Rainbow Poems | Best Poems about Rainbows

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    Epitaph For A Darling Lady Poem by Dorothy Parker

    All her hours were yellow sands,
    Blown in foolish whorls and tassels;
    Slipping warmly through her hands;
    Patted into little castles.

    Shiny day on shiny day
    Tumble in a rainbow clutter,
    As she flipped them all away,
    Sent them spinning down the gutter.

    Leave for her a red young rose,
    Go your way, and save your pity;
    She is happy, for she knows
    That her dust is very pretty.

     

     

    The Creation I Poem by Kahlil Gibran

    The God separated a spirit from Himself and fashioned it into Beauty. He showered upon her all the blessings of gracefulness and kindness. He gave her the cup of happiness and said, ‘Drink not from this cup unless you forget the past and the future, for happiness is naught but the moment.’ And He also gave her a cup of sorrow and said, ‘Drink from this cup and you will understand the meaning of the fleeting instants of the joy of life, for sorrow ever abounds.’

    And the God bestowed upon her a love that would desert he forever upon her first sigh of earthly satisfaction, and a sweetness that would vanish with her first awareness of flattery.

    And He gave her wisdom from heaven to lead to the all-righteous path, and placed in the depth of her heart and eye that sees the unseen, and created in he an affection and goodness toward all things. He dressed her with raiment of hopes spun by the angels of heaven from the sinews of the rainbow. And He cloaked her in the shadow of confusion, which is the dawn of life and light.

    Then the God took consuming fire from the furnace of anger, and searing wind from the desert of ignorance, and sharp- cutting sands from the shore of selfishness, and coarse earth from under the feet of ages, and combined them all and fashioned Man. He gave to Man a blind power that rages and drives him into a madness which extinguishes only before gratification of desire, and placed life in him which is the specter of death.

    And the god laughed and cried. He felt an overwhelming love and pity for Man, and sheltered him beneath His guidance.

     

     

    Hope Is A Tattered Flag Poem by Carl Sandburg

    Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.
    Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white
    The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,
    The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,
    The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,
    The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,
    The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,
    The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,
    The kiss and the comforting laugh and resolve—
    Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
    The spring grass showing itself where least expected,
    The rolling fluff of white clouds on a changeable sky,
    The broadcast of strings from Japan, bells from Moscow,
    Of the voice of the prime minister of Sweden carried
    Across the sea in behalf of a world family of nations
    And children singing chorals of the Christ child
    And Bach being broadcast from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
    And tall skyscrapers practically empty of tenants
    And the hands of strong men groping for handholds
    And the Salvation Army singing God loves us….

     

     

    Impossible To Tell Poem by Robert Pinsky

    to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert

    Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
    Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
    In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

    The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
    Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
    Impossible to tell in writing. ‘Bashõ’

    He named himself, ‘Banana Tree’: banana
    After the plant some grateful students gave him,
    Maybe in appreciation of his guidance

    Threading a long night through the rules and channels
    Of their collaborative linking-poem
    Scored in their teacher’s heart: live, rigid, fluid

    Like passages etched in a microscopic cicuit.
    Elliot had in his memory so many jokes
    They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture

    Inside his brain, one so much making another
    It was impossible to tell them all:
    In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana.

    Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother,
    Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child
    And her new baby in a squalid apartment

    Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors.
    She tells the child she’s going to kill herself.
    She broods, she rages. Hoping to distract her,

    The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations
    Of different people in the building, he jokes,
    He feels if he keeps her alive until the father

    Gets home from work, they’ll be okay till morning.
    It’s laughter versus the bedroom and the pills.
    What is he in his efforts but a courtier?

    Impossible to tell his whole delusion.
    In the first months when I had moved back East
    From California and had to leave a message

    On Bob’s machine, I used to make a habit
    Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through,
    I would pretend that I forgot the punchline,

    Or make believe that I was interrupted–
    As though he’d be so eager to hear the end
    He’d have to call me back. The joke was Elliot’s,

    More often than not. The doctors made the blunder
    That killed him some time later that same year.
    One day when I got home I found a message

    On my machine from Bob. He had a story
    About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short,
    One day while walking along the street together

    They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them,
    And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest.
    Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy,

    Impossible to tell–a dead-end challenge.
    But here it is, as Elliot told it to me:
    The dead man’s widow came to the rabbis weeping,

    Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him.
    Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not.
    But the short rabbi told her to bring the body

    Into the study house, and ordered the shutters
    Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed
    Over the body, chanting a secret blessing

    Out of Kabala. ‘Arise and breathe,’ he shouted;
    But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then
    The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles

    And danced around the body, chanting and praying
    In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed
    In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician

    For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin
    In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes
    Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer

    Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition
    He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man’s face.
    Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture

    And said, ‘Arise and breathe!’ And still the body
    Lay as before. Impossible to tell
    In words how Elliot’s eyebrows flailed and snorted

    Like shaggy mammoths as–the Chinese widow
    Granting permission–the little rabbi sang
    The blessing for performing a circumcision

    And removed the dead man’s foreskin, chanting blessings
    In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse
    From head to foot, and with a final prayer

    In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion,
    He seized the dead man’s head and kissed the lips
    And dropped it again and leaping back commanded,

    ‘Arise and breathe!’ The corpse lay still as ever.
    At this, as when Bashõ’s disciples wind
    Along the curving spine that links the renga

    Across the different voices, each one adding
    A transformation according to the rules
    Of stasis and repetition, all in order

    And yet impossible to tell beforehand,
    Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee
    Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer,

    Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching,
    A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: ‘Hoo boy!’ he says,
    ‘Now that’s what I call really dead.’ O mortal

    Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal
    Lords of the underground and afterlife,
    Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto,

    What has a brilliant, living soul to do with
    Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac
    And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers,

    Our languages don’t touch you, you’re like that mother
    Whose small child entertained her to beg her life.
    Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi,

    The one who washed his hands of all those capers
    Right at the outset. Or maybe he became
    The author of these lines, a one-man renga

    The one for whom it seems to be impossible
    To tell a story straight. It was a routine
    Procedure. When it was finished the physicians

    Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded,
    But Elliot wouldn’t wake up for maybe an hour,
    They should go eat. The two of them loved to bicker

    In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish,
    On Sandra’s to some Sicilian dialect.
    He used to scold her endlessly for smoking.

    When she got back from dinner with their children
    The doctors had to tell them about the mistake.
    Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement

    Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment
    Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book.
    Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent,

    Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer.
    But the Universal is the goal of jokes,
    Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper

    Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures
    Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There’s one
    A journalist told me. He heard it while a hero

    Of the South African freedom movement was speaking
    To elderly Jews. The speaker’s own right arm
    Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers.

    He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots
    For the ANC–a group the old Jews feared
    As ‘in with the Arabs.’ But they started weeping

    As the old one-armed fighter told them their country
    Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote
    Could make a country their children could return to

    From London and Chicago. The moved old people
    Applauded wildly, and the speaker’s friend
    Whispered to the journalist, ‘It’s the Belgian Army

    Joke come to life.’ I wish I could tell it
    To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud
    Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious,

    So out of hand the army could barely function.
    Finally one commander assembled his men
    In one great room, to deal with things directly.

    They stood before him at attention. ‘All Flemings,’
    He ordered, ‘to the left wall.’ Half the men
    Clustered to the left. ‘Now all Walloons,’ he ordered,

    ‘Move to the right.’ An equal number crowded
    Against the right wall. Only one man remained
    At attention in the middle: ‘What are you, soldier?’

    Saluting, the man said, ‘Sir, I am a Belgian.’
    ‘Why, that’s astonishing, Corporal–what’s your name?’
    Saluting again, ‘Rabinowitz,’ he answered:

    A joke that seems at first to be a story
    About the Jews. But as the renga describes
    Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals

    And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer
    The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl,
    So in the joke, just under the raucous music

    Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance
    Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow,
    Over the banana tree the moon in autumn–

    Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.

     

     

    Mandela – The Immortal Icon Poem by Chinedu Dike

    The Peace Warrior Of Mzansi, among heroes – a colossus!
    Sun Of The Nation; a rare gift of Providence.
    Once, entangled in the web of racist succubus;
    Unruffled he declares before High Justice:
    ‘[I]t is an ideal for which I am prepared to die! ‘ Silence –
    Pregnant with dreadful menace in court ensued.
    A beast of burden consequent of unshakeable stance.
    In the slammer Symbol Of The Struggle he attained;
    But Apartheid demon persisted in its Treachery.
    ‘Coalition Of Conscience’ inspired outcry for Liberty;
    Plagues of sanctions shatter manacles of Slavery.
    Looming on the horizon – a sight of Equality.
    From abyss of darkness emerged the Institution;
    The Immortal Icon and mastermind of Rainbow Nation.

     

     

    Mattins Poem by George Herbert

    I cannot ope mine eyes,
    But thou art ready there to catch
    My morning-soul and sacrifice:
    Then we must needs for that day make a match.

    My God, what is a heart?
    Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
    Or star, or rainbow, or a part
    Of all these things or all of them in one?

    My God, what is a heart?
    That thou should’st it so eye, and woo,
    Pouring upon it all thy art,
    As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?

    Indeed man’s whole estate
    Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
    He did not heav’n and earth create,
    Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

    Teach me thy love to know;
    That this new light, which now I see,
    May both the work and workman show:
    Then by a sun-beam I will climb to thee.

     

     

    Candy Man Poem by Roald Dahl

    Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew
    Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two
    The candy man, the candy man can
    The candy man can ’cause he mixes it with love
    And makes the world taste good

    Who can take a rainbow, wrap it in a sigh
    Soak it in the sun and make a strawberry–lemon pie
    The candy man?
    The candy man, the candy man can
    The candy man can ’cause he mixes it with love
    And makes the world taste good

    Willy Wonka makes everything he bakes
    Satisfying and delicious
    Talk about your childhood wishes
    You can even eat the dishes

    Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream
    Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
    The candy man, Willy Wonka can, the candy man can
    The candy man can ’cause he mixes it with love
    And makes the world taste good

    And the world tastes good’
    Cause the candy man thinks it should

     

     

    The Bridge Poem by Octavio Paz

    Between now and now,
    between I am and you are,
    the word bridge.

    Entering it
    you enter yourself:
    the world connects
    and closes like a ring.

    From one bank to another,
    there is always
    a body stretched:
    a rainbow.
    I’ll sleep beneath its arches.

     

     

    In Time Of Silver Rain Poem by Langston Hughes

    In time of silver rain
    The earth puts forth new life again,
    Green grasses grow
    And flowers lift their heads,
    And over all the plain
    The wonder spreads

    Of Life,
    Of Life,
    Of life!

    In time of silver rain
    The butterflies lift silken wings
    To catch a rainbow cry,
    And trees put forth new leaves to sing
    In joy beneath the sky
    As down the roadway
    Passing boys and girls
    Go singing, too,

    In time of silver rain When spring
    And life
    Are new.

     

     

    So Alone! Poem by Sylvia Chidi

    So alone in my bed
    Alone listening to nightly whispers
    Alone in my thoughts
    Alone standing in court
    Alone I stand and fight
    Alone I pray for rainbow lights

    Alone in the morning I awake
    Alone I celebrate my joys
    Alone I cry out my sadness
    Alone I voice out my fears
    Alone in strenght

    Alone in wealth
    Alone in good health
    Alone I try to understand
    Alone I seek knowledge
    Alone I share what is mine
    Alone I try not to be alone
    Alone when my time has come, I pass away