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  • Subh Milis (Sweet jam). It's a short and powerful Irish poem reminding parents to be kind to their kids.

    English translation below. Can't seem to get the formatting correct on mobile...

    Bhí subh milis ar bháscrann an doras

    ach mhúch mé an corraí

    ionaim a d’éirigh

    mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá

    a bheadh an bháscrann glan

    agus an lámh beag – ar iarraidh…”

    There was jam on the door handle

    But I quelled the anger

    That rose inside me

    Because I thought of the day

    That the handle would be clean

    And the little hand - longed for

  • I really like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. I first encountered it as a result of reading Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels, but one day I saw the original in the library and just read it from start to finish. It's fantastic, so weird, so compelling.

    I also like his Kubla Khan, the imagery of the "caverns measureless to man" and the "sunless sea" have always stuck with me.

  • This Bread I Break by Dylan Thomas

    It’s a short, beautiful poem that laments man’s destructive relationship with nature.

  • "The View From Halfway Down" by Alison Tifel has always resonated with me:

    The weak breeze whispers nothing
    The water screams sublime
    His feet shift, teeter-totter
    Deep breath, stand back, it’s time

    Toes untouch the overpass
    Soon he’s water bound
    Eyes locked shut but peek to see
    The view from halfway down

    A little wind, a summer sun
    A river rich and regal
    A flood of fond endorphins
    Brings a calm that knows no equal

    You’re flying now
    You see things much more clear than from the ground
    It’s all okay, it would be
    Were you not now halfway down

    Thrash to break from gravity
    What now could slow the drop
    All I’d give for toes to touch
    The safety back at top

    But this is it, the deed is done
    Silence drowns the sound
    Before I leaped I should’ve seen
    The view from halfway down

    I really should’ve thought about
    The view from halfway down
    I wish I could’ve known about
    The view from halfway down

  • We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I remember reading it in middle school. Poetry hadn’t done much for me at that point of my life but that one got through to me and helped me appreciate the medium much more in general

  • Rainer Maria Rilke
    Der Panther/ The Panther.
    (I don't really feel the english translation does the poem justice. In german the words create a certain rhythm, nearly like a melody, that I find utterly enchanting)

    _His gaze against the sweeping of the bars has grown so weary, it can hold no more. To him, there seem to be a thousand bars and back behind those thousand bars no world.

    The soft the supple step and sturdy pace, that in the smallest of all circles turns, moves like a dance of strength around a core in which a mighty will is standing stunned.

    Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides up soundlessly — . An image enters then, goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs — and in the heart ceases to be._

    ----- The original German‐------

    _Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

    Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

    Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille – und hört im Herzen auf zu sein._

  • It's a tie tbh.

    Between "the bells" for sheer joyous onomatopoeia, and "oh captain, my captain" because of the flow of it.

    Both of them are poems I read out loud to myself, and there's not many of those. They both resonate inside me in different ways, and both are associated with my initial exploration of poetry.

    I've never been able to pick one over the other.

    And yeah, they're pretty basic poems rather than some more deeply personal things. It isn't an emotional connection to them, it's more of a sensory thing, if that makes sense (pun intended).

    But, they both represent the way words can affect us, move our minds. They're an experience when you hear them. They're immersive and fulfilling, though in different ways.

  • Baudelaire- la beauté

    It's a beautifully worded sonnet on the nature of beauty, but meta as in how the poet is swayed by it and how he both loves that and is annoyed by the ease with with he's enthralled 

  •  undefined
        
So wie die Ordnung stets in Chaos geht,
wenn keine Kraft dagegen steht,
so herrscht das Chaos nie allein:
Es braucht die Ordnung, um zu sein.

  
    •  undefined
          
Das Chaos, das sich selbst bezwingt,
indem es langsam Ordnung bringt,
gebiert aus Dunkelheit und Dreck
schön langsam, aber stetig, Form und Zweck,
kurz: Leben, das sich selbst erhält,
und auch im Sturme Kraft behält,
um nach dem Regen neu zu blühn,
so wie auch wir es alle tun.
66 comments