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Titles of some poems
in the public domain
read at the Poetry Circle
in the past

Text of some poems
in the public domain
read at the Poetry Circle
in the past

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Welcome to the


Paris Poetry Circle


23rd year and still going strong!

 

Text of some poems
read at the Poetry Circle
in the past


(that are in the public domain)
Heart! We will forget him!

Heart! We will forget him!
You and I-tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave-
I will forget the light!
When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you’re lagging
I remember him!


Emily Dickinson		 Democracy

Here’s a boat that cannot float.
Here’s a queue that cannot vote.
Here’s a line you cannot quote.
Here’s a deal you cannot note&#hellip;
and here’s a sacrificial goat,
here’s a cut, here’s a throat,
here’s a drawbridge, here's a moat&#hellip;
What’s your hurry? ’s your coat.


Carol Ann Duffy
Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the ’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.


John Masefield		 Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.


Alfred Lord Tennyson
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.


James Arlington Wright		 No Matter where we go

No matter where we go
we always arrive too late
to experience what we left to find.
And in whatever cities we stay
it is the houses where it is too late to return
the gardens where it’s too late to spend a moonlit night
and the women whom it’s too late to love
that disturb us with their intangible presence.


Henrick Nordbrandt [translated from Danish by the author and Alexander Taylor]
Sonnet 128

How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.


William Shakespeare		 Small Mercies

I am waiting for the end
but I would rather go,
not painfully and slow,
but with a sudden bullet
that bursts the bone balloon,
or high-dive from the summit
of a dizzy peak to plummet
into the dark below;
yet you and I both know
that I must stay marooned
on this bleak isle of impotence
to wait here for the Finis,
grateful for God's providence,
for Schubert and chilled Guinness.


Vernon
Sledging

Just as less can be more, rarely can be often.
It’s not so much the mind-body problem as
the nature of truth and its conditions, the meaning
of memory, the soul and its survival in the world,
whirled in an infinite number of dimensions and planes.

So I protest to myself, anyway, admitting
when  I say  “I used to,” it might be I mean “once”.
Upon a time, below a time, events winnow out
their chaff. So with the grain, against the grain,
the song steps out into the blizzard of the page.


Andrew McNeillie		 Days

The days go by us like the cars,
Either fast or slow,
One followed by another
Rushing through an amber light,
Or grinding up a hill,
Or casually taking a corner
With a dog gulping the breeze.
Then all of them run together
At once, almost identical.
Someone with a tinted window
Swerves to the right
Attempting a new direction,
And the rest follow as at a funeral,
Keeping a respectful distance.


Kevin Halligan
Advice

When you are faced with two alternatives
Choose both. And should they put you to the test,
Tick every box. Nothing is ever single.
A seed’s a tree’s a ship’s a constellation.
Nail your true colours to this branching mast.


Robert Crawford		 Prayer

Give me a little less
with every dawn:
colour, a breath of wind,
the perfection of shadows,
till what I find, I find
because it’s there,
gold in the seams of my hands
and the desk lamp, burning.


Robert Crawford
The Stone Age

Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind,
Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment,
Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite
Dove, you build round me a shabby room,
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep,
You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And
Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink
Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood,
Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities.
When you leave, I drive my blue battered car
Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty
Noisy steps to knock at another’s door.
Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch,
they watch me come
And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me
What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,
A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake
Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like
A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,
And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is
Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price’
[From The Old Playhouse and Other Poems]


Kamala Das 		Talent

This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
a man, inching across it in the space
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.

There is no word net.

You want him to fall, don’t you?
I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
The word applause is written all over him.


Carol Ann Duffy
The Darling Letters

Some keep them in shoeboxes away from the light,
sore memories blinking out as the lid lifts,
their own recklessness written all over them. My own.
Private jokes, no longer comprehended, pull their punchlines,
fall flat in the gaps between the endearments. What are you wearing?

Don’t ever change.
They start with Darling; end in recriminations,
absence, sense of loss. Even now, the fist’s bud flowers
into trembling, the fingers trace each line and see
the future then. Always.Nobody burns them,
the Darling letters, stiff in their cardboard coffins.

Babykins. We all had strange names
which make us blush, as though we’d murdered
someone under an alias, long ago. I’ll die
without you. Die. Once in a while, alone,
we take them out to read again, the heart thudding
like a spade on buried bones.


Carol Ann Duffy 		After 37 Years my Mother apologizes for my Childhood

When you tilted toward me, arms out
like someone trying to walk through a fire,
when you swayed toward me, crying out you were
sorry for what you had done to me, your
eyes filling with terrible liquid like
balls of mercury from a broken thermometer
skidding on the floor, when you quietly screamed
where else could I turn? Who else did I have?, the
chopped crockery of your hands swinging towards me, the
water cracking from your eyes like moisture from
stones under heavy pressure, I could not
see what I would do with the rest of my life.
The sky seemed to be splintering like a window
someone is bursting into or out of, your
tiny face glittered as if with
shattered crystal, with true regret, the
regret of the body. I could not see what my
days would be, with you sorry, with
you wishing you had not done it, the
sky falling around me, its shards
glistening in my eyes, your old soft
body fallen against me in horror I
took you in my arms, I said It’s all right,
don’t cry , it’s all right, the air filled with
flying glass, I hardly knew what I
said or who I would be now that I had forgiven you.


Sharon Olds
© Paris Poetry Circle