Ask Lemmy

First verse of mad Tom o bedlam:

From the hag and hungry goblin.
That into rags would rend ye,
The spirit that stands by the naked man.
In the Book of Moons defend ye,
That of your five sound senses.
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom.
Abroad to beg your bacon,
While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.

XV.

EACH that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides.

Emily Dickinson

That night when joy began
Our narrowest veins to flush,
We waited for the flash
Of morning's levelled gun.

But morning let us pass,
And day by day relief
Outgrows his nervous laugh,
Grown credulous of peace,

As mile by mile is seen
No trespasser's reproach,
And love's best glasses reach
No fields but are his own.

—W. H. Auden

For Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man's while; Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought, Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style.

In earliest years - why I know not - I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that leaked slowly out, May haply have bent me to stand and to show not Much zest for its dance.

With symphonies soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song, And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller Than life among men.

Anew I found nought to set eyes on, When, lifting its hand, It uncloaked a star, Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar, And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon As bright as a brand.

And so, the rough highway forgetting, I pace hill and dale Regarding the sky, Regarding the vision on high, And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting My pilgrimage fail.

• Thomas Hardy

Two come to mind, I'll drop the heavy one first so if it bums you out, read the fun one next:

Married - Jack Gilbert - from the collection "Great Fires"

I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came
there was no way to be sure which were
hers and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
this long black hair tangled in the dirt.

The Country - Billy Collins - from the collection "Nine Horses"

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

"Das Lied von der Glocke" (The Song Of The Bell) by Friedrich Schiller is a massive romantic poem describing the casting of a church bell as a heroic act and achievement of a god-fearing hard-working people. German teachers have made their students memorize and recite it for generations.
Here it is, along with its English translation:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/das-lied-von-der-glocke-song-bell.html

This isn't my favorite poem. My favorite poem is the abbreviated version:

Loch in Boden
Bronze rin
Glocke fertig
Bim bim bim

(Dig a hole
Put bronze in
Bell is finished
Ding dong ding)

This one always stuck with me:

in time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow) forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim the aim of waking is to dream, remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze our now and here with paradise) forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond whatever mind may comprehend, remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be (when time from time shall set us free) forgetting me,remember me

EE Cummings

It's a fine day by Edward Barton, also sang by Jane Lancaster: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vgcYBwyw28

Dream Song 29 by John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

If— | The Poetry Foundation https://share.google/doIsTaZmZYVmxSOQ6

If. By Rudyard Kipling

Margaret Atwood - Cohabitation

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert 
                    the unpainted stairs 
at the back where we squat 
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Forever shut and made of wood,

That's what I am. My head's no good

now that it by a stone was struck.

Old spectacles bewitched with muck

repose within me by the score.

I'm just a cupboard, nothing more.

-Dancelot Wordwright

Featured in the novel The City of Dreaming Books, written by his authorial godson Optimus Yarnspinner. Translated from Zamonian and Illustrated by Walter Moers

My honest answer is probably The Raven, but I'll post something less well known.

Gray Room

by Wallace Stevens

Although you sit in a room that is gray,

Except for the silver

Of the straw-paper,

And pick

At your pale white gown;

Or lift one of the green beads

Of your necklace,

To let it fall;

Or gaze at your green fan

Printed with the red branches of a red willow;

Or, with one finger,

Move the leaf in the bowl--

The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia

Beside you...

What is all this?

I know how furiously your heart is beating.

Beowulf.

Hi bamo!

Sappho - Fragment 147 - bits of a text that was mostly destroyed by time, the remaining words gave us this

Hallaig, by Sorley MacLean.Here translated by the poet from Scots Gaelic:

‘Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig’

The window is nailed and boarded through which I saw the West and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig, a birch tree, and she has always been

between Inver and Milk Hollow, here and there about Baile-chuirn: she is a birch, a hazel, a straight, slender young rowan.

In Screapadal of my people where Norman and Big Hector were, their daughters and their sons are a wood going up beside the stream.

Proud tonight the pine cocks crowing on the top of Cnoc an Ra, straight their backs in the moonlight – they are not the wood I love.

I will wait for the birch wood until it comes up by the cairn, until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice will be under its shade.

If it does not, I will go down to Hallaig, to the Sabbath of the dead, where the people are frequenting, every single generation gone.

They are still in Hallaig, MacLeans and MacLeods, all who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim: the dead have been seen alive.

The men lying on the green at the end of every house that was, the girls a wood of birches, straight their backs, bent their heads.

Between the Leac and Fearns the road is under mild moss and the girls in silent bands go to Clachan as in the beginning,

and return from Clachan, from Suisnish and the land of the living; each one young and light-stepping, without the heartbreak of the tale.

From the Burn of Fearns to the raised beach that is clear in the mystery of the hills, there is only the congregation of the girls keeping up the endless walk,

coming back to Hallaig in the evening, in the dumb living twilight, filling the steep slopes, their laughter a mist in my ears,

and their beauty a film on my heart before the dimness comes on the kyles, and when the sun goes down behind Dun Cana a vehement bullet will come from the gun of Love;

and will strike the deer that goes dizzily, sniffing at the grass-grown ruined homes; his eye will freeze in the wood, his blood will not be traced while I live.

And here a reading by the poet set to music by the late great Martyn Bennett:

https://vimeo.com/25562404?fl=pl&fe=sh

Underwear by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Still relevant.

Edit: Posting a runner-up, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

“The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot

Check out the poem and its analysis via the link.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

10th grade

As I sat there in English class, I stared at the girl next to me. She was my so called "best friend". I stared at her long, silky hair, and wished she was mine. But she didn't notice me like that, and I knew it. After class, she walked up to me and asked me for the notes she had missed the day before and handed them to her. She said "thanks" and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I wanted to tell her, I want her to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love her but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why.

11th grade The phone rang. On the other end, it was her. She was in tears, mumbling on and on about how her love had broke her heart. She asked me to come over because she didn't want to be alone, so I did. As I sat next to her on the sofa, I stared at her soft eyes, wishing she was mine. After 2 hours, one Drew Barrymore movie, and three bags of chips, she decided to go to sleep. She looked at me, said "thanks" and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love her but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why.

Senior year The day before prom she walked to my locker. My date is sick" she said; he's not going to go well, I didn't have a date, and in 7th grade, we made a promise that if neither of us had dates, we would go together just as "best friends". So we did. Prom night, after everything was over, I was standing at her front door step. I stared at her as she smiled at me and stared at me with her crystal eyes. I want her to be mine, but she isn't think of me like that, and I know it. Then she said "I had the best time, thanks!" and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love her but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why.

Graduation Day A day passed, then a week, then a month. Before I could blink, it was graduation day. I watched as her perfect body floated like an angel up on stage to get her diploma. I wanted her to be mine, but she didn't notice me like that, and I knew it. Before everyone went home, she came to me in her smock and hat, and cried as I hugged her. Then she lifted her head from my shoulder and said, "you're my best friend, thanks" and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love her but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why.

A Few Years Later Now I sit in the pews of the church. That girl is getting married now. I watched her say "I do" and drive off to her new life, married to another man. I wanted her to be mine, but she didn't see me like that, and I knew it. But before she drove away, she came to me and said "you came!". She said "thanks" and kissed me on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love her but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why.

Funeral

Years passed, I looked down at the coffin of a girl who used to be my "best friend". At the service, they read a diary entry she had wrote in her high school years. This is what it read: I stare at him wishing he was mine, but he doesn't notice me like that, and I know it. I want to tell him, I want him to know that I don't want to be just friends, I love him but I'm just too shy, and I don't know why. I wish he would tell me he loved me!. "I wish I did too..." I thought to my self, and I cried.

God, now I'm all teary having read it again.