Share your favourite poems here

[Dogberry's Watch]

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars
Robert Bly

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, "You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wed fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

 

[Zatamon]

The End and the Beginning​

By Wisława Szymborska
Translated By Joanna Trzeciak

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.


The 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska

 

[Zatamon]

PS. This poem inspired me to write the following, after watching a M*A*S*H episode:

Fair Trade​

In wars
we trade with the enemy:
left arm for a right eye,
burnt face for a kidney,
orphans for orphans,…
it’s not always a fair trade
but the one who was counting
is already dead.

It’s all so practical,
supply lines for our tools:
shells, bullets,
gas for our trucks, tanks,
and our flame throwers too...
paper clips, pencils, official forms
that need to be filled in
with the names of the dead.

Surgeons operate
on conveyor belt
of young people,
covered in blood…
and they don’t always have
the right kind
to fill them up,
help them to kill
more boys,
on the wrong side,
heroic dead.

Our pilots drop bombs
on your village,
in exchange for the same...
our wives will weep for us,
answered by the sobbing
of your loved ones,
back where you have been
dragged from, or duped,
to come here,
to be crippled or dead.

When it’s all over
with nothing accomplished,
our leaders will make
noble speeches
while wreaths will be hung
over crosses in neat rows
in white forests,
flags draped over caskets,
and the heroic wool
over stupid, stupid, gullible minds,
lamenting the fate
of the glorious dead.