To save myself from the fear of death,

I became desperate about the “desperate times” and wrote.

My countrymen at the front lines read these poems.

Men read them and went to their deaths.

The Submarine captain who wrote his family

That he reread my poems each day soon afterward went down

      with his ship.

—-

More poems posted on a Tuesday can be found here

Small black cat carries
the dead mouse to the door, ice
circles the witness moon.

Under the barn floor
the dog and I hear squeaking.
Swallows guard their eggs.

August heat glimmers,
white sequins litter the lake.
I wish for fireflies.

Leaves cling to the boy’s
boots. Darkness enters early.
Windows close their eyes.

—-

For more poems posted on a Tuesday see here…featuring a poem and reading by writer and filmmaker Kathyrn Hunt this week…

Hard night. Homer. Homeless sails.
I’ve listened to the list of ships in my own voice.
I’ve seen, as my own voice fails,
Those strange cranes arrowing sorrowing over Hellas.

Ever alien, ever more interior, these shores,
And the sun-flecked, god-picked wings glinting spray—
Anxiety’s army, ghost souls of Achaea,
Without your one longing, what is dying for?

The singer and the sea, all things are moved by love.
But what is that to me? Homer is dead.
And a wall of silence, eerily eloquent,
Breaks like a black wave above my bed.

(1915)

—-

I really like the alliteration in the first line, as well as the whole first verse and third verse. I’m read this several times now…but I just really don’t like the middle verse..it sort transcends into a romanticism that I have never been able to appreciate, anyway details of the translation of this poem are here

To read a bunch of other poems posted on a Tuesday by poets (and poetry appreciators) head here

Dreams are back, sort of,
telling me things I already know –
I know my woman is crazy,
I know Robin Goodfellow poisoned my eyes,
I know the expiration date is coming up.
We live by the sea and everything rots.
The sugar hardens into crust.
The guitar strings rust.
The great tree of life spreads its limbs
wide in the middle of the heart,
but it won’t show up on an MRI –
in death by a thousand cuts,
love madness and love lost,
need fire burning through the night,
and the astronaut I imagine
arriving a thousand years from now,
barely older after a long flight,
the way we all return again
from a world of dreams,
amazed –

————————

Many more poems posted on a Tuesday here

Neither the atom bomb,
Nor the London conference;
Tweezers in one hand,
A mirror on the other;
Does she care about the world?

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Other poems posted on a Tuesday here at the Tuesday Poem blog..
and this is my 300th post here...have a good day :)