Poems Rethabile Likes

The Quarrel by Stanley Kunitz The Quarrel The word I spoke in anger weighs less than a parsley seed, but a road runs through it that leads to my grave, that bought-and-paid-for lot on a salt-sprayed hill in Truro where the scrub pines overlook the bay. Half-way I’m dead enough, strayed from my own nature and my fierce hold on life. If I could cry, I’d cry, but I’m too old to be anybody’s child. Liebchen, with whom should I quarrel except in the hiss of love, that harsh, irregular flame? Poet: Stanley Kunitz Source: @BlueRidgeJournal Books: @AbeBooks

The Truly Great by Stephen Spender The Truly Great I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded from the Spring branches The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. What is precious, is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light Nor its grave evening demand for love. Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit. Near the snow, near the sun, in th...

Antidotes to Fear of Death by Rebecca Elson Antidotes to Fear of Death Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars. Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp. Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood: No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form. And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones: To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings. Poet: Rebecca Elson Source: @TheGuardian Books: @AbeBook...