Share your favourite poems here

[Riddley Walker]

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Gwendolyn MacEwen, one of Canada's greatest poets, was a high school dropout, published more than 20 books of poetry and won Canada's Governors General Award for poetry at the age of 28. She died age 46.​

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A Breakfast for Barbarians​

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

my friends, my sweet barbarians,
there is that hunger which is not for food —
but an eye at the navel turns the appetite
round
with visions of some fabulous sandwich,
the brain’s golden breakfast
eaten with beasts
with books on plates

let us make an anthology of recipes,
let us edit for breakfast
our most unspeakable appetites —
let us pool spoons, knives
and all cutlery in a cosmic cuisine,
let us answer hunger
with boiled chimera
and apocalyptic tea,
an arcane salad of spiced bibles,
tossed dictionaries —
(O my barbarians
we will consume our mysteries)

and can we, can we slake the gaping eye of our desires?
we will sit around our hewn wood table
until our hair is long and our eyes are feeble,
eating, my people, O my insatiates,
eating until we are no more able
to jack up the jaws any longer —

to no more complain of the soul’s vulgar cavities,
to gaze at each other over the rust-heap of cutlery,
drinking a coffee that takes an eternity —
till, bursting, bleary,
we laugh, barbarians, and rock the universe —
and exclaim to each other over the table
over the table of bones and scrap metal
over the gigantic junk-heaped table:

by God that was a meal

 

[JLT]

This thread needs a bump:

"My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.'

--Emily Dickenson

and, on the subject of seeing the coming of old age, a song by Kate Wolf, who also died too young (age 44, from leukemia):

" I've been walkin' in my sleep
Countin' troubles 'stead of countin' sheep
Where the years went I can't say;
I just turned around and they've gone away

I've been siftin' through the layers
Of dusty books and faded papers
They tell a story I used to know
And it was one that happened so long ago

It's gone away in yesterday
Now I find myself on the mountainside
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide

Now, I heard the owl callin'
Softly as the night was fallin'
With a question, and I replied
But he's gone across the borderline

He's gone away in yesterday
Now I find myself on the mountainside
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide

The finest hour that I have seen
Is the one that comes between
The edge of night and the break of day
It's when the darkness rolls away"

To really appreciate this song, you have to hear it sung by Kate Wolf herself. I've often said that it's like you're the only person in the room, and she's singing it softly into your ear. The illusion is spell-binding.

Some songs, I think, qualify as great poetry. Not all songs. Some of John Prine's songs stand alone as poetry, in their ability to compress much meaning and emotion into a small space, as do Bob Dylan's. (When Alan Ginsberg heard Dylan's ""A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" he wept, because he realized that the torch had been passed to a new generation of poets.)

 

[GrahamLewis]

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

 

[Woof]

A favourite, by Michael Donaghy:

Machines (2000)

Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer’s twelve-speed bike.

The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
And in the playing, Purcell’s chords are played away.

So this talk, or touch if I were there,
Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
Like Dante’s heaven, and melt into the air.

If it doesn’t, of course, I’ve fallen. So much is chance,
So much agility, desire, and feverish care,
As bicyclists and harpsichordists prove

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.

 

[Woof]

And another, by Rudy Francisco:

Mercy

She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.

 

[Woof]

Okay, last one... Danusha Lameris:

Feeding the Worms

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.