I was a boy in a bookstore, “a bathhouse,” I’ll joke
when I am older. But then, I wasn’t. I was in a gallery
of things to be cracked open; all their spines & mine.
I tell you, I was a hungry pickpocket, plucking
what language I could from books & men who stood hard
before me. This is what it means to be astonishing;
to thieve speech and sense from the undeserving.
I tell you, I was a boy and they were men, so all
the words I know for this I made into small razors,
some tucked between my teeth, under my tongue,
and when they said what a good mouth I had,
I smiled, the silver glint of sharp things in me
singing, “I’ll outlive you. I’ll outlive all of you.”
Copyright © 2022 by Jesús I. Valles. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 12, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
You say you will not think of me:
You shut me out and count your beads,
The chaplet of your rules and doubts,
But lovers never think of creeds.
You’ll fill your mind with serious things:
You’ll think of God or Infinity,
Of a lover whose last charm is gone,
Of anything in the world but me.
Yet every thought will lead you back,
Infinity grow far and dim,
And God, with His sense of irony,
Will never let you think of Him.
From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa Gidlow. This poem is in the public domain.
It's a year almost that I have not seen her: Oh, last summer green things were greener, Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer. It's surely summer, for there's a swallow: Come one swallow, his mate will follow, The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken. Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow O'er height, o'er hollow! I'd be a swallow, To build this weather one nest together.
This poem is in the public domain.
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old—
October—November—
How she disliked the cold!
She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.
And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,
She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!
Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!
But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old—
October—November—
How she disliked the cold!
“When the Year Grows Old” was published in Millay’s book Renascence and Other Poems (M. Kennerley, 1917). This poem is in the public domain.
I.
Life goes by moving,
Up and down a chain of moods
Wanting what’s nothing.
II.
My soul is the wind
Dashing down fields of Autumn:
O, too swift to sing.
III.
Listen to the rain
Falling broken on the ground:
Pity the sky once.
IV.
Knowing not at all
Who stands above me seeing:
Tears of gratitude.
V
The nightingale sings
My heart desires but the night
Space swallows my voice:
VI.
I shall spend my moods
Like a rose discards leaves
And die without moods.
VII.
Did you say a sound?
Did you say the wind? Dashing
Only my soul’s quick—
VIII.
O moon of to-night
Let me rest my head on you
And hear my life sing.
IX.
My ears burn for speech
And you lie cold and silent
Supinely cruel:
X.
Look at the white moon
The sphinx does not question more.
Turn away your eyes.
XI.
Thought that is no thought
Poems buried in my heart
Song that is no song …
XII
The poetry of life?
No, the picture of my dreams
Flashing on my heart.
XIII
I ride down the stream
Between the earth and the sun
On the moon’s shadow.
XIV
Treading wearily
A unit of the parade
There is no escape.
XV.
Within the shadow
I am weaving the pattern
Of a spider web.
XVI
My heart like a shell
Moans at the breast of the earth
Being too full to sing.
XVII
You are life’s fountain
Springing from eternity
Flow not recklessly.
XVIII
I will wrap the song
In the leaves of the lotus
And send it to you.
XIX
No words speak louder
Than the tragic look of eyes
Close yours out of love.
XX
Why should I wander
I who have known no surprise?
Every day the same.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 25, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.
The human brain wants to complete—
The poem too easy? Bored. The poem too hard?
Angry. What’s this one about? Around the block
the easy summer weather, the picture-puff clouds
adrift in the blue sky that’s no paint-by-numbers.
In the corner garden, the cabbage butterfly
bothers the big leafy heads, trying to complete
its life cycle by hatching a horned monster to
chew holes in the green cloth manufactured so
laboriously by seed germ from air, water,
light, dirt. There’s no end to this, yes, no end.
Even when we want to stop, stop, stop! Even
when someone else calls us monster. Even when
we fear and hope that we will not have the final
word.
Copyright © 2018 by Minnie Bruce Pratt. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright ©1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.