The best Author's Poems

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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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When death comes, it will have your eyes-
This death that is always with us,
From morning till evening, sleepless,
Deaf, like an old remorse
Or some senseless bad habit. Your eyes
Will be a pointless word,
A stifled scream, a silence;
The way they appear to you each morning,
When you lean over, alone,
Into the mirror. Sweet hope,
That day we too shall know
That you are life and you are nothingness.
For each of us, death has a face.
When death comes, it will have your eyes.
It will be like quitting some bad habit,
Like seeing a dead face
Resurface out of the mirror,
Like listening to shut lips.
We'll go down into the vortex in silence.

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Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

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I'll wander the streets till I'm dead tired,
I'll learn to live alone and look each passing face
straight in the eye and still be what I am.
This coolness ascending in me, searching through my veins,
is an awakening each morning that I've never felt
so real -except that I feel stronger
than my body, and a colder shiver comes each morning now.
The mornings I had at twenty are now far: away.
And tomorrow, twenty-one: tomorrow I'll go out in tile streets.
I remember every stone, and the layers of the sky.
From tomorrow people will start seeing me,
I'll walk straight, and perhaps I'll pause
to see myself in windows. There were mornings once
when I was young and didn't know it, didn't even know
that who was passing by was me - a woman, mistress
of herself. The scrawny girl I used to be
was awakened by a weeping that went on for years.
Now it's as if that grieving never was.
And all I want are colours. Colours don't weep,
they're like an awakening: tomorrow colours
will return. Every woman will go out into the street,
each body a colour - even the children.
And this body of mine, dressed after so much paleness
in a frivolous red, will repossess its life.
I'll feel glances slide over me
and I'll know I'm me: a sidelong look
and I'll see I'm there, among people. Each new morning
I'll go out into the streets and look for colours.

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When the lighted lamp is brought into the room I shall go. And then, perhaps, you will listen to the night, and hear my song when I am silent.

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You are still the one with the stone and the sling,
Man of my time. You were in the cockpit,
With the malevolent wings, the meridians of death,
-I have seen you - in the chariot of fire, at the gallows,
At the wheels of torture. I have seen you: it was you,
With your exact science set on extermination,
Without love, without Christ. You have killed again,
As always, as your fathers killed,
as the animals killed that saw you for the first time.
And this blood smells as on the day
When one brother told the other brother:
"Let us go into the fields." And that echo, chill, tenacious,
Has reached down to you, within your day.
Forgot, O sons, the clouds of blood
Risen from the earth, forget your fathers:
Their tombs sink down in ashes,
Black birds, the wind, cover their heart.

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Be patient towards all that
is unresolved in your heart...
try to adore questions, so similar to
locked rooms and books written
in a foreign language.
Don't seek now those answers that can't be given to you
for you wouldn't be able to live with them.
Living is everything. Live the questions now.
Maybe you shall receive it, without you noticing it,
to live the distant
day in which you'll have the answer.

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Remember Barbara
It rained endlessly on Brest on that day
And you walked smiling
Radiant enchanted dripping-wet
In the rain
Remember Barbara
It was raining endlessly on Brest
And I came across you in the Rue de Siam
You were smiling
And I smiled the same
Remember Barbara
You whom I did not know
You who did not know me
Remember
Remember even though that very day
Forget not
A man, under a porch, was sheltering
And he called your name
Barbara
And you ran towards him in the rain
Dripping-wet enchanted radiant
And you threw yourself into his arms
Remember that, Barbara
And do not resent it if I call you: "tu"
I say "tu" to everyone I love
Even if I have seen them only once
I say" tu" to all who love each other
Even if I do not know them
Remember Barbara
Forget not
The quiet and happy rain
Hereon your happy face
Hereon the happy town
The rain hereon the merry sea
On the arsenal
On the shuttle boat to Ushant
Oh Barbara
What a bloody farce the war
What's become of you now
In the rain of iron
Of fire, of steel of blood
And the one who clasped you in his arms
Lovingly
Is he now dead, missing, or still alive
Oh Barbara
It's raining endlessly on Brest
As it rained before
But now it is not the same, and all set abased
It is a rain of mourning, terrible and desolate
Now it is even no longer the storm
Of iron, of steel of blood
Merely clouds
That go coma like dogs
Dogs that go missing
Along the current over Brest
And will go pouring in the far
In the very far away from Brest
Of which there is nothing left.

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The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?
See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

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Smile

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile.