~The official POETRY thread~

Suicide in the Trenches Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumbs and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.



You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

A Little Boy Lost William Blake

v'Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

'And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.'

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
'Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
'One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.'

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such thing done on Albion's shore?
 
Far away, near the sea
I met the most beautiful girl
Who one day said to me
"How did you ever find your way here?"
Silence came and conquered all
I was struck by the strangest fear
To fill the space
I said something stupid and untrue
Though deep inside; I know that she knew
From there on it only spelled the end
For the fair haired girl who had become my friend
I saw her off that very night
Watched as her lifeless body
Was drowned beneath the tide
Looking back it was such a shame
Though to be perfectly honest
She only had herself to blame
For reading through my notes and diary
Discovering the truth; revealing the real me
That sealed her sad and tragic fate
From their on she could only ever be
DECEASED
 
Siegfried Sassoon
IM.jpg

one of the 'great war poets'

Attack
Assault.jpg

AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
 
Poems, Potato

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch. Not that they're gross (although

Afterthought often would have them alter
To delicacy, to poise) but that they
Shortchange me continuously: whether

More or other, they still dissatisfy.
Unpoemed, unpictured, the potato
Bunches its knobby browns on a vastly
Superior page; the blunt stone also.


by Sylvia Plath
 
I will never ever get over how lovely this poem is. It's so sort-of sick, I can only ever enjoy it on my own. I think I'd vomit if I had to share the experience with anybody else!

It's untitled, by Simon Armitage and in the 'The Book of Matches' collection (which is excellent cover-to-cover)

Let me put it this way:
if you came to lay

your sleeping head
against my arm or sleeve,

and if my arm went dead,
or if I had to take my leave

at midnight, I should rather
cleave it from the joint or seam

than make a scene
or bring you round.

There,
how does that sound?
 
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

by
John Donne
(1572-1631)
 
Ode to the Lemon

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.


-- Pablo Neruda

 
Speak!-Wordsworth

WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant—
Bound to thy service with unceasing care,
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak—though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!
 
I buried myself, my thoughts, and everything I said
Is that a reason to deny me?
I’ve already fallen in your trap,
your secret one,
Incase you didn’t know, love.
Oh, can I call later?
Can you call?
I put the note under my pillow but its still there and
The magic didn’t work.
I didn’t want anything
Just more of your time
But time isn’t there.
Do you even feel it?
Its been too long to say
But I can still remember like I remember that way I am.
It sits still in my head, dormant.
A dead star never grows.
Oh what a thought,
I thought it would only last for eight years.
-By Me :)
 
Ode to the Lemon

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.


-- Pablo Neruda

lemon.jpg
 
Shadwell Stair by Wilfred Owen

I am the ghost of Shadwell stair.
Along the wharves by the water-house,
And through the dripping slaughter-house,
I am the shadow that walks there.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
And eyes tumultuous as the gems
Of moons and lamps in the lapping Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
Where I watch, always, from the banks
Dolorously the shipping clanks,
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane
And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
But when the crowing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.
 
Scarlet Ribbons

I peeked in to say goodnight
And I heard my child in prayer
"And for me some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for my hair"
All the stores were closed and shuttered
All the streets were dark and bare
In our town, no scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair
Thru the night my heart was aching
Just before the dawn was breaking
I peeped in and on her pillow
On her pillow lying there
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair
If I live to be a hundred
I will never know from where
Came those ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair
 
Scarlet Ribbons

I peeked in to say goodnight
And I heard my child in prayer
"And for me some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for my hair"
All the stores were closed and shuttered
All the streets were dark and bare
In our town, no scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair
Thru the night my heart was aching
Just before the dawn was breaking
I peeped in and on her pillow
On her pillow lying there
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair
If I live to be a hundred
I will never know from where
Came those ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair


That was lovely :)
 
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