The Poetry Typewriter

Read poems (Even if you don't understand).

[thepoetrytypewriter]

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,   Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river   I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway:   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you   Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean   Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,   For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages,   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city   Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you,   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare   Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry   Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley   Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,   Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,   The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,   O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window   As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,   The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming,   And the deep river ran on.

//

W. H. Auden《Another Time》1940, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice,         I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

//

Robert Forst《New Hampshire》1920, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—  Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart,  Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task           Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask  Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,  Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,          To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,  Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

//

John Keats《Keats: Poems Published in 1820》1819, United Kingdom

[thepoetrytypewriter]

I Shall not Care

When I am dead and over me bright April      Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,      I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful      When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted      Than you are now.

//

Sara Teasdale《Rivers to the Sea》1915, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Since There Is No Escape

Since there is no escape, since at the end    My body will be utterly destroyed, This hand I love as I have loved a friend,    This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed; Since there is no escape even for me    Who love life with a love too sharp to bear: The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea    And hours alone too still and sure for prayer— Since darkness waits for me, then all the more Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore    In pride, and let me sing with my last breath; In these few hours of light I lift my head; Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead    If there is any way to baffle death.

//

Sara Teasdale《Flame and Shadow》1920, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Growing Blind (Die Erblindende)

She sat, like all the rest of us, at tea. It seemed at first as if she raised her cup Not quite as all the others held theirs up. She smiled: her smile was pitiful to see.

And when we rose at last with talk and laughter, And through the many rooms with idle pace, As chance would have it, strolled from place to place- Then I saw her. She slowly followed after.

Restrained, like one who must be calm and cool Because she soon will sing before a crowd; Upon her happy eyes, without a cloud, The light fell from outside, as on a pool.

She followed slowly, hesitating, shy, As if some height or bridge must still be passed, And yet—as if, when that was done, at last She would no longer walk her way, but fly

//

Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by Margarete Münsterberg)《New Poems》1907, Bohemia / Austria

[thepoetrytypewriter]

I Am Too Alone in the World, and Yet Not Alone Enough (Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug)

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every hour holy. I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough just to stand before you like a thing, dark and shrewd. I want my will, and I want to be with my will as it moves towards deed; and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times, when something is approaching, I want to be with those who are wise or else alone. I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being, and never to be too blind or too old to hold your heavy, swaying image. I want to unfold. Nowhere do I want to remain folded, because where I am bent and folded, there I am lie. And I want my meaning true for you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I studied closely for a long, long time, like a word I finally understood, like the pitcher of water I use every day , like the face of my mother, like a ship that carried me through the deadliest storm of all.

//

Rainer Maria Rilke《The Book of Hours》1905, Bohemia / Austria

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

//

Rainer Maria Rilke《New Poems: The Other Part》1908, Bohemia / Austria

[thepoetrytypewriter]

#42 Dear Hank & John: Haiku (647)

Burning out its time, And timing its own burning, One lonely candle.

//

Richard Wright《Haiku: This Other World》1998, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

On Thinking about Hell (Nachdenkend über die Hölle / Nachdenkend, wie ich höre)

On thinking about hell, I gather My brother Shelley found it was a place Much like the city of London. I Who live in Los Angeles and not in London Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be Still more like Los Angeles.

In Hell too There are, I've no doubt, these luxuriant gardens With flowers as big as trees, which of course wither Unhesitantly if not nourished with very expensive water. And fruit markets With great heaps of fruit, albeit having Neither smell nor taste. And endless processions of cars Lighter than their own shadows, faster than Mad thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which Jolly-looking people come from nowhere and are nowhere bound. And houses, built for happy people, therefore standing empty Even when lived in.

The houses in Hell, too, are not all ugly. But the fear of being thrown on the street Wears down the inhabitants of the villas no less than The inhabitants of the shanty town.

//

Bertolt Brecht (Translated by Nicholas Jacobs)《Poem 1913-1956》1941, German

[thepoetrytypewriter]

To Those Born Later (An die Nachgeborenen)

I

Truly I live in dark times! Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs Has simply not yet heard The terrible news.

What kind of times are these, when To talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors? When the man over there calmly crossing the street Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends Who are in need?

It’s true that I still earn my daily bread But, believe me, that’s only an accident. Nothing I do gives me the right to eat my fill. By chance I've been spared. (If my luck breaks, I'm lost.)

They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it! But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat From the starving And my glass of water belongs to someone dying of thirst? And yet I eat and drink. 

I would also like to be wise. In the old books it says what wisdom is: To shun the strife of the world and to live out Your brief time without fear Also to get along without violence To return good for evil Not to fulfill your desires but to forget them Is accounted wise. All this I cannot do. Truly, I live in dark times. 

II

I came to the cities in a time of disorder When hunger reigned. I came among men in a time of revolt And I rebelled with them. So passed my time Given me to on earth.

I ate my food between battles I lay down to sleep among murderers I practiced love carelessly And I had little patience for nature’s beauty. So passed my time Given to me on earth.

All roads led into the mire in my time. My tongue betrayed me to the butchers. There was little I could do. But those is power Sat safer without me: that was my hope. So passed my time Given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight. Our goal Lay far in the distance Clearly visible, though I myself Was unlikely to reach it. So passed my time Given to me on earth.

III

You who will emerge from the flood In which we have gone under Bring to mind When you speak of our failings Bring to mind also the dark times That you have escaped. 

Changing countries more often than our shoes, We went through the class wars, despairing When there was only injustice, no outrage.

And yet we realized: Hatred, even of meanness Contorts the features. Anger, even against injustice Makes the voice hoarse. O, We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last When man is helper to man Think of us With forbearance.

//

Bertolt Brecht《Poems 1913-1956》1940, Germany

[thepoetrytypewriter]

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 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?

//

W. B. Yeats《Michael Robartes and the Dancer》1919, Ireland

[thepoetrytypewriter]

The Broken Balance

I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways, Were all suddenly struck quiet And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful, So fierce and final, a brazen Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany. They marvelled; the soothsayers answered: 'Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at the end of each period A sign is declared in heaven Indicating new times, new customs, a changed people; the Romans Rule, and Etruria is finished; A wise mariner will trim the sails to the wind.'

I heard yesterday So shrill and mournful a trumpet-blast, It was hard to be wise.... You must eat change and endure; not be much troubled For the people; they will have their happiness. When the republic grows too heavy to endure, then Caesar will carry It; When life grows hateful, there's power ...

II. To the Children

Power's good; life is not always good but power's good. So you must think when abundance Makes pawns of people and all the loaves are one dough. The steep singleness of passion Dies; they will say, 'What was that?' but the power triumphs. Loveliness will live under glass And beauty will go savage in the secret mountains. There is beauty in power also. You children must widen your minds' eyes to take mountains Instead of faces, and millions Instead of persons; not to hate life; and massed power After the lone hawk's dead.

III

That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow Fire licking the sides of the gray stones, Has a more passionate and more pure heart In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine; But he is betrayed by his own courage, The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.

Then praise the jewel-eyed hawk and the tall blue heron; The black cormorants that fatten their sea-rock With shining slime; even that ruiner of anthills The red-shafted woodpecker flying, A white star between blood-color wing-clouds, Across the glades of the wood and the green lakes of shade.

These live their felt natures; they know their norm And live it to the brim; they understand life. While men moulding themselves to the anthill have choked Their natures until the souls die in them; They have sold themselves for toys and protection: No, but consider awhile: what else? Men sold for toys.

Uneasy and fractional people, having no center But in the eyes and mouths that surround them, Having no function but to serve and support Civilization, the enemy of man, No wonder they live insanely, and desire With their tongues, progress; with their eyes, pleasure; with their hearts, death.

Their ancestors were good hunters, good herdsmen and swordsman, But now the world is turned upside down; The good do evil, the hope's in criminals; in vice That dissolves the cities and war to destroy them. Through wars and corruptions the house will fall. Mourn whom it falls on. Be glad: the house is mined, it will fall.

IV

Rain, hail and brutal sun, the plow in the roots, The pitiless pruning-iron in the branches, Strengthen the vines, they are all feeding friends Or powerless foes until the grapes purple. But when you have ripened your berries it is time to begin to perish.

The world sickens with change, rain becomes poison, The earth is a pit, it is time to perish. The vines are fey, the very kindness of nature Corrupts what her cruelty before strengthened. When you stand on the peak of time it is time to begin to perish.

Reach down the long morbid roots that forget the plow, Discover the depths; let the long pale tendrils Spend all to discover the sky, now nothing is good But only the steel mirrors of discovery . . . And the beautiful enormous dawns of time, after we perish.

V

Mourning the broken balance, the hopeless prostration of the earth Under men's hands and their minds, The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city, The spreading fungus, the slime-threads And spores; my own coast's obscene future: I remember the farther Future, and the last man dying Without succession under the confident eyes of the stars. It was only a moment's accident, The race that plagued us; the world resumes the old lonely immortal Splendor; from here I can even Perceive that that snuffed candle had something . . . a fantastic virtue, A faint and unshapely pathos . . . So death will flatter them at last: what, even the bald ape's by-shot Was moderately admirable?

VI. Palinode

All summer neither rain nor wave washes the cormorants' Perch, and their droppings have painted it shining white. If the excrement of fish-eaters makes the brown rock a snow-mountain At noon, a rose in the morning, a beacon at moonrise On the black water: it is barely possible that even men's present Lives are something; their arts and sciences (by moonlight) Not wholly ridiculous, nor their cities merely an offense.

VII

Under my windows, between the road and the sea-cliff, bitter wild grass Stands narrowed between the people and the storm. The ocean winter after winter gnaws at its earth, the wheels and the feet Summer after summer encroach and destroy. Stubborn green life, for the cliff-eater I cannot comfort you, ignorant which color, Gray-blue or pale-green, will please the late stars; But laugh at the other, your seed shall enjoy wonderful vengeances and suck The arteries and walk in triumph on the faces.

//

Robinson Jeffers《Themes in My Poems》1956, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

It’s Raining (Il Pleut)

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little drops Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below

//

Guillaume Apollinaire (Translated by Roger Shattuck) 《Calligrammes》1918, France

//

//

[thepoetrytypewriter]

Spring is like a perhaps hand

Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

//

E. E. Cummings《Tulips and Chimneys》1923, United States

[thepoetrytypewriter]

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

//

W. B. Yeats《The Wind Among the Reeds》1899, Ireland

[thepoetrytypewriter]

The Bluebird

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 pour 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?

// 

Charles Bukowski《The Last Night of the Earth Poems》1992, Germany / United States