Favorite poem?

[Fellow]

I have to go with Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae by Ernest Dowson When I first came across it online I couldn't get some verses out of my head. So I ended up copying it out by hand(for want of a printer) and committing it to memory. Now it's all there to stay (hopefully) . Morning By Rimbaud comes in at a close second. Of course these are likely to change. I will have to update when the time comes.

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind'
and this lovely poem by Heather McHugh:

What He Thought
For Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic--
and least poetic-- so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. "If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

[Jassica]

I love poetry of Sergei Yesenin... for example, such poem (translated fron Russian to English). But, of course, in Russian it sounds better


No sorrow, no calls, no tears.
Now it's gone, white foam from apple-tree.
Faded, seized by tarnished golden flares,
I will not feel youthful. Never me.

Now you slow down, that's the matter,
You, my heart, that suffered a cold jet.
And the land of calico birch pattern
Hardly tempts my feet to walk o'er that.

Hobo spirit! You're so rare, rare,
Waking flame in mouth. It's now tense.
Oh, my freshness, that I couldn't spare.
Brawling eyes and overflowing sence!

I've become too greedy for desires.
Life of mine? Perhaps, it was a dream?
Me, alone, in early vernal hours
Riding a pink horse, as it cood seem.

We are mortal. In this world none's ever.
Copper leaves are floating. Let them fly.
Be you blest, you beautiful forever
That has come to blossom and to die.

[bazarov]

Oh yes, Yesenin is great! Who am I, what am I?, Black men, Farewell my dear...

[Jassica]

Oh yes, Yesenin is great! Who am I, what am I?, Black men, Farewell my dear...

And "Hooligan's confession", "To the Kachalov's dog", "A letter to mother", "The golden grove has ceased to speak...", "The unspoken, blue, tender..."

[bazarov]

''Don't shout at me...'' It's above my bed.

I hate translate name of poems

[Jassica]

I hate translate name of poems

I support you)

[iCherry]

I like everything by Pushkin 'cause his poems arouse so many feelings in me. Love and sadness, laughter and tears... "I loved you once" is amasing. "I loved you so sincerely and so mildly,/As, God permit, may love you someone else" though in Russian it sounds much better: "Я Вас любил так искренно, так нежно/Как дай Вам Бог любимой быть другим".

Also Love Lermontov, especially "the death of the Poet" and "Prophet". Here are the last 12 lines of " The death of the Poet":
And you, oh, vainglory decedents
Of famous fathers, so mean and base,
Who've trod with ushers' feet the remnants
Of clans, offended by the fortune's plays!
In greedy crowd standing by the throne,
The foes of Freedom, Genius, and Repute --
You're hid in shadow of a law-stone,
For you, and truth and justice must be mute! ...

But there is Court of God, you, evil manifold! --
The terrible court: it waits;
It's not reached by a ring of gold,
It knows, in advance, all thoughts' and actions' weights.
Then you, in vain, will try to bring your evil voice on:
It will not help you to be right,
And you will not wash of with all your bloody poison,
The Poet's righteous blood!

Unforgettable. I really was crying while reading them.

[appearances]

I would like to share a favorite of mine by Donald Justice:

FROM

Incident in a Rose Garden


Gardener
Sir, I encountered Death
Just now among our roses
Thin as a scythe he stood there.

I knew him by his pictures
He had on his black coat
Black gloves, and broad black hat.

I think he would have spoken,
Seeing his mouth stood open.
Big it was, with white teeth.

As soon as he beckoned, I ran.
I ran untill I found you.
Sir, I'm quitting my job.

....

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=80787

There is something about it I just seem to love. There have been some great pieces posted so far that I enjoy as well.

[~Sophia~]

I can't narrow down a favorite (there are so many fabulous works) but this one is up there. Also not sure if it's been posted before. Apologies if it has.

The Cinnamon Peeler
by Michael Ondaatje


If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

[Sapphire]

Wow... there are so many! It's impossible to choose a favourite!

I'd like to post here though, as I see that nobody mentioned a work of Stephen Crane - and I think he deserves to be mentioned

Amongst my favourites (and one of the few poems I know by heart):

The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this -
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.

"Tell her this
And more -
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."

In the end, everybody is helpless... even the ones who seem so mighty.

[blithe_spirit]

I have lots of favourite poems but one that never fails to move me is by
W. B.Yeats:


He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[Pryderi Agni]

Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gently Into the Good Night", and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods..." are the poems closest to my heart.

[Desolation]

'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg changed my life, and the way I view poetry.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving,
hysterical naked,
Dragging themselves through the negro street at dawn looking for
an angry fix,
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to
the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"

[greenfroggsplat]

Love Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 35. It was the first poem of hers that I appreciated

If I leave all for thee wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessings and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn nor count it strange,
When I look up to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors...another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled with dead eyes to tender to know change?
That's hardest if to conquer love has tried,
To conquer grief tries more...as all things prove;
For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
Alas! I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.