Have you got a favourite poem?

Doodledog, I love the two courageous, sceptical, pessimistic poems you posted . They were new to me and I find their messages encouraging . The wicked snake (that also tempted Eve out of Eden), and the honesty of the old coat are memorable symbols . Thank you!

I like the war poets, but of all the war poems, I like this one, from A Shropshire Lad.

The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair..."
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

“The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,
There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,

The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,

And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.

There's chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,

And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,

And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,
And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.

I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell
The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;

And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell

And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.

But now you may stare as you like and there's nothing to scan;
And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,

The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.”

The line “They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man” always brings tears to my eyes.

‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allen Poe.

Greyduster

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays, too, my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather, made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Oh! *Greyduster” that made me cry. It really resonates.

Here is one of mine.

I loved it particularly resonating with me stumbling out of bed at some ungodly hour when I first had my babies.

Morning Song
BY SYLVIA PLATH
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

By william stafford

I carry your heart with me.....e.e. cummings