My Favorite Poems:



FACTORY WINDOWS ARE ALWAYS BROKEN
 
by Vachel Lindsay
 
Factory windows are always broken.
Somebody's always throwing bricks,
Somebody's always heaving cinders,
Playing ugly Yahoo tricks.

Factory windows are always broken.
Other windows are let alone.
No one throws through the chapel-window
The bitter, snarling, derisive stone.

Factory windows are always broken.
Something or other is going wrong.
Something is rotten---I think, in Denmark.
End of the factory-window song.



rain
 
by Charles Bukowski
 
a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn't there?
he came to hear the
music.



22
 
by E.E. Cummings
 
annie died the other day

never was there such a lay---
whom,among her dollies,dad
first("don't tell your mother")had;
making annie slightly mad
but very wonderful in bed
---saints and satyrs,go your way

youths and maidens:let us pray



73
 
by E.E. Cummings
 
pity this busy monster,manunkind,
not.  Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on itself.
                                        A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence.  We doctors know

a hopeless case if--listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go



Sredni Vashtar
 
by Saki
 
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.



ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
 
by Robert Frost
 
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.



little citizen, little survivor
 
by Hayden Carruth
 
A brown rat has taken up residence with me.
A little brown rat with pinkish ears and lovely
Almond-shaped eyes. He and his wife live
in the woodpile by my back door, and they are
so equal I cannot tell which is which when they
poke their noses out of the crevices among
the sticks of firewood and then venture farther
in search of sunflower seeds spilled from the feeder.
I cannot tell you, dear friend, how glad I am to see them.
I haven't seen a fox for years, or a mink, or
A fisher cat, or an eagle or a porcupine; I haven't
Seen any of my old company in the woods
And the fields, we who used to live in such
Close affection and admiration. Well, I remember
When the coons would tap on my window, when
The ravens would speak to me from the edge of their
Little precipice. Where are they now? Everyone knows.
Gone. Scattered in this terrible dispersal. But at least
The brown rat that most people revile and fear
And castigate has brought his wife to live with me
Again. Welcome, little citizen, little survivor.
Lend me your presence, and I will lend you mine.



Hops
 
by Boris Pasternak
 
Beneath the willow, wound round with ivy,
We take cover from the worst
Of the storm, with a greatcoat round
Our shoulders and my hands around your waist.

I've got it wrong. That isn't ivy
Entwined in the bushes round
The wood, but hops. You intoxicate me!
Let's spread the greatcoat on the ground.



Journey of the Magi
 
by T.S. Eliot
 
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and
    women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the
    darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the
    lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and     death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.



The Goops
 
by Gelett Burgess
 
The Goops they lick their fingers
and the Goops they lick their knives;
They spill their broth on the tablecloth
OH, they lead disgusting lives!

The Goops they talk while eating,
and loud and fast they chew,
and that is why I'm glad that I
am NOT a GOOP-----are you?


home