In Memoriam - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

The Sanctuary - St Catherine of Sienna

It could be said that God’s foot is so vast
That this entire earth is but a
field on His
toe,

Manly Canvas - Louisa April

He smells like dead butterflies.

Dreams and poetry - Hu Shih

It’s all ordinary experience,
All ordinary images.
By chance they emerge in a dream,
Turning out infinite patterns.

December 26 - Kenn Nesbitt

A BB gun.
A model plane.
A basketball.
A ’lectric train.

Noël: Christmas Eve 1913 - Robert Bridges

Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
A frosty Christmas Eve
   when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
   where westward falls the hill,

The Shortest Day - Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.

The Wisemen - Georg Johannes Gick

After the children and the shepherds
after the poor we beg of you,
Oh, may your heavenly loving-kindness bring
our souls to pasture too.

The moment - Eavan Boland

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

She who is always in my thoughts - Bhartrhari

She who is always in my thoughts prefers
Another man, and does not think of me.

Everything promised him to me - Anna Akhmatova

Everything promised him to me:
the fading amber edge of the sky,
and the sweet dreams of Christmas,
and the wind at Easter, loud with bells,

Quarrelling - Tao Tschung Yu

The ancients argued that friendship could never last.
A few old friends, we walk on the mountain’s milder slopes,

Friendship - Octavio Paz

It is the awaited hour
over the table falls
interminably
the lamp’s spread hair

Among the multitudes - Wislawa Szymborska

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

What, no reindeer? - Bruce Levitan

Some traditions are hard to break,
like the April fool and the birthday cake.

My father - Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

White paper and time - Jaan Kaplinski

White paper and time: one I am filling,
the other fills itself.

The Bard - Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky

My friends, can you descry that mound of earth
Above clear waters in the shade of trees?
You can just hear the babbling spring against the bank;
You can just feel a breeze that's wafting in the leaves;
A wreath and lyre hang upon the boughs...
Alas, my friends! This mound'ss a grave;
Here earth conceals the ashes of a bard;
Poor bard!

Inspiration Comes (Fibonacci) - Jim T. Henriksen

I

am

sitting

quietly,

On your birthday, today - Ivan Donn Carswell

On your birthday, today, there is time to reflect
On the essence of our intimacy,

Code - Eavan Boland

Poet to poet.  I imagine you
  at the edge of language, at the start of summer
    in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, writing code.
      You have no sense of time.  No sense of minutes even.
        They cannot reach inside your world,
          your gray work station
            with when yet now never and once.
              You have missed the other seven.
                This is the eight day of Creation.

A poem for Christmas - Joseph Brodsky

Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
use the cracks in the floor to feel the cold.
Use crockery in order to feel the hunger.

Weaver - Diane Fahey

So many stories to be woven.
She worked with a furious patience,
conjuring even through dream-weary eyes
the curved brightness of dew on spider webs.

Growing Towards the Earth - Luis Rosales

When night comes and all leans on darkness,
when the night comes the sea might be asleep,
and all its strength may not suffice to move a single grain of sand,
to lend a smile to another face,

Enemy of Death - Salvatore Quasimodo

You should not have
ripped out your image
taken from us, from the world,
a portion of beauty.

I shall soon fall prey to rot - Nikolai Nekrasov

I shall soon fall prey to rot.
Though it's hard to die, it's good to die;
I shall ask for no one's pity,
And there's no one who would pity me.

The Cat And The Fox - Jean de La Fontaine

The Cat and the Fox once took a walk together,
Sharpening their wits with talk about the weather
And as their walking sharpened appetite, too;
They also took some things they had no right to.
Cream, that is so delicious when it thickens,
Pleased the Cat best. The Fox liked little chickens.

25. XII. 1993 - Joseph Brodsky

For a miracle, take one shepherd’s sheepskin, throw
in a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,
and a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye
a little chunk of space, a piece of sky,