Has a poem ever made you cry?

Yes….

———

“A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You”
Jon Sands

When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.

In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.

Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway

for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still

believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.

Yes, this one.

In tears I saw you sinking
I watched you fade away;
My heart was fully broken,
You fought so hard to stay

But When I saw you sleeping,
So peaceful, free from pain
I could not wish you back
To suffer that again.

A million times I needed you
One million times I cried;
If love could have saved you
You never would have died.

If I could only have one wish
One dream that would come true,
I’d pray to God with all my heart
For yesterday and you.
——Author Unknown
(I don’t know the title, but this poem makes me cry)

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

—Hart Crane

I also cried once reading ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ but that was unusual.

Not poems,but letters ;)

Alone
by Edgar Allen Poe, has always struck a melancholy chord with me that I could relate to, even as a pre-teen.

Well I never cried like a baby, but this poem really got to my tears flowing:
****************
A HUNTER’S POEM

Lem Ward Crisfield

A hunter shot at a flock of geese

That flew within his reach,

Two were stopped in their rapid flight

And fell on the sandy beach.

The male bird lay at the water’s edge

And just before he died,

He faintly called to his wounded mate

And she dragged herself to his side.

She bent her head and crooned to him

In a way distressed and wild,

Caressing her one and only mate

As a mother would a child.

Then covering him with her broken wing

And gasping with failing breath,

She laid her head against his breast

A feeble honk…then death!

This story is true though crudely told,

I was the man in this case,

I stood knee deep in snow and cold

And the hot tears burned my face.

I buried the birds in the sand where they lay,

Wrapped in my hunting coat,

And I threw my gun and belt in the bay

When I crossed in the open boat.

Hunters will call me a right poor sport

And scoff at the thing I did,

But that day something broke in my heart…

And shoot again??? God forbid!!!

Everytime my wife and i hear these lyrics to this song, we both shed a tear. it reminds us of us and the love we share for each other. its a song of the 70s. it was first a poem, then converted into a song…..........Bobby Goldsboro sings the lyrics and its on Youtube.

“Honey”.

“Some Few Walk Easy.”
“There are some few who walk easy on the earth,

Passing from childhood to wisdom without a usual turbulence,

Too aware to be young,

Too alive ever to be old.

Contemporary and companion of every life

Beyond discrimination

Or explanation.

God’s gift to His world

To make the lonely laugh,

The neglected come alive,

To stir spirits and warm hearts,

To enrich the discordant parts

Of all the rest of life.

Such gentle ones make a lasting mark on every life they touch

Without trying or preaching, judging, or seeking,

Merely by their presence on the earth.

A shade tree by a favorite stream,

The morning sun on a damp meadow,

A green hill mirrored in a quiet lake,

A sugar pine silver in the moonlight.

Until the morning comes and they are gone too soon,

Leaving us in darkness and unspeakable sadness.

Only later in the sunlight do we remember

When a brook laughs with the same gentle eyes,

Or a frightened fawn leaps in sudden surprise,

Or a dog runs carelessly across a field.

Remember

An excited face and a loving heart
,
A death too soon and a life apart.

Missing
A presence and a touch

And a smiling face so very much,

Only grateful that she could stay as long

Only grateful for the special song

She sang to us as long as she could live.

Grateful above all

That she walked easy on the earth.”

James Kavanaugh

I’m afraid they leave me cold. Now bills, they have me sobbing my bloody eyes out :¬(

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

How do I love thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

I can’t think of a poem that’s made me cry, but a lot of songs have. For me it’s more about the lyrics than the music, so maybe that is a “yes” after all.

Yes, the one at the funeral (in the movie four weddings and), when the gay guy had died.

No, but this one came close…...

Yuan Zhen (779 – 831)
An Elegy II

We joked, long ago, about one of us dying,
But suddenly, before my eyes, you are gone.
Almost all your clothes have been given away,
Your needlework is sealed, I dare not look at it.

I continue your bounty to our men and our maids,
Sometimes, in a dream, I bring you gifts.
This is a sorrow that all mankind must know,
But not as those know it who have been poor together.

@flutherother, damn, that’s a great poem.