PolyArchive

Digging Seamus Heaney Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through […]

Coda Dorothy Parker There’s little in taking or giving, There’s little in water or wine; This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent […]

Discordants Conrad Aiken I. (Bread and Music) MUSIC I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have […]

Infirmity Theodore Roethke In purest song one plays the constant fool As changes shimmer in the inner eye. I stare and stare into a deepening pool And tell myself my image cannot die. I love myself: that’s my one constancy. Oh, to be something else, yet still to be! Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity; […]

pity this busy monster, manunkind E. E. Cummings pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness –electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of […]

Travelogue for Exiles Karl Shapiro Look and remember. Look upon this sky; Look deep and deep into the sea-clean air, The unconfined, the terminus of prayer. Speak now and speak into the hallowed dome. What do you hear? What does the sky reply? The heavens are taken: this is not your home. Look and remember. […]

Night Mail W.H. Auden This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland […]

Of Mere Being Wallace Stevens The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze distance. A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird […]

Forgetfulness Billy Collins The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern […]

A Song W. B. Yeats I THOUGHT no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? Though I have many words, What woman’s satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? Oh, who could have foretold […]

Trzy słowa najdziwniejsze Wisława Szymborska Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Przyszłość, pier­wsza sy­laba od­chodzi już do przeszłości. Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Cisza, niszczę ją. Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Nic, stwarzam coś, co nie mieści się w żad­nym nieby­cie. * * * * * * * * The Three Oddest Words Wisława Szymborska Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak When I pronounce the word […]

Advice to My Son Peter Meinke (For Tim) The trick is, to live your days as if each one may be your last (for they go fast, and young men lose their lives in strange and unimaginable ways) but at the same time, plan long range (for they go slow; if you survive the shattered […]

Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As […]

The Literary World Philip Larkin I ‘Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me…’ My dear Kafka, When you’ve had five years of it, not five months, Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object […]

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm Wallace Stevens The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, […]