Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication by Seamus Heaney
Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication by Seamus Heaney 1. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove […]
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying– He had always taken funerals in his stride– And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. […]
Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney
Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass, Came dazzling around, into the rocks, Came glinting, sifting from the Americas To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush to throw wide arms of rock around a tide That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash? Did sea define the land […]
Limbo by Seamus Heaney
Limbo by Seamus Heaney Fishermen at Ballyshannon Netted an infant last night Along with the salmon. An illegitimate spawning, A small one thrown back To the waters. But I’m sure As she stood in the shallows Ducking him tenderly Till the frozen knobs of her wrists Were dead as the gravel, He was a minnow […]
Keeping Going by Seamus Heaney
Keeping Going by Seamus Heaney The piper coming from far away is you With a whitewash brush for a sporran Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow, Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting With laughter, but keeping the drone […]
From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney
From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney The tightness and the nilness round that space when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect its make and number and, as one bends his face towards your window, you catch sight of more on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent down cradled guns that […]
Follower by Seamus Heaney
Follower by Seamus Heaney My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horse strained at his clicking tongue. An expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. The sod rolled over without breaking. At the headrig, with a […]
Exposure by Seamus Heaney
Exposure by Seamus Heaney It is December in Wicklow: Alders dripping, birches Inheriting the last light, The ash tree cold to look at. A comet that was lost Should be visible at sunset, Those million tons of light Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips, And I sometimes see a falling star. If I could […]
Docker by Seamus Heaney
Docker by Seamus Heaney There, in the corner, staring at his drink. The cap juts like a gantry’s crossbeam, Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw. Speech is clamped in the lips’ vice. That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic- Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again; The only Roman collar he […]
Death Of A Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
Death Of A Naturalist by Seamus Heaney All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted […]
Casualty by Seamus Heaney
Casualty by Seamus Heaney I He would drink by himself And raise a weathered thumb Towards the high shelf, Calling another rum And blackcurrant, without Having to raise his voice, Or order a quick stout By a lifting of the eyes And a discreet dumb-show Of pulling off the top; At closing time would go […]
Bogland by Seamus Heaney
Bogland by Seamus Heaney for T. P. Flanagan We have no prairies To slice a big sun at evening– Everywhere the eye concedes to Encrouching horizon, Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye Of a tarn. Our unfenced country Is bog that keeps crusting Between the sights of the sun. They’ve taken the skeleton Of the […]
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains […]
Act of Union by Seamus Heaney
Act of Union by Seamus Heaney I To-night, a first movement, a pulse, As if the rain in bogland gathered head To slip and flood: a bog-burst, A gash breaking open the ferny bed. Your back is a firm line of eastern coast And arms and legs are thrown Beyond your gradual hills. I caress […]
Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
Through the window, i feel something slide gently past . It`s the cool wind, long past midnight with the solemn promise. The promise that the winters will soon be there. enthralled was my soul and joyfully jumped forth exalted i was to think It won`t be long, before the houses will get cozier with fires, […]
The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
‘Tis spring; come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ground The primroses are found. And there’s the windflower chilly With all the winds at play, And there’s the Lenten lily That has not long to stay And dies on Easter day. And since till girls go […]
Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
Through the window, i feel something slide gently past . It`s the cool wind, long past midnight with the solemn promise. The promise that the winters will soon be there. enthralled was my soul and joyfully jumped forth exalted i was to think It won`t be long, before the houses will get cozier with fires, […]
On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields […]
The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
‘Tis spring; come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ground The primroses are found. And there’s the windflower chilly With all the winds at play, And there’s the Lenten lily That has not long to stay And dies on Easter day. And since till girls go […]
On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields […]
Broken wings of a Heart by Saajida Gora
Deepest oceans, mountains high, I wish I cud sail Through the libertied sky, Darkness surrounds Silencing the sounds Pangs of memories Are the only thing that hounds The rythmic beating tells a story untold To the world around her Solitude is gold She longs for the sunlight But the ocean sealed a vow She longs […]
Being Underwater by Sahiti Siddharth
Being underwater is like a trip to heaven Being underwater is so sweet Being underwater is like flying in the ocean Where the surface is meters beneath your feet Being underwater is like a dream come true I wish it was real, but the chances are few Being underwater is like returning to childhood When […]
Awake by Sara Herlihy
Awake by Sara Herlihy As dawn breaks and my body stirs, my mind struggles to stay wrapped in your embrace. Warm breath tickles my face as soft lips caress it. Love and yearning penetrate my deepest layers. I never want to leave. A thousand years could pass but a minute would not be missed As […]
Attitude: Don Juan in the Shopping Mall by S. K. Kelen
Attitude: Don Juan in the Shopping Mall by S. K. Kelen Let us fly to bounty land…Aqua I Today’s Don Juan could be any of a million characters: Mohammed Hatim a wayward son of the Mujahideen, Doan Huan sporting a Da Nang pedigree, or Mario Lanza living out a serious fetish for muscle cars, Jim […]
Aspirations by SAAJIDA GORA
The essence of her soul lies within the purity of her heart The breath of her words illuminates a guiding path The voice of her aspiring dreams whispers subtle, compassionate beams The fluttering of her infinite love disperses through the smog filled air grappling through the unstable torrents Will it all be in despair? Poetry […]
ASHA APARTMENTS, 416, S.V. ROAD by Santosh Kumar Panda
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Not Thursday Again Friday Not Saturday This time you disappeared on Thursday Saturday… was my… holiday Crossing the divider & using the long distance route for my destination I waited unknowingly going on in desperate Then here you come & checked me crossing the divider This is alone I look forward to […]
As if by Sara Herlihy
As if by Sara Herlihy Like a cloud Listless Hopeless Floating through a clear blue sky waiting… Just waiting… Until I evaporate and disappear. As if I never was. As if I didn’t impact the millions of eyes who saw my magnificent beauty grace their souls. As if I never was. I KNOW I was […]
Amity’s Death by SAAJIDA GORA
Woe is unto me Thou shalt never see. Despair, Despair, despair Viciously ripped, unaware Beams of amity like the essence of air Flowed smoothly through destined to share So precious, so pearly, so diamondly rare Velvety threads of gentle care Time has sought the light of th sun Time has sought the […]
America, America by Saadi Youssef
God save America, My home, sweet home! We are not hostages, America, and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers… We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods, the gods of bulls, the gods of fires, the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song… We are the […]
A Writer’s Pen by Sahiti Siddharth
A pen, when a writer holds A brand new chapter unfolds A few lines can make him the king It can make him fly on a single wing A writer without his pen Is like a leader without powers A writer without his pen Is like a garden without flowers A writer’s pen Makes him […]
A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies by S. K. Kelen
A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies by S. K. Kelen 1. To arrive anywhere tonight you travel a road lit only by fireflies to towns whose names really mean ‘tomb of a hundred martyrs’. Invisible birds sing tinkling vowels — words from a time before history invaded. Frogs roar louder and louder kick-starting a […]
A sense’s addiction to chocolate by SAAJIDA GORA
The sensual mouth’s craving desires are finding sweet addiction’s rapid fires, The enticing chocolate mounds of pure pleasure, melting in a fervent, passionate, river appealing rugged hazelnut mountains, swim in the oceans of chocolate fountains. Sensations so pure, desires so dreamy, A tantalizing taste, so eerily creamy. The earthy, nutty flavour splashing around, spreading sweet […]
A Father’s Hands by Scott Ransopher
A Father’s Hands by Scott Ransopher Men would bet upon her father’s hands. Could he pick up in just one fist A dozen eggs scattered on the table– One by one–cracking none? He’d reach his hand (stretched at five by Pulsing milk from freshened cows) And settle shells beneath knuckle’s crease. Then pressing oh so […]
The Unborn by Sharon Olds
The Unborn by Sharon Olds Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, The glimmer of them. Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing In some antechamber; servants, half- Listening for the bell. Sometimes I see them lying like love letters In the Dead […]
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds On the then-below-zero day, it was on, near the patients’ chair, the old heater kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end, like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot of my father’s grave. And it was hot, with the almost laughing satire of a fire’s heat, […]
The Sash by Sharon Olds
The Sash by Sharon Olds The first ones were attached to my dress at the waist, one on either side, right at the point where hands could clasp you and pick you up, as if you were a hot squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the sashes that emerged like axil buds from the angles […]
The Pact by Sharon Olds
The Pact by Sharon Olds We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to kill herself. We kneeled over the rubber bodies, gave them baths carefully, scrubbed their little orange hands, wrapped them […]
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds Three months after he lies dead, that long yellow narrow body, not like Christ but like one of his saints, the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs, the ones who died of nettles, bile, the one who died roasted […]
The End by Sharon Olds
The End by Sharon Olds We decided to have the abortion, became killers together. The period that came changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the crash was not a surprise. We went to the window, looked at the crushed cars and […]
The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept creeping over the smooth plastic to find your strong meaty little hand and squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the noble ribbing of the corduroy, straight and regular […]