Tildistas, what is your favorite poem?

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Shelley, Ozymandias

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale always gets me.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

I don't particularly know why - it's honestly kind of depressing in my opinion, but it really speaks to a nihilist streak that I guess I have, despite my being a rather optimistic person. Just the kind of sense that ultimately whatever actions I have, whatever actions we have, earth and life and all the things around us will be happy to continue on and sing their own songs.

I knew that poetry served a purpose in the world, but I never appreciated it until I read Wendell Berry.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Not sure if it's my favorite but I was quite fascinated by this reading of Three Songs of Shattering by Edna St. Vincent Millay for a while, I think it's a combination of the reader's voice and the poem that got me:

https://ia800203.us.archive.org/11/items/renascence_millay_ll_librivox/renascence_11_millay.mp3

I have to say I don't quite understand what it's about.

I

The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.

II

Let the little birds sing;
Let the little lambs play;
Spring is here; and so ’tis spring;—
But not in the old way!

I recall a place
Where a plum-tree grew;
There you lifted up your face,
And blossoms covered you.

If the little birds sing,
And the little lambs play,
Spring is here; and so ’tis spring—
But not in the old way!

III

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!
Ere spring was going—ah, spring is gone!
And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,—
Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on.

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree,
Browned at the edges, turned in a day;
And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me,
And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!

Jan Erik Vold's poem Kulturuke

The poem is just rearanging the Norwegian word kulturuke (culture week) to make absolute nonsense.

Kulturuke

ulturkuke
tulkuruke
ultkuruke
ukturulke
tlukuruke
ukturkule
urtukulke
turlukuke
kulrukute
ultrukuke
kuleturuk
rulekukur
tulekukur
luretukuk
kukutelur
ruktukule
lurekuktu
luekuktur
kuktulure
rukletuku
tuklekuru
urukekult
kuruketul

Listen to his declaration in the link above. You won't regret that minute of your life.

How does someone think of doing this? How do they make the result so incredibly good? Why does it capture the feeling of these horrid events during Culture weeks so well?

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

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.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

A Dog on His Master
by Billy Collins

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.

Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.

And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

It's short, sweet, and makes me tear up almost every time I come back to it.

The last love letter from an entomologist is a pretty awesome spoken word piece by Jared Singer. His performance has stuck with me for all these years.

“A Screw Fell to the Ground” by Xu Lizhi is also profound. He was a Foxconn worker who jumped to his death.

《一颗螺丝掉在地上》
"A Screw Fell to the Ground"

一颗螺丝掉在地上
A screw fell to the ground

在这个加班的夜晚
In this dark night of overtime

垂直降落，轻轻一响
Plunging vertically, lightly clinking

不会引起任何人的注意
It won’t attract anyone’s attention

就像在此之前
Just like last time

某个相同的夜晚
On a night like this

有个人掉在地上
When someone plunged to the ground

Be not Defeated by the Rain (雨ニモマケズ) by Kenji Miyazawa.

Translation by David Sulz:

Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.

Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy.
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.

A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade.

A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day.

If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health.
If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden.
If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear.
If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues:
Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit.

In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.

Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".

This is my goal, the person I strive to become.

Original:

雨ニモマケズ
風ニモマケズ
雪ニモ夏ノ暑サニモマケヌ
丈夫ナカラダヲモチ
慾ハナク
決シテ瞋ラズ
イツモシヅカニワラッテヰル
一日ニ玄米四合ト
味噌ト少シノ野菜ヲタベ
アラユルコトヲ
ジブンヲカンジョウニ入レズニ
ヨクミキキシワカリ
ソシテワスレズ
野原ノ松ノ林ノ蔭ノ
小サナ萓ブキノ小屋ニヰテ
東ニ病氣ノコドモアレバ
行ッテ看病シテヤリ
西ニツカレタ母アレバ
行ッテソノ稻ノ朿ヲ負ヒ
南ニ死ニサウナ人アレバ
行ッテコハガラナクテモイヽトイヒ
北ニケンクヮヤソショウガアレバ
ツマラナイカラヤメロトイヒ
ヒデリノトキハナミダヲナガシ
サムサノナツハオロオロアルキ
ミンナニデクノボートヨバレ
ホメラレモセズ
クニモサレズ
サウイフモノニ
ワタシハナリタイ

Bonus Song version, performed by Artistes 311 Love Beyond Borders to fundraise after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Hard to pick a favorite but this one has stuck with me:

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The Rose of the World
by William Butler Yeats

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.
We and the laboring world are passing by:—
Amid men’s souls that day by day gives place,
More fleeting than the sea’s foam-fickle face,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before ye were or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one stood beside His seat;
He made the world, to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, 1919 - proving eternal september has been around forever. :L

Edna St. Vincent Millay has been my favourite poet for decades (shoutout to @Staross). This is one of her many sonnets and was the poem that made me sit up and take notice of her for the first time:

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
“What a big book for such a little head!”
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

Duration, by Octavio Paz

"Thunder and wind: duration. " ~ I Ching

I

Sky black
Yellow earth
The rooster tears the night apart
The water wakes and asks what time it is
The wind wakes and asks for you
A white horse goes by

II

As the forest in its bed of leaves
you sleep in your bed of rain
you sing in your bed of wind
you kiss in your bed of sparks

III

Multiple vehement odor
many-handed body
On an invisible stem a single
whiteness

IV

Speak listen answer me
what the thunder-clap
says, the woods
understand

V

I enter by your eyes
you come forth by my mouth
You sleep in my blood
I waken in your head

VI

I will speak to you in stone-language
(answer with a green syllable)
I will speak to you in snow-language
(answer with a fan of bees)
I will speak to you in water-language
(answer with a canoe of lightning)
I will speak to you in blood-language
(answer with a tower of birds)

Fernando Pessoa, Cemal Süreya, Asaf Halet Çelebi, Orhan Veli Kanık and Cesare Pavese are among my favourites. I realise now that most poetry I read is in Turkish, which is sad. I really should read more in English, because to this day I've mostly taken it as a technical language, but there is beautiful original literature written in it.

Süreya has such a unique style, so much power in building images with incredibly smart ways of bending Turkish grammar and juxtaposing words and concepts so smartly in such a surreal way. I translated one of his poems here (Turkish original), which is one of my favourites, but there are many more shockingly wonderful ones, translating which to any language would be a truly monumental task for any translator.

From Pessoa, well, I love everything by him, but these couple of verses are among my favourites:

Na vespera de não partir nunca
Ao menos não ha que arrumar malas

which I first read in a book by Tabucchi where it was included as an epigram. I couldn't find a translation, so here is my attempt:

On the eve of not departing ever
At least there is no packing to be done

This piece is rather melancholic and negative, but for myself I take it more as a warning than advice: staying put is so bad that all there is to it that is good is not having to prepare to act.

Pavese is so clear and beautiful. He has a certain overal rhythm to laying out his poem which I really love. Here are some translations. Cats will know is one of my favourites.

Orhan Veli is synonymous with poetry in Turkish; in fact if you force someone unwilling to write poetry here you can be told "I'm not Orhan Veli, am I?", meaning "hey, I'm not a poet, don't expect much". He has a way of portraying reality---and he's generally interested in mundane reality---that is really expressive. I like his three epitaphs, Bird and Cloud, and many others. Quantitatif is one of my favourites, but this translation misses the double entendre that is at the heart of the poem:

Güzel kadınları severim,
İşçi kadınları da severim;
Güzel işçi kadınları
Daha çok severim.

The penultimate verse can be interpreted "beautiful working women" as well as "women doing beautiful/good work". Which I take as a laconic celebration of women's empowerment as well as self-realisation.

Asaf Halet is more on the mystic side, but he has a beautiful style, and his essays on poetry have been really formative for my appreciation of the art form. I don't have time to translate, and can't find any online, so I'll just copy-paste one of his works:

İbrahîm

ibrâhim
içimdeki putları devir
elindeki baltayla
kırılan putların yerine
yenilerini koyan kim

güneş buzdan evimi yıktı
koca buzlar düştü
putların boyunları kırıldı
ibrâhim
güneşi evime sokan kim

asma bahçelerinde dolaşan güzelleri
buhtunnasır put yaptı
ben ki zamansız bahçeleri kucakladım
güzeller bende kaldı
ibrâhim
gönlümü put sanıp da kıran kim

There are many that I enjoy, most too long to include here, and at least two that have already been mentioned (Ozymandias and Stopping By Woods). Here are some others:

• The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
• The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
• A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

I've always had a soft spot, though, for this poem:

Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

It's not a deep poem, but I have always particularly enjoyed the rather light and obvious interpretation: as all the things listed are doomy and gloomy (dusty snow, hemlock tree, crow, getting snowed on are all clearly negative) but the tone is positive ("saved some part" of a crappy day) then the only real possibility was "the way" that this negative thing happened was somehow positive, ie. the crow did something noteworthy, interesting or funny. Alternately, he's so edgy that through suffering he found solace, or the sheer overwhelming melodrama was humourous, but I like the first interpretation better.

Well this is an almost impossible thing to decide, so here's a couple of them.

If I Woz a Tap-Natch Poet by Linton Kwesi Johnson. I've linked to a reading because you need to hear it to truly appreciate it.

Rong Radio Station by Benjamin Zephaniah. Again, a link to a reading by the poet himself.

Beasley Street by John Cooper Clark. This one is recited over music, and works well.

A few months after I met my girlfriend, she revealed to me that she was suffering from pretty crippling depression. It wasn't hard to guess - the eager, adventure-loving person that she was was replaced by someone entirely different. There followed some of the worst, most agonizing months of our lives, as she tried and failed and tried to fight it. One of the few things that gave her brain some respite was being read to. And of those things, what got her to calm down and fall asleep were the nonsensical, carefree, and juvenile poetry of Lewis Carroll:

• I'll tell thee Everything I can
• Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur
• She also took a great liking to Robert Frost's Departmental

She's fought this monster for many years, though truly terrible times, and it seems like she's slowly clawing her way out now. But I will forever cherish those poems that managed to engage and distract her from her nightmares enough to give her some rest.

I'm not really into poems and I also don't know if Haikus count or not, but I felt like sharing this one I saw somewhere

One hundred and ten.
One hundred and eleven.
One hundred and twelve.

Poetry has never been a great love of mine, but a friend posted this poem during national poetry month back when LJ was used by people other than GRRM. It's stuck with me since.

The Waking
By Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Design, by Robert Frost

Not sure I'd call it my favorite, but it has haunted me for most of my life, unlike any other.

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Also, honorable mention to La Belle Dame sans Merci, by John Keats, for much the same reason. Both will feature prominently in my autobiography.

More generally, I'm a fan of the Keats/Byron/Shelley Romantic poetry. I'm fascinated by the sequence of events that have followed their "wet, ungenial" summer holiday in Switzerland in 1816, which gave us - among other things - both Frankenstein and Dracula.

Oh man, how to just pick one! I have no idea, so I'm going to list many that I love, then I'll put in my favorite.

Invictus -- William Ernest Henley
Wild Geese -- Mary Oliver
Those Winter Sundays -- Robert Hayden
The Laughing Heart -- Charles Bukowski
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House -- Billy Collins

And, as a personal reminder of my mother's love for me (she passed away a year ago):
The Paper Nautilus by Marianne Moore

Almost missed this one!

“Haiku Ambulance” x Richard Brautigan

A piece of green pepper

fell

off the wooden salad bowl:

so what?

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

~ Ezra Pound

More info here

I have three that come to mind, but I'll just post the text of the one, I think.

Good Bones by Maggie Smith is a nice one. A bit sad, but also hopeful.

I also like A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy. It is a very angry poem, and at the time I first read it, it definitely stirred that anger in me.

My current favourite though is probably Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. I see someone else linked it above, but here is the full text:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Stillness by Mansur al Hallaj

Stillness, then silence, then random speech,
Then knowledge, intoxication, annihilation;

Earth, then fire, then light.
Coldness, then shade, then sunlight.

Thorny road, then a path, then the wilderness.
River, then ocean, then the shore;

Contentment, desire, then Love.
Closeness, union, intimacy;

Closing, then opening, then obliteration,
Separation, togetherness, then longing;

Signs for those of real understanding
Who find this world of little value.

I suppose this answer is rather boring in an English speaking environment, but The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, is to me perfect both in the original and in its most famous Portuguese translation. Poe’s essay about the writing process is delightful as well.

And I think as OP you "owe" us your own favorite @alyaza. Care to share?