Everyone has -- or should have -- his or her favorite poem. Do you like a poem because of its meaning and the way in which it recalls a memory from your past? Do you like it because of the beauty of its imagery and the inventiveness of its metaphors? Do like it because of the way it sounds and the playfulness of its rhyme? Or do you just like it, and you don't know why? Whatever the reason, poetry serves its purpose best when it is read and memorized, when it is recitable in our heads or to a friend in an hour of need ... or maybe just an hour of sunshine. Below, some of our readers recite their favorite poems to remind us that -- regardless of how it is absorbed, by sight or by sound -- poetry is about enjoyment.________________________________________________________________
For a Five-Year-Old
by Fleur Adcock (1934- )
A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.
I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
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The Trees
by Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
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