Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Best poems by famous poets all around the world on Poem Hunter. Read poem and quotes from most popular poets.

20 Apr, 2025 Today
POEM OF THE DAY
When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.

...

POEM OF THE DAY - MODERN POEM
The Congo: A Study Of The Negro Race

I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,

...

POEM OF THE DAY - MEMBER POEM
Silenced Wings

They came like storms, cloaked in night,
Turning morning into fright.
Books were burned, voices chained,
Dreams were drowned in endless pain.

A girl once danced beneath the sky,
Soft hands raised, her laughter high.
Now she walks with eyes cast low,
Buried beneath a world of woe.


...

19 Apr, 2025 Saturday
POEM OF THE DAY
Troop Train

It stops the town we come through. Workers raise
Their oily arms in good salute and grin.
Kids scream as at a circus. Business men
Glance hopefully and go their measured way.
And women standing at their dumbstruck door
More slowly wave and seem to warn us back,
As if a tear blinding the course of war
Might once dissolve our iron in their sweet wish.


Fruit of the world, O clustered on ourselves
We hang as from a cornucopia
In total friendliness, with faces bunched
To spray the streets with catcalls and with leers.
A bottle smashes on the moving ties
And eyes fixed on a lady smiling pink
Stretch like a rubber-band and snap and sting
The mouth that wants the drink-of-water kiss.


And on through crummy continents and days,
Deliberate, grimy, slightly drunk we crawl,
The good-bad boys of circumstance and chance,
Whose bucket-helmets bang the empty wall
Where twist the murdered bodies of our packs
Next to the guns that only seem themselves.
And distance like a strap adjusted shrinks,
Tightens across the shoulder and holds firm.



...

POEM OF THE DAY - MODERN POEM
He Made This Screen

not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.

Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;

here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space --

designating here, a bower;

...

POEM OF THE DAY - MEMBER POEM
Friends?

Once upon a time,
when I acted like a mime,
shut through all my sorrows
with you shooting all the arrows.
I never knew what you were upto.

Once I heard a voice,
I had to make a choice
I decided to follow you
But I didn't know you weren't true

...

18 Apr, 2025 Friday
POEM OF THE DAY
Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
...

POEM OF THE DAY - MODERN POEM
Fine Days

These fine days have been my ruin.
On this kind of day I resigned
My job in 'Pious Foundations'
On this kind of day I started to smoke
On this kind of day I fell in love
On this kind of day I forgot
To bring home bread and salt
On this kind of day I had a relapse
Into my versifying disease.
These fine days have been my ruin.

...

POEM OF THE DAY - MEMBER POEM
Sometimes Silence Is My Best Friend

Sometimes silence is my best friend,
It often comes to my aid,
Birds chirp sweetly round the bend,
The sun blazes bright, unswayed.
I love this kind of calm retreat,
When you sit still, so do I,
Slowly, gently, with care so sweet,
Stroking petals passing by.
I wish to speak with the world I know,
Where I live in such serene delight,

...

RANDOM POEM GO!
Best POETS
Best POEMS
1.
Muzahidul Reza

Indoors by technology, outdoors by speedy transport
I travel the world
Today in Japan, tomorrow in Rome,
Next day by an ancient civilization or in Hawaii or Coast Ivory,
...

2.
Howard Simon

The low lands call
I am tempted to answer
They are offering me a free dwelling
Without having to conquer
...

3.
Chinedu Dike

The Peace Warrior Of Mzansi, among heroes - a colossus!
Sun Of The Nation; a rare gift of Providence.
Once, entangled in the web of racist succubus;
Unruffled he declares before High Justice:
...

4.
Ency Bearis

(This is a composition in Pilipino Language the first one I did, the only one, and hope some of the Filipinos will get this funny poem in this site. The poem is updated with English translation)


Noong taong otsenta dekada
...

5.
indira babbellapati

I dwell
In the absence
You left behind
...

6.
Dr. Antony Theodore

If you die before me
I would jump down into your grave
and hug you so innocently
that angels will become jealous.
...

CLASSICAL POEMS
1.
Jacques Prevert

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante
...

2.
Evie Shockley

you put this pen
in my hand and you
take the pen from you put this pen
...

3.
Barbara Guest

On this dry prepared path walk heavy feet.
This is not "dinner music." This is a power structure.
...

4.
Richard Lovelace

"Come, pretty birds, present your lays,
And learn to chaunt a goddess praise;
Ye wood-nymphs, let your voices be
Employ'd to serve her deity:
...

5.
Robert William Service

If you had the choice of two women to wed,
(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)
And the first from her heels to her dainty head
Was charming in every sense of the word:
...

6.
Emily Jane Brontë

A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile,
Alike, while I have holiday.
...

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