Simile

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

Adebe D. A.

River of Milk

bear with me it wasn’t long ago I was brainless

lazily pulling fireflies into my teeth chewing them

into pure light so much of me then was nothing

I could have fit into a sugar cube my body burned

like a barnful of feathers nothing was on fire

but fire was on everything the wild mustard

...

Kaveh Akbar
b. 1989

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a...

Dylan Thomas
1914–1953

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

he answered, under the apple boughs,

and so it went between us

in the days I waited for him to...

Richard Harrison
1957

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid...

Theodore Roethke
1908-1963

Tape hiss, Value Village, vibraphones. On fixed-gears scrubbed with salt and lemon, like the secret at the centre of a Magic Eye the witches, genderless as light, breathe green and lavender, appear and disappear, chanting your passwords in a round. Voices like dimes dropped in a bowl, blush ultraviolet, glittering auras. Skin so soft they move through walls they press against your window,...

Emma Healey
b. 1991

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring...

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my...

Sylvia Plath
1932–1963

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

...

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

After the click of the shutting. Life to life —

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm

Against the stab of worldlings,...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809-1892

Blousy Guitar

Blousy guitar I don’t want to count the beats Hey Hey

My pen I have bed hair in the best way Daughter

of sunlight and air and I’m glad you were born

on this day or put another way: that you were

born Let’s be superstars Let’s call each other “suckas”

Turn everything into writing Lord of my Love

and...

Hoa Nguyen
b. 1967

sturgeon

i twist and gasp

open and close my mouth

searching for air

whenever a sturgeon is caught in the rainy river

i know

the feel of strange hands touching my body

the struggle

to be free

the longing

to go where i want to go

i feel

the impact of stick or rock on bone

the splash of colour...

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
b. 1965

Under the Answering Sky

I can manage being alone,

can pace out convivial hope

across my managing ground.

Someone might call, later.

What do the dead make of us

that we’d flay ourselves trying

to hear them though they may

sigh at such close loneliness.

I would catch, not my echo,

but their guarantee that this

...

Denise Riley
b. 1948

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

the hand of my companion

gradually melts into mine

and her head on my shoulder

is as light as a dove

When we...

Abdellatif Laâbi
b. 1942

From Injun

he played injun in gods country

where boys proved themselves clean

dumb beasts who could cut fire

out of the whitest sand

he played english across the trail

where girls turned plum wild

garlic and strained words

through the window of night

he spoke...

Jordan Abel
b. 1985

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller...

Alice Oswald
b. 1966

You’d Have to Pay Me Could You Pay Me Enough

You’d have to pay us

Could you pay us enough

To live for a stretch

Again in that house

Rippling through rooms

Papered with boys

Papered with dogs

As a means of escape imagining

Ourselves into every bad painting

...

Sara Peters
b. 1982

Say the Names

— say the names say the names

and listen to yourself

an echo in the mountains

Tulameen Tulameen

say them like your soul

was listening and overhearing

and you dreamed you dreamed

you were a river

and you were a river

Tulameen Tulameen

— not the flat borrowed imitations

of foreign names...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl

sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel.

She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand

instead of starting to practise.

She doesn’t want to play —

not yet, if ever. The irritating sound

of her teeth clicking is the only sound

in the band room. The cranky girl

has...

Adam Sol

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,

Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;

That angel pureness which admits no stain;

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,

And...

Anna Laetitia Barbauld
1743–1825

The Novel As Manuscript

An ars poetica

I remember the death, in Russia,

of postage stamps

like immense museum masterpieces

patchwork

wrapped in linen, tea stained,

with hemp for strapping...

these colored stamps designed for foreign places

were even printed during famine—

so when they vanished...

Norman Dubie
b. 1945

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,

...

Patricia Smith
b. 1955

St John’s Burns Down for the Umpteenth Time

Let’s say the fix was in. Let’s say history,

Being human and thus short on ideas,

Made change from an old bag of tricks. Say this

Was something reported as news

On a day when your life came to no good.

The new homeless drifting from row houses

Along streets tamped down by the heedless

And paved in afterthought. Out of hollows...

James Langer
b. 1973

Poem For Duncan Campbell Scott

(Canadian poet who “had a long and distinguished career

in the Department of lndian Affairs, retiring in 1932.”

The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse)

Who is this black coat and tie?

Christian severity etched in the lines

he draws from his mouth. Clearly a noble man

who believes in work and mission. See

how he rises from...

Armand Garnet Ruffo

Porphyria's Lover

The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria: straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled...

Robert Browning
1812-1889

Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam

I am awake between stiff

sheets tonight in room thirty

four, listening to the heat

tick through the radiator,

seeing a television

pour out news of the war

the war in the air, the war

in the Gulf. The walls vibrate

with video light. This is

no room for sleep anymore.

There is no room for...

Daniel David Moses
b. 1952

Cowboy Story

The books sit on the shelf, a row of coma patients

in a ward, a series of selves no longer able to learn

and trapped at the point of injury: the last page.

At the donor clinic I offer my arm to the spigot

of the needle and think, as I see the bag fill

with blood, there goes some of me. But that’s a lie:

as...

George Murray
b. 1971

Common Magic

Your best friend falls in love

and her brain turns to water.

You can watch her lips move,

making the customary sounds

but you can see they’re merely

words, flimsy as bubbles rising

from some golden sea where she

swims sleek and exotic as a mermaid.

It’s always like that.

You stop for lunch in a...

Bronwen Wallace
1945-1989

mixed tape

side a:

1. 18 and Life

her friend takes her to

the guidance counselor

she doesn’t see the point

but her friend won’t go

without her

2. Patience

...

Katherena Vermette
b. 1977

The Boxers

We were combatants from the start. Our dad

Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten —

Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius

Of wooden-horse fame: ‘I am the greatest!’

‘Nobody’s going to knock me down!’ Listen,

Peter, to the commentary — gruesome teeth-

Grinding, sweat splattering their arms and legs,

Huge fists in ox-hide...

Michael Longley
b. 1939

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

We can never be with loss too long.

Behind the warped door that sticks,

the wood thrush calls to the monks,

pausing atop the stone crucifix,

singing: “I am marvelous alone!”

Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:

rows of marrow and bone undone.

The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,

sealing the blue hills with vermillion....

Spencer Reece
b. 1963

Chemo Side Effects: Memory

Where is the word I want?

Groping

in the thicket,

about to pinch the

dangling

berry, my fingerpads

close on

air.

I can hear it

scrabbling like a squirrel

on the oak’s far side.

Word, please send over this black stretch of ocean

your singular flare,...

Elise Partridge
1958–2015

I've Tasted My Blood

If this brain’s over-tempered

consider that the fire was want

and the hammers were fists.

I’ve tasted my blood too much

to love what I was born to.

But my mother’s look

was a field of brown oats, soft-bearded;

her voice rain and air rich with lilacs:

and I loved her too much to like

how she dragged...

Milton Acorn
1923–1986

Sun Bear

yesterday at the Oakland zoo

I was walking alone for a moment

past the enclosure holding the sun bear

also known as beruang madu

it looked at me without interest

it has powerful jaws and truly loves honey

it sleeps in a high hammock

its claws look made out of wood

and if it dreams at all it is of Malaysia

...

Matthew Zapruder
b. 1967

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

I was there, in the first of the long-term care centres, when he finished the story,

And we all shared the narrator’s sadness about giving up his donkey,

Not having realized that he loved her; unable to...

Lynn Crosbie

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

stone, age old, my burnished and bruised, hair lingering, hand

caked, spongy as November, my dear Relentless, my dear Aging,

...

Sina Queyras
b. 1963

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

mina and obol. Persia’s bullion had a lion and bull.

Athens an owl, Messana a hare, a jar for Terone, Melos

a pomegranate. Call it museum money, written...

Carmine Starnino
b. 1970

Portrait of Alice with Elvis

Queen and King, they rule side by side

in golden thrones above the clouds.

Her giggle and wide eyes remind him

of his first young wife, and his twang

never ceases to thrill her, so different

from the prim accents of men she’s known.

She sings for him, “Hound Dog”

and “Heartbreak Hotel,” and he turns

the Mock...

Stephanie Bolster
b. 1969

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more

available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or

try to...

But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it...

Carl Phillips
b. 1959

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

Left home to join the circus: 15 years old

You enter at the bottom and wind upwards

in spirals the bike climbing the sides

You enter the barrel on a Peugeot

with automatic tied down handles

...

Hoa Nguyen
b. 1967

11. Headwinds

When I began to write, I didn’t know

each of my words would bit by bit remove

things from the world and in return leave blank

spaces. That poems would begin to take

the place of my own homeland, mother, father,

first love, and second youth, and what I write

would fade from this world, trade its solid being

for unstable...

Tomasz Rózycki
b. 1970

Eight

The trick to building houses was making sure

they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste

was growing more sophisticated and occasionally

its appetite was unwieldy. It ate boats and children,

the occasional shoe. Pants. A diamond ring.

Hammers. It ate promises and rants. It snatched up

names like...

Sue Goyette
b. 1964

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

& the shadow kept arriving in segments,

cold currents pushed minerals

up from the sea floor, up through

coral & labels of Diet Coke blame shame

bottles down there —

it is so much work to appear!

unreadable zeroes drop lamps

...

Brenda Hillman
b. 1951

The Cold Green Element

At the end of the garden walk

the wind and its satellite wait for me;

their meaning I will not know

until I go there,

but the black-hatted undertaker

...

Irving Layton
1912–2006

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah,

these thirty-five years later,

still I could smell her fear.

Then, the huddled hills would not have

calmed her, now as they do me.

Then, the view did not snatch

the panting breath, now, as it does

these thirty-five years later, to the day,

I relive the journey of my salmon mother.

...

M. NourbeSe Philip
b. 1947

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots...

Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

Dear Updike

I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be present —

an endless succession of days I would miss, with their own

news and songs and styles of machine.

— John Updike, “On Being a Self Forever”

No, nothing much has changed.

A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize...

Evelyn Lau
b. 1971

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;

I have not parted the grasses

or purposefully left them thatched....

Leonard Cohen
1934-2016

When Winter Comes

Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke,

And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena,

And the skid-roads blind, and never a look

Of the Coast Range blue over Malaspina,

And west winds keener

Than jack-knife blades,

And rocks grown greener

With the long drip-drip from the cedar shades

On the drenched deep soil where the footsteps...

Marjorie Pickthall
1883-1922

From thirsty

This city is beauty

unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,

in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,

submerged landings,

I am innocent as thresholds

and smashed night birds, lovesick,

as empty elevators

let me declare doorways,

corners, pursuit, let me say

standing here in eyelashes, in

...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

Sweet Like a Crow

For Hetti Corea, 8 years old

‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical

people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have

less sense of...

Michael Ondaatje
b. 1943

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man

who would leave his wife and child because

they made noise in his study. These are the poems   ...

Robert Bringhurst
b. 1946

Self-Portrait

He wants to be

a brutal old man,

an aggressive old man,

as dull, as brutal

as the emptiness around him,

He doesn’t want compromise,
...

Robert Creeley
1926-2005

From The Titanic: The Iceberg

Calved from a glacier near Godhaven coast,

It left the fiord for the sea — a host

Of white flotillas gathering in its wake,

And joined by fragments from a Behring floe

Had circumnavigated it to make
...

E. J. Pratt
1882-1964

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the gray

and cloud-piled sky;

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray...

A. J. M. Smith
1902-1980

“Breathe dust…”

Breathe dust like you breathe wind so strong in your face little grains of dirt which pock around the cheeks peddling against a dust-storm coming down a street to the edge of town in Swift Current Saskatchewan or the air walked out into the fields across from Granny Erickson’s house with a few pails of water to catch gophers over by the glue factory downwind of...

Fred Wah
b. 1939

The Cariboo Horses

At 100 Mile House the cowboys ride in rolling

stagey cigarettes with one hand reining

half-tame bronco rebels on a morning grey as stone

— so much like riding dangerous women

          with whiskey coloured eyes...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

fluorine

arsenic in calculators, mercury in felt

hats, mad as a poisoned hatter

pyrophoric undercurrent in mundane

acts assume poison unless otherwise

informed crowded alloys detect no
...

Rita Wong
b. 1968

Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you know

your blood can spring like a hydrant.

That September, the horseflies were...

Elizabeth Bachinsky
b. 1976

Fear of Snakes

The snake can separate itself

from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,

taste the air, the morning and the evening,

the darkness at the heart of things. I remember

when my fear of snakes left for good,
...

Lorna Crozier
b. 1948

A Stone Diary

At the beginning I noticed

the huge stones on my path

I knew instinctively

why they were there

breathing as naturally

as animals

I moved...

Pat Lowther
1935-1975

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a...

Billy Collins
b. 1941

Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point

Mornings

before the sun’s liquid

spilled gradually, flooding

the island’s cool cellar,

there was the boat

and the still lagoons,

the...

Raymond Souster
1921 - 2012

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught....

Amy Lowell
1874-1925

dont worry yr hair

   dont worry yr eyes

   dont worry yr brain man th snow is

   cummin th bright burds flyin highr, th

sun is already all ovr yu,

   all th words...

bill bissett
b. 1939

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

             in space and time:
...

Gary Snyder
b. 1930

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.

Inarticulate, arctic,

Not written on by history, empty as paper,
...

F. R. Scott
1899-1985

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps,

came the bull moose

to be stopped...

Alden Nowlan
1933-1983

Two Words: A Wedding

There are things you have words for, things you do not have words for. There are words that encompass all your feelings & words that encompass none. There are feelings you have that are like things to you, picked up & placed in the pocket, worn like the cloth the pocket is attached to, like a skin you live...

bp Nichol
1944-1988

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even

in the midst of making sense or...

Don McKay
b. 1942

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

Constantly risking absurdity

                                          and death

            whenever he performs

                                       above the heads

                                                           of his audience...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
b. 1919

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through —

And when they all were seated,
...

Emily Dickinson
1830-1886

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

slit them free of their spotless pelts.

The storm...

Michael Crummey
b. 1965

Plenty

The sky, lit up like a question or

an applause meter, is beautiful

like everything else today: the leaves

in the gutters, salt stains on shoes,

the girl at the IGA who looks just like
...

Kevin Connolly
b. 1962

Blank Sonnet

   The air smells of rhubarb, occasional

Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,

Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls

Like flower. I step through snow as thin as script

Watch white stars spin dizzy as...

George Elliott Clarke
b. 1960

From Summer Grass

The willows are thinking again about thickness,

slowness, lizard skin on hot rock,

and day by day this imaging transforms them

into what we see: dragons in leaf, draped scales

alongside the river of harried, spring-...

Roo Borson

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

   adjusting the ash-heaps;

      opening and shutting itself like

...

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it one discovers that there

is in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.
...

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Guanahani, 11

like the beginnings — o odales o adagios — of islands

from under the clouds where I write the first poem

its brown warmth now that we recognize them
...

Kamau Brathwaite
b. 1930

Pale Blue Cover

In the middle of the night Matt would fly to Vancouver so he could take a walk on the sea wall the next day, then go home.

Wouldnt tell anyone, no telephone call, just run a scene through his peculiar Ontario head, no snow on that beach.

No one can imagine Matt teaching religion at...

George Bowering
b. 1935

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

He, who navigated with success

the dangerous river of his own birth

once more set forth

on a voyage of discovery

into the land I floated on

but could not touch to claim.

His feet slid on the bank,

the currents took him;

he swirled with ice and trees in the swollen water

and...

Margaret Atwood
b. 1939

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate...

William Butler Yeats
1865-1939

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; —

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

...

Robert W. Service
1874-1958

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.

I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,

For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;

As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

...

Ezra Pound
1885-1972

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying;

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;

...

Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have...

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

Epitaph

On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred

What on Earth deserves our trust?

Youth and Beauty both are dust.

Long we gathering are with pain,

What one moment calls again.

Seven years childless marriage past,

A Son, a son is born at last:

So...

Katherine Philips
1632-1664

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children’s faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like a curve of gold,

...

Sara Teasdale
1884-1933

Sonnet VII from ‘Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods’

Our life is like a forest, where the sun

Glints down upon us through the throbbing leaves;

The full light rarely find us. One by one,

Deep rooted in our souls, there springeth up

Dark groves of human passion, rich in gloom,

At first no bigger than an acorn-cup.

Hope threads the tangled labyrinth, but grieves

Till all our sins...

Charles Sangster
1822-1893

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,

We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,

’Tis a...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their...

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

I think I should have loved you presently

I think I should have loved you presently,

And given in earnest words I flung in jest;

And lifted honest eyes for you to see,

And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;

And all my pretty follies flung aside

That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,

Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,

Spread like a chart my little...

Edna St. Vincent Millay
1892-1950

Give All to Love

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse, —

Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

Sonnet XXIII: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescu’d from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old Law did save...

John Milton
1608-1674

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo...

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —

Lean on a garden urn —

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —

Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —

Fling them to the ground and turn

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:

But weave, weave the...

T. S. Eliot
1888-1965

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;

And I supported the family by washing,

Learning the secrets of all the people

From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.

For things that are...

Edgar Lee Masters
1868-1950

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;
...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Comes like the stir of the day:

One whose breath is an odor,

Whose eyes show the road to stars,

The breeze in his face,

The glory of heaven on his back.

He steps like a vision hung in air,

Diffusing the passion of eternity;

...

Yone Noguchi
1875-1947

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please,...

Andrew Marvell
1621-1678

Marshlands

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,

In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose,...

E. Pauline Johnson
1861-1913

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

...

Queen Elizabeth I
1533-1603

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome

Arose the howl of wakened hounds:

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,

The worms drew back into the mounds,

The...

Thomas Hardy
1840-1928

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

The hurrying centres of the storm unite

And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

Tower darkening...

Archibald Lampman
1861-1899

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834

I Am

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes —

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live — like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea...

John Clare
1793-1864

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 spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,...

Matthew Arnold
1822-1888

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

There are no stars tonight

But those of memory.

Yet how much room for memory there is

In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough

For the letters of my mother’s mother,

Elizabeth,

That have been pressed so long

Into a corner of the roof

That they are brown and soft,
...

Hart Crane
1899-1932

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang...

Robert Burns
1759-1796

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
...

Lord (George Gordon) Byron
1788-1824

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun unhappy shadow.

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth,

Though here thou liv’st disgraced,

And she in heaven is placed,

Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.
...

Thomas Campion
1567-1620

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

Which nothing, nothing can divide:

When she the word obey has said,

And man by law supreme has made,

Then all that’s kind is laid aside,

And nothing left but state and pride:

Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,
...

Lady Mary Chudleigh
1656-1710

How One Winter Came in the Lake Region

For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,

Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;

The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,

And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,

In those grey, withered days.

Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,

At night the...

Wilfred Campbell
1858-1918

The Dark Stag

A startled stag, the blue-grey Night,

Leaps down beyond black pines.

Behind — a length of yellow light —

The hunter’s arrow shines:

His moccasins are stained with red,

He bends upon his knee,

From covering peaks his shafts are sped,

The blue mists plume his mighty head, —...

Isabella Valancy Crawford
1850-1887

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Ex Libris

River of Milk

Fern Hill

With the Dying of the Light

My Papa’s Waltz

Trust Fund Witches

somewhere i have never travelled

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Blackberrying

Invitation to Love

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Ulysses

Blousy Guitar

sturgeon

Under the Answering Sky

Two Hours on the Train

From Injun

A Short Story of Falling

You’d Have to Pay Me Could You Pay Me Enough

Say the Names

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

The Rights of Woman

The Novel As Manuscript

Hip-Hop Ghazal

St John’s Burns Down for the Umpteenth Time

Poem For Duncan Campbell Scott

Porphyria's Lover

Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam

Cowboy Story

Common Magic

mixed tape

The Boxers

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

Chemo Side Effects: Memory

I've Tasted My Blood

Sun Bear

Modestine

Five Postcards from Jericho

Money

Portrait of Alice with Elvis

My Meadow, My Twilight

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

11. Headwinds

Eight

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

The Cold Green Element

Salmon Courage

Dulce et Decorum Est

Dear Updike

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

When Winter Comes

From thirsty

Sweet Like a Crow

These Poems, She Said

Self-Portrait

From The Titanic: The Iceberg

The Lonely Land

“Breathe dust…”

The Cariboo Horses

fluorine

Wolf Lake

Fear of Snakes

A Stone Diary

Introduction to Poetry

Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point

A Fixed Idea

dont worry yr hair

Riprap

Laurentian Shield

The Bull Moose

Two Words: A Wedding

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Plenty

Blank Sonnet

From Summer Grass