What's the best poem you've ever read?  I mean, the one you can read a thousand times, and never get tired of it?
  I'll start...mine is "The Second Coming" by WB Yeats.

Bukowski's "there's a bluebird in my heart".

Equivocal about A favorite, but this, by Neruda, surely rates high. It's my own translation (and an inspiration).

Ars magnetica
                          Pablo Neruda

From so much love and travelling come books,
and if they don’t contain kisses or regions,
if they don’t contain a man with full hands,
if they don’t contain a woman in each drop,
hunger, desire, anger, roads,
they’re useless as a shield or bell:
they have no eyes and can’t open them,
they have the dead mouth of a statement.

I loved the tangling of genitals,
from blood and love I carved my poems,
in hard earth I planted a rose
fought over by the fire and the dew.

Thus I can go my way singing.

i didn't know we were quoting...cool!  here's BLUEBIRD by Charles Bukowski:

Bluebird
by Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

“What I Must Tell Myself” by David Whyte

Above the water
And against the mountain
The geese fly through the
Brushed darkness
Of the early morning
And out into the light,

They travel over
My immovable house
With such unison
Of faith
And with such
Assurance
Towards the south

Cresting the mountains
And the long
Coast of a continent

As they move
Each year
Toward a horizon
They have learned
To call their own.

I know this house
And this horizon
And this world I have made.
I know this silence
And the particular treasures
And terrors
Of this belonging
But I cannot know the world
To which I am going

I have only this breath
And this presence
For my wings
And they carry me
In my body
Whatever I do
From one hushed moment
To another.

I know my innocence
And I know my unknowing
But for all my successes
I go through life
Like a blind child
Who cannot see,
Arms outstretched
Trying to put together
A world.

And the world
Works on my behalf
Catching me in its arms
When I go to far.

I don’t know what
I could have done
To have earned such faith.

But what of all the others
And the bitter lovers
And the ones who were not held?

Life turns like a slow river
And suddenly you are there
At the edge of the water
With all the rest
And the fire carries the
Feast and the laughter
And in the darkness
Away from the fire
The unspoken griefs
That still
Make togetherness
But then
Just as suddenly
It has become a fireless
Friendless
Night again
And you find yourself alone
And you must speak to the stars
Or the rain-filled clouds
Or anything at hand
To find your place.

When you are alone
You must do anything
To believe
And when you are
Abandoned
You must speak
With everything
You know
And everything you are
In order
To belong.

If I have no one to turn to
I must claim my aloneness.

If I cannot speak
I must reclaim the prison
Of my body.

If I have only darkness
I must claim the night.

And then,
Even in the closest dark
The world
Can find me

And if I have honor
Enough
For the place in which it finds me
I will know
It is speaking to me
And where I must go.

Watching the geese
Go south I find
That
Even in silence
And even in stillness
And
Even in my home
Alone
Without a thought
Or a movement
I am part
Of a great migration
That will take me to another place.

And though all the things I love
May pass away and
The great family of things and people
I have made around me
Will see me go,
I feel them living in me
Like a great gathering
Ready to reach a greater home.

When one thing dies all things
Die together, and must live again
In a different way,
When one thing
Is missing everything is missing,
And must be found again
In a new whole
And everything wants to be complete,
Everything wants to go home
And the geese traveling south
Are like the shadow of my breath
Flying into the darkness
On great heart-beats
To an unknown land where I belong.

This morning they have
Found me,
Full of faith,
Like a blind child,
Nestled in their feathers,
Following the great coast of the wind
To a home I cannot see.

PLUS might I add the best poem of the 20th century, Four Quartets by TS Eliot. A bit long for a post.

There are many poems that I like better than this one
but because it is the first poem I ever memorized
and because it brings an emotional memory to mind
I choose


Breathes There the Man... From the Lay of the Last Minstrel
by Sir Walter Scott

Canto Sixth

I

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

My mother would often recite poems for me when I was little.
The first poem she ever memorized was also her favorite.
OK, OK, it seems sappy today but I can still remember
laying my head in her lap and listening to her drone the words

I wandered lonely as a cloud
  WIlliam Wordsworth

          I wandered lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:                                 
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,                             
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.

Now, as far as Yeats is concerned, I love:

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
 

My girl:
Anne Sexton, 'For My Lover, Returning to His Wife'

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.

She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.

Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.

She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,

has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,

done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.

She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.

I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --

for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive --

for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --

the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.

She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

J

I disagree with this assessment...I think your pick is second best.  "Howl" beats it by a long mile...it is as purely, savagely, barbarically American as anything ever spawned by any poet in America. 
But then again, I like Jim Morrison's poetry, too, so I am inclined to savagery and barbarity...LOL.
Old TS is one of my go-to guys, though.

as ever,
Anita

ahhh, anita, is it not a matter of taste? I meant no assertion of absolutes when stating Four Quartets being the best poem of the 20th century...you certainly have a case for contention with "Howl", I must say. Both eliot and ginsberg can be rather 'longwinded' poets...which I enjoy WHEN it is written to the superb perfection that these great masters have mastered.
thank you for your contention.

Sunday Morning  - Wallace Stevens

Well, I'd have to say the one that I find myself reciting parts of from time to time--because I'm on a long journey and remember that in periods of solitude--is "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," Robert Frost.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This is my favourite.....

The Lady of Shalott    (Alfred Tennyson)

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

I liked Ozymandius ever since I was a kid. Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright is another - great images and superb get out.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening is a good one too Jay. I used to do a lot of readings and this was one I often used when sick of my own stuff.

Oooh, 'Ulysses' by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Though 'Sunday Morning' and a few of Cummings' are not too distant runners up.
 

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Six Persimmons" by Arthur Sze.  It's in six sections; here's the second section. 

2

A visual anthropologist dies in a head-on collision
and leaves behind an Okinawan bow, whisk
Bizen bowl, hammock, New Guinea coffee beans,
calligraphic scroll, "In motion there is stillness."
Walking along the shifting course of the Pojoaque River,
I ponder the farmation of sunspots, how they appear
to be floating islands, gigantic magnetic storms
on the surface of the sun, and, forming cooler regions,
become darker to the human eye.  I ponder how
he slowed the very sharpening of a pencil
but sped up La Bajada behind a semi in the dark,
and, when the semi shifted in the the right lane,
was sandwiched and smashed into an out-of-state
pickup driving down the wrong side of the highway.
I hold the blued seconds when - Einstein Cross -
he cursed, slammed on the brakes - the car crunched
and flew apart in a noise he could not hear into
a pungent white saguaro blossom opening for a single night.


("Einstein cross" is the gravitational effect on viewing distant objects in the solar system--it has been compared to viewing a distant street light through a drinking glass.  The drinking glass acts as a lens that make one see a single object multiple times)

In my email this morning appeared this poem by Neruda.  Wonderful.

Poetry


And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Pablo Neruda

I wanted to add this one which also is a favorite of mine by C. P. Cavafy.


Ithaka
 
 
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.


Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.


And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

"I Made a Mistake" by Charles Bukowski
from "Love is a Dog from Hell"

I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?"
and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog."
she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.

To A Young  Poet
 

Time cannot break the bird’s wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.

 
           Edna St. Vincent Millay



In Mind

 

There’s in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured, and smelling of
apples or grass.  She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation –

               but she has
no imagination.

                    And there’s a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs –

but she is not kind.

                            Denise Levertov


           

I've been thinking of this poem a lot lately:

The Ballad of Reading Gaol: I

by Oscar Wilde

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
  For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
  When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
  And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
  In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head,
  And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
  With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
  Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
  A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
  ”That fellow’s got to swing.”

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
  Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
  Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
  My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what haunted thought
  Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
  With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
  And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
  By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
  And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
  Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
  The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
  Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
  And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
  Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
  On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
  Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
  Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men
  Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
  And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
  The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
  Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
  The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
  With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
  To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
  Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
  Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not feel that sickening thirst
  That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
  Comes through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
  The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the anguish of his soul
  Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
  Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
  Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
  For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
  The kiss of Caiaphas.

I had forgotten just how much I adored, still adore, the work of Maxine Kumin.  Today, pulling out my Contemporary American Poetry, 1991 5th edition, I discovered Maxine all over again.  What follows may not be my favorite, but, whoa, what a poem.

“Morning Swim”

Into my empty head there come
a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nude
through mist, in chilly solitude.

There was no line, no roof or floor
to tell the water from the air.

Night fog thick as terry cloth
closed me in its fuzzy growth.

I hung my bathrobe on two pegs.
I took the lake between my legs.

Invaded and invader, I
went overhand on that flat sky.

Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame.
In their green zone they sang my name

and in the rhythm of the swim
I hummed a two-four-time slow hymn.

I hummed Abide with Me.  The beat
rose in the fine thrash of my feet,

rose in the bubbles I put out
slantwise, trailing through my mouth.

My bones drank water; water fell
through all my doors.  I was the well

that fed the lake that met my sea
in which I sang Abide with Me.

I would have to say "the inferno" i have read it 10 times and could read it ten more. i like "metamorphoses" also.

i

Dax Riggs is really a genius.

My favorite poem varies from time to time. It's the one that has just reminded me of itself and made me want to quote from it.

A favorite of mine by Lyn Lifshin

 AFTER A DAY WE STAY IN BED UNTIL
THE SUN IS CLOSE TO SETTING


He drives home
thru the black trees
with a poem
about me that will
make him famous
starting in his
fingers.  He wishes
the wheel was his
Olympia typewriter.
He needs to get my
hair where he can
touch it on the long
drive thru the pine
trees, my musk still
drenching the car.
I want to read
this poem almost as
much, dazed, the
night's performance
has sucked me flat
and pale as an empty
sheet of non erasable
bond, has pulled
all color, all the
wet moist verbs
out the way he took
the stories I told
and made them in
to his own surreal
dreams.  Even my
leaves and branches
became the green
arms of a child.
My mouth is dry, I
need to have his
poem where my clove
nipples press into his
blue striped cotton
smelling of sun and
wind in the pine
trees, a mirror that
will reflect my dark
eyes.  I need this as
much as he needs
to invent me to
become himself.

Actually, Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" is broken into four-line stanzas.

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is for the Lifshin poem I mean....wow!

e

My favorite poem is often the one I have just written.
That is until reality sets in!

e

Lifshin is magnificent isn't she?

I am on the road today in a hotel
but soon as I get back to my desk I will hunt her works down

:-) e

I have three,

Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe. 
The Knight by Adrienne Rich
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.

I could reread these three poems over and over and never get sick of them.

Perhaps Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."  I also love Amy Lowell's "Lilacs," William Carlos Williams' "The Desert Music," and an almost totally unknown poem, hard to find, by William Rose Benet called "Green Turtles" -- a long, lovely, reminiscent poem about childhood and turtles, very well written indeed, I think.  Etc., etc.  And Edward FitzGerald's translation of "The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam."  And by all means Walt Whitman's "Song Of Myself" and Emily Dickinson's "A Bird Came Down The Walk."

My current favorite poet and the second reason why I learned Spanish. I hope to one day be able to write as beautifully as he, in this language.


Los Heraldos Negros by Cesar Vallejo

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... Yo no sé.
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma... Yo no sé.

Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.

Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

Y el hombre... Pobre... pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como un charco de culpa, en la mirada.

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes ... Yo no sé!

I recommend The Black Heralds and Trilce, $25 for both on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Heralds-Lannan-Literary-Selections/dp/1556591993.

(Oh, and the first reason, was La Casa de Bernada Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca, Bernada Alba crying "¡Mi hija ha muerto virgen!" is a brilliant, powerful image that still sits in my mind.)

Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred PrufrockThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
         
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
 
LET us go then, you and I,   
When the evening is spread out against the sky   
Like a patient etherised upon a table;   
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,   
The muttering retreats   
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels   
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:   
Streets that follow like a tedious argument   
Of insidious intent   
To lead you to an overwhelming question …          
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”   
Let us go and make our visit.   
    
In the room the women come and go   
Talking of Michelangelo.   
    
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,          
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes   
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,   
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,   
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,   
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,          
And seeing that it was a soft October night,   
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.   
    
And indeed there will be time   
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,   
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;          
There will be time, there will be time   
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;   
There will be time to murder and create,   
And time for all the works and days of hands   
That lift and drop a question on your plate;          
Time for you and time for me,   
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,   
And for a hundred visions and revisions,   
Before the taking of a toast and tea.   
    
In the room the women come and go          
Talking of Michelangelo.   
    
And indeed there will be time   
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”   
Time to turn back and descend the stair,   
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—          
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]   
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,   
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—   
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]   
Do I dare          
Disturb the universe?   
In a minute there is time   
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   
    
For I have known them all already, known them all:—   
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,          
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;   
I know the voices dying with a dying fall   
Beneath the music from a farther room.   
  So how should I presume?   
    
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—          
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,   
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,   
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,   
Then how should I begin   
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?          
  And how should I presume?   
    
And I have known the arms already, known them all—   
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare   
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]   
It is perfume from a dress          
That makes me so digress?   
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   
  And should I then presume?   
  And how should I begin?
      .      .      .      .      .   
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets          
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes   
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…   
    
I should have been a pair of ragged claws   
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
      .      .      .      .      .   
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!          
Smoothed by long fingers,   
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,   
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.   
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,   
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?          
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,   
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,   
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;   
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,   
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,          
And in short, I was afraid.   
    
And would it have been worth it, after all,   
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,   
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,   
Would it have been worth while,          
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,   
To have squeezed the universe into a ball   
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,   
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,   
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—          
If one, settling a pillow by her head,   
  Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.   
  That is not it, at all.”   
    
And would it have been worth it, after all,   
Would it have been worth while,          
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,   
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—   
And this, and so much more?—   
It is impossible to say just what I mean!   
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:          
Would it have been worth while   
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,   
And turning toward the window, should say:   
  “That is not it at all,   
  That is not what I meant, at all.”
      .      .      .      .      .          
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;   
Am an attendant lord, one that will do   
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,   
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,   
Deferential, glad to be of use,          
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;   
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;   
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—   
Almost, at times, the Fool.   
    
I grow old … I grow old …        
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.   
    
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?   
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.   
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.   
    
I do not think that they will sing to me.          
    
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves   
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back   
When the wind blows the water white and black.   
    
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea   
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown          
Till human voices wake us, and we drown   

Lots of favorites, but I guess Frost's "The Road Note Taken" holds a special place. I did a kind of avant-garde tribute to it some long while ago:

http://www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,53.0.html

Absolute one and only favourite is impossible.

A few faves already mentioned (Howl, When you are Old, J Alfred Prufrock, Sunday Morning),
but here's a few more:

The Moment by Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.



An Afternoon by Raymond Carver

As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn't that. No,
it's because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy, not even sure where she is
for a moment. She waves the hair from her forehead.
Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,
head down. Legs sprawled. He sees her
through the doorway. Maybe
she's remembering what happened that morning.
For after a time, she opens one eye and looks at him.
And sweetly smiles.





I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath


But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.



Tomes by Billy Collins
     
There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in her kitchen,
the device on which she would place
a certain amount of flour,
a certain amount of fish.

Open flat on my lap
under a halo of lamplight,
a book like this always has a way
of soothing the nerves,
quieting the riotous surf of information
that foams around my waist
even though it never mentions
the silent labors of the poor,
the daydreams of grocers and tailors,
or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms-

even though it never mentions my mother,
now that I think of her again,
who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth
in her electric bed,
in her smooth pink nightgown
the bones of her fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

What a fine poem.  One of my favorites, too.  So glad to read it here again.

Humpty Dumpty

— thereafter
all else falls into place
— on and on

dr





.

Lights Out
by Edward Thomas (Killed in ww1 (a friend of Robert Frost, ))

 
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.
 
 
Many a road and track
That, since the dawn’s first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.
 
 
Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends;
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.
 
 
There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter, and leave, alone,
I know not how.
 
 
The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.



First Hour


That hour I was most myself. I had shrugged
my mother slowly off, I lay there
taking my first breaths, as if
the air of the room was blowing me
like a bubble. All I had to do
was go out along the line of my gaze and back,
out and back, on gravity’s silk, the
pressure of the air a caress, smelling on my
self her creamy blood. The air
was softly touching my skin and tongue,
entering me and drawing forth the little
sighs I did not know as mine.
I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet
and looked, and did the wordless thought,
my mind was getting its oxygen
direct, the rich mix by mouth.
I hated no one. I gazed and gazed,
and everything was interesting, I was
free, not yet in love, I did not
belong to anyone, I had drunk
no milk yet – no one had
my heart. I was not very human. I did not
know there was anyone else. I lay
like a god, for an hour, then they came for me,
and took me to my mother.

Sharon Olds
(my favourite poet ever)

By St Thomas Water by Charles Causley (which I can't find but here's a link to him reading Timothy Winters)

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do;jsessionid=4C39E6EB5C706B45C0BB08BB7A37B4D4?poemId=124

Ha, ha....that's interesting, its my father's favorite poem, I remember when I was really young, like 7? or 8, maybe. And I wrote my first poem, showed him it, and he then followed it up with reading that poem to me. Its a really nice memory for me, thanks for inadvertently bringing it up.

So glad to see something by Edward Thomas, the man Robert Frost went walking with and for whom he wrote "The Road Not Taken," as Thomas said it did not matter which road you took, and Frost was choosy.  The poem may be a private joke and not perhaps the great serious thing most have made of it.  But I am far from sure of that, and do not want to take any reader's pleasure away.  Thomas was, I think, a truly great and very individual poem, and his work deserves to be read and read and reread.

I'm quite fond of this poem by Roger McGough:

Let Me Die A Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean & and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
& in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
& give me a short back & insides

Or when I'm 104
& banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
& fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
& throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax & waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

the way I heard about the road not taken was that Thomas was booked to moved his family to the States to start a new life in the vicinity of Frost.  Frost sent him a draft of the road not taken and three weeks later Thomas a troubled man in his thirties with a iwfe and young family joined up and was subsequently killed in France in 1916.


Your story about Thomas saying it did not matter which road you took sheds an even more interesting light on it all. Thanks Jonathan.

Brian - just saw that you added this - one of my favorite of Plath- xo M

many of my favourites poets have been mentioned, including Ginsburg, Bukowski and Frost. I'll add Al Purdy.
Langston Hughes also come to mind.