one of you now many

will just as many times be one again.

And when you’ve gone as far as you can go,

quietly await your next beginning.

Robert Frost

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,

“You push and I’ll pelt.”

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged — though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, 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 marked 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 traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Maya Angelou

Touched by An Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love’s light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

Refusal

Beloved,

In what other lives or lands

Have I known your lips

Your Hands

Your Laughter brave

Irreverent.

Those sweet excesses that

I do adore.

What surety is there

That we will meet again,

On other worlds some

Future time undated.

I defy my body’s haste.

Without the promise

Of one more sweet encounter

I will not deign to die.

Edgar Allan Poe

Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow–

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand–

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep–while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?