Future Poems
Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
The British
by Benjamin Zephaniah
Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
......
The City Planners
by Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
......
Life
by Henry Van Dyke
Let me but live my life from year to year,
With forward face and unreluctant soul;
Not hurrying to, nor turning from the goal;
Not mourning for the things that disappear
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear
From what the future veils; but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll
To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
......
Roosters
by Elizabeth Bishop
At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock
just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo
off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
......
Blinders and Burrows
by Igor Vykhovanets
Interests in a Demon’s World
The space of interests speaks much more
Than any words could hope to show,
In worlds of demons, fools who swore
To blindly serve the hellish flow.
It shows what you are truly worth,
Your path, your soul’s authentic way.
If lies have drenched your very earth,
......
What's in a Star Sign
by Dr. Robert Ippaso
I'm often asked what sign I am
Leading me to answer best I can
That while I know that signs exist
I try my best to cheerfully desist.
But there again if truth be told
My interest piqued this subject old,
So with new fervor I travailed
The results of which I here detailed.
......
The Training of a Monkey with a Grenade
by Igor Vykhovanets
The Training of a Monkey with a Grenade
Frol's school turns the child to ape,
With fingers clenched in a cruel shape.
Without the grenade, the vile new trend —
Neo-fascism's easy to bend.
-------------------------
......
You're the Bride I long for
by Mario Odekerken
You're the bride I long for,
not in lace or veil,
but in the quiet way
your eyes understand silence.
You walk into a room,
and suddenly
I forget the years I spent
waiting for something unnamed.
......
Echoes of a Rose
by Drake Son
Her winds still whisper names forgotten,
And her rivers now hum hymns of home’s embrace.
Chimney tops rise, silent like prayers unanswered,
And cracked cobbles mutter stories of long ago.
Still held together by time’s drystone hands,
The home we once knew, now overthrown.
Now, not a place of darkness and gloom,
As strangers still believe.
Nor a land of milky tea-stained dreams,
......
