Last football game of the season.
from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry / by Walt Whitman
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
DPF / Drummond de Andrade
from Family Portrait / by Carlos Drummond de Andrade trans. by Elizabeth Bishop
I don’t distinguish those
that went away from those
that stay. I only perceive
the strange idea of family
travelling through the flesh.
DPF / Tate
Twenty-three years today since our father had his gun salute and American-flag folding. He was not a pilot, but he was a B-52 navigator.
from The Lost Pilot / by James Tate
and you, passing over again,
fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well
DPF / Justice
An extra one today, for the rain. The poem that carried me to Florida.
from Bus Stop / by Donald Justice
And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out —
Black flowers, black flowers.
DPF / Forche
from Sequestered Writing / by Carolyn Forché
What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?
— With its no one without its I —
DPF / Milosz
from Ars Poetica? / by Czeslaw Milosz trans. by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee
What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
DPF / Akhmatova
Dreams, war.
from Poem Without a Hero / by Anna Akhmatova
But a dream — is also something real,
Soft embalmer, Blue Bird,
The parapets and terraces of Elsinore.
DPF / Tadic
Dreams, fire, outrage.
from Armful of Twigs, Dream / by Novica Tadic trans. by Charles Simic
Armful of dry twigs
I carry to the fire
through busy streets.
DPF / Hugo
War, dreams, home.
from In Your War Dream / by Richard Hugo
You ask, “Why must I do this again?” A man
replies, “Home.” You fly over one country
after another. The nations are bright, like a map.
DPF / Hughes
Fathers and sons (written on the back of one of his father’s letters) and rivers.
from The Negro Speaks of Rivers / by Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 