Share your favourite poems here

[Riddley Walker]

​

​

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.​

​

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.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Omar Khayyam (1048-1123), a Persian mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet, is most famous for his Rubaiyat, a spirited and profoundly human celebration of life, love and liquor. The best known adaptation is that of the English writer Edward Fitzgerald, published in 1859.

The rubai is a four-line stanza, or quatrain, that rhymes AABA and offers rousing robustness: the rhyme disappears, falters for a line, but returns with added emphasis to clinch the deal. (And then sometimes, like a flourish, the rhyme is maintained throughout).

Here's a selection of the hundred-or-so quatrains that Fitzgerald produced. (The full cycle, with all its variations, is available online).

Rubáiyát
(Omar Khayyam, 11th-century Persian poet; as translated by Edward FitzGerald, 1859)

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
the Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
the Tavern shouted – ‘Open the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
and, once departed, may return no more.’

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
to flutter – and the Bird is on the Wing.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
a Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
to talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
about it and about: but evermore
came out by the same Door where in I went.

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
and with my own hand wrought to make it grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d –
‘I came like Water, and like Wind I go.’

Ah, fill the Cup – what boots it to repeat
how Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TOMORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,
why fret about them if TODAY be sweet!

But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
the Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.

For in and out, above, about, below,
’tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
and one by one back in the Closet lays.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Ah Love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire
to grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
would not we shatter it to bits – and then
re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again –
how oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
through this same Garden – and for one in vain!

And when like her, oh Sáki, you shall pass
among the Guests Star-scatter’d on the Grass,
and in your joyous errand reach the spot
where I made One – turn down an empty Glass!
===============
Life is short and has to end -- "Time is slipping underneath our Feet", as in Khayyam's day as in Fitzgerald's as in our own. But often it's the simplest pleasures ("A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,/A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou") that can transform a Wilderness into Paradise. We can't alter the past (read again that beautiful stanza beginning "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/Moves on"), nor predict the future, and may never know what the "Magic Shadow-show" is about. All we can do is to enjoy ourselves while we can. Though life is short and has to end, at least we have the chance to experience it at all, here and now.

Make mine a double! (That's a teabag dunked twice, please ...)

 

[Louanne Learning]

Recently, I was introduced to the work of writer and poet Daragh Fleming, of Cork, Ireland.

Below are videos of him reciting two of his poems.


If I Ever Have Boys

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

If I Ever Have Girls

Daragh Fleming on Instagram: "The most requested for poem I’ve ever had and it’s not even close. If I Ever Have Girls (Link at bio for prints x) #poetry #poem #spokenword #daraghfleming"

295K likes, 4,737 comments - daraghfleming on February 11, 2026: "The most requested for poem I’ve ever had and it’s not even close. If I Ever Have Girls (Link at bio for prints x) #poetry #poem #spokenword #daraghfleming".

www.instagram.com

 

[JLT]

The Lanyard

By Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

 

[JLT]

Omar Khayyam (1048-1123), a Persian mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet, is most famous for his Rubaiyat, a spirited and profoundly human celebration of life, love and liquor. The best known adaptation is that of the English writer Edward Fitzgerald, published in 1859.

It should be noted that FitzGerald made a rather free translation of the original, which doesn't (or shouldn't) detract from the value of his version. But it's worth seeking out more literal translations of the Rubaiyat.