Find and share the perfect poems.
(For Roberta)
What if his glance is bold and free,
His mouth the lash of whips?
So should the eyes of lovers be,
And so a lover's lips.
What if no puritanic strain
Confines him to the nice?
He will not pass this way again,
Nor hunger for you twice.
Since in the end consort together
Magdalen and Mary,
Youth is the time for careless weather:
Later, lass, be wary.
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