Best Poverty Poems
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
...
Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among
Objects:
Nothing mattered or had a name:
...
Is there for honesty poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave - we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
...
As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
...
'I will kill you like a snake',
'I will roast you like a chicken',
'I will fry you like a plantain',
So roll, roll, roll your boat when,
...
It is darkest hour in our history,
Dark nights shrouded with mystery,
Keeping under heels and making mockery,
Liberty torch shine but under label of slavery,
...
Out on the high "bird islands," Ciboux and Hertford,
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand
with their backs to the mainland
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge,
...
In their faces a colourless gaping of life's adversity:
the hopeless grief of a hellish existence;
Malnourished, starving, filth and olfactory horrors;
Their humiliating nothingness clothed in rags;
...
Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.
...
Poverty
Poverty is a curse for human society
Poverty prevails there where the injustice is
Poverty exclaims there where the illiteracy is
...
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire's call.
...
I am your neighbour
When your house is
Under fire or in flood.
...
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
...
If the day is done,
if birds sing no more,
if the wind has flagged tired,
then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me,
...
Oh city, whom grey stormy hands have sown,
With restless drift, scarce broken now of any,
Out of the dark thy windows dim and many
...
No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather- for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists-
...
I can't barter my freedom
Take away the riches with you
Don't display your dollars and pounds
To my countrymen who need freedom too
...
Myth has it that the riches of the rich are good for all the people
And such a fable has got so many performances that it’s easy
To be swayed into thinking that it’s just the truth.
But when I see the eyes of the poor, aloof in their bare poverty,
...
Family comes together
For always and forever
In sickness and in health
In poverty or in wealth
...
I am the lover's eyes, and the spirit's
Wine, and the heart's nourishment.
I am a rose. My heart opens at dawn and
The virgin kisses me and places me
...
Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
...
Is this a holy thing to see.
In a rich and fruitful land.
Babes reduced to misery.
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
...
A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of
student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.
Berket in high spirits--"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!"
And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart.
...
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
...
May you open your hearts
To the less fortunate
Feel within their heart
And hug them with your love
...
Freedom from hunger and freedom from pain
freedom from loss and so freedom from gain.
Freedom to give and freedom to share
freedom from want and that of despair.
...
'Attar began The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-tair) with an invocation praising the holy Creator in which he suggested that one must live a hundred lives to know oneself; but you must know God by the deity, not by yourself, for God opens the way, not human wisdom. 'Attar believed that God is beyond all human knowledge. The soul will manifest itself when the body is laid aside. One cannot gain spiritual knowledge without dying to all things. When the birds assemble, they wonder why they have no king. The Hoopoe presents herself as a messenger from the invisible world with knowledge of God and the secrets of creation. She recommends Simurgh as their true king, saying that one of his feathers fell on China.
The Nightingale says that the love of the Rose satisfies him, and the journey is beyond his strength; but the Hoopoe warns against being a slave of passing love that interferes with seeking self-perfection. The Parrot longs for immortality, and the Hoopoe encourages the Peacock to choose the whole. The Duck is too content with water to seek the Simurgh. The Hoopoe advises the Partridge that gems are just colored stones and that love of them hardens the heart; she should seek the real jewel of sound quality. The Humay is distracted by ambition, and the Owl loves only the treasure he has found. The Hoopoe reprimands the Sparrow for taking pride in humility and recommends struggling bravely with oneself. She states that the different birds are just shadows of the Simurgh. If they succeed, they will not be God; but they will be immersed in God. If they look in their hearts, they will see the divine image. All appearances are just the shadow of the Simurgh. Those loving truly do not think about their own lives and sacrifice their desires. Those grounded in love renounce faith and religion as well as unbelief. One must hear with the ear of the mind and the heart.
...
The lamp of the bright life had darkened.
When my father life was taken by God.
It was the darkest moment ever
experienced by my mother and family.
...
O Liberty! thou goddess, heavenly bright,
profuse of bliss and pregnant with delight,
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
...
Whose hands should have been hand cuffed and blind folded?
To face a death penalty and possible murder in cold
Can this practice be not put on permanent hold?
Can this be construed as cowardice act or bold?
...
Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday,
in all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleeping
those volcanoes like ashen roses, or the incurable sore
...
Daughter of Heav'n, relentless pow'r,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,
...
299
Your Riches—taught me—Poverty.
Myself—a Millionaire
...
Not for any single system we feel proud
can’t claim high and speak so loud
what will we gain by making them unstable?
Would we able to bye peace and remain stable?
...
I am black unshaped stone
Simple but famous for quality alone
When cut to size may assume name of diamond
All envy keen interest and passion found
...
The Song of the Shirt
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
...
GREAT are the myths--I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve--I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
...
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.
...
Lately world leaders have consented to some session
May be Herculean task but agreed to reduce tension
Hunger, death and starvation looming over horizon
Atmosphere is also not favourable with depletion of ozone’s
...
172
'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
...
She drift's around without luggage, living off a blank page
Without family, finding a time to bloom,
Raising her face to the sun,
As it embraces her desire to have fun,
...
Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?
When you've scattered the last of the farmer bands, and the war for a while is over,
You will hold the land – ay, you'll hold the land – the land that your rifles cover.
...
Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
...
She sees things of beauty in all that she see
And what's beautiful to her seems ugly to me
What to her is a flower to me is a weed
We do seem so different so different indeed.
...
It is a light, that the wind has extinguished.
It is a pub on the heath, that a drunk departs in the afternoon.
It is a vineyard, charred and black with holes full of spiders.
It is a space, that they have white-limed with milk.
...
Don't fear death in earthly travels.
Don't fear enemies or friends.
Just listen to the words of prayers,
To pass the facets of the dreads.
...
Politician pouncing
with a mike on podium
Born on a dark dense night
Held in a jail
...
A photograph appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1994...a malnourished dying child trying to crawl to a UN aid post a kilometer away...watched over by a vulture just waiting for the child to die...
Kevin Carter zoomed his camera lens, that day in’94,
...
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
...
“Fishing in troubled waters” means end of happiness
Infusing hatred and violence where exists oneness
Excuses advanced with malign and hollowness
Waiting for chance to ruin and reduce to nothingness
...
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
...
This is the life which is full of care,
Persons like this attitude are found rare.
Tolerance is too difficult to bear in body,
Such persons are there to speak truth ready.
...
I was,
And I am.
So shall I be to the end of time,
For I am without end
...
On no work of words now for three lean months in the
bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body
I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:
...
Why don't we all take a hard look at the world we live in.
Why is it that we have all the hate not love,
Why is there all ways room for war, not peace?
Why is it that no one ever thinks about the consequences of their actions?
...
I.
She was an aged woman; and the years
Which she had numbered on her toilsome way
...
Silence again. The glorious symphony
Hath need of pause and interval of peace.
Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,
Save hum of insects' aimless industry.
...
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that
...
V-isions of fame and fortune
A-re deep inside your mind;
N-ever let them fade,
N-or let them stay behind.
...
So many ideas you have conceived
Either at work or leisure,
But you have not perceived, the idea of me.
I am the idea, unconceived, the idea of anti reason,
...
Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
...
In the Book of God (Ilahi-nama) 'Attar framed his mystical teachings in various stories that a caliph tells his six sons, who are kings themselves and seek worldly pleasures and power.
The first son is captivated by a virgin princess, and his father tells him the adventures of a beautiful and virtuous woman who attracts several men but miraculously survives their abuse and then forgives them. They acknowledge that carnal desire is necessary to propagate the race but also recognize that passionate love can lead to spiritual love, which can annihilate the soul in the beloved.
Other stories indicate the importance of respecting the lives of other creatures such as ants or dogs. One only thinks oneself better than a dog because of one's dog-like nature.
...
A birth in poverty is luck supreme!
A death in poverty, a great blessing;
A life of poverty is rare a dream;
Achievements great, stark poverty can bring.
...
ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all, or mistress of all--aplomb in the midst of irrational
things,
...
She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
...
If we see better through tiny,
grim glasses, we like to wear
tiny, grim glasses.
...
An Elegy for Tristan Tzara
In the hungry kitchen
The dog sings for its dinner.
...
Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
...
Riding the waves of sorrow
Gliding through imagery
In pursuit of salvation
Flies a poet's imagination.
...
Educated heads
Sitting in parliament
Or heads wanting power
The power to serve
...
When the world is fast asleep,
Along the midnight skies--
As though it were a wandering cloud--
The ghostly dream-ship flies.
...
I
If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
...
'Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu'
(Lét the whole world be happy)
One who keeps such wish in mind
One who keeps no discrimination
...
When you thought me poor,
my poverty was shaming.
When blackness was unwelcome
we found it best
...
Turn on again, that old, once new film of your life -
it's called the 'establishing shot'; and as it pans
across your once-favourite city, corny in the sunshine,
arty in the dusk and rain, the home to all your dreams,
...
In a world that is
Free from terrible terrorism and death
Full of happy harmony and warmth
...
When I have come with happy heart to sixty years and ten,
I'll buy a boat and sail away upon a summer sea;
And in a little lonely isle that's far and far from men,
In peace and praise I'll spend the days the Gods allow to me.
...
A dazzling flower that gives joy
Even in death and poverty.
And when the earth and sky
Turn dark and weary,
...
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
...
Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
...
Before the Altar, bowed, he stands
With empty hands;
Upon it perfumed offerings burn
Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.
...
And all that is this day. . .
The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. ..
Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his
...
Blown up with painful care and hard to light,
A glimmering torch blown in a moment out,
Suspended by a web, an angler's bait,
Floating at stake along the stream of chance,
...
Who bides his time, and day by day
Faces defeat full patiently,
And lifts a mirthful roundelay,
However poor his fortunes be,--
...
If I could take the world
into my world;
If I could be God-like
what would I do
...
She has little money to enjoy or spend
But to other people she is a good friend
To help out her poverty line neighbours she goes out of her way
And for her assistance she never asks for pay.
...
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
...
We have travelled to Moon and Mars
We are to conquer many more stars
With the blessings of science and human brain
So much progress have we made in material gain
...
I was born in Africa
In the war and poverty
I love Africa my country
I will save Africa.
...
The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry
His power is his left hand
It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
...
There's a dear little home in Good-Children street -
My heart turneth fondly to-day
Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet
Make sweetest of music at play;
...
Father, poverty is a gift
ask any bird taking a rain bath.
Son, don't make me laugh
there's nothing but rain
...
And this place our forefathers made for man !
This is the process of our Love and Wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us--
Most innocent, perhaps--and what if guilty ?
...
We will build a tower
With unbridled spring-water attitudes
Flowing with fires of charity
For all the suffering multitudes
...
Delivering Poems Around The World
Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge...
12/13/2023 1:59:51 AM # 1.0.0.1119
