Poems Rethabile Likes

Meditation by Charles Baudelaire Meditation Calm down, my Sorrow, we must move with care. You called for evening; it descends, it’s here. The town is coffined in its atmosphere, bringing relief to some, to others care. Now while the common multitude strips bare, feels pleasure’s cat o’ nine tails on its back, and fights off anguish at the great bazaar, give me your hand, my Sorrow. Let’s stand back; back from these people! Look, the dead years dressed in old clothes crowd the balconies of the sky. Regret emerges smiling from the sea, the sick sun slumbers underneath an arch, and like a shroud strung out from east to west, listen, my Dearest, hear the sweet night march! Poet: Charles Baudelaire Translator: Robert Lowell Sourc...

Kingdom of Rain by Rustum Kozain Kingdom of Rain Somewhere in some dark decade stands my father without work, unknown to me and my brother deep in the Paarl winter and a school holiday. As the temperature drops, he, my father, fixes a thermos of coffee, buys some meat pies and we chug up Du Toit’s Kloof Pass in his old 57 Ford, where he wills the mountain—under cold cloud, tan and blue rockface bright and wet with rain—– he wills these to open and let his children in, even as he apologises— my strict and angry fearsome father— even as he apologises for his existence then and there his whereabouts declared to the warden or ranger in government issue, ever-present around the next turn or lazing in a jeep in the next lay-by: “No sir, just driving. Y...

Kingdom of Weeds by Rethabile Masilo Kingdom of Weeds The sea has a host of new angels, not ten miles off the Libyan coast where the boat sank, ferrying men in its heart as time carries fate, and drops them, with the living, on rocks the shorehas prepared for them. Last night there were voices there, of lives being changed, those who made it becoming dead also, to hold their breath at the bottom and not ever be able to tell their story to fishermen who talk with waves at night, never explain how in a dinghy a child is calmed by giving it urine to drink. They know gods and goddesses of the seabed, now, who dwell beside Poseidon in his realm of weeds. Poet: Rethabile Masilo Source: @CanopicJar Books: @AbeBooks ...

Brooklyn 1979 by Judson Jerome Brooklyn 1979 Whitman, thou shouldst be living at this hour, riding the Brooklyn subway or its cabs, not tending wounds, but picking at the scabs that crust our lives and turn our lifeblood sour. The lusty laborers you knew now cower in factories, kitchens, offices, or labs. Their furtive hearts behind the concrete slabs might yet find courage in your loving power. O Walt, who reached into all secret places unjudgingly and celebrated all, now in this air-conditioned shopping mall where buyers mingle masked, their features glossed, discern our tender flesh and frightened faces and whisper where our dignity was lost! Poet: Judson Jerome Source: @PoemTree Books: @BetterWorldBooks ...

The House by Richard Wilbur The House Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes For a last look at that white house she knew In sleep alone, and held no title to, And had not entered yet, for all her sighs. What did she tell me of that house of hers? White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door; A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore; Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs. Is she now there, wherever there may be? Only a foolish man would hope to find That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind. Night after night, my love, I put to sea. Poet: Richard Wilbur Source: @PoetsDotOrg Books: @Abebooks A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore ...

Bogland by Seamus Heaney Bogland We have no prairies To slice a big sun at evening— Everywhere the eye concedes to Encrouching horizon, Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye Of a tarn. Our unfenced country Is bog that keeps crusting Between the sights of the sun. They’ve taken the skeleton Of the Great Irish Elk Out of the peat, set it up An astounding crate full of air. Butter sunk under More than a hundred years Was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind, black butter Melting and opening underfoot, Missing its last definition By millions of years. They’ll never dig coal here, Only the waterlogged trunks Of great firs, soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking Inwards and downwards, Every layer they strip Seems camped on before. The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. ...

After Apple-picking by Robert Frost After Apple-picking My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showin...

Love After Love by Derek Walcott Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Poet: Derek Walcott Source: @PoetsDotOrg Books: @Abebooks ...

The More Loving One by W. H. Auden The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime Though this might take me a little time. Poet: W. H. Auden So...

"Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden Frederick Douglass When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man, superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, ...

A Jelly-Fish by Marianne Moore A Jelly-Fish Visible, invisible, A fluctuating charm, An amber-colored amethyst Inhabits it; your arm Approaches, and It opens and It closes; You have meant To catch it, And it shrivels; You abandon Your intent— It opens, and it Closes and you Reach for it— The blue Surrounding it Grows cloudy, and It floats away From you. Poet: Marianne Moore Source: @Poets.org Books: @Abebooks A fluctuating charm Please take a moment to read the guidelines . Use this form to sign up and receive poems...

"After Auschwitz," by Anne Sexton After Auschwitz Anger, as black as a hook, overtakes me. Each day, each Nazi took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan. And death looks on with a casual eye and picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower that should be burnt, I say aloud. Man is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus. Man with his small pink toes, with his miraculous fingers is not a temple but an outhouse, I say aloud. Let man never again raise his teacup. Let man nev...