Junior Poem Anthology

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

nibbling on a crust of bread, apple skins,

chewing the edges of photographs, the small

details of a life. I hoard and save,

place one thing inside...

Family Reunions

The other people quit their stone fields to come here.

They slip in from nights that even the snow abandons.

They leave ashes in their glasses

          and stains on the table.

The house is littered with bits of their hair and skin.

Bones clatter through the holes in their pockets.

All night long their hands scythe the air....

from Quit Dying to Die

   When the doctors burrowed into my body, they unearthed a slew of tumours. Growths speckled across lungs and kidneys. (Later, they would find the duo nestled into my cortex.) A Starry Night, the ultrasound technician titled my organs. He said they looked calcified as an alcoholic’s liver. Before the calcification was recognized as tumours, before those tumours were known...

In Exile I Draw the Tower Card

           Spruce, inadequate, and alien

            I stood at the side of the road

            It was the only life I had.

            – Jane Kenyon

When I injured my brain

it was barely spring.

Now it is mid-October

& getting up at eleven

is a big accomplishment.

My sister cries the sea

My sister is crying and crying

her tears grow to salt stormy showers

to rain and to rapids and rivers

they run to the sea to the sea.

My sister sobs softly she knows

she listens at shells and the shoals

she hears from fish sleeping at nightfall

she gathers from mushrooms and moulds.

Hears walking...

aubade for the BPD subreddit user who wrote can people with BPD love?

        bedtime ritual     summon a stranger     tonight you

linger on my laptop screen

                                          in the apartment hallway a door slams like a bird

                                           into glass     I will never know

                                        melts like snow

on a warm window

Let's Not Get It Together

The world has become corrupted

from our hearts

to the way our gods love us

as if they know they’re already dying

and they’re determined to drag us down with them

and just like a flagpole in winter

demanding our affection

we’ve stuck our tongues to their ancient religions

leaving us dumbstruck and blinded

Great Intimacy

It is like an exquisite spider web, this world, but I

don't get trapped.

I have ceased to tie the strings of one shoe to

another in the morning,

so now I don't trip over my wants. This leaves me

nimble. Any mountain I can scamper up.

A long rope shoved quickly into a sack can easily

get tangled...

Comfort

11 am. Time to wake up.

Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light

scattering dreams of violence across

the bedroom. I've chosen a self

too large for this body. Too willing to

change for others. Too beautiful

to appear in public. I’d tell you to walk

in my...

Bilingual/Bilingüe

My father liked them separate, one there,

one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart

(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was—his memory, his name

(su nombre)—with a key he could not claim.

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”

he said, “...

Internet Safety

My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age,

address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake

birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a

random year from the early 1900s. I spent hours making

my avatars look like everything, anything but myself. It

didn’t matter how people (mis)pronounced my name, how

young I was...

Picking Up a Dandelion

Before dawn,

I pick you up,

then bring you closer.

My fingers slowly roll

over your body,

removing seeds attached to you,

free them into the air.

I hear you sigh

as if breezes swirl at the bottom

of mountains. Through wheels

of twilight, I see you naked and fresh.

A shadow, and now a...

Women Do This Every Day

Packing for the Future: Instructions

Take the thickest socks.

Wherever you're going

you'll have to walk.

There may be water.

There may be stones.

There may be high places

you cannot go without

the hope socks bring you,

the way they hold you

to the earth.

At least one pair must be new,

must be blue as a wish...

On My Tongue

Bismillah is my first memory.

I became a bird in the Qur’an

at hardly eight years old.

I opened the dark green cover

and revealed the slippery

two hearts: Arabic

and its English translation.

On Saturdays, I learned to repeat

passages in Arabic,

to...

I Am

l am

gap tooth black girl

back corner of class

scribbling left-handed

poetry on blank paper

save the school's

curriculum for later

I am

overflowing tales by moonlight

trickling off the tip

of my grandmothers tongue

you will find my mother

tongue here

fast...

Finis

Give me a few more hours to pass 

With the mellow flower ofthe elm-bough falling,

And then no more than the lonely grass

And the birds calling.

Give me a few more days to keep

With a little love and a little sorrow,

And then the dawn in the skies of sleep

And a clear tomorrow.

Give me a few more...

My Poem Without Me in It

My poem without me in it—would it be like

my room when I had returned to it

after my mother was done with me.

Under my bed, only the outer

space balls, of dust, only

the asteroids of hair, no bent-legs

spider drawstring purse, no fly, no

I. My poem without me in it, would it

be like her house before I was granted

people arrived

people arrived from portugal. people arrived from africa. people arrived from

india. people arrived from england. people arrived from china. people

predated arrival. people fled predation. people were arrayed. people populated.

whips patterned rays into people. people arose. people rayed outward to

toronto, london, boo york. people raided people. people...

bhater mondo

Family History

Only the beginning is true.

There was an island

and an orphanage

and a boy.

There was a train and a country

to cross.

There was just a boy.

They took his words from him.

There was just a boy

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close...

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

as if viewed from the open mouth of a whale.

Inside her belly and inside the belly of time,

there’s no point worrying.

You...

Parable of the Eagle

An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed

and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed

even though he was the king of birds. The farmer

clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him

as a chicken. When he grew large, wildlife control

called on the farm. “It has the heart of an eagle,”

said the public...

We Lived Happily during the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house —

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month...

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you —

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-...

From Verso 4

I was nine and I stood at the top of the street for no reason except to make the descent of the gentle incline toward my house where I lived with everyone and everything in the world, my sisters and my cousins were with me, we had our bookbags and our four o'clock hunger with us and our grandmother and everything we loved in the world were waiting in the yellow washed house, there was a...

Happy Birthday Moon

Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

He makes the Moon say something new every night

to his deaf son who slurs his speech.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it,

his deaf son...

On Seeing a Photograph of My Mother at St. Joseph Residential School for Girls

A black and white picture

The sun is shining through a window behind you

Your hair black short Your small brown hands folded neatly on a tiny wooden desk

Some of the girls in the picture are smiling You are not Your eyes staring into the camera Seem a million miles away

That stare I will see seldom and one day...

Wow! You've Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

your selfies are so

animalistic

like, are you out to prove something

you’re a lion

you’re a bear

you’re a...

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

River of Milk

bear with me     it wasn’t long ago I was brainless

lazily pulling fireflies into my teeth      chewing them

into pure light     so much of me then was nothing

I could have fit into a sugar cube     my body burned

like a barnful of feathers       nothing was on fire

but fire was on everything     the wild mustard

 ...

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

I can attest to your misapprehension.

My social studies teacher in grade 8, Ms. Rogers,

believed it was customary for the Chinese

to walk...

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

                      Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

                                                                      he answered, under the apple boughs,

and so it went between us

            in the days I waited for him to...

Trust Fund Witches

Tape hiss, Value Village, vibraphones. On fixed-gears scrubbed with salt and lemon, like the secret at the centre of a Magic Eye the witches, genderless as light, breathe green and lavender, appear and disappear, chanting your passwords in a round. Voices like dimes dropped in a bowl, blush ultraviolet, glittering auras. Skin so soft they move through walls they press against your window,...

For My Best Friend

We are losing the intensive care unit waiting room war

We were doing so well

           So well we got sleepy

                       So sleepy the institution returned

In the 8th adjoined room sleeping on the 8th adjoined chair

The last five minutes just like the first

Hands...

Should Lanterns Shine

Should lanterns shine, the holy face,

Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,

Would wither up, and any boy of love

Look twice before he fell from grace.

The features in their private dark

Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come

And from her lips the added pigments fall,

The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

From Whereas

Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America

opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding. My daughter picks up

new habits from friends. She’d been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto...

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my...

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

After the click of the shutting. Life to life —

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm

Against the stab of worldlings,...

From World of Made and Unmade

In my dream my mother comes with me.

We are in the meadows we call

The Flats, walking the dogs.

Walk straight past the water trough,

she says, do not engage the moss.

Go back to the top of the page,

the dream says, and leave out the suicides.

In my dream I walk and...

Under the Answering Sky

I can manage being alone,

can pace out convivial hope

across my managing ground.

Someone might call, later.

What do the dead make of us

that we’d flay ourselves trying

to hear them though they may

sigh at such close loneliness.

I would catch, not my echo,

but their guarantee that this

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller...

Letters

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again.

The last items I had left.

The dates. The phrases.

The things you said. Forfeited.

Snowflake patterns.

Leaf diagrams.

Crushed. Melted. Dissolved....

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

 ...

Illegalese: Floodgate Dub

(for the Chinese maroons, British Columbia, 1999–2001)

if you arrive in the belly of a rusting imagination, there are grounds to

outlaw you. but Canada is a remix B-side chorus in the globalization

loop: a sampled track of “back home”-desiring, “old days”-admiring,

democracy-dreaming, racism-reaping homesickness that even

...

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough...

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,                      

Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;

That angel pureness which admits no stain;

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,

And...

Francesca Woodman

                              i

At the heart there is a hollow sun

by which we are constructed and undone

                              ii          

Behind the mirror. Favourite place to hide.

I didn't breathe. They looked so long I died.

Ae Fond Kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;                                

Ae fareweel, and then forever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,          

Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.          

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,   

While the star of hope she leaves him:     

Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle...

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,

...

Good Day Villanelle

You ran naked out the door.

The neighbours laughed; I chased you down.

I hardly see you anymore.

I know you’re busy.

Did I tell you when you were little how

you ran naked out the door?

You got halfway down the street

before I caught you in my arms.

I hardly see you anymore.

I...

Poem For Duncan Campbell Scott

(Canadian poet who “had a long and distinguished career

in the Department of lndian Affairs, retiring in 1932.”

The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse)

Who is this black coat and tie?

Christian severity etched in the lines

he draws from his mouth. Clearly a noble man

who believes in work and mission. See

how he rises from...

Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam

I am awake between stiff

sheets tonight in room thirty

four, listening to the heat

tick through the radiator,

seeing a television

pour out news of the war

the war in the air, the war

in the Gulf. The walls vibrate

with video light. This is

no room for sleep anymore.

There is no room for...

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki 

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,

a crawling-out ceremony

that cannot be translated.

hâw, pîkiskwê!

I’ll teach...

I Feel the Sun

Down a long, long corridor

I keep walking…

—A window straight ahead so bright it hurts the eyes,

reflective walls on both sides.

Sunlight, me,

I stand with the sunlight.

—The sunlight is so intense!

So warm people stop in their tracks,

so bright people hold their breath.

All the light in...

All About My Grandmother

Wheat daughter, prisoner of sneaky pigweed, mother

to the five corners of the world and your three hectares,

beak-nosed carpenter’s wife and the potter’s lover,

queen of the aroma of grey soap, head covered

with a gold-trimmed kerchief, the glory of birds at dawn,

tired liege of furrowed fields, midwife to our breads,

magic purveyor of...

Sonoma

He totaled his blue truck —

slowly spun out on an icy bridge,

rammed it into a guard rail.

Climbed out unbruised.

Coal Creek. Middle of nowhere.

A passing couple brought him home.

Then three years

with letters from the Motor Vehicle Department

before he relinquished his license.

...

World Town

Entirely windless, today’s sea; of these waters’ many names

the best seemed “field-of-pearl-leaves,” for it smelled like the air

in the house he built entirely of doors: pink school door,

gold of the burnt hotel, two old church blues, the abandoned

bank’s steel doors singular and immovably wedged over

the family’s heads though as with everything...

from Citizen

The rain this morning pours from the gutters and

everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your

glasses to single out what you know is there because 

doubt is inexorable; you put on your glasses. The trees,

their bark, their leaves, even the dead ones, are more

vibrant wet. Yes, and it’s raining. Each moment is like

this — before...

I've Tasted My Blood

If this brain’s over-tempered

consider that the fire was want

and the hammers were fists.

I’ve tasted my blood too much

to love what I was born to.

But my mother’s look

was a field of brown oats, soft-bearded;

her voice rain and air rich with lilacs:

and I loved her too much to like

how she dragged...

world shapers

creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups

they remind us of all the possible ways & means

that worlds can be born

& humans come to be

tricksters & goddesses

fire & water

the one god, or all of the gods

working as a team

worldmakers

worldshakers

worldbreakers...

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

stone, age old, my burnished and bruised, hair lingering, hand

caked, spongy as November, my dear Relentless, my dear Aging,

...

Badlands

Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home.

He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books

you never knew he read. He sat until his eyes strained to know

what the prairie insisted he must see. Once he found a hoodoo,

toppled after centuries of reaching beyond the flattened earth

we all become and remembering that,...

Portrait of Alice with Elvis

Queen and King, they rule side by side

in golden thrones above the clouds.

Her giggle and wide eyes remind him

of his first young wife, and his twang

never ceases to thrill her, so different

from the prim accents of men she’s known.

She sings for him, “Hound Dog”

and “Heartbreak Hotel,” and he turns

the Mock...

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more

available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or

try to...

              But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it...

11. Headwinds

When I began to write, I didn’t know

each of my words would bit by bit remove

things from the world and in return leave blank

spaces. That poems would begin to take

the place of my own homeland, mother, father,

first love, and second youth, and what I write

would fade from this world, trade its solid being

for unstable...

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

there was Cocteau, wagging his testimonial

finger, as usual, while flat out on the floor

with my arms in receipt of the flower

of thought, palms upwards, I envisaged

the...

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the

weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white...

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah,

these thirty-five years later,

still I could smell her fear.

Then, the huddled hills would not have

calmed her, now as they do me.

Then, the view did not snatch

the panting breath, now, as it does

these thirty-five years later, to the day,

I relive the journey of my salmon mother.

 ...

Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River

you are unaware of your obscure sources

but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea

as your final destination

you always frown with your brownish wrinkles

but you prefer a nonprofessional smile on your face

your only luggage of life

Echolalia

Once one gets what one wants

one no longer wants it.

One no longer wants what?

One no longer wants what

one wanted.

-

A man and a woman want a woman and a man

or a man and a woman depending

on the man and the woman.

Dear Updike

I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be present —

an endless succession of days I would miss, with their own

news and songs and styles of machine.  

          — John Updike, “On Being a Self Forever”

No, nothing much has changed.

A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize...

It Couldn’t Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing...

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;

I have not parted the grasses

or purposefully left them thatched....

From thirsty

This city is beauty

unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,

in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,

submerged landings,

I am innocent as thresholds

and smashed night birds, lovesick,

as empty elevators

let me declare doorways,

corners, pursuit, let me say

standing here in eyelashes, in

...

Sweet Like a Crow

For Hetti Corea, 8 years old

‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical

people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have

less sense of...

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of...

Self-Portrait

He wants to be

a brutal old man,

an aggressive old man,

as dull, as brutal

as the emptiness around him,

He doesn’t want compromise,   

Hall of Mirrors

To Kristin Lems

We miss something now

as we think about it

Let’s see: eat, sleep & dream, read

A good book, by Robert Stone

From The Titanic: The Iceberg

Calved from a glacier near Godhaven coast,

It left the fiord for the sea — a host

Of white flotillas gathering in its wake,

And joined by fragments from a Behring floe

Had circumnavigated it to make

Heirloom

My father bequeathed me no wide estates;

No keys and ledgers were my heritage;

Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates

Writ mournfully upon a blank front page —

...

400: Coming Home

You are still on the highway and the great light of

noon comes over the asphalt, the gravelled

shoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind of

laughter, the cars pound

south. Over your shoulder the scrub-grass, the fences,

the fields wait patiently as though someone

believed in them. The light has laid it

upon them. One...

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

and I’m filled with peace, perfect peace

No longer shall I speak of electrocuted poets

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a...

A Breakfast for Barbarians

my friends, my sweet barbarians,

there is that hunger which is not for food —

but an eye at the navel turns the appetite

round

with visions of some fabulous sandwich,

the brain’s...

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught....

dont worry yr hair

             dont worry yr eyes

         dont worry yr brain man th snow is

    cummin th bright burds flyin highr, th

sun is already all ovr yu,

              all th words...

The Days of the Unicorns

    I remember when the unicorns

roved in herds through the meadow

behind the cabin, and how they would

lately pause, tilting their jewelled

horns to the falling sun as we shared

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid, by hands   

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

             in space and time:

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.

Inarticulate, arctic,

Not written on by history, empty as paper,

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps,

came the bull moose

to be stopped...

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

In the onion, there’s

something of fire. That fire known as

Fog. The onion is the way

fog has of entering the earth.

Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion....

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through —

And when they all were seated,      

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

slit them free of their spotless pelts.

The storm...

Blank Sonnet

      The air smells of rhubarb, occasional

Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,

Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls

Like flower. I step through snow as thin as script

Watch white stars spin dizzy as...

From Summer Grass

The willows are thinking again about thickness,

slowness, lizard skin on hot rock,

and day by day this imaging transforms them

into what we see: dragons in leaf, draped scales

alongside the river of harried, spring-...

Fire Watch

Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.”

Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand,

or was your silence intentional? Over.

Northwest of The Seven

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each...

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

   adjusting the ash-heaps;

      opening and shutting itself like

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

“Hope” is the thing with feathers — 

That perches in the soul — 

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard — ...

Pale Blue Cover

In the middle of the night Matt would fly to Vancouver so he could take a walk on the sea wall the next day, then go home.

Wouldnt tell anyone, no telephone call, just run a scene through his peculiar Ontario head, no snow on that beach.

No one can imagine Matt teaching religion at...

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

He, who navigated with success

the dangerous river of his own birth

once more set forth

on a voyage of discovery

into the land I floated on

but could not touch to claim.

His feet slid on the bank,

the currents took him;

he swirled with ice and trees in the swollen water

and...

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings...

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless...

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public...

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; —

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for...

The Second Coming

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...

Spring

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,

...

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn,

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,

Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and...

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!

How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!

For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,

And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?

Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,

Like the young hours that lead the tender year

...

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move,

To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,

When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,

And Philomel becometh dumb,

The rest complains of cares...

Sonnet VII from ‘Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods’

Our life is like a forest, where the sun

Glints down upon us through the throbbing leaves;

The full light rarely find us. One by one,

Deep rooted in our souls, there springeth up

Dark groves of human passion, rich in gloom,

At first no bigger than an acorn-cup.

Hope threads the tangled labyrinth, but grieves

Till all our sins...

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

His Grace! impossible! what dead!

Of old age too, and in his bed!

And could that mighty warrior fall?

And so inglorious, after all!

Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,

The last loud trump must wake him now:

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,

He’d wish to sleep a little longer.

And could he be indeed so old...

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born,

And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;

The vision of a warrior bold

...

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

...

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have...

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most...

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?...

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their...

Epitaph

On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred

What on Earth deserves our trust?

Youth and Beauty both are dust.

Long we gathering are with pain,

What one moment calls again.

Seven years childless marriage past,

A Son, a son is born at last:

So...

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:...

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

“Alone”

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring

My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone —

And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —

Then — in my childhood —...

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed...

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing...

Père Lalement

I lift the Lord on high,

Under the murmuring hemlock boughs, and see

The small birds of the forest lingering by

And making melody.

These are mine acolytes and these my choir,

And this mine altar in the cool green shade,

Where the wild soft-eyed does draw nigh

Wondering, as in the byre

Of Bethlehem the oxen heard Thy cry...