Estudiante

Anthology of CSEC Poetry

Jon Estrada
English Literature
September 11, 2012

Table of Content

Orchids -Hazel Simmons McDonald
I leave this house

box pieces of the five-week life I’ve gathered.

I’ll send them on

to fill spaces in my future life.

5 One thing is left

a spray of orchids someone gave

from a bouquet one who makes a ritual of flower-givingsent.

The orchids have no fragrance

but purple petals draw you

10 to look at the purple heart.

I watered them once

when the blossoms were full blown

like polished poems.

I was sure they’d wilt

15 and I would toss them out with the five-week litter.

They were stubborn.

I starved them.

They would not die.

This morning the bud atthe stalk’s tip unfurled.

20 I think I’ll pluck the full-blown blooms

press them between pages of memory.

Perhaps in their thin dried transparency

I’ll discover their peculiar poetry.
Hazel Simmons McDonald

* Hazel Simmons-McDonald is the Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies Open Campus.
* She served as Head of the Departmentof Language, Linguistics and Literature, Deputy Dean of Outreach, Deputy Dean – Planning and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Cave Hill Campus.
* She is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Cave Hill Campus of the University in Barbados.
* Professor Simmons-McDonald continued to teach in the Applied Linguistics graduate programme until the end May 2008, and shecontinues to supervise students pursuing higher degrees in the field.

Sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
William Wordsworth

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
5 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres andtemples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
10 In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth

*William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is a British poet.

* He was credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of Lyrical Ballads(1798) in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

* William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District.

* His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney.

*The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature.

* He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father.

* The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.

Once Upon a Time
Gabriel Okara

Once upon a time, son,
they usedto laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
5 while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
10 Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:they say, and when I come
15 again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.
20 I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

25 And I have...