Poem of the Day

Poem of the Day: In Memoriam, July 19, 1914

Anna Akhmatova — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

We aged a hundred years and this descended

In just one hour, as at a stroke.

The summer had been brief and now was ended;

The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring

Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.

And so I covered up my face, imploring

God to destroy me before battle fell.

And from my memory the shadows vanished

Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.

The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—

A book of portents terrible to read.

Source: Poetry (April 2008).

Anna Akhmatova

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Poem of the Day: In Memory of Jane Fraser

Geoffrey Hill — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

When snow like sheep lay in the fold

And winds went begging at each door,

And the far hills were blue with cold,

And a cold shroud lay on the moor,

She kept the siege. And every day

We watched her brooding over death

Like a strong bird above its prey.

The room filled with the kettle's breath.

Damp curtains glued against the pane

Sealed time away. Her body froze

As if to freeze us all, and chain

Creation to a stunned repose.

She died before the world could stir.

In March the ice unloosed the brook

And water ruffled the sun's hair.

Dead cones upon the alder shook.

Geoffrey Hill, "In Memory of Jane Fraser" from New and Collected Poems, 1952-1992. Copyright © 1994 by Geoffrey Hill. Used with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: New and Collected Poems 1952-1992 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994)

Geoffrey Hill

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Poem of the Day: After the Auction, I Bid You Good-Bye

Aimee Nezhukumatathil — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

You elbow me with your corduroy jacket

when a box chock-full of antique marbles comes up.

I can't hear your whispers above the auctioneer's racket.

The clipped speech of the auctioneer cracked

me up when you impersonated him in bed. Like a wild, thick mop

I soak up every copper smell from your corduroy jacket.

In two days, I will drive you to the airport, packed

with other couples pressed tightly at the top

of the escalator. Lines sear my cheek from your corduroy jacket

when we hug—then a quick kiss good-bye tacked

on at the end. I'll finger the rim on the paper coffee cup

you leave in my car. When I hear your name I can't forget

how your long torso pressed against my bare back,

bluish in this early light. Your fingers shot into me, popped

my spine into a wicked arch. There is no lack

of how it haunts me still—what I bid—lost, sacked

and wrapped for other girls. I should have looked up

to see who else was bidding, but I studied the folds in your jacket.

My limit is spent, loud and certain as the auctioneer's racket.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "After the Auction, I Bid You Good-Bye" from At the Drive-In Volcano. Copyright © 2007 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.

Source: At the Drive-in Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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Poem of the Day: The Sign in My Father's Hands

Martín Espada — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

The beer company

did not hire Blacks or Puerto Ricans,

so my father joined the picket line

at the Schaefer Beer Pavilion, New York World's Fair,

amid the crowds glaring with canine hostility.

But the cops brandished nightsticks

and handcuffs to protect the beer,

and my father disappeared.

In 1964, I had never tasted beer,

and no one told me about the picket signs

torn in two by the cops of brewery.

I knew what dead was: dead was a cat

overrun with parasites and dumped

in the hallway incinerator.

I knew my father was dead.

I went mute and filmy-eyed, the slow boy

who did not hear the question in school.

I sat studying his framed photograph

like a mirror, my darker face.

Days later, he appeared in the doorway

grinning with his gilded tooth.

Not dead, though I would come to learn

that sometimes Puerto Ricans die

in jail, with bruises no one can explain

swelling their eyes shut.

I would learn too that "boycott"

is not a boy's haircut,

that I could sketch a picket line

on the blank side of a leaflet.

That day my father returned

from the netherworld

easily as riding the elevator to apartment 14-F,

and the brewery cops could only watch

in drunken disappointment.

I searched my father's hands

for a sign of the miracle.

Martin Espada, "The Sign in My Father's Hands" from Imagine the Angels of Bread. Copyright © 1996 by Martin Espada. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1996)

Martín Espada

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Poem of the Day: The Kingfisher

Amy Clampitt — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud

they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming

beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening

of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed

by those eye-spots' stunning tapestry, unsettled

the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.

Months later, intermission in a pub on Fifty-fifth Street

found one of them still breathless, the other quizzical,

acting the philistine, puncturing Stravinsky—"Tell

me, what was that racket in the orchestra about?"—

hauling down the Firebird, harum-scarum, like a kite,

a burnished, breathing wreck that didn't hurt at all.

Among the Bronx Zoo's exiled jungle fowl, they heard

through headphones of a separating panic, the bellbird

reiterate its single chong, a scream nobody answered.

When he mourned, "The poetry is gone," she quailed,

seeing how his hands shook, sobered into feeling old.

By midnight, yet another fifth would have been killed.

A Sunday morning, the November of their cataclysm

(Dylan Thomas brought in in extremis to St. Vincent's,

that same week, a symptomatic datum) found them

wandering a downtown churchyard. Among its headstones,

while from unruined choirs the noise of Christendom

poured over Wall Street, a benison in vestments,

a late thrush paused, in transit from some grizzled

spruce bog to the humid equatorial fireside: berry-

eyed, bark-brown above, with dark hints of trauma

in the stigmata of its underparts—or so, too bruised

just then to have invented anything so fancy,

later, re-embroidering a retrospect, she had supposed.

In gray England, years of muted recrimination (then

dead silence) later, she could not have said how many

spoiled takeoffs, how many entanglements gone sodden,

how many gaudy evenings made frantic by just one

insomniac nightingale, how many liaisons gone down

screaming in a stroll beside the ruined nunnery;

a kingfisher's burnished plunge, the color

of felicity afire, came glancing like an arrow

through landscapes of untended memory: ardor

illuminating with its terrifying currency

now no mere glimpse, no porthole vista

but, down on down, the uninhabitable sorrow.

Amy Clampitt, "The Kingfisher" from The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt. Copyright © 1997 by the Estate of Amy Clampitt. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt (1997)

Amy Clampitt

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Poem of the Day: Eating Babies

Chana Bloch — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

FAT

is the soul of this flesh.

Eat with your hands, slow, you will understand

breasts, why everyone

adores them—Rubens' great custard nudes—why

we can't help sleeping with

pillows.

The old woman in the park pointed,

Is it yours?

Her gold eye-teeth gleamed.

I bend down, taste the fluted

nipples, the elbows, the pads

of the feet. Nibble earlobes, dip

my tongue in the salt fold

of shoulder and throat.

Even now he is changing,

as if I were

licking him thin.

HE SQUEEZES his eyes tight

to hide

and blink! he's still here.

It's always a surprise.

Safety-fat,

angel-fat,

steal it in mouthfuls,

store it away

where you save

the face that you touched

for the last time

over and over,

your eyes closed

so it wouldn't go away.

WATCH HIM sleeping. Touch

the pulse where

the bones haven't locked

in his damp hair:

the navel of dreams.

His eyes open for a moment, underwater.

His arms drift in the dark

as your breath

washes over him.

Bite one cheek. Again.

It's your own

life you lean over, greedy,

going back for more.

Chana Bloch, "Eating Babies" from The Past Keeps Changing. Copyright © 1992 by Chana Bloch. Reprinted by permission of The Sheep Meadow Press.

Source: The Past Keeps Changing (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1992)

Chana Bloch

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Poem of the Day: The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

William Butler Yeats

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Poem of the Day: Swimming Ool

Kenn Nesbitt — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Swimming in the swimming pool

is where I like to "B,"

wearing underwater goggles

so that I can "C."

Yesterday, before I swam,

I drank a cup of "T."

Now the pool's a "swimming ool"

because I took a "P."

"Swimming Ool." © 1998 by Kenn Nesbitt. Reprinted from Miles of Smiles (© 1998, 2004 by Meadowbrook Creations) with permission from Meadowbrook Press.

Source: Miles of Smiles (1998)

Kenn Nesbitt

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Poem of the Day: Between

Marie Ponsot — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Composed in a shine of laughing, Monique brings in sacks

of groceries, unloads them, straightens, and stretches her back.

The child was a girl, the girl is a woman; the shift

is subtle and absolute, worn like a gift.

The woman, once girl once child, now is deft in her ease,

is door to the forum, is cutter of keys.

In space that her torque and lift have prefigured and set free

between her mother and her child the woman stands

having emptied her hands.

Marie Ponsot, "Between" from The Green Dark. Copyright © 1988 by Marie Ponsot. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Green Dark (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)

Marie Ponsot

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Poem of the Day: All You Did

Kay Ryan — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

There doesn't seem

to be a crack. A

higher pin cannot

be set. Nor can

you go back. You

hadn't even known

the face was vertical.

All you did was

walk into a room.

The tipping up

from flat was

gradual, you

must assume.

Source: Poetry (May 2011).

Kay Ryan

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Poem of the Day: The Courtship of the Lizard Lover

Kate Buckley — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

He crawls through the cracks

of my stone foundation,

sly and sleek as

I tempt him with food.

He stays out of habit; I cook

out of love for things that move.

We grow accustomed to each other's

trails and smells, the skins we've shed

along the long, long road

of rubbing each other smooth.

Till all the skins we've shed lie sparkling

like so many stones in this desert land.

I scoop him up in my hand

and eat him.

Kate Buckley, "The Courtship of the Lizard Lover" from Follow Me Down. Copyright © 2009 by Kate Buckley. Reprinted by permission of Tebot Bach.

Source: Follow Me Down (Tebot Bach, 2009)

Kate Buckley

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Poem of the Day: Earth Science

J. T. Barbarese — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I smell me

coming up behind me

some days—

sweet sarcophagal

history. The Ark

after the beasts

disembarked,

the motel bed

as the maid draws

the shades, shakes the sheets,

blinks back the stink,

the leafed hollow

where the stalled mower

sits in its exhaust

and smells of wronged

flesh, wing, meat

but me mostly,

climbing the steps,

extract of me,

stinking of me.

Source: Poetry (January 2009).

J. T. Barbarese

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Poem of the Day: We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool" from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Gwendolyn Brooks.

Source: Poetry (September 1959).

Gwendolyn Brooks

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Poem of the Day: Harlem Shadows

Claude McKay — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass

In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall

Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass

To bend and barter at desire's call.

Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet

Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Through the long night until the silver break

Of day the little gray feet know no rest;

Through the lone night until the last snow-flake

Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,

The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet

Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.

Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way

Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,

Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,

The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!

Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet

In Harlem wandering from street to street.

Claude McKay

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Poem of the Day: The Box Kite

William Logan — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

The lift, the very lift and pull of it!

They'd wasted the summer morning,

father and son in the devil's

breath of July—gnats wheeling

madly above the drive—pasting Sunday comics

across the struts, like the canvas skin

of a Sopwith Camel. Into the close-gnawn yard

with its humpback boulder,

they dragged it triumphantly, unreeling the twine

until the contraption yanked itself

from bald earth, high above

the matchbox houses on the verge

of woods and the sweet-smelling bog,

to a height where a boy might peer over the horizon

to Boston—and beyond, the ocean.

The son was my father. I tottered at his legs,

having borrowed his name and my grandfather's.

They payed out the ramshackle affair

until it became a postage stamp. The line

burned a bloody groove into my palms,

the last time they stood at ease with each other.

Source: Poetry (September 2010).

William Logan

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Poem of the Day: Casey at the Bat

Ernest Lawrence Thayer — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;

The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,

A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest

Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;

They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that—

We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,

And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,

For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,

And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;

And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,

There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;

It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;

It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,

For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;

There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.

Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,

Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,

And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—

"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.

"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted some one on the stand;

And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;

He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;

He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;

But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;

But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,

And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clinched in hate;

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer

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Poem of the Day: My Sad Self

Allen Ginsberg — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

my buildings, streets I've done feats in,

lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

walking the size of specks of wool—

Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,

sun go down over New Jersey where I was born

& Paterson where I played with ants—

my later loves on 15th Street,

my greater loves of Lower East Side,

my once fabulous amours in the Bronx

faraway—

paths crossing in these hidden streets,

my history summed up, my absences

and ecstasies in Harlem—

—sun shining down on all I own

in one eyeblink to the horizon

in my last eternity—

matter is water.

Sad,

I take the elevator and go

down, pondering,

and walk on the pavements staring into all man's

plateglass, faces,

questioning after who loves,

and stop, bemused

in front of an automobile shopwindow

standing lost in calm thought,

traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me

waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

the romantic war news on the radio

... all movement stops

& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,

tenderness flowing thru the buildings,

my fingertips touching reality's face,

my own face streaked with tears in the mirror

of some window—at dusk—

where I have no desire—

for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese

lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,

Man struggling up the street

with packages, newspapers,

ties, beautiful suits

toward his desire

Man, woman, streaming over the pavements

red lights clocking hurried watches &

movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading

so crosswise, honking, lengthily,

by avenues

stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums

thru such halting traffic

screaming cars and engines

so painfully to this

countryside, this graveyard

this stillness

on deathbed or mountain

once seen

never regained or desired

in the mind to come

where all Manhattan that I've seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958

Allen Ginsberg

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Poem of the Day: The Shadow on the Stone

Thomas Hardy — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I went by the Druid stone

That broods in the garden white and lone,

And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows

That at some moments fall thereon

From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,

And they shaped in my imagining

To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders

Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,

Yea, her I long had learned to lack,

And I said: 'I am sure you are standing behind me,

Though how do you get into this old track?'

And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf

As a sad response; and to keep down grief

I would not turn my head to discover

That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see

That nobody stood at the back of me;

But I thought once more: 'Nay, I'll not unvision

A shape which, somehow, there may be.'

So I went on softly from the glade,

And left her behind me throwing her shade,

As she were indeed an apparition—

My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Source: The Complete Poems (2001)

Thomas Hardy

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Poem of the Day: Discrimination

Kenneth Rexroth — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I don't mind the human race.

I've got pretty used to them

In these past twenty-five years.

I don't mind if they sit next

To me on streetcars, or eat

In the same restaurants, if

It's not at the same table.

However, I don't approve

Of a woman I respect

Dancing with one of them. I've

Tried asking them to my home

Without success. I shouldn't

Care to see my own sister

Marry one. Even if she

Loved him, think of the children.

Their art is interesting,

But certainly barbarous.

I'm sure, if given a chance,

They'd kill us all in our beds.

And you must admit, they smell.

Kenneth Rexroth, "Discrimination" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1966 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: The Collected Shorter Poems (1966)

Kenneth Rexroth

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Poem of the Day: When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Walt Whitman — Fri, 31 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

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Poem of the Day: Yet Do I Marvel

Countee Cullen — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,

And did He stoop to quibble could tell why

The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,

Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus

Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus

To struggle up a never-ending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune

To catechism by a mind too strewn

With petty cares to slightly understand

What awful brain compels His awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel" from Color. Copyright 1925 by Harper & Brothers, NY. Renewed 1953 by Ida M. Cullen. Copyrights held by The Amistad Research Center, Tulane University. Administrated by Thompson and Thompson, Brooklyn, NY.

Source: My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen (Anchor Books, 1991)

Countee Cullen

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Poem of the Day: I Went into the Maverick Bar

Gary Snyder — Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

I went into the Maverick Bar

In Farmington, New Mexico.

And drank double shots of bourbon

backed with beer.

My long hair was tucked up under a cap

I'd left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay

by the pool tables,

A waitress asked us

where are you from?

a country-and-western band began to play

"We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskokie"

And with the next song,

a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances

in the fifties;

I recalled when I worked in the woods

and the bars of Madras, Oregon.

That short-haired joy and roughness—

America—your stupidity.

I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—

under the tough old stars—

In the shadow of bluffs

I came back to myself,

To the real work, to

"What is to be done."

Gary Snyder, "I Went into the Maverick Bar" from Turtle Island. Copyright © 1974 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Gary Snyder

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Poem of the Day: Sadie and Maud

Gwendolyn Brooks — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Maud went to college.

Sadie stayed at home.

Sadie scraped life

With a fine-tooth comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in.

Her comb found every strand.

Sadie was one of the livingest chits

In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies

Under her maiden name.

Maud and Ma and Papa

Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long

Her girls struck out from home.

(Sadie had left as heritage

Her fine-tooth comb.)

Maud, who went to college,

Is a thin brown mouse.

She is living all alone

In this old house.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "Sadie and Maud" from Selected Poems. Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

Source: Selected Poems (1963)

Gwendolyn Brooks

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Poem of the Day: Like Brothers We Meet

George Moses Horton — Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

Like heart-loving brothers we meet,

And still the loud thunders of strife,

The blaze of fraternity kindles most sweet,

There's nothing more pleasing in life.

The black cloud of faction retreats,

The poor is no longer depressed,

See those once discarded resuming their seats,

The lost strangers soon will find rest.

The soldier no longer shall roam,

But soon shall land safely ashore,

Each soon will arrive at his own native home,

And struggle in warfare no more.

The union of brothers is sweet,

Whose wives and children do come,

Their sons and fair daughters with pleasure they greet,

When long absent fathers come home.

They never shall languish again,

Nor discord their union shall break,

When brothers no longer lament and complain,

Hence never each other forsake.

Hang closely together like friends,

By peace killing foes never driven,

The storm of commotion eternally ends,

And earth will soon turn into Heaven.

Source: "Words for the Hour": A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)

George Moses Horton

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Poem of the Day: To an Athlete Dying Young

A. E. Housman — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 -0600

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)

A. E. Housman

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