The Homecoming, by Anna Wickham (1884-1947) I waited ten years in the husk That once had been our home, Watching from dawn to dusk To see if he would come. And there he was beside me Always at board and bed; I looked — and woe betide me He I had loved was dead. […]
To the Sun, by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) More beautiful than the remarkable moon and her noble light, More beautiful than the stars, the famous medals of the night, More beautiful than the fiery entrance a comet makes, And called to a part far more splendid than any other planet’s Because daily your life and my […]
For a Five-Year-Old, by Fleur Adcock (1934-) A snail is climbing up the window-sill Into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see, and I explain That it would be unkind to leave it there: It might crawl to the floor; we must take care That no one squashes it. […]
Something Like a Rainbow, by Christopher Benfey (1954-) The storms that make it into poems most often leave something like disaster in their wake: the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn, the chimney cracked, the basement a shallow lake. This morning’s storm was nothing much by contrast — a shiver of wind, no more […]
Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth, by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) Say not the struggle naught availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d, Your comrades chase […]
The New Experience, by Suzanne Buffam (1972-) I was ready for a new experience. All the old ones had burned out. They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields. From a distance some appeared to be smoldering But when I approached with my hat in […]
Field, by Martha Collins (1940-) The window fell out the window and having only a frame to refer to, we entered a new field, the space filled with lightness, wheat field, sweet field, field of vision, field and ground, and the puzzle became the principle, a page without a single tree, but you kept coming […]
Desire, by Gail Mazur (1937-) It was a kind of torture—waiting to be kissed. A dark car parked away from the street lamp, away from our house where my tall father would wait, his face visible at a pane high in the front door. Was my mother always asleep? A boy reached for me, I […]
Representation, by Rosmarie Waldrop (1935-) I have no conscience because I always chew my pencil. Can we say white paper with black lines on it is like a human body? This question not to be decided by pointing at a tree nor yet by a description of simple pleasures. Smell of retrieval. Led to expect […]
Under the Linden Branches, by John Freeman (1880-1929) Under the linden branches They sit and whisper; Hardly a quiver Of leaves, hardly a lisp or Sigh in the air. Under the linden branches They sit, and shiver At the slow air’s fingers Drawn through the linden branches Where the year’s sweet lingers; And sudden avalanches […]