English poems.

Good poems, Trang. I encountered the second poem long back when I read ''Nghệ thuật ngôn ngữ thơ Đường'' (The art of Tang poetry) by two oversea Chinese authors. They praised it very much.

William Carlos Williams
The Shadow
Soft as the bed in the earth
Where a stone has lain --
So soft, so smooth and so cool,
Spring closes me in
With her arms and her hands.
Rich as the smell
Of new earth on a stone,
That has lain, breathing
The damp through its pores --
Spring closes me in
With her blossomy hair;
Brings dark to my eyes.
Metric Figure
There is a bird in the poplars --
It is the sun!
The leaves are little yellow fish
Swimming in the river;
The bird skims above them --
Day is on his wings.
Phoenix!
It is he that is making
The great gleam among the poplars.
It is his singing
Outshines the noise
Of leaves clashing in the wind.

I got this from one of my instructors recently. I thought it''s pretty nice to share with those who have the passion for poetry.
A Poet''s Advice to Students
A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.
This may sound easy. It isn''t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel--but that''s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling--not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you''re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you''re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn''t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time--and whenever we do it, we''re not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you''ve written one line of one poem, you''ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poet is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world--unless you''re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn''t.
It''s the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
Source: From the Ottawa Hills Spectator, October 26, 1955.
Được TrnHo sửa chữa / chuyển vào 04:54 ngày 08/12/2006

Cross (1925, 1926)
Langston Hughes
My old man''s a white old man
And my old mother''s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I''m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I''m gonna die,
Being neither white nor black?
Her Lips Are Copper Wire (1923)
Jean Toomer
whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incadescent

I do not argee with the author. He emphasis so heavily on feeling of composing/ appreciating poetry that knowledge for understanding poetry was taken slightly. There is no pure-sentimental (feeling) poetry. Poets can not compose poetry without vocabulary (a learned vocabulary), metaphor, and understanding of poetry forms and rules which naive poetry students have difficulty to face with.
Poetry, at first as an art, is built on knowledge from ancient to modern. Ancient poetry, such as Greek poetry- Oddysey and Iliad or Tang poetry was never for ''common people''-unlearned poeple. Modern poetry with various techniques, complex forms,'' -ism'', movements from East to West. Is is for unlearned people? No, definitely.

THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When the love is gone.​

Francis William Bourdillon
Được Ang3l sửa chữa / chuyển vào 14:08 ngày 09/12/2006