Poetry

I. But yesterday, your noble fathers bled Upon the fields of France, where countless dead Had found among the vines their final rest, To gild with fame a venerated crest Whose princely brandishing from age to age Outlasted armies and the tyrant’s rage. But yesterday, you bravely fought and won...

  If seasons pass too fast you'd better run. If they proceed too slow indulge in fun. Sunups are best enjoyed in days of cold. Sundowns when heat waves linger fierce and bold. Old age returns all that you thought was lost. Except perennial snow and springtime frost. Dost thou...

Sail Fever I knew some terms, the merest germs Of illness called ‘Sail Fever’: Tack starboard, port, keep mainsail taut, Steer boat by tiller lever! One Saturday, beside the bay, A salesman full of running Cast practised spiel of salty zeal, Sheer confidence and cunning. He said, “This boat will...

The precious are so  easy to neglect: I let them down, my family and my friends. It’s futile if I offer my respect - Today is much too late to make amends. Nothing is left for me to do or say. The fact is:  my priorities were wrong. So much...

Where a lamppost spreads a white spot light Nursing silent night with canny purr, A racoon crosses there in sudden flight. Where an old man walks his dog this hour With a leash that’s buckled to his hand, The dog stands briefly pat in belled collar. Where a beggar sits...

Nova Scotia and the Clouds of Summer So silently they march along, the clouds of summer, proud and strong; their grand approach from yonder shore majestically they wander o’er. Not for the likes of me to know from whence they come, where e’er they go, for I am but a...

For Elizabeth My morning’s mountain wears the lavish light Of candid clouds and truth-engendered white. Ah, heavens, spread your opalescent ray, And open earth-blind eyes to boundless sight, That love abide beyond the close of day! And sip, O buds of May, the frigid dew! Grow fairer, earth, to our...

Alzheimer's Disease I can feel your deep darkness closing in, With its harrowing sense of helplessness, Soon obscenity sours tongues gathering; Havoc’s wrought by every hellish djin As chaos kicks aside your selflessness, Guilt, aplenty, glee guilds in fathering: Flaunting tones of stricken folk fail true faith, Whilst naught stands...

Runnymede Revisited Note: Runnymede is the location where King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This poem was written in the 1990s when the English nation was debating whether to join the European Union or not. “At Runnymede, at Runnymede What say the reeds at Runnymede? The lissome...

Bristlecone Longevity The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its silent history yet untold, Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough— Their age—but in its newness ever new, Its torqued refusal to be caught by death, Rejection of defeat...

Translator's Preliminary Note This is an original translation of a poem by Sappho (630-580 BC), traditionally known as the “old age poem” or the “Tithonus poem” (in the standard numbering by Lobel and Page, it is “Fragment 58”). Tithonus, mentioned in the poem, was a mortal whom the goddess Dawn...

Heritage I like to say I’d an Egyptian father If that is too obscure for you, I’d rather Explain it just by citing preservation. They preserved mummies, he his indignation At how the world had gone awry, once all Ethics, society had gone on stall. My father then stepped gingerly...

Poet’s Note: I wrote this poem in the same metrical form as the song “America the Beautiful” (but without the internal rhyme). You can sing it if you want, but I think it is most effective when simply read out loud. This year our nation’s birthday seems a tad bit...

Two Lives by Michael Maibach When soldiers die, They give two lives. The one they had, And the one denied. The spouse not met, The child unknown, The life unsaved, The welcome home. The hill unclimbed, The beach unseen, The books unread, The field un-gleaned. The chance to see Their...

Garden Waltz a terza rima sonnet in dactylic pentameter with a truncated foot at the end of each line Radishes sway to the rhythm of sunlight and rainfall, Carrots to minerals present in alkaline soil. Onions, however, invite a due process most painful, Opening eyes to the sting of their...

You pushed Grace hard so you could have your book. She did the layout, made the pdf. I bought the thing so I could take a look but, when I read it, I found blatant theft. You’d stolen poems from anthologies of poets who had won the Nobel Prize. You...

The Lord’s Supper They’re gathered round, astonished, full of dread, round him who like a wise man must decide, and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread, and who comes like a stranger from outside. Old solitude haunts him, Gethsemane, though once it bound him to astounding acts; now...

The Fall Revisited The implications of the fall are endless in their reach; that lowly serpent had such gall, Eve's failure to beseech. Though what they chose when they did bite that infamous red fruit was bad enough for God to smite them; He withheld pursuit. Preferring then to extricate...

Guess who is not invited to come to a dinner here? Rights are just for some people. Others have to disappear. There is no bias in denials of our services; we shall not break bread with those who do not think just like us. Injustice anywhere's a threat to justice...

It's first of sweaty, sweltering daybreaks of summer new. The fewer trailing steps of parting spring are still moist-fresh with drakes' claw prints and redolent green pollen specks. The waters in the troughs and dew on leaves bid their tearful adieus with vapour-hands looking athwart through narrow foliar sieves at...

“Only fools are positive.”  “You sure about that?” “I’m positive.” ―The Three Stooges “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” "Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” “In a time of deceit telling the truth is...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With worthy exploits and a mind once refined, These guardians of masses, once seeking...

Winners announced here. Scroll down and read the comments section to enjoy all of the submissions. What has no subject one can tell, Yet tries to make it ring a bell? What makes you scratch your head and think, “How does this blather even link?” RULES: Write a rhyming riddle...

by Dusty Grein Like many of the old French refrain forms, the kyrielle originated in the 15th century with the traveling troubadours. It is a rhymed form, written in either 2 line couplets, or 4 line stanzas (also known as quatrains). Each couplet or quatrain contains a repeating line or...

Born at Constantinople in 1762 of a French father and Greek mother, André Chénier grew up in pre-revolutionary France and studied at Paris. Well-read, and enamored with ancient Greece, he is considered one of the last classicists in verse, and for his sentiment, a precursor to the romantics. He was executed...

03.27.18 A smattering of rain above a hall That holds her earthy fragments, broken, spent, A woman who, in life, out-did them all, And e’en in death defies the elements. O, what would she make now of her dear France, Beset by enemies who walk among us, Tracing our very...

Written upon reading the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World. The beast once foretold for the end of days Crouched in a Karl Marx statue erected Last month in Germany, where it displays A villain’s face now praised and respected. The beast’s scales are the merchandise...

Little Girl She's fishing in a rock pool just abandoned by the sea She's too engrossed within her world to notice you and me. She sprawls to draw a picture open book upon the sand Great masters never wielded so delicate a hand. Her rainbow spreads across the page to...

Note: Joseph Charles MacKenzie would like to offer a 25% discount on the first edition hardcover of Sonnets for Christ the King to his fellow poets and readers of the Society of Classical Poets, in gratitude for their many edifying comments. Just click here or on the book cover image...

by James Sale FORMAL COMPLAINTS by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 1997 MASQUERADE by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 2005 SKIRMISHES by Joseph S. Salemi, Pivot Press, 2010 I first encountered Joseph Salemi’s work on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets, and a great discovery it...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Confucius Institutes "Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and truth." —paraphrase of a Buddhist quote by Lu "Reed ABCs" Wei The Chinese Party-Communists use wily socialites, constructing a network of spying, propaganda sites, for outposts called evasively Confucian Institutes, attempting...

Congratulations to the following winners! Thank you to judges Joseph S. Salemi, James Sale, and Damian Robin.   First Place $100 Prize: Ben Foreman, Cascabel, Arizona Cheesemaking Find a way To weigh The whey.   Second Place: James B. Nicola, New York, New York Trip of a Lifetime The place within. Shall...

To Make a Poet “A man can learn the art of poetry,” You say, “and many learn this art by me.” Poetry teacher, render something clear: Tell me, how do you teach a man to hear?   The Erudite Poet Strange use of words, Professor! And a stranger way to...

  I may have borne them each, but it was you, Whose shoulders carried weight I never knew, You set the bar so high, so straight, so true, The surest, strongest Dad?  Well, that was you. I may have dried their tears, but it was you, Who made them get...

Form Sonnet Turn the page and write again today Make something come out of an eager mind Make something in a new and different way In something both of earthy and refined For when I strive it seems that I can find What I am looking for in forms like...

See notes below for background and allusions. Olivia: Daughter, shall we sit and grieve together, And tie our two bêtes noires up with a tether? You had Ezra Pound and I had Yeats: Two poets now enshrined among the greats. God knows it was no picnic. We both fell For...

A short film by Gleb Zavlanov. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnDmkKqaF4&feature=youtu.be Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,...

  Everlasting Chesterton The author, G.K. Chesterton: A playful epigramist, A master of the terse bon mot, And witty dithyrambist. He loathed pomposity and claimed (And I believe quite rightly) That angels fly simply because They take themselves so lightly. A staunch defender of his faith, He was a Roman...

  I Love This Life a rondeau I love this life in spite of all the trying times and every wall I must tear down to find success, although sometimes my happiness is thwarted, slowing to a crawl. When lofty expectations fall back to the earth, when I feel small...

Curtain Up! Sunset and the robins sing, nightingales reply song that summer evenings bring, weeping willows sigh from lawns and from thickets a chorus of crickets ____serenades but remains out of sight as we stroll hand-in-hand while this heavenly band ____entertains in the silver moonlight.   The Dance of Life Performance of unending grace,...