Wilfred Owen – Red lips are not so red

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft, --
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, --
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Charles Bukowski – Trapped

don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.

she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.

Charlotte Mew – Ken

The town is old and very steep

    A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers,

And black-clad people walking in their sleep—

     A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers

     To her new grave; and watched from end to end

     By the great Church above, through the still hours:

         But in the morning and the early dark

The children wake to dart from doors and call

Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend,

         Before it climbs up to the park,

Ken’s is in the gabled house facing the Castle wall.

 

When first I came upon him there

Suddenly, on the half-lit stair,

I think I hardly found a trace

Of likeness to a human face

     In his. And I said then

If in His image God made men,

Some other must have made poor Ken—

But for his eyes which looked at you

As two red, wounded stars might do.

 

He scarcely spoke, you scarcely heard,

His voice broke off in little jars

To tears sometimes. An uncouth bird

     He seemed as he ploughed up the street,

Groping, with knarred, high-lifted feet

     And arms thrust out as if to beat

          Always against a threat of bars.

 

     And oftener than not there’d be

     A child just higher than his knee

Trotting beside him. Through his dim

     Long twilight this, at least, shone clear,

     That all the children and the deer,

        Whom every day he went to see

Out in the park, belonged to him.

 

         “God help the folk that next him sits

         He fidgets so, with his poor wits,”

The neighbours said on Sunday nights

When he would go to Church to “see the lights!”

     Although for these he used to fix                                                          

     His eyes upon a crucifix

     In a dark corner, staring on

    Till everybody else had gone.

    And sometimes, in his evil fits,

You could not move him from his chair—

You did not look at him as he sat there,

     Biting his rosary to bits.

While pointing to the Christ he tried to say,

    “Take it away”.

 

     Nothing was dead:

He said “a bird” if he picked up a broken wing,

     A perished leaf or any such thing

     Was just “a rose”; and once when I had said

  He must not stand and knock there any more,

  He left a twig on the mat outside my door.

 

     Not long ago

The last thrush stiffened in the snow,

    While black against a sullen sky

       The sighing pines stood by.

But now the wind has left our rattled pane

To flutter the hedge-sparrow’s wing,

The birches in the wood are red again

       And only yesterday

The larks went up a little way to sing

       What lovers say

   Who loiter in the lanes to-day;

   The buds begin to talk of May

   With learned rooks on city trees,

        And if God please

       With all of these

We, too, shall see another Spring.

 

But in that red brick barn upon the hill

    I wonder—can one own the deer,

And does one walk with children still

        As one did here?

        Do roses grow

Beneath those twenty windows in a row—

        And if some night

When you have not seen any light

They cannot move you from your chair

        What happens there?

         I do not know.

 

       So, when they took

Ken to that place, I did not look

After he called and turned on me

His eyes. These I shall see—

George Gordon Byron – from Don Juan: Canto 1, Stanzas 47-48

47

Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,

   And homilies, and lives of all the saints;

To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,

   He did not take such studies for restraints;

But how faith is acquired, and then insured,

   So well not one of the aforesaid paints

As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,

Which make the reader envy his transgressions.

 

48

This, too, was a seal'd book to little Juan—

   I can't but say that his mamma was right,

If such an education was the true one.

   She scarcely trusted him from out her sight;

Her maids were old, and if she took a new one

   You might be sure she was a perfect fright,

She did this during even her husband's life—

I recommend as much to every wife.

George Gordon Byron – Dear Doctor, I have Read your Play

John Murray

Dear Doctor, I have read your play,

Which is a good one in its way,

Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels,

And drenches handkerchiefs like towels

With tears that, in a flux of grief,

Afford hysterical relief

To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses,

Which your catastrophe convulses.

I like your moral and machinery;

Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery!

Your dialogue is apt and smart;

The play's concoction full of art;

Your hero raves, your heroine cries,

All stab, and everybody dies;

In short, your tragedy would be

The very thing to hear and see;

And for a piece of publication,

If I decline on this occasion,

It is not that I am not sensible

To merits in themselves ostensible,

But—and I grieve to speak it—plays

Are drugs—mere drugs, Sir, nowadays.

I had a heavy loss by Manuel —

Too lucky if it prove not annual—

And Sotheby, with his damn'd Orestes

(Which, by the way, the old bore's best is),

Has lain so very long on hand

That I despair of all demand;

I've advertis'd—but see my books,

Or only watch my shopman's looks;

Still Ivan, Ina and such lumber

My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber.

There's Byron too, who once did better,

Has sent me—folded in a letter—

A sort of—it's no more a drama

Than Darnley, Ivan or Kehama:

So alter'd since last year his pen is,

I think he's lost his wits at Venice,

Or drain'd his brains away as stallion

To some dark-eyed and warm Italian;

In short, Sir, what with one and t'other,

I dare not venture on another.

I write in haste; excuse each blunder;

The coaches through the street so thunder!

My room's so full; we've Gifford here

Reading MSS with Hookham Frere,

Pronouncing on the nouns and particles

Of some of our forthcoming articles,

The Quarterly—ah, Sir, if you

Had but the genius to review!

A smart critique upon St. Helena,

Or if you only would but tell in a

Short compass what—but, to resume;

As I was saying, Sir, the room—

The room's so full of wits and bards,

Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres and Wards,

And others, neither bards nor wits—

My humble tenement admits

All persons in the dress of Gent.,

From Mr. Hammond to Dog Dent.

A party dines with me today,

All clever men who make their way:

Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton and Chantrey

Are all partakers of my pantry.

They're at this moment in discussion

On poor De Staël's late dissolution.

Her book, they say, was in advance—

Pray Heaven she tell the truth of France!

'Tis said she certainly was married

To Rocca, and had twice miscarried,

No—not miscarried, I opine—

But brought to bed at forty nine.

Some say she died a Papist; some

Are of opinion that's a hum;

I don't know that—the fellow, Schlegel,

Was very likely to inveigle

A dying person in compunction

To try the extremity of unction.

But peace be with her! for a woman

Her talents surely were uncommon.

Her publisher (and public too)

The hour of her demise may rue,

For never more within his shop he—

Pray—was she not interr'd at Coppet?

Thus run our time and tongues away;

But, to return, Sir, to your play;

Sorry, Sir, but I cannot deal,

Unless 'twere acted by O'Neill.

My hands are full—my head so busy,

I'm almost dead—and always dizzy;

And so, with endless truth and hurry,

Dear Doctor, I am yours,