by Czeslaw Milosz  (awarded  the  Nobel  Prize  for  literature  in  1980)
translated by Anthony Milosz 

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
Vegetable peddlers shou...
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"Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign............"

"...Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England,Alfred Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem.......".

The  Poem  has  inspired  many  artists  &  musicians.

William H...
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Siegfried Sassoon

Suicide in the Trenches

 

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, 

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know 

The...

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At Last the Secret is Out
By
W. H. Auden

At last the secret is out,
as it always must come in the end,
the delicious story is ripe to tell
to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square
the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear,
there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir,
behind the ghost on the links,
behind the lady who dances
and the man who madly drinks,
under the look of fatigue
the attack of migraine and the sigh...
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The Seeds were buried deep

by

Matthew Mokoena

The Seeds were buried deep…

Six days labour with harboured heaves,

Rolled up sleeves,

No sleep, grief, nor partial reprieve.

Deep…

From spoken word metaphors that big banged metal doors to settle scores,

Deep, hanging,

Pendulum swinging statements that cradled life.

Deep…

“LET THERE BE…” lived long before the light could even breath.

Deep…

Is just a matter of mortal perception,

To God, we remain shallow in our ...

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This  week  I  stumbled  across  this  poem  by  a  local  poet :

by

Matthew Mokoena

She was a strong,
black,
loveless woman.
She said,
"He doesn't love me no more.
He doesn't hold me down or beat me against the concrete floor, doesn't hit me with concrete thoughts as he slams the bedroom door.
He d...

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Older people are exiting this life as if it were a movie… "I didn’t get it,"
they are saying.
He says, "It didn’t seem to have any plot."
"No." she says, "it seemed like things just kept coming at me. Most of the
time I was confused… and there was way too much sex and violence."
"Violence anyway," he says.
"It was not much for character development either; most of the time
people were either shouting or mumbling. Then just when someone st...

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—Wendlessen, from The Calendar of the Trees

I  am  sitting  cataloguing  a  copy  of  Jack the Giant Killer   by  Charles  de  Lint  and  I  came  upon  this  poem  which  he  has  cited  in  the  beginning  of  the  book :

Rowan am I and I           am sister to the Red Man
my berries are guarded           by dreamless dragons
my wood charms the           spells from witches
and in the wide plains           my floods quicken

—Wendlessen, from The Calendar of the Tree...
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