The Poetic Library of Venus

A collection of poetry on love, death, sex, anger, fear and life

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Welcome to the Library of Venus!

I used to be a literature student. Then I got ill. But I never lost my love of poetry or its ability to gut me with a single phrase. So this is my collection of favourites from across the centuries.

If you know of a poem you think I should include, send me a message! I’d love to see what you find inspiring. 

I hope you’ll join me in this exploration through the literary world. You’ll find the most famous poets and complete strangers posted side by side here. You’ll probably even find some of my own work, but that is few and far between.

It won’t all be happiness and sunshine - there’ll be war, murder, oppression, violence, death, loss and pain. The world is terrible in its beauty and beautiful in its terror, and it does no good to sugar coat life. Instead, alongside the joyful and inspiring will be the voices that need to be heard, the stories of a world you probably have never seen, the echoes of deep rooted fears.

Every poem available on this blog is already available on the internet for free; however, if you enjoy any of these poems I urge you to go buy some of that author’s published material! Support poets where you can. 

This is a side blog. Comment replies will be coming from venusandhestia.

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I Turn the Carriage, Yoke and Set Off - Traditional Chinese Poem (anon, tr. Burton Watson & Arthur Waley)

I turn the carriage, yoke and set off, far far, over never-ending roads. The autumn winds shake the hundred grasses, On every side, how desolate and bare! Among all I meet, nothing of the past; Their strangeness hastens the coming of old age. Prosperity and decay, each have their season; success is bitter when it is so late in coming! Man is not made of metal or stone; He cannot far prolong the days of his fate. Swiftly he follows in the wake of change; Fame is the only treasure that endures. 

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On the Nature of Love - Rabindranath Tagore

The night is black and the forest has no end; a million people thread it in a million ways. We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where or with whom - of that we are unaware. But we have this faith - that a lifetime's bliss will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips. Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks. Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning: whomever I see that instant I fall in love with. I call that person and cry: `This life is blest! for your sake such miles have I traversed!' All those others who came close and moved off in the darkness - I don't know if they exist or not.

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Black Woman - Georgia Douglas Johnson

Don’t knock at my door, little child,     I cannot let you in, You know not what a world this is     Of cruelty and sin. Wait in the still eternity     Until I come to you, The world is cruel, cruel, child,     I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,     I cannot bear the pain Of turning deaf-ear to your call     Time and time again! You do not know the monster men     Inhabiting the earth, Be still, be still, my precious child,     I must not give you birth!

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Nothing - Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (tr. Sarah Maguire & Atef Alshaer)

Before you start reading, put down your pen: consider the ink, how it comprehends bleeding Learn from the distant horizon and from the narrowing eyes the expansiveness of vision and the treachery of hands Do not blame me – do not blame anyone – if you die before you read on before blood is understood

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The Infinite Shining Heavens - Robert Louis Stevenson

The infinite shining heavens Rose and I saw in the night Uncountable angel stars Showering sorrow and light.

I saw them distant as heaven, Dumb and shining and dead, And the idle stars of the night Were dearer to me than bread.

Night after night in my sorrow The stars stood over the sea, Till lo!  I looked in the dusk And a star had come down to me

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Love Poems When All The Flowers Are Dead - Ash Davida Jane

This is the start of a new poetry school          It’s called  ~Dinosaur Romanticism~

We write lines like            I miss you like a long-dead pterodactyl misses the air rushing through its wings! &            You make my body tremble like a much younger Earth under a T-Rex’s feet!

I’d swallow the comet whole for you but it can’t make them come back Here’s my ode to a diplodocus                       Here’s my meditation on brachiosaurus hearts            It would have gone down well in the Late Jurassic era but it’s no good as elegy

Here’s a pile of old bones lashed together +                                                                              a library like a graveyard with shiny new                                                                                                                                  headstones

This poem is like a bird’s broken rib              It’s so small you’d never notice it but once there’s enough of them you’ll start to hear it –                        the gaps in the song

You can dress a skeleton up as much as you want but it still looks just as dead You can hide the scent You can come crying when all your books are full of rotting corpses            & all your love poems are about birds that your children will never see alive only tiny dioramas in museums                                    cold bones with the feathers hot-glued on

Source: https://www.starlingmag.com/issue-7/ash-davida-jane

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Breathe. As in. (shadow) - Rosamond S. King

Breathe . As in what if the shadow is gold en? Breathe. As in hale assuming exhale. Imagine that.      As in first person singular. Homonym :eye. As in subject. As in centeroftheworld as in mundane. The opposite of spectacle spectacular. This is just us breathing. Imagine normalized respite gold in shadows . You have the right to breathe and remain . Imagine that

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Gone to the Unseen - Rumi

At last you have departed and gone to the Unseen. What marvelous route did you take from this world?

Beating your wings and feathers, you broke free from this cage. Rising up to the sky you attained the world of the soul. You were a prized falcon trapped by an Old Woman. Then you heard the drummer’s call and flew beyond space and time.

As a lovesick nightingale, you flew among the owls. Then came the scent of the rosegarden and you flew off to meet the Rose.

The wine of this fleeting world caused your head to ache. Finally you joined the tavern of Eternity. Like an arrow, you sped from the bow and went straight for the bull’s eye of bliss.

This phantom world gave you false signs But you turned from the illusion and journeyed to the land of truth.

You are now the Sun – what need have you for a crown? You have vanished from this world – what need have you to tie your robe?

I’ve heard that you can barely see your soul. But why look at all? – yours is now the Soul of Souls!

O heart, what a wonderful bird you are. Seeking divine heights, Flapping your wings, you smashed the pointed spears of your enemy.

The flowers flee from Autumn, but not you – You are the fearless rose that grows amidst the freezing wind.

Pouring down like the rain of heaven you fell upon the rooftop of this world. Then you ran in every direction and escaped through the drain spout . . .

Now the words are over and the pain they bring is gone. Now you have gone to rest in the arms of the Beloved.

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Cradle Song - William Blake

Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming in the joys of night; Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast Where thy little heart doth rest.

O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful night shall break.

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Freedom - Langston Hughes

Freedom will not come Today, this year            Nor ever Through compromise and fear. I have as much right As the other fellow has            To stand On my two feet And own the land. I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.            Freedom            Is a strong seed            Planted            In a great need.            I live here, too.            I want my freedom            Just as you.  

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On World-Making - Nomi Stone

To love is to tell the story of the world.     There was an ocean with a boat     mountains     a meadow     too painful to stare at directly. Haven’t I been here before? Yes.     No:     not quite here. “It is not as if,” the philosopher writes, “an I exists independently over here and then simply loses a you over there.” In the mist, a man rigs the Suzelle, little red boat. Loved labored for months, learning to tie the right knot. The exact and only knot that will keep the vessel tethered. She rehearsed for the worst possible thing. “The attachment to you,” it is written, “is part of what composes who I am.” I know/knew those hands, hers. I watched her dust the sourdough with flour at midnight a moon between her fingers.     Gone went Loved. But the half-world of her in me was me.     It was lit by the moon.

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A White Rose - John Boyle O’Reilly

The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; Oh, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove. But I send you a cream-white rose bud With a flush on its petal tips; For the love that is purest and sweetest Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

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Last Curtain - Rabindranath Tagore

I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes.

Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.

When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives.

Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got ---let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked.

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On a Night of the Full Moon - Audre Lorde

Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. The curve of your waiting body fits my waiting hand your breasts warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes. Thus I hold you frank in my heart's eye in my skin's knowing as my fingers conceive your flesh I feel your stomach moving against me. Before the moon wanes again we shall come together. And I would be the moon spoken over your beckoning flesh breaking against reservations beaching thought my hands at your high tide over and under inside you and the passing of hungers attended, forgotten. Darkly risen the moon speaks my eyes judging your roundness delightful.

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Georgia Dusk - Jean Toomer

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue   The setting sun, too indolent to hold   A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,   Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,     An orgy for some genius of the South   With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,   Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,   And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,   Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfil    Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile   Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low     Where only chips and stumps are left to show   The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,     Race memories of king and caravan,   High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man, Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,     Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .     Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane Is caroling a vesper to the stars . .

O singers, resinous and soft your songs   Above the sacred whisper of the pines,   Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

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Among Worlds - Innokenty Annensky

Among the worlds, in the glittering of luminaries, I keep repeating the name of one Star only…. Not because I feel love for Her, But that with others all is mirthless cheating. And when I am overpowered by doubt, from Her alone I seek an answer, not because she gives light, but because with Her no light is needed. 

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Среди миров, в мерцании светил Одной Звезды я повторяю имя… Не потому, чтоб я Её любил, А потому, что я томлюсь с другими. И если мне сомненье тяжело, Я у Неё одной ищу ответа, Не потому, что от Неё светло, А потому, что с Ней не надо света.