Poetry

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror

— Derek Walcott · Love After Love

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create

— Martha Postlethwaite · The Clearing

(Poetry) And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of nigh…

— Pablo Neruda · Poesia (Poetry)

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

— W.E. Henley · Invictus

Nice chance completely cut loose from purpose he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere

— Charles Bukowski · Nirvana

(Keeping Quiet) Translated by Stephen Mitchell Now we will all count to twelve and we will all keep still. This one time upon the earth, let’s not speak any language, let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be a delicious moment, without hurry, without…

— Pablo Neruda · A Callarse (Keeping Quiet)

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

— Robert Frost · Stopping by Woods on a Snowy…

Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm\! – The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil;

— Theodore Roethke · Long Live The Weeds

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette someone left burning on a baby grand piano around three o’clock in the morning; smoke that billows up into the bright lights

— Billy Collins · Nightclub

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

— Mary Oliver · When I Am Among The Trees

Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.

— T.S. Eliot · The Hollow Men

(I Ask For Silence) Translated by Heidi Fischbach Now if you’d leave me in peace. Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things, five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn. I cannot be without leaves f…

— Pablo Neruda · Pido Silencio (I Ask For Silence)

And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you? I do not love you Thursday— So much is true.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Thursday

(translated by Robert Bly) I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried window panes that a storm is coming,

— Rainer Maria Rilke · The Man Watching

Rhyme XI —I am ardent, I am dark-skinned, I am the symbol of passion, my soul is filled with longing for pleasures. Are you looking for me? —No, it’s not you. —My forehead is pale, my tresses golden: I can offer you endless joys, I hold a treasure of tenderness. Are you calling…

— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer · Rima XI (Rhyme XI)

Who is Jeremy Lord? There are degrees of madness. And the matter you are, the more obvious it will be to other

— Charles Bukowski · My Madness

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great draughts of space; The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

— Walt Whitman · Song Of The Open Road

How shall I hold my soul, so that it does not touch on yours? How shall I lift it beyond you to other things? Ah, gladly would I house it with something

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Love Song

and squander the power of the noblest gift, only to make men worse, more skeptical, and sadder? Is this your sacred calling as prophets and as artists?… Where are our enthusiasts, our dreamers, our troubadours, to sing us the meaning of the world and the splendors of nature?

— Alexandru Vlahuță · Where Are Our Dreamers