Act of Union By Seamus Heaney I To-night, a first movement, a pulse, As if the rain in bogland gathered head To slip and flood: a bog-burst, A gash breaking open the ferny bed. Your back is a firm line…
Tag: poem analysis
A Woman’s Hands
A Woman’s Hands By Eva Bezwoda A woman’s hands always hold something: A handbag, a vase, a child, a ring, an idea. My hands are tired of holding They simply want to fold themselves. On a crowded bus, I watched…
A Sheep Fair
A Sheep Fair By Thomas Hardy The day arrives of the autumn fair, And torrents fall, Though sheep in throngs are gathered there, Ten thousand all, Sodden, with hurdles round them reared: And, lot by lot, the pens are cleared,…
Alabama Centennial
Alabama Centennial By Naomi Long Madgett They said, “Wait.” Well, I waited. For a hundred years I waited In cotton fields, kitchens, balconies, In bread lines, at back doors, on chain gangs, In stinking “colored” toilets And crowded ghettos, Outside…
Against Love
Against Love By Katherine Philips HENCE Cupid! with your cheating toys, Your real Griefs, and painted Joys, Your Pleasure which itself destroys. Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave, And only what will injure them do crave. Men’s weakness…
Africa My Africa
Africa My Africa By David Diop Africa of proud warriors in ancestral Savannahs Africa of whom my grandmother sings On the banks of the distant river I have never known you But your blood flows in my veins Your beautiful…
Africa
Africa By Maya Angelou Thus she had lain sugarcane sweet deserts her hair golden her feet mountains her breasts two Niles her tears. Thus she has lain Black through the years. Over the white seas rime white and cold brigands…
The African Beggar
The African Beggar By Raymond Tong Sprawled in the dust outside the Syrian store, a target for small children, dogs and flies, a heap of verminous rags and matted hair, he watches us with cunning reptile eyes, his noiseless, small-poxed…
A Sketch for a Modern Love
A Sketch for a Modern Love By Tadeusz Różewicz And yet whiteness can be best described by greyness a bird by a stone sunflowers in December love poems of old used to be descriptions of flesh they described this and…
Alone in the Woods
Alone in the Woods By Stevie Smith Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises…
The Wound in Time
The Wound in Time By Carol Ann Duffy It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides, chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it. Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place; the earth nursing its ticking metal…
The Tom Cat
The Tom Cat By Donald Robert Perry Marquis At midnight in the alley A Tom-cat comes to wail, And he chants the hate of a million years As he swings his snaky tail. Malevolent, bony, brindled Tiger and devil and…
The Summer I Was Sixteen
The Summer I Was Sixteen By Geraldine Connolly The turquoise pool rose up to meet us, its slide a silver afterthought down which we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles. We did not exist beyond the gaze of a…
The Starry Night
The Starry Night By Anne Sexton That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother …
The Little Boy with His Hands Up
The Little Boy with His Hands Up By Yala Korwin Your open palms raised in the air like two white doves frame your meager face, your face contorted with fear, grown old with knowledge beyond your years. Not yet ten.…
Alone
Alone By Maya Angelou Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don’t believe I’m wrong That nobody,…
The Silesian Weavers
The Silesian Weavers By Heinrich Heine In sad eyes there sheds no tear, They sit at the loom and grind their teeth: Germany, we weave your shroud; And into it we weave a threefold curse– –We weave; we weave. One curse…
The Silkworms
The Silkworms By Douglas Stewart All their lives in a box! What generations, What centuries of masters, not meaning to be cruel But needing their labour, taught these creatures such patience That now though sunlight strikes on the eye’s dark…
The Last Laugh
The Last Laugh By Wilfred Owen ‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died. Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed, The Bullets chirped—In vain, vain, vain! Machine-guns chuckled—Tut-tut! Tut-tut! And the Big Gun guffawed. Another sighed,—‘O Mother,—mother,—Dad!’ Then…
The Habit of Perfection
The Habit of Perfection By Gerard Manley Hopkins Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear. Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: It is…