Favorite Poems/Favorite Poets

Circling back to Simon Armitage who started this thread ^ - I read some of his stuff today  ........he's really exceptional and like I said (still) under 60.  Smiths fans on here should look up some of the things he says about his affection for Morrissey ........it's a trip to hear him dissect his lyrics as a poet ......he's quite the fan.......

I just love the poems of C.P. Cavafy. Most of them are set in a historical background, but are drenched in poignant irony and their themes are timeless and extremely relevant even today. He's often heralded as one of the greatest Greek poets. Here are two examples:

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.


In A Large Greek Colony, 200 B.C.

That things in the Colony are not what they should be
no one can doubt any longer,
and though in spite of everything we do go forward,
maybe—as more than a few believe—the time has come
to bring in a Political Reformer.

But here’s the problem, here’s the hitch:
they make a tremendous fuss
about everything, these Reformers.
(What a relief it would be
if no one ever needed them.) They probe everywhere,
question the smallest detail,
and right away think up radical changes
that demand immediate execution.

Also, they have a liking for sacrifice:
Get rid of that property;
your owning it is risky:
properties like those are exactly what ruin colonies.
Get rid of that income,
and the other connected with it,
and this third, as a natural consequence:
they are substantial, but what can one do?
the responsibility they create for you is damaging.

And as they proceed with their investigation,
they find an endless number of useless things to eliminate—
things that are, however, difficult to get rid of.

And when, all being well, they finish the job,
every detail now diagnosed and sliced away,
and they retire, also taking the wages due to them—
it will be a miracle if anything’s left at all
after such surgical efficiency.

Maybe the moment has not yet arrived.
Let’s not be too hasty: haste is a dangerous thing.
Untimely measures bring repentance.
Certainly, and unhappily, many things in the Colony are absurd.
But is there anything human without some fault?
And after all, you see, we do go forward.

There once was a man from Nantucket...

This is the 3rd poem by Simon Armitage I've posted in this thread - it was his birthday yesterday (May 26th) - he's 59. I said this before, but how many guys exist who are "now" and are masters of a medium that "peaked" long ago.

Sometimes he's my favorite poet - maybe ever - (at certain times anyway) - and he has lived in our modern era and still lives and writes..........though this one is about being young, and Pop culture and um........Batman ....

Happy Belated Birthday, to one of the best.....and certainly the funniest.......

William Wordsworth is my favorite poet

Favorite poems:
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth (of course)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Leisure by William Henry Davies
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear
Matilda by Hilaire Belloc
You Are Old, Father William by Lewis Carroll
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Tragic Story by William Makepeace Thackeray

This thread really needs more poems........or dirty limericks at least


Evil (Le Mal) by Arthur Rimbaud


While the red-stained mouths
of machine guns ring
Across the infinite expanse of day;

While red or green,
before their posturing King,
The massed battalions break and melt away;

And while a monstrous frenzy runs a course
That makes of a thousand men a smoking pile
— Poor fools! — dead, in summer, in the grass,
On Nature's breast, who meant these men to smile;

There is a God, who smiles upon us through
The gleam of gold, the incense-laden air,
Who drowses in a cloud of murmured prayer,
And only wakes when weeping mothers bow
Themselves in anguish, wrapped in old black shawls —
And their last small coin into his coffer falls.