Poems Rethabile Likes

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of ...

Back from Vacation by John Updike Back from Vacation “Back from vacation,” the barber announces, or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan. They are amazed to find the workaday world still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs, their customers having hardly missed them, and how sparse an audience to tell of the wonders, the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas, the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies, the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities. But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims. Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit, warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small, the evidence says, though their hearts cry, “Not so!” ...

January by W. S. Merwin January So after weeks of rain at night the winter stars that much farther in heaven without our having seen them in far light are still forming the heavy elements that when the stars are gone fly up as dust finer by many times than a hair and recognize each other in the dark traveling at great speed and becoming our bodies in our time looking up after rain in the cold night together Poet: W. S. Merwin Source: @Silver Birch Press Books: @AbeBooks Looking up after rain in the cold night together Do take a moment...

First Lesson by Philip Booth First Lesson Lie back daughter, let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand. Gently, and I will hold you. Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls. A dead- man’s float is face down. You will dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe me, when you tire on the long thrash to your island, lie up, and survive. As you float now, where I held you and let go, remember when fear cramps your heart what I told you: lie gently and wide to the light-year stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you. Poet: Philip Booth Source: @TheDewdrop Books: @AbeBooks Let your head be tipped b...

This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin This Be The Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. Poet: Philip Larkin Source: @HuckGutMan Books: @AbeBooks But they were fucked up in their turn by fools. ...