I Remember by Stevie Smith
I Remember by Stevie Smith It was my bridal night I remember, An old man of seventy-three I lay with my young bride in my arms, A girl with t.b. It was wartime, and overhead The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead. What rendered the confusion worse, perversely Our bombers had chosen […]
I Do Not Speak by Stevie Smith
I Do Not Speak by Stevie Smith I do not ask for mercy for understanding for peace And in these heavy days I do not ask for release I do not ask that suffering shall cease. I do not pray to God to let me die To give an ear attentive to my cry To […]
Happiness by Stevie Smith
Happiness by Stevie Smith Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends, Grief is explicit and her song never ends, Happiness is like England, and will not state a case, Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and […]
Freddy by Stevie Smith
Freddy by Stevie Smith Nobody knows what I feel about Freddy I cannot make anyone understand I love him sub specie aet ernitaties I love him out of hand. I don’t love him so much in the restaurants that’s a fact To get him hobnob with my old pub chums needs too much tact He […]
Exeat by Stevie Smith
Exeat by Stevie Smith I remember the Roman Emperor, one of the cruellest of them, Who used to visit for pleasure his poor prisoners cramped in dungeons, So then they would beg him for death, and then he would say: Oh no, oh no, we are not yet friends enough. He meant they were not […]
Edmonton, thy cemetery by Stevie Smith
Edmonton, thy cemetery by Stevie Smith Edmonton, thy cemetery In which I love to tread Has roused in me a dreary thought For all the countless dead, Ah me, the countless dead. Yet I believe that one is one And shall for ever be, And while I hold to this belief I walk, oh cemetery, […]
Drugs Made Pauline Vague by Stevie Smith
Drugs Made Pauline Vague by Stevie Smith Drugs made Pauline vague. She sat one day at the breakfast table Fingering in a baffled way The fronds of the maidenhair plant. Was it the salt you were looking for dear? said Dulcie, exchanging a glance with the Brigadier. Chuff chuff Pauline what’s the matter? Said the […]
Deeply Morbid by Stevie Smith
Deeply Morbid by Stevie Smith Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters Always out of office hours running with her social betters But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her It was that […]
Conviction (iv) by Stevie Smith
Conviction (iv) by Stevie Smith I like to get off with people, I like to lie in their arms I like to be held and lightly kissed, Safe from all alarms. I like to laugh and be happy With a beautiful kiss, I tell you, in all the world There is no bliss like this. […]
Conviction (iii) by Stevie Smith
Conviction (iii) by Stevie Smith The shadow was so black, I thought it was a cat, But once in to it I knew it No more black Than a shadow’s back. Illusion is a freak Of mind; The cat’s to seek. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems […]
Conviction (ii) by Stevie Smith
Conviction (ii) by Stevie Smith I walked abroad in Easter Park, I heard the wild dog’s distant bark, I knew my Lord was risen again, – Wild dog, wild dog, you bark in vain. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — […]
Conviction (i) by Stevie Smith
Conviction (i) by Stevie Smith Christ died for God and me Upon the crucifixion tree For God a spoken Word For me a Sword For God a hymn of praise For me eternal days For God an explanation For me salvation. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems […]
Bag-Snatching In Dublin by Stevie Smith
Bag-Snatching In Dublin by Stevie Smith Sisely Walked so nicely With footsteps so discreet To see her pass You’d never guess She walked upon the street. Down where the Liffey waters’ turgid flood Churns up to greet the ocean-driven mud, A bruiser in fix Murdered her for 6/6. ————— The End And that’s the End […]
Away, Melancholy by Stevie Smith
Away, Melancholy by Stevie Smith Away, melancholy, Away with it, let it go. Are not the trees green, The earth as green? Does not the wind blow, Fire leap and the rivers flow? Away melancholy. The ant is busy He carrieth his meat, All things hurry To be eaten or eat. Away, melancholy. Man, too, […]
Autumn by Stevie Smith
Autumn by Stevie Smith He told his life story to Mrs. Courtly Who was a widow. ‘Let us get married shortly’, He said. ‘I am no longer passionate, But we can have some conversation before it is too late.’ ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic […]
Alone In The Woods by Stevie Smith
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 in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the […]
Work and Play by Ted Hughes
Work and Play by Ted Hughes The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer, A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage, A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air. But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust In shimmering exhaust Searching to slake Its fever in ocean Will play and be idle or […]
Wind by Ted Hughes
Wind by Ted Hughes This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and […]
Tractor by Ted Hughes
Tractor by Ted Hughes The tractor stands frozen; an agony To think of. All night Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale, A spill of molten ice, smoking snow, Pours into its steel. At white heat of numbness it stands In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness. It defied flesh and won’t start. […]
Thrushes by Ted Hughes
Thrushes by Ted Hughes Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn, More coiled steel than living; a poised Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs Triggered to stirrings beyond sense; with a start, a bounce, a stab Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing. No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states, No […]
Thistles by Ted Hughes
Thistles by Ted Hughes Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure. Every one a revengeful burst Of resurrection, a grasphed fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They […]
The Warm and the Cold by Ted Hughes
The Warm and the Cold by Ted Hughes Freezing dusk is closing Like a slow trap of steel On trees and roads and hills and all That can no longer feel. But the carp is in its depth Like a planet in its heaven. And the badger in its bedding Like a loaf in the […]
The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes
The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches […]
The Owl by Ted Hughes
The Owl by Ted Hughes I saw my world again through your eyes As I would see it again through your children’s eyes. Through your eyes it was foreign. Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens, A mystery of peculiar lore and doings. Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes Emerged at a point of exclamation […]
The Minotaur by Ted Hughes
The Minotaur by Ted Hughes The mahogany table-top you smashed Had been the broad plank top Of my mother’s heirloom sideboard- Mapped with the scars of my whole life. That came under the hammer. That high stool you swung that day Demented by my being Twenty minutes late for baby-minding. ‘Marvellous!’ I shouted, ‘Go on, […]
The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes
The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes The flame-red moon, the harvest moon, Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing, A vast balloon, Till it takes off, and sinks upward To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon. The harvest moon has come, Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon. And the earth […]
The Child Is Father To The Man by Ted Hughes
The Child Is Father To The Man by Ted Hughes ‘The child is father to the man.’ How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: ‘The child is father to the man.’ No; what the poet did write ran, ‘The man is father to the child.’ ‘The child […]
Spring & Fall: To A Young Child by Ted Hughes
Spring & Fall: To A Young Child by Ted Hughes Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By & by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of […]
September by Ted Hughes
September by Ted Hughes We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold: No clock counts this. When kisses are repeated and the arms hold There is no telling where time is. It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still: Behind the eye a star, Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell Time […]
Pied Beauty by Ted Hughes
Pied Beauty by Ted Hughes Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; […]
Old Age Gets Up by Ted Hughes
Old Age Gets Up by Ted Hughes Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again Ponders Ideas that collapse At the first touch of attention The light at the window, so square and so same So full-strong as ever, the window frame A scaffold in space, […]
Lovesong by Ted Hughes
Lovesong by Ted Hughes He loved her and she loved him His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and Sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains […]
Lineage by Ted Hughes
Lineage by Ted Hughes In the beginning was Scream Who begat Blood Who begat Eye Who begat Fear Who begat Wing Who begat Bone Who begat Granite Who begat Violet Who begat Guitar Who begat Sweat Who begat Adam Who begat Mary Who begat God Who begat Nothing Who begat Never Never Never Never Who […]
How To Paint A Water Lily by Ted Hughes
How To Paint A Water Lily by Ted Hughes To Paint a Water Lily A green level of lily leaves Roofs the pond’s chamber and paves The flies’ furious arena: study These, the two minds of this lady. First observe the air’s dragonfly That eats meat, that bullets by Or stands in space to take […]
Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes
Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray Are of advantage to me; And the […]
God’s Grandeur by Ted Hughes
God’s Grandeur by Ted Hughes The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with […]
Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes
Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket – And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming; mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in […]
Examination at the Womb-Door by Ted Hughes
Examination at the Womb-Door by Ted Hughes Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death. Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death. Who owns these still-working lungs? Death. Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death. Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death. Who owns these questionable brains? Death. All this messy blood? Death. These minimum-efficiency eyes? […]
Earth-Moon by Ted Hughes
Earth-Moon by Ted Hughes Once upon a time there was a person He was walking along He met the full burning moon Rolling slowly twoards him Crushing the stones and houses by the wayside. She shut his eyes from the glare. He drew his dagger And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. The cry that quit […]
Crow’s Nerve Fails by Ted Hughes
Crow’s Nerve Fails by Ted Hughes Crow, feeling his brain slip, Finds his every feather the fossil of a murder. Who murdered all these? These living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood Till he is visibly black? How can he fly from his feathers? And why have they homed on him? Is […]