poems and pickaxes

The Narrow Sea by Robert Graves With you for mast and sail and flag, And anchor never known to drag, Death's narrow but oppressive ...

To A Steam Roller by Marianne Moore The illustration is nothing to you without the application.    You lack half wit.  You crush all th...

Fountain At Tsarskoye Selo by Alexander Pushkin (tr. D.M. Thomas) The girl has dropped the urn, and broken it on a rock. Sadly the girl sit...

'I have outlived...'  by Peter Vyazemsky (tr. A. Myers) I have outlived most things and people round me and weighed the worth of...

Garden by Marina Tsvetayeva (tr. D. McDuff) Cure for this hell, This fever, send Me a garden Toward my life's end, Toward my lif...

'Freshness of words...'  by Anna Akhmatova (tr. D.M. Thomas) Freshness of words, simplicity of emotions, If we lost these, would...

Ill Luck by Charles Baudelaire (tr. Wallace Fowlie) To raise a weight so heavy, Sisyphus, we would need your courage! Although we have ...

Facet by Dean Young For weeks, I've gone unbroken but not unpunished by the quiet of zero degrees which is worse than the quiet of...

The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes I saw him once before, As he passed by the door,      And again The pavement stones resound, ...

Don't Turn Round by Gunter Grass (tr. Michael Hamburger & Christopher Middleton) Don't go into the wood, in the wood is the ...

Giantess by Charles Baudelaire (tr. Richard Howard) Had I been there when primal Nature teemed with monstrous progeny, I would have trie...

"It's raining.  There is silence since the rain itself" by Fernando Pessoa (tr. Edwin Honig and Susan M Brown) It's rai...

Dissolver of Sugar by Jelaluddin Rumi Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me, if this is the time. Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a ...

Portrait Of A Lady by T.S. Eliot Thou hast committed-- Fornication: but that was in another country And besides, the wench is dead.      ...

Unrequited Love Poem  by Sierra DeMulder You will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all o...

To M.B. by Joseph Brodsky (tr. George Kline) When I embraced these shoulders, I beheld the room as it was now revealed beyond us. I saw...

Favor of Alexander Balas by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven) O, I am not upset that a wheel of my chariot is broken, and I have lost a foolish v...

Infidelity by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven) At the nuptial banquet of Thetis and Peleus Apollo rose from the sumptuous marriage table, and g...

Monotony C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven) One monotonous day follows another identical monotony. The same things will happen, they will happen ...

Theatre Impressions by Wislawa Szymborska (trans. by Krynski & Maguire) For me a tragedy's most important act is the sixth: the ...

"We believe books, music, poetry..." by Anatoly Sergeyevich Steiger We believe books, music, poetry; We believe dreams that we...

The Face Of A Woman by Ali Ahmed Said [a.k.a. Adonis] (trans. by Kamal Abu-Deeb) I dwell in the face of a woman who dwells in a wave f...

Villanelle: The Psychological Hour by Ezra Pound I I had over-prepared the event, that much was ominous. With middle-ageing care I ha...

Things That Might Have Been by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. A. S. Kline) I think of things that weren't, but might have been. The treatise...

In the Heart of the Desert by Al-Tirimmah (tr. Omar S. Pound) A foolish man rides here with my saddle and on my camel.

Elizabeth Hoar by Ralph Waldo Emerson Almost I am tempted to essay For sympathetic eyes the portraiture Of the good angels that environ...

A Traveler at Night Writes His Thoughts by Tu Fu (tr. Watson) Delicate grasses, faint wind on the bank; stark mast, a lone night boat: ...

Tale of the Assyrian Statue by Mahmoud al-Buraikan (tr. Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye) In a glass room In a museum that squats in...

Nicholas, The Experimental Dog by Raymond Queneau (tr. Rexroth) Nicholas You ran away from the hospital They told you you weren’t sick ...

The Room by Vladimir Nabokov The room a dying poet took at nightfall in a dead hotel had both directories -- the Book of Heaven and th...

"Many red devils..."  by Stephen Crane Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page. They were so tiny The pen co...

(Dedications) by Adrienne Rich I know you are reading this poem late, before leaving your office of the one intense yellow lamp-spot an...

Decisions by Boris Novak (tr. Dintinjana) Between two words choose the quieter one. Between word and silence choose listening. Betw...

from "Grapefruit" by Yoko Ono ANNOUNCEMENT PIECE I Give death announcements each time you move instead of giving announcemen...

"Of all your forgotten ones..." by Lea Goldberg (tr. Back) Of all your forgotten ones I am the most forgotten. Of all the fac...

Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thoug...

Child by Sylvia Plath Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new ...

Vocation by Sandra Beasley For six months I dealt Baccarat in a casino. For six months I played Brahms in a mall. For six months I arra...

The Juggler at Heaven's Gate by Raymond Carver Behind the dirty table where Kristofferson is having breakfast, there's  a window...

As The Mist Leaves  No Scar by Leonard Cohen As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill, So my body leaves no scar On you, nor...

Postscriptum by Joseph Brodsky (tr. George Kline) How sad that my life has not come to mean for you what your life came to mean for me. ...

Breakfast by Jacques Prévert (tr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti) He put the coffee In the cup He put the milk In the cup of coffee He put th...

Despair Is Seated On A Bench by Jacques Prévert (tr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti) In a square on a bench There's a man who calls you when ...

One Night I Burned by Leonard Cohen One night I burned the house I loved, It lit a perfect ring In which I saw some weeds and stone Be...

Love Is A Fire by Leonard Cohen Love is a fire It burns everyone It disfigures everyone It is the world's excuse for being ugly

Waking Dreams 6 by Mina Assadi (tr. Niloufar Talebi) After rain           there will be rain After loneliness           loneliness Af...

To Fate by Charles Simic You were always more real to me than God. Setting up the props for a tragedy, Hammering the nails in With onl...

Kazoo Wedding by Charles Simic The groom is red-cheeked as he blows into a kazoo And so is the bride as she blows one too. The guests a...

Department Of Complaints by Charles Simic Where you are destined to turn up Some dark winter day Walking up and down dead escalators S...

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? by A.E. Housman He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to ...

Consolation by Wislawa Szymborska Darwin. They say he read novels to relax, But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If ...

The Problem by Richard Siken The problem (if there was one) was simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, a...

If I Could Tell You by W.H. Auden Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell yo...

An Unacceptable Smile by Kostas Montis (tr. Amaranth Sitas & Charles Dodd) I do not know how far the rights of a mirror reach, I do ...

Casabianca by Elizabeth Bishop  Love's the boy stood on the burning deck  trying to recite "The boy stood on  the burning deck...

Kites by Kostas Montis (tr. Amaranth Sitas & Charles Dodd) We are kites, kites caught on the electric wires, with those broken stri...

Those Who Love by Sara Teasdale Those who love the most, Do not talk of their love, Francesca, Guinevere, Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise, ...

The Eyes Of The Poor by Charles Baudelaire Ah! So you would like to know why I hate you today? It will certainly be harder for you to und...

Fundamental Difference by Yannis Ritsos (tr. Minas Savvas) In the middle of the road they got hungry.  They sat down      for their lunc...

That Which Remains by Adriana Ierodiakonou (tr. Thanasis Maskaleris) That which remains most is what leaves us      As the nothing is m...

"I'm Nobody!..." (288) by Emily Dickinson I'm Nobody!  Who are you? Are you--Nobody--Too? Then there's a pair of ...

The Obligation to Be Happy by Linda Pastan It is more onerous than the rites of beauty or housework, harder than love. But you expect ...

Parable Of The Russian Émigrés  by Zbigniew Herbert (tr. Peter Dale Scott) It was the year twenty or perhaps twenty-one the Russian émi...

Late Fragment by Christian Wiman How to say this-- my silences were not always mine: scrabbled hole and the dark beyond, vaporous pond...

Desert Places by Robert Frost Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost ...

Food For Prophets by Gunter Grass (tr. Anselm Hollo) When the locusts occupied our town, no milk came to the door, the dailies suffocate...

Winter: My Secret by Christina Rossetti I tell my secret? No indeed, not I: Perhaps some day, who knows? But not today; it froze, and ...

Queen Victoria And Me by Leonard Cohen Queen Victoria my father and all his tobacco loved you I love you too in all your forms the sl...

A Waking by Octavio Paz (tr. Eliot Weinberger) I was walled inside a dream. Its walls had no consistency, no weight: its emptiness was...

The Flowers That I Left In The Ground by Leonard Cohen The flowers that I left in the ground, that I did not gather for you, today I b...

Possibilities by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Where are the Poets, unto whom belong The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent ...

"The brain within its groove.."  by Emily Dickinson The brain within its groove Runs evenly and true; But let a splinter swe...

The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself;...

This Is a Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood It was taken some time ago. At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and g...

Wrestling With The Angel by Jacques Prévert (tr. Benedikt) Don't bother The fight's fixed The match is rigged and when he or s...

A Forge, and a Scythe by Raymond Carver One minute I had the windows open and the sun was out. Warm breezes blew through the room. (I ...

Feeling Fucked Up by Etheridge Knight Lord she's gone done left me done packed/up and split and I with no way to make her come back...

In The Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo by Raymond Carver The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book. The man in the lobby using a br...

Unanswered Letter by Tess Gallagher Your silence is leaning toward judgment. Yesterday I bragged, writing to calm my paranoid friend, ...

Love at First Sight by Wislawa Szymborska (tr. Baranczak & Cavanagh) They’re both convinced that a sudden passion joined them. Such...

The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students by Galwlay Kinnell Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me snapsh...

Solitude by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Edward Snow) Solitude is like a rain. It rises from the sea toward evening; from plains, which are ...

It Is The Season by Josephine Jacobsen when we learn or do not learn to say goodbye. The crone leaves that as green virgins opened t...