Sick Poems
Mandalay
by Rudyard Kipling
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!
......
The Village: Book I
by George Crabbe
The Village Life, and every care that reigns
O'er youthful peasants and declining swains;
What labour yields, and what, that labour past,
Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;
What form the real picture of the poor,
Demand a song--the Muse can give no more.
Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains,
The rustic poet praised his native plains:
No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,
......
The Ballad Of Father Gilligan
by William Butler Yeats
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded in a chair
At the moth-hour of the eve
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
......
Disabled
by Wilfred Owen
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,-
......
Homosexuality
by Frank O'Hara
So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance!
The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment
than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;
so I pull the shadows around me like a puff
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment
of a very long opera, and then we are off!
......
Tuberculosis
by Khayelihle Bongiswa Gamedze
I was fine until I had
This disease that drives me mad.
Slowly it is eating me,
The doctor said I have TB.
And that is why I have to lay
Down on my bed all the day.
It worsens when I'm alone,
I can't even reach my phone.
......
Sick Morning
by Beatrice Knox
Blinds separate from each other
Light sneaks in
Touching the walls of my room
Touching my closed eyes
I open
Ruby red in my face
Brush it away to get a clear view
Of the eggshell ceiling I see everyday
I sit up
Stretch my sleeping bones
......
Hidden Love
by Sara Teasdale
I hid the love within my heart,
And lit the laughter in my eyes,
That when we meet he may not know
My love that never dies.
But sometimes when he dreams at night
Of fragrant forests green and dim,
It may be that my love crept out
And brought the dream to him.
......
When Love Goes
by Sara Teasdale
I
O mother, I am sick of love,
I cannot laugh nor lift my head,
My bitter dreams have broken me,
I would my love were dead.
"Drink of the draught I brew for thee,
Thou shalt have quiet in its stead."
......
In A Railroad Station
by Sara Teasdale
We stood in the shrill electric light,
Dumb and sick in the whirling din
We who had all of love to say
And a single second to say it in.
"Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go,
I felt the train's slow heavy start,
You thought to see me cry, but oh
My tears were hidden in my heart.
