Great Poem: "'Had I not been awake...'" by Seamus Heany

'Had I not been awake'
by Seamus Heaney

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence;
Had I not been awake I would have missed it

It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
Afterwards. And not now.

Great Poem: "The Dawn" By Federico Garcia Lorca

It amazes me that this poem was written 80 years ago, and it still has so much insight into the New York of today. It's truly a great poem.

The Dawn

BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

The New York dawn has

four columns of mud

and a hurricane of black doves

that paddle in putrescent waters.

The New York dawn grieves

along the immense stairways,

seeking amidst the groins

spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.

The dawn comes and no one receives it in his mouth,

for there no morn or hope is possible.

Occasionally, coins in furious swarms

perforate and devour abandoned children.

The first to come out understand in their bones

that there will be no paradise nor amours stripped of leaves:

they know they are going to the mud of figures and laws,

to artless games, to fruitless sweat.

The light is buried under chains and noises

in impudent challenge of rootless science.

Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger,

as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.

Great Poem: "Barges on the Hudson" by Babette Deutsch

Barges on the Hudson

BY BABETTE DEUTSCH

Going up the river, or down, their tuneless look

Is of men grown poorer who, though ageing, wear

Some majesty of the commonplace. Old barges

Are cousin to those whom poverty becomes—

To late November, the north, nightfall, all the

Deprived whom increment of loss enlarges.

They have no faces, have no voices, even

Of their own selves no motion. Yet they move.

With what salt grace, with a dim pride of ocean

Uncompassable by a fussy tug,

Prim nurse that drags or nudges the old ones on.

They must borrow their colors from the river, mirror

The river’s muddy silver, in dulled red echo

A sundown that beds in soot. Their freight, rusty,

Faded, cindery, is like the past

The charwoman deals with. Yesterday’s business

They carry with the dignity of the blind.

By night the river is black, they are black’s shadows

Passing. The unwrinkled stars dispute that darkness

Alone with a lantern on a one-eyed spar.