Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A.E. Housman

This must be one of the saddest poems ever written. It's interesting that in such a short poem both 'blue remembered hills' and 'land of lost content' have become (relatively) common phrases.

Thanks, Holly, this is as close to perfection as one can get.

Oh yes - AE Housman, how could I have forgotten him?

I wrote a poem dedicated to Housman and it was one I read at my first (one and only) public reading - in, of all places, Much Wenlock in the lovely county of Shropshire. Poetic, ye might say!

Another one for my little list!

Philip

It's difficult to discuss the perfect poem without first agreeing on how to define it, which is impossible since poetry is subjective.
However, it's interesting to see people's preferences, and some lovely poems have been posted above.
Here's a favourite of mine:

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

Angel Shark, by Hailey Leithauser

Wan oxymoron of a fish, dotted
dun and fledge winged, mud-feathered when
it glides through silt, by nature bottom fed.

Whoever named it named himself a man
of undisputed Christian eye,
who saw in mortal depths a guardian

and humblest trumpeter. God tongue to cry,
it haunts an earth too dread for dread-
filled man til rapture calls: Arise and fly.



Just one possible choice. I could select any number of poems from this list. This one has many of the qualities that float my boat: compression, layers, contrast, physicality, rhythm, rhyme.

Rose

A new name for me and a great discovery.

Has something of the Ted Hughes about it - the shark that hungers down the blood smell even to a leak of its own side...

Your little list of attributes is in itself a masterpiece of compression.

It reminds me somewhat (though I can't say why), also, of W S Merwin's

THE CURRENT

For a long time some of us
lie in the marshes like dark coats
forgetting that we are water

dust gathers all day on our closed lids
weeds grow up through us

but the eels keep trying to tell us
writing over and over in our mud
our heavenly names

and through us a thin cold current
never sleeps

its glassy feet move on until they find stones

then cloud fish call to it again
your heart is safe with us

bright fish flock to it again touch it
with their mouths say yes
have vanished

yes and black flukes wave to it
from the Lethe of the whales

Wow. Thanks for posting that.

Good heavens. There's no argument. "Jabberwocky" is the perfect poem.
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/j...bberwocky.html





Jabberwocky


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll


Actually there's no such thing as a perfect poem, thank goodness.

Yes, I think there are just favorite poems. Here's another huge favorite of mine:

Returning Turtle
by Robert Lowell


Weeks hitting the road, one fasting in the bathtub,
raw hamburger mossing in the watery stoppage,
the room drenched with musk like kerosene -
no one shaved, and only the turtle washed.
He was so beautiful when we flipped him over:
greens, reds, yellows, fringe of the faded savage,
the last Sioux, old and worn, saying with weariness,
"Why doesn't the Great White Father put his red
children on wheels, and move us as he will?"
We drove to the Orland River, and watched the turtle
rush for water like rushing into marriage,
swimming in uncontaminated joy,
lovely the flies that fed that sleazy surface,
a turtle looking back at us, and blinking.
.

Yes - Lewis Carrol. Indeed.

And I have finally worked out what the perfect poem is...

...the next one you're (one is) going to write.

P