Best Obscurity Poems

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers?
...

How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
...

There is a change- and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
...

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,- -that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
...

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
...

1.

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
...

Why art thou silent & invisible
Father of jealousy
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye
...

Wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of night and dark obscurity;
...

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
...

Gone are my people, but I exist yet,
Lamenting them in my solitude...
Dead are my friends, and in their Death my life is naught but great
Disaster.
...

. Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
--It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
...

I.

MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
...

The young Lady to whom this was addressed was my Sister. It was
composed at school, and during my two first College vacations.
There is not an image in it which I have not observed; and now, in
my seventy-third year, I recollect the time and place where most
...

Here is where.....
Madmen write verse for their amputated lovers
with blue fountain pens and quills of clotted ink
Scribbling morbid memories yellow with old malaria
...

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them in not particular,
...

...

In the deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
...

AFTER READING 'LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.'

Lead gently, Lord, and slow,
For oh, my steps are weak,
...

Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
...

He knocked, and I beheld him at the door--
A vision for the gods to verify.
"What battered ancient is this," thought I,
"And when, if ever, did we meet before?"
...

I.
THOU who stealest fire,
From the fountains of the past,
To glorify the present, oh, haste,
...

where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
...

The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.
...

WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Ascending, as if distance had the power
...

Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
O Beauté? ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
...

Dear Will,

How are things out there?
just thought you'd like to know,
...

In deep of night by dream
I hear swash of breeze
As I open door of blue
I see moment slushing me
...

She was so proud to have 'bagged' him -
he'd toured the world on Dad's business;
he'd 'squired'
(that's the word we use -
...

Trust divine as love embedded in truth
as day descends slowly by the light
moments rill on faltering art of darkness
listless yet heretical words tossed up
...

sparkling dew cries over blade of grass
redeeming slowly by rays golden
mystery shrouds over green of garden
as dawn remembers art of last night
...

Spring.
Another four I've left yet to bring on,
Of four times four the last Quaternion,
The Winter, Summer, Autumn & the Spring,
...

“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
...

And i do remember raves of ocean
seeing beaming whites of moon infinite
yet ever expanding into limitless thirst
rolling upon dunes long accrued upon
...

The rain knocks on my window,
In the middle of an abysmal sleep.
Dreams shattered and broken,
I wake up again and not the first.
...

I wrote a poem
a simple poem
from a simple mind -
it languished in obscurity
...

it is but natural
as some one so dear and near
as when away from home unrequitted
quest still persists by the remembrance
...

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare
...

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.
...

O breathe a word
or two of fire
smile as if those words
should burn me
...

These things my spirit bids me
teach the men of Athens:
that Dysnomia
brings countless evils for the city,
...

In memoriam, professor Earl Henry

Through shuttered eyes, I see you still -
dressed out in earthen tones
...

Ô toison, moutonnant jusque sur l'encolure!
Ô boucles! Ô parfum chargé de nonchaloir!
Extase! Pour peupler ce soir l'alcôve obscure
...

(WASHINGTON SQUARE)


I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
...

sparkling dew cries over blade of grass
redeeming slowly by rays golden
mystery shrouds over green of garden
as dawn remembers art of last night
...

I.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
...

Que diras-tu ce soir, pauvre âme solitaire,
Que diras-tu, mon coeur, coeur autrefois flétri,
À la très belle, à la très bonne, à la très chère,
...

Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on; the Doric reed once more,
...

I've spanned the edges of echelon's ledges
And languished the austere abyss
From the hue of grey's obscurity
And time's eternal perpetuity
...

yet I do remember the hoary stance of night
rolling spumes away into onshore
to heap of sands yet not unknown
history yet records reels of fire.
...

I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
...

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise,
When sense and wit with poesy allied,
No fabl'd graces, flourish'd side by side;
...

Orpheus he went, as poets tell,
To fetch Eurydice from hell;
And had her, but it was upon
This short, but strict condition;
...

Is this sanity or insanity
to wish a death in obscurity?
Death that might bring calm and ease
As my life deserted by joys and peace.
...

What virtue, or what mental grace
But men unqualified and base
Will boast it their possession?
...

Say, wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of bright and dark obscurity;
...

Tell me your race, your name,
O Lady limned as dead, yet as when living fair!
That within this faded frame
An unfading beauty wear.
...

earth adores warmth of light crowning of sun
light reels through hues of cascade spuming
heart seeps red touching universe of own
silence by sky disperses innocence of blue
...

I am a slave to poetry.

I do not wish to be set free
a willing prisoner happily.
...

Do you think, we two, just you and me,
having reached the age of sixty-three,
could find fame by writing poetry.
Or should we continue to compose,
...

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

GODS
...

FROM Nature doth emotion come, and moods
Of calmness equally are Nature's gift:
This is her glory; these two attributes
...

i have ached for you,
since time began
to have any meaning;
since the world began
...

Path of my voyage
Closed in front of eyes
By waving a farewell
To all my provisions
...

I wanted to give her a sky,
She opted for just pieces of cloud,
Some patches of soft, white cloud,
In the azure sky. When given, she hid
...

Now Mr. Jeremiah Bane
He owned a warehouse in The Lane,
An edifice of goodly size,
Where, with keen private enterprise,
...

“Dame,” said the Panther, “times are mended well,
Since late among the Philistines you fell.
The toils were pitched, a spacious tract of ground
...

Obscurity cared for the infant's pediatric life innocently where the motherly lap was way to life
At four, a playground was farming fields and a rustic prayer home with brother and cousin
Collecting paddy straws to help my mother in cooking and learning religion were duties daily
Sometimes Dang-guli game and scuffle with same age villagers were daily kith and kin
...

O, FRIEND! whose heart the grave doth shroud from human joy or woe,
Know'st thou who wanders by thy tomb, with footsteps sad and slow?
...

'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
...

(To emerging poets) ...........

Did not hear about Quintus Horace?
Who descended the laws to Verse in grace:
...

To nothing fitter can I thee compare
Than to the son of some rich penny-father,
Who, having now brought on his end with care,
Leaves to his son all he had heap'd together;
...

I wanted to write to you about your poems,
that is, about something I couldn't quite put my finger on
so I didn't write in case it sounded inconsequential
and it's silly to write to a poet who handles words so expertly,
...

Words too many, creates an inflation-like balloon; sphere grown too large
where each word gets lost in the volume of words gone awry, orphaned,
where syllabicity becomes too complicatedly and comprehension
escapes the brain and flees into the night of obscurity and sadly
...

Sailing on the ocean's waves
as the sun prepares to descend
and the moon readies to emerge
as shimmering lights replace the orange hue
...

Let a thing be what we say it is,
if a donkey is eating corn
let the donkey not be an allegory
nor the corn a corn byproduct.
...

'WHAT have I earned for all that work,' I said,
'For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defaned,
...

As one whose eyes have watched the stricken day
Swoon to its crimson death adown the sea,
Turning his face to eastward suddenly
...

Just another way
to frustrate me

Just another way
...

Short of ending up like Kafka
Who toiled in obscurity
And died peniless
I work myself up
...

I built myself a monument, eternal and miraculous,
It's higher than the Pyramids, than metal it is harder;
Swift winds and thunder cannot knock it down
The flight of time cannot demolish it.
...

Barren of events,
Rich in pretensions
My earthly life.
...

Let me not die for ever! when I'm laid
In the cold earth; but let my memory
Live still among ye, like the evening shade,
...

Why are we Scholars plagu'd to write,
On Days devoted to Delight?
In Honour of the King, I'd play
Upon his Coronation Day:
...

'Who can deliver us, Lord of our destiny!
Out of the depths comes our passionate cry,
Wrung from the soul of us. Aid for the whole of us!
Tell us, we pray, that our succor is nigh.
...

One of the devotees of Mount Lebanon, whose piety was famed in the Arab country and his miracles well known, entered the cathedral mosque of Damascus and was performing his purificatory ablution on the edge

of a tank when his feet slipped and he fell into the reservoir but saved himself with great trouble. After the congregation had finished their prayers, one of his companions said: ‘I have a difficulty.’ He asked: ‘What is it?’ He continued: ‘I remember that the sheikh walked on the surface of the African sea without his feet getting wetted and today he nearly perished in this paltry water which is not deeper than a man’s stature. What reason is there in this?’ The sheikh drooped his head into the bosom of meditation and said after a long pause: ‘Hast thou not heard that the prince of the world, Muhammad the chosen, upon whom be the benediction of Allah and peace, has said: I have time with Allah during which no cherubim nor inspired prophet is equal to me?’ But he did not say that such was always the case. The time alluded to was when Gabriel or Michael inspired him whilst on other occasions he was satisfied with the society of Hafsah and Zainab. The visions of the righteous one are between brilliancy and obscurity.
...

He was a young lad
Endless dreams she had

She was a flowered rose
...

Out of the ground
comes a root that has no form-
it has no beauty
in which one can adore-
...

INSPIRED BY READING MR. KIPLING'S POEMS AS
PRINTED IN THE NEW YORK PAPERS

Though earnest and industrious,
...

Identities dissolved in the liquid darkness
Mists, unidentified faces lurked
Silent screams quivered on closed lips
And a multitude of unanswered
...

We are suckling-babies at the nipples of this planet,
with a ceaseless, insatiate voraciousness for life;
all the sap of Earth: all the lactation of the Mother-Meteor!
...

And now, thou elder nursling of the nest;
Ere all the intertangled west
Be one magnificence
Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun
...

I'm Julie, then I was only of eight
I was blooming from a bud like a little rose red.
I enjoyed this gleaming world, pleasing my eyes
A world saturated with splendor, aroma and so bright.
...

Upon a tall breeze
The lark swims in thermals.
Oh! What ease! What melody
To soar into obscurity
...

The first line of a story, thought or poem is usually what comes to me first. The source can be a phrase I happen to hear on the radio, or in a song. 'Rolling Them' is actually from a piece of a song I heard by Miranda Lambert. (I love country music, lots of stories there) .

The idea of the cowboy rolling his own also reminded me of my dad who at one point also rolled his own cigarettes.
...

ON thy carved sides, where many a vivid dye
In easy progress leads the wandering eye,
A distant nation's manners we behold,
...

Have you heard the inscrutable mutable Alf,
The mannerly man with the silvery tongue?
Ever loquacious,
Smiling and gracious.
...

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NEW CHALLENGE POEM/TITLE CONTEST
- - - - - TITLE FOR MAY 2015 - - - - -
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what made a scar on you?

Is it the wound given to you
...

Rest, warrior, rest! thine hour is past,—
Thy longest war-whoop, and thy last,
...

Searching an infinite Where,
Probing a bottomless When,
Dreamfully wandering,
Ceaselessly pondering,
...