History Poems
The City In Which I Loved You
by Li-Young Lee
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
Creed
by Steve Turner
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
......
The Stalin Epigram
by Osip Emilevic Mandelstam
Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can't hear our words.
But whenever there's a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,
the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,
the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
......
Questions Of Travel
by Elizabeth Bishop
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
- For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
......
We Refugees
by Benjamin Zephaniah
I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.
I come from a beautiful place
Where they hate my shade of skin
They don't like the way I pray
And they ban free poetry.
......
saved
by Mario Marcou
Who can be saved
a road already paved
history a keeper of blood and thunder.
Who can be saved
man In constant anger.
Words to be chains
ambitious claims
a palm readers hand
draws the line in the sand.
Will history decide to speak
......
Photograph
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Some haunt me pleasantly,
Using the grains of dewy silence that speak loudly
Within the long, grey halls of history.
I recline on such images with smiles I borrow from
The penetralia of my soul and skin.
Behind them come lean trees denuded by the swift
Gales of re-greened winters that celebrated
Friendliness in the course of wondrous seasons.
I peer deeply at them, genuflecting to Time
For its abundance of grace and reflections.
......
Cleopatra
by Mario Odekerken
Cleopatra, a vision draped in gold and shadow,
eyes painted dark as the Nile's midnight flow,
lips curving with secrets
whispered to power,
each glance a promise, each word a silken snare.
She moves as a storm hidden in silks,
her beauty a veil over cunning
that glitters sharp,
a queen crowned in mysteries,
......
Stanbrook Abbey.
by Laurence Argyll Simon Noond
In a quiet Worcestershire village,
Stands an Abbey of a by-gone age.
Once a home to Benedictine Nuns,
The holy order; the silent ones.
A place of peace and grace,
Stanbrook Abbey; a Holy place.
Along the Cloisters; the chapel to reach,
On bended knees to pray and beseech.
It`s a hotel now of grand design,
......
Beyond the Past
by Aloo Denish Obiero
The past is a lesson, not a prison,
The past is a mentor, not a captor.
The past is a tale, not a jail,
The past is a page, not a cage.
The past is a foundation, not a stagnation,
The past is a phase, not a maze.
The past is a guide, not a slide,
......
