Favorite Poems

[Tempest]

What are your favorite poems and what do you like about them? (If you post a poem, please give credit to the poet!)

One of my favorites is The Wolf's Postscript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' by Agha Shahid Ali, which I like for somewhat obvious reasons. :p I like seeing things from the villain's perspective. Here's the awesome poem (note: you probably won't get this poem if you haven't read the original story (http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/type0333.html#grimm)):

First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn't wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn't speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn't know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you'll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.

[Ieliv]

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

by Sara Teasdale

I first saw it in a book called The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, I highly recommend it if your into science fiction:)