This Is Just To Say, by William Carlos Williams 

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Close All The Windows, by Cyril Wong

After discovering the Internet, my mother has trouble finding a connection, and calls me up for help while I am at work. We keep miscommunicating. She has clicked open so many windows the computer threatens to hang. And my logic runs out of variations to explain the same thing over and over. Suddenly, I imagine she is looking for her future through that glowing screen and I am really helping her to find back her life after all her children have left for new homes, new families to love. ‘What now?’ she asks. ‘Try again,’ I reply, the phone pressed to my ear. ‘Close all the windows. Tell me — what do you see?’ Commentary: It might be useful to teach students the etymology of words, and how the meaning of certain words alters with the culture and time. Technological change, in particular, has brought about linguistic and cultural changes. Words such as ‘windows’, ‘connection’ and ‘logic’ have been prescribed new meanings...
Read more

Tipp-Ex-Sonate, by Andre Letoit

Image
*P.S. This anti-apartheid poem by Andre Letoit, written under the pseudonym Koos Kombuis, stumped students at a Cambridge examination. The poem comprises only punctuation marks. I added this poem into the list because I think it is an interesting way of highlighting the silences of the Other (which is what the poem is about), and also to draw attention to grammar and punctuation. There is also a lot of room for interpretation.
Read more

Neighbours, by Alfian Sa'at

During Hari Raya she knocks on my conscience, I knock on her door and I give her cakes. She says she likes them and gives me Sweets with gelatine inside. I throw them away. Poor woman, doesn’t know how to make cakes. Her children eat Maggi after school every day. That's why the elder one is in Normal stream And the younger one can't spell her name. If I was her age I wouldn't be wearing shorts at home. No shame, she doesn't know how to hide her womanhood. When the children are naughty and I beat them I close the door: I hear she's a gossip. But she beats her children harder than I do What to do her children are like that. I once hear her scream she wanted to kill herself. These people never value their own lives. Other times I see her I smile and she smiles back And her children smile and call me auntie. But in our hands we hold with fists clenched tight The keys to our homes, each night we slam the bolt shut.
Read more