Emily Dickinson – Mine-by the Right of the White Election (Poem 411)

Mine - by the Right of the White Election!

Mine - by the Royal Seal!
Mine - by the sign in the Scarlet prison -
Bars - cannot conceal!

Mine - here - in Vision - and in Veto!
Mine - by the Grave's Repeal -
Titled - Confirmed -
Delirious Charter!
Mine - long as Ages steal!

Charles Bukowski – Poem For My 43rd Birthday

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers...
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sylvia Plath – Years

They enter as animals from the outer

Space of holly where spikes

Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,

But greenness, darkness so pure

They freeze and are.

O God, I am not like you

In your vacuous black,

Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.

Eternity bores me,

I never wanted it.

What I love is

The piston in motion . . .

My soul dies before it.

And the hooves of the horses,

There merciless churn.

And you, great Stasis . . .

What is so great in that!

Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door?

It is a Christus,

The awful

God-bit in him

Dying to fly and be done with it?

The blood berries are themselves, they are very still.

The hooves will not have it,

In blue distance the pistons hiss.

Anne Brontë – A Fragment

'Maiden, thou wert thoughtless once

Of beauty or of grace,

Simple and homely in attire

Careless of form and face.

Then whence this change, and why so oft

Dost smooth thy hazel hair?

And wherefore deck thy youthful form

With such unwearied care?

'Tell us ­- and cease to tire our ears

With yonder hackneyed strain ­-

Why wilt thou play those simple tunes

So often o'er again?'

'Nay, gentle friends, I can but say

That childhood's thoughts are gone.

Each year its own new feelings brings

And years move swiftly on,

And for these little simple airs,

I love to play them o'er ­-

So much I dare not promise now

To play them never more.'

I answered and it was enough;

They turned them to depart;

They could not read my secret thoughts

Nor see my throbbing heart.

I've noticed many a youthful form

Upon whose changeful face

The inmost workings of the soul

The gazer's eye might trace.

The speaking eye, the changing lip,

The ready blushing cheek,

The smiling or beclouded brow

Their different feelings speak.

But, thank God! you might gaze on mine

For hours and never know

The secret changes of my soul

From joy to bitter woe.

Last night, as we sat round the fire

Conversing merrily,

We heard without approaching steps

Of one well known to me.

There was no trembling in my voice,

No blush upon my cheek,

No lustrous sparkle in my eyes,

Of hope or joy to speak;

But O my spirit burned within,

My heart beat thick and fast.

He came not nigh ­- he went away

And then my joy was past.

And yet my comrades marked it not,

My voice was still the same;

They saw me smile, and o'er my face ­-

No signs of sadness came;

They little knew my hidden thoughts

And they will never know

The anguish of my drooping heart,

The bitter aching woe!