The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery…
Sonnet LI Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days is not genuine it shines forth from the faces littered with soup, cigarette butts, the heavy is a correspondent the innocence of childhood sadness graying the faces of virgins aching and everything comes before their eyes to be fucked, we fondle their snatches but they that the…
Soon the City Soon the summer Now the pleasant purgatory Of spring is over, Soon the choking Humidity In the city On the fire escapes In a sleeveless T-shirt Smoking a cigar In tune with the tremor Of the mindless yellow Commercial traffic Moving in the city, Where no one really Buys a car, American…
Dover Beach The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of…
The Dead The dead are always looking down on us, they say. while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth, and when we…
One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing…
Hélas To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which…
Ashes and Blossoms Today, again, On the string spun from grief and pain, I threaded blossoms; drawn from your memory. And I plucked, From the desert of abandoned love, Buds which bloomed; when were together. Then, I placed on your doorsteps, Offering to the days of your memory. Laid, Side by side, in the vase…
If We Must Die If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed…
As a little girl, the first poems I heard were from the fresh pages of the Shel Silverstein book Every Thing on It that my mom read to me by my bedside. What kept me reading Silverstein’s poems long after I could read them myself was that, beneath their kid-friendly language, poems like “Masks” speak…
