PolyArchive

Anne Hathaway Carol Ann Duffy ‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’ (from Shakespeare’s will) The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my […]

Green-Striped Melons Jane Hirshfield They lie under stars in a field. They lie under rain in a field. Under sun. Some people are like this as well— like a painting hidden beneath another painting. An unexpected weight the sign of their ripeness.

Death of the Hat Billy Collins Once every man wore a hat. In the ashen newsreels, the avenues of cities are broad rivers flowing with hats. The ballparks swelled with thousands of straw hats, brims and bands, rows of men smoking and cheering in shirtsleeves. Hats were the law. They went without saying. You noticed […]

The Dictionary Charles Simic Maybe there is a word in it somewhere to describe the world this morning, a word for the way the early light takes delight in chasing the darkness out of store windows and doorways. Another word for the way it lingers over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses someone let drop on […]

Marginalia Billy Collins Sometimes the notes are ferocious, Skirmishes against the author Raging along the borders of every page In tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, They seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments […]

…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’ […]