Abdul the Bulbul Ameer
by William Percy French (1854 –1920)
Irish songwriter, author, poet, entertainer and painter
The sons of the prophet are brave men and bold,
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest of all was a man, I am told,
Named Abdul, the Bulbul Amir.
This son of the desert in battle aroused,
Could split seven men on his spear,
What a terrible creature when sober or soused,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Amir.
Brave heroes were plenty and well known to fame,
Who fought in the ranks of the czar,
But the bravest of all was a man by the name —
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
The Amir decided to Moscow to go,
With one thousand coins in a jar,
And he wagered this loot he would bring home the boot
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
Now Ivan was one who would not turn and run,
He donned his most arrogant sneer.
Downtown he did go, where he trod on the toe —
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Amir.
"Young man", snickered Abdul, "Has life grown so dull,
You're anxious to end your career?
Vile infidel, know — you have trod on the toe —
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Amir."
"So look with a sigh at the sunshine on high,
I'll blacken it right where you are,
By which I imply, you are going to die,
Mr. Ivan Skavinsky Skivar."
Said Ivan, "My friend, your remarks in the end,
Will avail you but little, I fear,
For you ne'er will survive to repeat them alive,
Mr. Abdur, the Bulbul Amir."
They fought through the day till the sun sank away,
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, for so great was the fame —
Of Abdul and Ivan Skivar.
As Abdul's long knife was extracting the life —
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar,
He suddenly felt a sharp whip from a belt,
And the thrust of a sharp scimitar.
A tomb rises up where the plains gently roll,
And written in characters clear,
are: "Stranger, when passing, please pray for the soul —
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Amir."
A splash in the Black Sea, one dark, moonless night,
Caused ripples to spread wide and far,
It was made by a sack with a body held tight —
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
A sweet Moscow maiden her lone vigil keeps,
'Nearth the light of the pale northern star,
And the name that she murmurs so oft as she weeps —
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
After a Greek Proverb
By A. E. Stallings
Ουδέν μονιμότερον του προσωρινού
We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query—
Just for a couple of years, we said, a dozen years back.
Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
We dine sitting on folding chairs—they were cheap but cheery.
We’ve taped the broken window pane. tv’s still out of whack.
We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query.
When we crossed the water, we only brought what we could carry,
But there are always boxes that you never do unpack.
Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
Sometimes when I’m feeling weepy, you propose a theory:
Nostalgia and tear gas have the same acrid smack.
We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query—
We stash bones in the closet when we don’t have time to bury,
Stuff receipts in envelopes, file papers in a stack.
Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
Twelve years now and we’re still eating off the ordinary:
We left our wedding china behind, afraid that it might crack.
We’re here for the time being, we answer to the query,
But nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allen Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
-- Dan Vera
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name aloud
she made her way to the stage
straightened the papers in her hands —
pages and envelopes, the backs of grocery bills,
she closed her eyes for a minute,
took a breath,
and began.
From her mouth perfect words exploded,
intact formulas of light and darkness.
She dared to rhyme with words like cochineal
and described the skies like diadem.
Obscurely worded incantations filled the room
with an alchemy that made the very molecules quake.
The solitary words she handled
in her upstairs room with keen precision
came rumbling out to make the electric lights flicker.
40 members of the audience
were treated for hypertension.
20 year old dark haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.
Her second poem erased the memory of every cellphone
in the nightclub,
and by the fourth line of the sixth verse
the grandmother in the upstairs apartment
had been cured of her rheumatism.
The papers reported the power outages.
The area hospitals taxed their emergency generators
and sirens were heard to wail through the night.
Quietly she made her way to the exit,
walked to the terminal and rode back to Amherst.
She never left her room again
and never read such syllables aloud.
For Our Children’s Children
By Chris Colderly
Celebrating Chief Dan George
Greet the new day
like a stranger
entering it
for the first time.
Listen to the rivers,
the ravens song,
the woodpecker’s knock,
and you’re beating heart.
Walk softly, mind
the leaves, dancing
in shaky hands
of an old maple.
Let the shadows
of drifting clouds
warm your cheek
and whisper softly:
Share the earth
with all creatures.
Love them, and they
will love you back.
If I Were in Charge of the World
By Judith Viorst
If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.
If I were in charge of the world
There'd be brighter night lights,
Healthier hamsters, and
Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.
If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn't have lonely.
You wouldn't have clean.
You wouldn't have bedtimes.
Or "Don't punch your sister."
You wouldn't even have sisters.
If I were in charge of the world
A chocolate sundae with whipped cream
and nuts would be a vegetable
All 007 movies would be G,
And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
And sometimes forgot to flush,
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of the world.
Haiku: Lines on a Skull
By Ravi Shankar
life’s little, our heads
sad. Redeemed and wasting clay
this chance. Be of use.
Morning on Tserege [excerpt]
By Peggy Pond Church
When I was a child, I climbed here
at sunrise, barefooted among the grasses.
I searched for arrowheads among the ruins
and stood wondering on the rims of the broken kivas.
I had no language to say what it was that moved me,
a wisdom of rocks and old trees, of buried rivers
of the great arcs and tangents of sky and mountain.
Nancy Hanks
(1784-1818)
By Rosemary & Stephen Vincent Benet
If Nancy Hanks
Came back as a ghost,
Seeking news
Of what she loved most,
She’d ask first “Where’s my son?
What’s happened to Abe?
What’s he done?”
“Poor little Abe,
Left all alone
Except for Tom,
Who’s a rolling stone;
He was only nine
The year I died.
I remember still
How hard he cried.”
“Scraping along
In a little shack,
With hardly a shirt
To cover his back,
And a prairie wind
To blow him down,
Or pinching times
If he went to town.”
“You wouldn’t know
About my son?
Did he grow tall?
Did he have fun?
Did he learn to read?
Did he get to town?
Do you know his name?
Did he get on?”
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 thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Oatmeal
By Galway Kinnell
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if somebody eats
it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, as he called it with
John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture,
gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate,
oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary
companion, and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with
Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as wholesome as
Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode to a
Nightingale."
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some
sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in
his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a Moslem
at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, and then lay itself down
slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move forward with God’s
reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps
of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas of his own, but only
made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly,
and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started on it, and
two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and
"Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," came to him while eating
oatmeal alone.
I can see him—drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering—and it occurs to me:
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato can be damp, slippery, and
simultaneously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.
Recuerdo
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
By William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Summer’s End
By Judith Viorst
One by one the petals drop
There's nothing that can make them stop.
You cannot beg a rose to stay.
Why does it have to be that way?
The butterflies I used to chase
Have gone off to some other place.
I don't know where. I only know
I wish they didn't have to go.
And all the shiny afternoons
So full of birds and big balloons
And ice cream melting in the sun are done.
I do not want them done
Sunflowers in My Room
By Tony Beckworth
Under doctor’s orders
I took myself to bed
In and out of daydreams
hanging by a thread
Peering through my eyelids
everything is red
Doomed to isolation
living in my head
Then you brought me sunflowers
and sunshine filled the room
Pretty yellow faces
banishing the gloom
Something deep inside me
struggling to bloom
Basking in the golden light
of sunflowers in my room
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
By Billy Collins
First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.
Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.
You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset
and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
The Guest House
by Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Thoughts of Mother and Father
By Shin Saimdang
I climb the mountain, and my hometown is already thousands of miles away.
Day and night, even in dreams, my soul longs to go back.
Above the ridges of Hansongjeong’s paddies floats the lonely moon;
Over the roof of Gyeongpo Pavilion rushes a gust of wind.
Seagulls gather along the sandy fields and
Fishing boats come and go, but
When will my feet once again tread the path to Gangneung?
Shall I put on a colorful dress and busy myself with needlework?