poetry
The Ants and the Clock
By HH
The ants all marched in tidy lines, And counted dots and drew their signs. "The numbers fit! The charts are fine! We've measured every grand decline!" They counted red, they counted blue, An…
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Original Poetry & Classic Poems
Read original poetry by HH alongside voices from the wider poetry collection. Browse poems about nature, love, fear, resilience and the strange business of being human.
poetry
The Big Cat
By HH
The little cat had lost his house, His silver dish, his clockwork mouse. He walked where crooked branches spread Like hungry fingers overhead. A mountain moved between the trees And brought …
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The Cries of a Hawk
By HH
Kree-ah! Come, my silver wing! You cross the sky and softly sing; I send you every song I know— But still you hum and onward go. Kree-ah, kree-ah, fly with me! Over the hill and over the tre…
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Twinkle, Twinkle
By HH
twinkle twinkle, up so high we still fight, don’t ask why twinkle twinkle, little light we say wrong, we say right say it’s true, say it’s right then we swing, then we fight nothing here sai…
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Leviathan
By HH
“Of every man, against every man.” — Thomas Hobbes “Man is something that is to be surpassed.” — Friedrich Nietzsche They seem like they’re drowning, though. They seem like they’re drowning,…
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The Walrus and the Screens
By HH
he spoke of brighter days to come, where hunger fades and hearts grow numb. he smiled through fog — the crowd believed, their pockets light, their hope retrieved. he said, “the shore’s a pro…
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Testing, Testing
By HH
Testing, testing. Hope this shit works. The mouse has a mop and the owl has concerns. I posted a thought. It came back with a fee. “Who’s charging?” I asked. Said the owl, “Certainly not me.…
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Lemmings
By HH
Pick up a stone, put somebody down. Call it your home, put a fence around. Teach your little boy how to stand his ground. Give him your stone when you lay yours down. King wants land, so he …
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Tenacity
By HH
I'm not the biggest, never was. No iron skin, no bones of steel. I've never quite understood the cause Of something in me that won't yield. I know a fist can break a jaw. I know a bullet doe…
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2C-B, LSD
By HH
Basel, Switzerland! 1943! A curious chemist makes a discovery! Please remain seated... Too late. --- Just say no, just say no, That's what they told us long ago. Close your eyes and count to…
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An invincible summer
By Albert Camus
In the middle of winter, I finally learned that an invincible summer lived within me.…
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Gitanjali 35
By Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from t…
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Hope is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That cou…
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Dreams
By Langston Hughes
What happens when you stop giving yourself something to reach for?…
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The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
The choice you made. The story you tell yourself afterward.…
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How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to …
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Love After Love
By Derek Walcott
Finding your way back to the person you were before you forgot yourself.…
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Remember
By Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You…
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If We Must Die
By Claude McKay
A refusal to have your dignity decided by the people threatening it.…
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The Solitude of Night
By Li Bai
A voice from China. Read the poem at its source.…
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In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
By Anna Akhmatova
A voice from Russia. Read the poem at its source.…
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To Our Land
By Mahmoud Darwish
A voice from Palestine. Read the poem at its source.…
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Possibilities
By Wisława Szymborska
A voice from Poland. Read the poem at its source.…
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Mailbox
By Kim Hyesoon
A voice from South Korea. Read the poem at its source.…
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A Vision
By Adonis
A voice from Syria / Lebanon. Read the poem at its source.…
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Raindrum
By Niyi Osundare
A voice from Nigeria. Read the poem at its source.…
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Rain
By Hone Tuwhare
A voice from Aotearoa New Zealand. Read the poem at its source.…
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Invictus
By William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried al…
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Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And …
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Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son The jaws that bite, the claws t…
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The Hollow Men
By T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead. A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Ar…
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Sonnet XXI: A Witless Galant
By Michael Drayton
A witless gallant a young wench that woo'd (Yet his dull spirit her not one jot could move), Entreated me, as e'er I wish'd his good, To write him but one sonnet to his love; When I, as fast…
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On the Miracle of the Multiplied Loaves
By Richard Crashaw
See here an easy feast that knows no wound, That under hunger's teeth will needs be sound; A subtle harvest of unbounded bread, What would ye more? Here food itself is fed.…
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Mother's Day Proclamation
By Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our h…
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