Find and share the perfect poems.
(For Guillaume)
Since little time is granted here
For pride in pain or play,
Since blood soon cools before that Fear
That makes our prowess clay,
If lips to kiss are freely met,
Lad, be not proud nor shy;
There are no lips where men forget,
And undesiring lie.
This poem is in the public domain.
(For Carl Van Vechten)
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue and called me, “Nigger.”
1
For my Grandmother
This lovely flower fell to seed;
Work gently sun and rain;
She held it as her dying creed
That she would grow again.
2
For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty