Invictus by William Ernst Henley

When I was younger I clung to it’s message of perseverance. It ended up being the first poem that I ever memorized.

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 aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

Dolce et Decorum est - Wilfred Owen. A grim, anti-war masterpiece written by a soldier fighting in the trenches in WW1

Ozymandias - Percy Shelley. A reminder of human transience and hubris

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas. Helps me to endure when things seem bleak or hopeless.

Subh Milis (Sweet jam). It’s a short and powerful Irish poem reminding parents to be kind to their kids.

English translation below. Can’t seem to get the formatting correct on mobile…

Bhí subh milis ar bháscrann an doras

ach mhúch mé an corraí

ionaim a d’éirigh

mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá

a bheadh an bháscrann glan

agus an lámh beag – ar iarraidh…”

There was jam on the door handle

But I quelled the anger

That rose inside me

Because I thought of the day

That the handle would be clean

And the little hand - longed for

It’s not DNS,
There’s no way it’s DNS,
It was DNS

I really like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. I first encountered it as a result of reading Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently novels, but one day I saw the original in the library and just read it from start to finish. It’s fantastic, so weird, so compelling.

I also like his Kubla Khan, the imagery of the “caverns measureless to man” and the “sunless sea” have always stuck with me.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

Mark Strand - Keeping things whole. It helps me deal with depression. I find it very soothing when I’m feeling down. It’s one of the few I know by heart.

This Bread I Break by Dylan Thomas

It’s a short, beautiful poem that laments man’s destructive relationship with nature.

Teeny tiny axolotl

There is really not a lotl

Of you. Not a jot or tittle

So I’ll call you axolitl

— anon

Li Bai - Quiet Night Thought

床前明月光
疑是地上霜
举头望明月
低头思故乡

Before my bed bright moonlight pools
Almost like frost on the ground
Raising my head I see the shining moon
Bowing my head I think of home

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturitions are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,

That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]

Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and slipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,

Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,

See if I don’t.

– Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It always struck me as both humble and proud and it only becomes more meaningful as I age.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

I can’t remember the number but it’s a sonnet by (of course) Shakespeare but it’s the one where he’s ruminating about how he’s eventually going to die.

It starts off by comparing the fleeting short existence of a person to the summer season.

A Supermarket in California by Ginsberg. Idk why it just always has stuck with me

We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I remember reading it in middle school. Poetry hadn’t done much for me at that point of my life but that one got through to me and helped me appreciate the medium much more in general