Ekphrastic Poems
The Man With The Hoe (Written After Seeing Millet's World-Famous Painting)
by Edwin Markham
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
......
The Starry Night
by Anne Sexton
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.
- Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry night! This is how
I want to die.
......
War Photograph
by Kate Daniels
A naked child is running
along the path toward us,
her arms stretched out,
her mouth open,
the world turned to trash
behind her.
She is running from the smoke
and the soldiers, from the bodies
of her mother and little sister
......
The Hunter In The Snow
by William Carlos Williams
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
......
The Mad Potter
by John Hollander
Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke
On the old one's ragged end.I bite my tongue
As the end of me--of my rope of stuff and nonsense
(The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke),
Of bones and light, of levity and crime,
Of reddish clay and hope--still bides its time.
Each of my pots is quite unusable,
Even for contemplating as an object
......
Heartbroken Death
by Emma Thomas
An ekphrastic poem based of off the painting ¨Death of Sappho¨ By Miguel Carbonell
¨Don't do it!¨
I say to the woman standing over the rocky cliff.
¨He's not worth it!¨
Her body draped with a white, silky dress
She looks like an angel.
¨I Loved him¨
she says leaning over the cliff.
Her eyes gaze at the violent waves, her face is pale
......
On The Medusa Of Leonardo Da Vinci In The Florentine Gallery
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
......
The Starry Night
by Anne Sexton
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.
- Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry night! This is how
I want to die.
......
The Great Figure
by William Carlos Williams
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
......
The Hunter In The Snow
by William Carlos Williams
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
......
