I have looked down the saddest city lane

Acquainted with the Night

BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

A change of mood

Dust of Snow

BY ROBERT FROST

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

“New Year” by Bei Dao

New Year

BY BEI DAO

a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year

a conductor tattooing darkness

listens to the shortest pause

hurry a lion into the cage of music

hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse

moving in parallel nights

who's the visitor? when the days all

tip from nests and fly down roads

the book of failure grows boundless and deep

each and every moment's a shortcut

I follow it through the meaning of the East

returning home, closing death's door

Copyright Credit: "New Year" by Bei Dao, translated by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen, from Landscape Over Zero, copyright © 1995, 1996 by Zhao Zhenkai, Translation copyright © 1995, 1996 by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen

Do you still have horses?

 

A Hundred Years from Now

by David Shumate

I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to
see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.
What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know
if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your
children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have
you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your
bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?
A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The
doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a
horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?

I hear it in the deep heart’s core

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The Day of Judgement

“The Day of Judgement” by Jonathan Swift

With a whirl of thought oppressed,
I sink from reverie to rest. 
An horrid vision seized my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead.
Jove, armed with terrors, burst the skies,
And thunder roars, and light’ning flies.
Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne.
While each pale sinner hangs his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said,
‘Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never fell, through pride;
You who in different sects have shammed,
And come to see each other damned;
(So some folks told you, but they knew
No more of Jove’s demands than you);
The world’s mad business now is o’er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools! — Go, go, you’re bit.’

Read about this poem via this link.

They will come to you in dream and in waking

No Ruined Stone

BY SHARA MCCALLUM

May 2018: for my grandmother

When the dead return

they will come to you in dream

and in waking, will be the bird

knocking, knocking against glass, seeking

a way in, will masquerade

as the wind, its voice made audible

by the tongues of leaves, greedily

lapping, as the waves’ self-made fugue

is a turning and returning, the dead

will not then nor ever again

desert you, their unrest

will be the coat cloaking you,

the farther you journey

from them the more

distance will maw in you,

time and place gulching

when the dead return and demand

accounting, wanting

everything you have to give and nothing

will quench or unhunger them

as they take all you make as offering.

Then tell you to begin again.