From “Free Dirt”

by Henri Cole

I like invisibleness,
except in the moon’s strong,
broad rays. Some nights,
I ask her paleness, Will I be okay?
I am weak and fruitless at night,

like a piece of meat with eyes,
but in the morning optimistic again,
like a snowflake that has traveled
many miles and many years
to be admired on the kitchen pane. Continue reading →

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 the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its
desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke
without fire. Continue reading →

TEA
by Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips. Continue reading →

Sous-Entendu

by Anne Stevenson

Don’t think
that I don’t know
that as you talk to me
the hand of your mind
is inconspicuously
taking off my stocking,
moving in resourceful blindness
up along my thigh. Continue reading →

Each year we send a ship to Africa —
sparing neither lives nor money — to seek
answers to the questions: Who are you?
What are your laws? What language do
you speak? They, however, never send a
ship to us.
Herodotus Continue reading →

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Continue reading →

The train has left the
the station you can’t take it.
Once the promise has been
broke you can’t unbreak it.

If the letter has been sent
you can’t rewrite it.
If the cigarette’s been smoked
you can’t not light it. Continue reading →

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night. Continue reading →

The Rabbit Catcher

by Sylvia Plath

It was a place of force—
The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
Tearing off my voice, and the sea
Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture. Continue reading →