Lyric Poems
Sun
by Michael Palmer
Write this. We have burned all their villages
Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them
Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress
Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears or an X
In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at jokes,
secrets beyond the boundaries of speech
......
Phoenix Lyrics
by Delmore Schwartz
I
If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
Confusion is variety, variety
And confusion in everything
Make experience the true conclusion
Of all desire and opulence,
All satisfaction and poverty.
......
Fiddle
by Julie Butler
The fiddler play son
With his fiddle and bow
A tune so inviting
'Till hardly you'll know
The merry tune waits
For the fire in your eyes
He's captured your soul
With his friendly disguise
The lyrics they'll 'will' you
With words said to jest
......
Bridge Ghazal
by C.J. Sage
My love and I reside upon the belly of a bridge
with heartbeats of the sky?--the drums upon the bridge.
I've heard of songs that rise at night from pitch black oceans.
I've heard the strums of lyrics made by four hands on a bridge.
My love and I do landscapes for the gardens of the sea.
At night we sleep as seedlings at the center of its bridge.
Once I saw a Sufi breathe in seabirds, and send them out again.
......
A Song For Kilts
by Robert William Service
How grand the human race would be
If every man would wear a kilt,
A flirt of Tartan finery,
Instead of trousers, custom built!
Nay, do not think I speak to joke:
(You know I'm not that kind of man),
I am convinced that all men folk.
Should wear the costume of a Clan.
Imagine how it's braw and clean
......
O Stay my Lover
by Muhammad Umair
I die here, you live there;
Dolorous distance brought tears;
I'll fall apart---I have this fear;
All I see with open eyes is nightmares.
With yourself, you brought extreme ecstasy,
With myself, I saw the nature dancing;
Now with your departure, you give me melancholy;
I see myself in this lake of uncertainty---drowning.
......
Indian Summer
by Sara Teasdale
Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples
The wheel of a locust slowly grinding the silence,
Under a moon waning and warn and broken,
Tired with summer.
......
Sappho
by Sara Teasdale
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
......
The Tavern Of Last Times
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
At Box Hill, Surrey
A modern hour from London (as we spin
Into a silver thread the miles of space
Between us and our goal), there is a place
Apart from city traffic, dust, and din,
Green with great trees, where hides a quiet Inn.
Here Nelson last looked on the lovely face
Which made his world; and by its magic grace
Trailed rosy clouds across each early sin.
......
A Lyric Day
by Robert William Service
I deem that there are lyric days
So ripe with radiance and cheer,
So rich with gratitude and praise
That they enrapture all the year.
And if there is a God b\above,
(As they would tell me in the Kirk,)
How he must look with pride and love
Upon his perfect handiwork!
To-day has been a lyric day
......
