I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation’ and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: The wild birds shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of and enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an alter-place,
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
Fr an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful—was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the universe.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

lost(in this br
ambliest tangle of hi
llside)a

few dim tombstones

try to re(still u
ntumbled but slant
ing drun
kenly)mind

me of noone i ever &

someone(the others have
long ago laid
them)i never(selves
any than

every more silent

ly)heard(& how
look at it blue is the
high is
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darling)of(down

e.e. cummings

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him;and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

e.e.cummings

A girl is freezing in a telephone booth,
huddled in her flimsy coat,
her face stained by tears
and smeared with lipstick.
She breathes on her thin little fingers.
Fingers like ice. Glass beads in her ears.

She has to beat her way back alone
down the icy street.

First frost. A beginning of losses.
The first frost of telephones phrases.

It is the start of winter glittering on her cheek,
the first frost of having been hurt.
 

Andrei Voznesensky

Saga

You will awaken me at dawn
And barefoot lead me to the door;
You’ll not forget me when I’m gone,
You will not see me anymore.

Lord, I think, in shielding you
From the cold wind of the open door:
I’ll not forget you when I’m gone,
I shall not see you anymore.

The Admiralty, the Stock Exchange
I’ll not forget when I am gone.
I’ll not see Leningrad again,
Its water shivering at dawn.

From withered cherries as they turn,
Brown in the wind, let cold tears pour:
It’s bad luck always to return,
I shall not see you anymore.

And if what Hafiz says is true
And we return to earth once more,
We’ll miss each other if it’s true;
I shall not see you anymore.

Our quarrels then will fade away
To nothing when we both are gone,
And when one day our two lives clash
Against that void to which they’re drawn.

Two silly phrases rise to sway
On heights of madness from earth’s floor.
I’ll not forget you when I’m gone,
I shall not see you anymore.

Andrei Voznesensky

The Emperor of  Ice Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Brings flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Wallace Stevens

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breast 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.

William Shakespear

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams

[I Opened Your Head]

I opened your head
To read your thoughts.
I devoured your eyes
To taste your sight.
I drank your blood
To know your wants
And made of your shivering body
My nourishment.

Joyce Mansour

[Men's Vices]

Men's vices
are my domain
Their wounds my sweet desserts
I love to chew on their vile thoughts
For their ugliness makes my beauty.

Joyce Mansour

Blacklisted

Why shall I keep the old name?
What is a name anywhere anyway?
A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child:
A job is a job and I want to live, so
Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by?

Carl Sandburg

She Held Herself a Deep Pool for Him

she held herself a deep pool for him
and the shadows crying for him
he gathered himself in many dark waters
and the shadows crying for her
they took each other in shadow meetings
they held themselves in shadow songs

    she coiled herself around him
    with a ribbon of glass
    and a rope of gold
    the coils of her cunning held him
    with rings of golden glass
    with a moon of melting gold
    with a mist of sunset ribbons

Carl Sandburg

Friendship With Men

Is friendship with men like friendship with birds?
Is friendship the way this parrot nestles
beneath my chin, its feathers only disturbed
by the regular wind from my nostrils?

Unexpectedly, another species
and I achieve intimacy: we are
each other's pets; as I imagine the seas
at a great distance are pets of the stars.

Molly Peacock

DON'T THINK GOVERNMENTS END THE WORLD

Don't think governments end the world. The blast,
the burnings, and the final famine will
be brought on by mistake. "I'm sorry," the last
anxious man at the control panel will
try to say, his face streaked with panic, red
hives rising on his neck. He'll have been a jerk
all his life, who couldn't get through his head
that his mother couldn't love him. Work
at the panel would give him the control
the she had denied him again and again.

Thus the world will burn through the central hole
of his being. He won't really be sure--again,
having never been assured of her--of what
he is supposed to do. That is, he'll be sure
at every exercise until the shut
blank door of the final moment injures
his gerrybuilt control and BANG, BANG, BANG.

It won't be his fault, his childish mother's fault,
or the fault of what produced her or what
produced what produced her back through the vault
of savage centuries. If he'd just known what,
he'd have done it to please. He might have known himself
through what he'd felt, and thus might be clear.
She might have said, "That's nice, dear,"
and we wouldn't be dead.

Aren't you scared of your life in his hands?
But of all the men whose hands you'd hope to be in,
name the one you're sure of. The history of nations
is cold; the world burns by generations.

Molly Peacock

Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

     Half a league, half a league,
         Half a league onward,
     All in the valley of Death
         Rode the six hundred.
     `Forward, the Light Brigade!
     Charge for the guns!' he said:
     Into the valley of Death
         Rode the six hundred.

II.

     `Forward, the Light Brigade!'
   Was there a man dismay'd?
   Not tho' the soldier knew
       Some one had blunder'd:
   Their's not to make reply,
   Their's not to reason why,
   Their's but to do and die:
   Into the valley of Death
       Rode the six hundred.

III

   Cannon to right of them,
   Cannon to left of them,
   Cannon in front of them
       Volley'd and thunder'd;
   Storm'd at with shot and shell,
   Boldly they rode and well,
   Into the jaws of Death,
   Into the mouth of Hell
       Rode the six hundred.

IV

   Flash'd all their sabres bare,
   Flash'd as they turn'd in air
   Sabring the gunners there,
   Charging an army, while
       All the world wonder'd:
   Plunged in the battery-smoke
   Right thro' the line they broke;
   Cossack and Russian
   Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
       Shatter'd and sunder'd.
   Then they rode back, but not
       Not the six hundred.

V

   Cannon to right of them,
   Cannon to left of them,
   Cannon behind them
       Volley'd and thunder'd;
   Storm'd at with shot and shell,
   While horse and hero fell,
   They that had fought so well
   Came thro' the jaws of Death,
   Back from the mouth of Hell,
   All that was left of them,
       Left of six hundred.

VI

   When can their glory fade?
   O the wild charge they made!
       All the world wonder'd.
   Honour the charge they made!
   Honour the Light Brigade,
       Noble six hundred!
 

Alfred Lord Tennyson