Section: «Poems»
Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings:
artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.);
a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,And whisper to their souls, to go,Whilst some of their sad friends do say,'The breath goes now,' and some say..
© John Donne
Death Be Not Proud
Death be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,Die..
© John Donne
No Man Is An Island
No man is an island,Entire of itself,Every man is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the..
© John Donne
Observing The Mute Cat
Clean water in the housebut the cat laps up clay wateroutside. Drinking the earth.His pile, being perfect,ignores the misting rain.A charcoal..
© Les Murray
To Fly In Just Your Suit
Humans are flown, or fall;humans can't fly.We're down with the gravity-stemmers,rare, thick-boned, often basso.Most animals above the tides are..
© Les Murray
Photographing Aspirations
Fume-glossed, unbearably shrill,this car is dilated with a glazethat will vanish before standstill—and here's the youth swimming in spaceabove his..
© Les Murray
Holland's Nadir
Men around a submarinemoored in Sydney Harbourclose to the end of wartimeshowed us below, down intotheir oily, mesh-lit gangwayof bunks atop..
© Les Murray
The Head-Spider
Where I lived once, a roller coaster's rangeof timber hills peaked just by our backyard cliffand cats undulated scream-driven round its..
© Les Murray
Bottles in the Bombed City
They gave the city a stroke. Its memoriesare cordoned off. They could collapse on you.Water leaks into bricks of the Workers' centuryand every..
© Les Murray
Vertigo
Last time I fell in a shower roomI bled like a tumbril dandyand the hotel longed to be rid of me.Taken to the town clinic, Idescribed how I tripped..
© Les Murray
Self and Dream Self
Routines of decaying timefade, and your waking lifegets laborious as science.You huddle in, becomingthe deathless younger selfwho will survive your..
© Les Murray
The Margin of Difference
One and one make two,the literalist said.So far they've made five billion,said the lateralist, or tentimes that, if you count the dead.
© Les Murray
The Cows on Killing Day
All me are standing on feed. The sky is shining.All me have just been milked. Teats all tingling stillfrom that dry toothless sucking by the chilly..
© Les Murray
Nursing Home
Ne tibi supersis:don't outlive yourself,panic, or break a hipor spit purée at the staffat the end of gender,never a happy ender -yet in the pastel..
© Les Murray
The Conversations
A full moon always rises at sunsetand a person is taller at night.Many fear their phobias more than death.The glass King of France feared he'd..
© Les Murray
I wrote a little haiku
I wrote a little haikutitled ‘The Springfields'Lead drips out ofa burning farm rail.Their Civil War.Critics didn't like it,said it was obscure -The..
© Les Murray
The farm terraces
Beautiful merciless workaround the slopes of earthterraces cut by curt hoeat the orders of hungeror a pointing lord.Levels eyed up to rhymecopied..
© Les Murray
The Holy Show
I was a toddler, wet-combedwith my pants buttoned to my shirtand there were pink and green lights, prettyin the day, a Christmas-tree partyup the..
© Les Murray
Ripe In The Arbours Of The Nose
Even rippled with sunthe greens of a citrus grove darkenlike ocean deepening from shore.Each tree is full of shade.A shadowy fast spiral throughand a..
© Les Murray
Science Fiction
I can travelfaster than lightso can youthe speed of thoughtthe only troubleis at destinationsour thought balloonsare coated invisibleno one there..
© Les Murray
Water-gardening in an Old Farm Dam
Blueing the blackened waterthat I'm widening with my spadeas I lever up water tussocksand chuck them ashore like sopping cometsis a sun-point..
© Les Murray
Ernest Hemingway and the Latest Quake
In fact the Earth never stops moving.Northbound in our millimetric shovingwe heap rainy Papua ahead of uswith tremor and fumarole and shearbut: no..
© Les Murray
Quintets for Robert Morley
Is it possible that hyper-ventilating up ParnassusI have neglected to pay tributeto the Stone Age aristocracy?I refer to the fat.We were probably the..
© Les Murray
Spermaceti
I sound my sight, and flexing skeletons eddyin our common wall. With a sonic bolt from the fragrantchamber of my head, I burst the lives of someand..
© Les Murray
The Broad Bean Sermon
Beanstalks, in any breeze, are a slack church paradewithout belief, saying trespass against us in unison,recruits in mint Air Force dacron, with..
© Les Murray