PolyArchive

Night Mail W.H. Auden This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland […]

“And, of course, that is what all of this is – all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or […]

Of Mere Being Wallace Stevens The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze distance. A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird […]

Forgetfulness Billy Collins The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern […]

A Song W. B. Yeats I THOUGHT no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old? Though I have many words, What woman’s satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? Oh, who could have foretold […]

…May whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you, and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate, and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am, and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing –From ‘And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day’ […]

Trzy słowa najdziwniejsze Wisława Szymborska Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Przyszłość, pier­wsza sy­laba od­chodzi już do przeszłości. Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Cisza, niszczę ją. Kiedy wy­mawiam słowo Nic, stwarzam coś, co nie mieści się w żad­nym nieby­cie. * * * * * * * * The Three Oddest Words Wisława Szymborska Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak When I pronounce the word […]

Advice to My Son Peter Meinke (For Tim) The trick is, to live your days as if each one may be your last (for they go fast, and young men lose their lives in strange and unimaginable ways) but at the same time, plan long range (for they go slow; if you survive the shattered […]

One Art Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing […]

Hate Poem Julie Sheehan I hate you truly. Truly I do. Everything about me hates everything about you. The flick of my wrist hates you. The way I hold my pencil hates you. The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel hates you. Each corpuscle singing […]

Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As […]

In Memory of W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold […]

Epilogue Robert Lowell Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme— why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art […]

The Literary World Philip Larkin I ‘Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me…’ My dear Kafka, When you’ve had five years of it, not five months, Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object […]

I reached saturation point with lifestyle blogs, as I had previously with personal finance blogs, lifehack blogs, and probably more that have now slipped my mind entirely. It’s miserably hot here, by the way. I love Pinterest, but it depresses me how 80% of pins are re-pins, and only 20% is new content. Of that […]