The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
On the Beach at Night Alone
by Walt Whitman
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing
her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a
thought of the clef of the universes, and of the
future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns,
moons, planets
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies, though they be ever
so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral
processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations,
languages,
All identities that have existed, or may exist, on
this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present,
future,
Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
somewhere i have never
travelled, gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly
beyond
any experience, your eyes have their
silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which
enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are
too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as
Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first
rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere
descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this
world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose
texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each
breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that
closes
and opens; only something in me
understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all
roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small
hands
Uncoiling by Pat Mora
With thorns, she scratches
on my window, tosses her hair dark
with rain,
snares lightning, cholla, hawks,
butterfly
swarms in the tangles.
She sighs clouds,
head thrown back, eyes closed,
roars
and rivers leap,
boulders retreat like crabs
into themselves.
She spews gusts and thunder,
spooks pale women who scurry to
lock doors, windows
when her tumbleweed skirt starts its
spin.
They sing lace lullabies
so their children won’t hear
her uncoiling
through her lips, howling
leaves off trees, flesh
off bones, until she becomes
sound, spins herself
to sleep, sand stinging her ankles,
whirring into her raw skin like stars.
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.
Carpe Diem by Robert Frost
Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether
homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing)
churchward,
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Too present to imagine.
Unity by Pablo Neruda
There is something dense,
united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its
identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have
touched time,
in their refined matter there is
an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea,
from salt and sleep.
I'm encircled by a single thing, a
single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed
light
cling to the sound of the word
"noche":
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of
tears,
things of leather, of wood, of
wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.
I work quietly, wheeling over
myself,
a crow over death, a crow in
mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread
of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent
geometry:
a partial temperature drifts
down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused
unities
reunites encircling me.
Mother Night
by James Weldon
Johnson
Eternities before the firstborn day,
Or ere the first sun fledged
his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting
and the same,
A brooding mother over
chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall
blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses
and then claim
The haven of the darkness
whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace
shall grope their way.
So when my feeble sun of
life burns out,
And sounded is the hour
for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the
feverish light,
Welcome the darkness
without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall
softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the
Night.