Famous Short Paris Poems
Famous Short Paris Poems. Short Paris Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Paris short poems
by
Ogden Nash
Hypochondriacs
Spend the winter at the bottom of Florida and the summer on top of
the Adirondriacs.
You go to Paris and live on champagne wine and cognac
If you're dipsomognac.
If you're a manic-depressive
You don't go anywhere where you won't be cheered up, and people say
"There, there!" if your bills are excessive.
But you stick around and work day and night and night and day with
your nose to the sawmill.
If you're nawmill.
Note: Dipsomaniac -- alcoholic
by
David Lehman
What I propose is not
Marxism, which
is not dead yet in
the English department,
Not maximalism, which was
a still-born alternative
to minimalism,
Nor Maxism, which rests on
adulation of Max
Beerbohm, parodist
nonpareil,
But maximism, the love
of adages,
Or Maximism, the advocacy of
maximum gastronomic
pleasure on the model
of a meal at Maxim's
in Paris in, say, 1950.
Is that clear?
by
Victor Hugo
("Aveugle comme Homère.")
{Improvised at the Café de Paris.}
Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind,
But one weak child to guide his vision dim.
The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind—
He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him.
H.L.C., "London Society."
by
James A Emanuel
Stairstep music: ups,
downs, Bill Robinson smiling,
jazzdancing the rounds.
She raised champagne lips,
danced inside banana hips.
All Paris wooed Jo.
Banana panties,
perfumed belt, Jazz tatooing
lush ecstasies felt.
Josephine, royal,
jewelling her dance, flushing
the bosom of France.
by
Edgar Lee Masters
My name used to be in the papers daily
As having dined somewhere,
Or traveled somewhere,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Where I entertained the nobility.
I was forever eating or traveling,
Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
Now I am here to do honor
To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
No one cares now where I dined,
Or lived, or whom I entertained,
Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!
by
Paul Celan
The line
that remained, that
became true: .
.
.
your
house in Paris -- become
the alterpiece of your hands.
Breathed through thrice,
shone through thrice.
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It's turning dumb, turning deaf
behind our eyes.
I see the poison flower
in all manner of words and shapes.
Go.
Come.
Love blots out its name: to
you it ascribes itself.
Tr.
Michael Hamburger
by
William Butler Yeats
O bid me mount and sail up there
Amid the cloudy wrack,
For peg and Meg and Paris' love
That had so straight a back,
Are gone away, and some that stay
Have changed their silk for sack.
Were I but there and none to hear
I'd have a peacock cry,
For that is natural to a man
That lives in memory,
Being all alone I'd nurse a stone
And sing it lullaby.
by
Paul Celan
The line
that remained, that
became true: .
.
.
your
house in Paris -- become
the alterpiece of your hands.
Breathed through thrice,
shone through thrice.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It's turning dumb, turning deaf
behind our eyes.
I see the poison flower
in all manner of words and shapes.
Go.
Come.
Love blots out its name: to
you it ascribes itself.
Tr.
Michael Hamburger
by
David Lehman
It's the day of the ram
and the head of the year
Rosh Ha'Shanah at
services I sat next to
Mel Torme who outshone
all comers with his bar
mitzvah heroics while on
my left is Barnett Newman
big talker whose favorite
subjects include the horses
and the stock market he
knows the odds the women
are seated upstairs this is
an orthodox congregation
very serious I make
eye contact with the wife
of Menelaus who runs off
with Paris confident I'm Paris.
by
Emily Dickinson
Pigmy seraphs -- gone astray --
Velvet people from Vevay --
Balles from some lost summer day --
Bees exclusive Coterie --
Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with Emerald --
Venice could not show a check
Of a tint so lustrous meek --
Never such an Ambuscade
As of briar and leaf displayed
For my little damask maid --
I had rather wear her grace
Than an Earl's distinguished face --
I had rather dwell like her
Than be "Duke of Exeter" --
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the Bumblebee.
by
Robert William Service
The sunshine seeks my little room
To tell me Paris streets are gay;
That children cry the lily bloom
All up and down the leafy way;
That half the town is mad with May,
With flame of flag and boom of bell:
For Carnival is King to-day;
So pen and page, awhile farewell.
by
Victor Hugo
{Bought with the proceeds of Readings of "Les Châtiments" during
the Siege of Paris.}
{1872.}
Thou deadly crater, moulded by my muse,
Cast thou thy bronze into my bowed and wounded heart,
And let my soul its vengeance to thy bronze impart!
by
Robert Burns
IN Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’;
Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,
In Lon’on or Paris, they’d gotten it a’.
Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s divine,
Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw:
There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton,
But Armour’s the jewel for me o’ them a’.
by
Friedrich von Schiller
That which Grecian art created,
Let the Frank, with joy elated,
Bear to Seine's triumphant strand,
And in his museums glorious
Show the trophies all-victorious
To his wondering fatherland.
They to him are silent ever,
Into life's fresh circle never
From their pedestals come down.
He alone e'er holds the Muses
Through whose breast their power diffuses,--
To the Vandal they're but stone!