"This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse

As read by Roger Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAQFMKohPEA

"A Thousand Kisses Deep" by Leonard Cohen

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/leonard-cohen-thousand-kisses-deep-poem-lyrics.html You came to me this morning And you handled me like meat You’d have to be a man to know How good that feels, how sweet My mirror twin, my next of kin I’d know you in my sleep And who but you would take me in A thousand kisses deep I loved you when you opened Like a lily to the heat You see I’m just another snowman Standing in the rain and sleet Who loved you with his frozen love His secondhand physique With all he is and all he was A thousand kisses deep I know you had to lie to me I know you had to cheat To pose all hot and high Behind the veils of sheer deceit Our perfect porn aristocrat So elegant and cheap I’m old but I’m still into that A thousand kisses deep I’m good at love, I’m good at hate It’s in between I freeze Been working out but it’s too late (It’s been too late for years) But you look good, you really do They love you on the street If you were here I’d kneel for you A thousand kisses deep The autumn moved across your skin Got something in my eye A light that doesn’t need to live And doesn’t need to die A riddle in the book of love Obscure and obsolete Till witnessed here in time and blood A thousand kisses deep But I’m still working with the wine Still dancing cheek to cheek The band is playing Auld Lang Syne But the heart will not retreat I ran with Diz, I sang with Ray I never had their sweep But once or twice they let me play A thousand kisses deep I loved you when you opened Like a lily to the heat You see I’m just another snowman Standing in the rain and sleet Who loved you with his frozen love His secondhand physique With all he is and all he was A thousand kisses deep But you don’t need to hear me now And every word I speak It counts against me anyhow A thousand kisses deep Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46cSksKVzzs

Rainer Maria Rilke

“When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910, March 27, 1903.

America's Most Widely Misread Literary Work

I got this one wrong too:
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/555959/robert-frost-road-not-taken/

Paul Muldoon

Robert Fulford had this nice profile of Paul Muldoon in the National Post.

NOT by Anne Michaels, Toronto's Poet Laureate

not will, not desire:
perhaps prayer

not still:
held

at the end you said:
I want to keep my eyes open,
to miss nothing

not entreaty, not regret
not future, not past:
touch and warm weight

breath and again:
what word can be heard

not loss, not absence:
perhaps soul

not inside, not outside:
dusk's doorway

not alone

From All We Saw

George Gray by Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)

I HAVE studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.	5
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail	10
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—	15
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.