Poems That Make Grown Men Cry Quotes

“A Meeting In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Remember Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann’d: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. (1862)”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, May-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known; (How often they dart out of themselves, as if to con-found me and mock me! How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,) May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, And might prove (as of course they would) naught of what they appear, or naught anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; To me, these and the like of these are curiously answer’d by my lovers, my dear friends, When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. (1860)”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Don’t ask the way of those who know it, you might not get lost.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“to live is to harbour so many profound losses.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“I am the self-consumer of my woes;”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Girl never see to know from me Who was the fairest of them all. What wouldst thou say if I asked thee: Where is the snow we watched last Fall?”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“A Poetry Reading at West Point I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall filled with bodies dressed alike, each toting a copy of my book. What would my shrink say, if I had one, about such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, and gave his name and rank, and then, closing his parentheses, yelled “Sir” again. “Why do your poems give me a headache when I try to understand them?” he asked. “Do you want that?” I have a gift for gentle jokes to defuse tension, but this was not the time to use it. “I try to write as well as I can what it feels like to be human,” I started, picking my way care- fully, for he and I were, after all, pained by the same dumb longings. “I try to say what I don’t know how to say, but of course I can’t get much of it down at all.” By now I was sweating bullets. “I don’t want my poems to be hard, unless the truth is, if there is a truth.” Silence hung in the hall like a heavy fabric. My own head ached. “Sir,” he yelled. “Thank you. Sir.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Essay So many poems about the deaths of animals. Wilbur’s toad, Kinnell’s porcupine, Eberhart’s squirrel, and that poem by someone—Hecht? Merrill?— about cremating a woodchuck. But mostly I remember the outrageous number of them, as if every poet, I too, had written at least one animal elegy; with the result that today when I came to a good enough poem by Edwin Brock about finding a dead fox at the edge of the sea I could not respond; as if permanent shock had deadened me. And then after a moment I began to give way to sorrow (watching myself sorrowlessly the while), not merely because part of my being had been violated and annulled, but because all these many poems over the years have been necessary,—suitable and correct. This has been the time of the finishing off of the animals. They are going away—their fur and their wild eyes, their voices. Deer leap and leap in front of the screaming snowmobiles until they leap out of existence. Hawks circle once or twice around their shattered nests and then they climb to the stars. I have lived with them fifty years, we have lived with them fifty million years, and now they are going, almost gone. I don’t know if the animals are capable of reproach. But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“The Book Burnings When the regime ordered that books with harmful knowledge Should be publicly burnt, and all around Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books To the pyre, one banished poet One of the best, discovered, studying the list of the burnt To his horror, that his books Had been forgotten. He hurried to his desk On wings of rage and wrote a letter to the powers that be. Burn me! he wrote, his pen flying, burn me! Don’t do this to me! Don’t pass me over! Have I not always told The truth in my books? And now I am treated by you as a liar! I order you: Burn me! (C. 1941)”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Requiem Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you ’grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. (1880-1884)”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“The Masque of Anarchy XC-XCI ‘And these words shall then become Like Oppression’s thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again—again—again— ‘Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“So it was stale time then, day in, day out,”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Not Cancelled Yet Some honorary day if I play my cards right I might be a postage stamp but I won’t be there to lick me and licking is what I liked, in tasty anticipation of the long dark slither from the mailbox, from box to pouch to hand to bag to box to slot to hand: that box is best whose lid slams open as well as shut, admitting a parcel of daylight, the green top of a tree, and a flickering of fingers, letting go.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“For Andrew Wood What would the dead want from us Watching from their cave? Would they have us forever howling? Would they have us rave Or disfigure ourselves, or be strangled Like some ancient emperor’s slave? None of my dead friends were emperors With such exorbitant tastes And none of them were so vengeful As to have all their friends waste Waste quite away in sorrow Disfigured and defaced. I think the dead would want us To weep for what they have lost. I think that our luck in continuing Is what would affect them most. But time would find them generous And less self-engrossed. And time would find them generous As they used to be And what else would they want from us But an honored place in our memory, A favorite room, a hallowed chair, Privilege and celebrity? And so the dead might cease to grieve And we might make amends And there might be a pact between Dead friends and living friends. What our dead friends would want from us Would be such living friends.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Dear Bryan Wynter 1 This is only a note To say how sorry I am You died. You will realise What a position it puts Me in. I couldn’t really Have died for you if so I were inclined. The carn Foxglove here on the wall Outside your first house Leans with me standing In the Zennor wind. Anyhow how are things? Are you still somewhere With your long legs And twitching smile under Your blue hat walking Across a place? Or am I greedy to make you up Again out of memory? Are you there at all? I would like to think You were all right And not worried about Monica and the children And not unhappy or bored.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“End of Summer An agitation of the air, A perturbation of the light Admonished me the unloved year Would turn on its hinge that night. I stood in the disenchanted field Amid the stubble and the stones, Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me The song of my marrow-bones. Blue poured into summer blue, A hawk broke from his cloudless tower, The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew That part of my life was over. Already the iron door of the north Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows Order their populations forth, And a cruel wind blows.”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them

“Dulce et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, – My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. (1917–1918)”
― Anthony Holden, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them