Poems for my life

'Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.'

This is one of the first lines of poetry that I remember. I am pretty sure I was in the 7^th grade when I read this in a book of poems that had made its way to me randomly (the poem is Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson if you are curious). Poems speak to me, just like I imagine pictures may speak to you or songs make your heart skip a beat.  Every once in a while a random line of poetry will pop into my head, almost like an excerpt from a life. Except this is my life. Over the years I have come across poems for all sorts of occasions and feelings and people and lives. I share them online, sometimes I email them to friends, occasionally I imprint them on myself. In this post, I am going to put them all together in a list to which I can keep adding. I hope it brings you some happiness.

Adrienne Rich

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language

guessing at some words while others keep you reading

and I want to know which words they are.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn

between bitterness and hope

turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.

&

In Those Years

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged

into our personal weather

Brown Girl Sings the Blues

You Bring Out the UP-Walli in Me

You remind me of all these.

The forgotten, pushed away,

Hidden parts of me,

The lekin and the agar in me,

The abey and the oye in me,

The ab to ho gaya in me.

Clementine von Radics

Mouthful of Forevers

I am not the first person you loved.

You are not the first person I looked at

with a mouthful of forevers. We

have both known loss like the sharp edges

of a knife. We have both lived with lips

more scar tissue than skin.

David Whyte

The Winter of Listening

But what is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

Derek Walcott

Love After Love

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

e.e. cummings

You Are Tired

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

Elizabeth Bishop

One Art

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Ghalib

Hazaaron Khwaiyshen Aisi

हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले

बहुत निकले मेरे अरमाँ, लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले

डरे क्यों मेरा कातिल क्या रहेगा उसकी गर्दन पर

वो खून जो चश्म-ऐ-तर से उम्र भर यूं दम-ब-दम निकले

Jack Gilbert

Rain

Suddenly this defeat.

This rain.

The blues gone gray

Nayyirah Waheed

Read everything

“Loving someone who hates

themselves

is a special kind of violence.

A fight inside the bones.

A war within the blood.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

You Who Never Arrived

And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors

were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back

my too-sudden image.

Rumi

The Guest House

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Sarah Manguso

Asking for More

I am not asking to suffer less.

I hope to be nearly crucified.

To live because I don’t want to.

Tony Hoagland

Personal

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness

Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said

at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t

believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture

served with a sauce of dirty regret

Wendy Cope

Differences of Opinion

But he has learned to argue well.

He calls her arguments unsound

And often asks her not to yell.

She cannot win. He stands his ground.

Yrsa Daley Ward

Again read everything

“No’ might make them angry but it will make you free.”