Poems Rethabile Likes

The Dance of Death by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Frank Pearce Sturm) | Poems Rethabile Likes The Dance of Death by Charles Baudelaire For he who has not folded in his arms A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. O irresistible, with fleshless face, Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: "Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! Withered Antinoüs, dandies with plump faces, Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, ...

Breakfast by Jacques Prévert (translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti) | Poems Rethabile Likes Breakfast by Jacques Prévert (translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti) He put the coffee In the cup He put the milk In the cup of coffee He put the sugar In the café au lait With the coffee spoon He stirred He drank the café au lait And he set down the cup Without a word to me He lit A cigarette He made smoke-rings With the smoke He put the ashes In the ash-tray Without a word to me Without a look at me He got up He put His hat upon his...

On Friday Night With The Mood Up by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes On Friday Night With The Mood Up by Rethabile Masilo despite promises to my wife and children, and yoga classes in China Town once a week, I walk into the shop, my breath rank with wine, for a pack of Camels. I slap cash onto the counter to the beat of music in my head, pick up the goods and the change, and let myself back into my world again, the sound of the city in the air. I don't care that the tobacconist's hoary wife holds my hundred up against the light, or that this place has left, among us who come here for work or lo...

Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton | Poems Rethabile Likes Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton Since you ask, most days I cannot remember. I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage. Then the almost unnameable lust returns. Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention, the furniture you have placed under the sun. But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. Twice I have so simply declared myself, have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy, have taken on his craft, his magic. In t...

Nostalgia by Carol Ann Duffy | Poems Rethabile Likes Nostalgia by Carol Ann Duffy Those early mercenaries, it made them ill— leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air to go down, down. What they got was money, dull, crude coins clenched in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste, stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds, the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath— wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor, they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them. It was a given name. Hearing tell of it, there were those who stayed put, fearful of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt, in t...

Putting in the Seed by Robert Frost | Poems Rethabile Likes Putting in the Seed by Robert Frost You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree. (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, ...

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass | Poems Rethabile Likes The Thing Is by Ellen Bass to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you...