Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

When Passion week started and Jesus
Came down to the city, that day
Hosannahs burst out at his entry
And palm leaves were strewn in his way.

But days grow more stern and more stormy.
No love can men's hardness unbend;
Their brows are contemptuously frowning,
And now comes the postscript, the end.

Grey, leaden and heavy, the heavens
Were pressing on treetops and roofs.
The Pharisees, fawning like foxes,
Were secretly searching for proofs.

The lords of the Temple let scoundrels
Pass judgement, and those who at first
Had fervently followed and hailed him,
Now all just as zealously cursed.

The crowd on the neighbouring sector
Was looking inside through the gate.
They jostled, intent on the outcome,
Bewildered and willing to wait.

And whispers and rumours were creeping,
Repeating the dominant theme.
The flight into Egypt, his childhood
Already seemed faint as a dream.


...

When love was a question, the message arrived
in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura
was hardly to be believed. For flight,

it took three stagehands: two
on the pulleys and one on the flute. And you
thought fancy rained like grace.

Our fog machine lost in the Parcel Post, we improvised
with smoke. The heroine dies of tuberculosis after all.

...

I watch you read those letters
In the silhouettes of dawn
The lonely tears I kissed away
Echoes of a life forlorn...
I watched you hide your smiles away
Leave me a heart so cold and still
How distant sounds our laughter, love
With all our dreams unfulfilled...

And I would give you all I had

...

Father is quite the greatest poet
    That ever lived anywhere.
You say you’re going to write great music—
    I chose that first: it’s unfair.
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and
        do Christ and angels, or lovely pears
        and apples and grapes on a green dish,
        or storms at sea, or anything lovely,
Because that’s been taken by Claire.

It’s stupid to be an engine-driver,
    And soldiers are horrible men.
I won’t be a tailor, I won’t be a sailor,
    And gardener’s taken by Ben.
It’s unfair if you say that you’ll write great
        music, you horrid, you unkind (I sim-
        ply loathe you, though you are my
        sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat,
        bully, liar!
Well? Say what’s left for me then!

But we won’t go to your ugly music.
    (Listen!) Ben will garden and dig,
And Claire will finish her wondrous pictures
    All flaming and splendid and big.
And I’ll be a perfectly marvellous carpenter,
        and I’ll make cupboards and benches
        and tables and ... and baths, and
        nice wooden boxes for studs and
        money,

...

I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
...

I loved her.
She hated me.
I still love her.
She still hates me.
I don't know her side of the story.
She doesn't know mine.
We never shared each other's side.
But from my side of the story,
She doesn't know what she means to me.
She doesn't know what I feel.

...

Innocent heart, what has happened to you?
Alas, what is the cure to this pain?

We are interested, and they are displeased,
Oh Lord, what is this affair?

I too possess a tongue-
just ask me what I want to say.

Though there is none present without you,
then oh God, what is this noise about?

I expected faith from those
who do not even know what faith is.
...

Australia, my native land,
A stirring whisper in your ear—
'Tis time for you to understand
Your rating now is A1, dear.
You've done some rousing things of late.
That lift you from the simple state
In which you chose to vegetate.

The persons so superior,
Whose patronage no more endures,

...

With someone whose heart is always full of deceit,
Tell me how can I cope?
Smile on my face, love, actually, a deception that comes from the heart,
I have distributed love in one life,
Still, I hear, it was left forever!
What this heart thinks, in meditation and knowledge,
In reality, it can be seen differently,
No matter how much I want to build love
In the world, still it is repeatedly broken.
The love that people find in other people

...