Rocking Horse

Fate is a mahout astride a large elephant, impersonal
as dark sun with winds raging across a desert. Fate is
the old bones of dead Indians being resurrected as
ground mist on the edge of a salt marsh.

And not knowing what to call personal destiny we
resort to the clunker "fate"    -    "beggar and king"
enjoying, or so it is said, the dust together. I prefer wet
leaves breaking canisters of restraint and calling to
the earth as little paws digging into the humus of the
sky.

Paul Cameron Brown

Paul Cameron Brown is a Canadian poet known for his extensive work in both poetry and art criticism. Born in western Canada, Brown has had a prolific career in writing, often intertwining themes of human experience and nature. His works have been showcased in various literary magazines and anthologies. With a style that is both reflective and evocative, he has gained recognition not only in Canada but also internationally.

Paul Cameron Brown

Desire

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Isles And Rivulets

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Slaughterhouse

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Canadian Book Review Annual 1985

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Double Ballade Of Life And Fate

Fools may pine, and sots may swill,
Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,
Moralists may scourge and drill,
Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.
Let them whine, or threat, or wail!
Till the touch of Circumstance
Down to darkness sink the scale,
Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance.

What if skies be wan and chill?
What if winds be harsh and stale?
Presently the east will thrill,
And the sad and shrunken sail,
Bellying with a kindly gale,
Bear you sunwards, while your chance
Sends you back the hopeful hail:-
'Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance.'

Idle shot or coming bill,
Hapless love or broken bail,
Gulp it (never chew your pill!),
And, if Burgundy should fail,
Try the humbler pot of ale!
Over all is heaven's expanse.
Gold's to fi...

William Ernest Henley

Warhorse

    Taken as metaphor ...
    Ophelia's funeral oration,
    derogatory snout
    of the Morning Glory
    breathing pollened fire
    overladen steps of the church.

    II
    Limestone rock
    caulking in grey
    limpid cracks ...
    doublet and hose
    then gold doubloons
    down sunlit honey
    where a smear of red lichen
    onto brown-yellow moss
    colonizes rock.

    III
    Poor Ophelia, dicing
    for a sedentary-free Hamlet,
    duty-free of fissures + frost.

    IV
    Elusiveness,
    water rushing over stone
    torrent of words
    (Ophelia receiving these),
    red hand of the berry
    swollen shut,
    prisoner in the dock
    bird of quarry, pit
    &am...

Paul Cameron Brown

The Boundary Rider

The bridle reins hang loose in the hold of his lean left hand;
As the tether gives, the horse bends browsing down to the sand,
On the pommel the right hand rests with a smoking briar black,
Whose thin rings rise and break as he gazes from the track.

Already the sun is aslope, high still in a pale hot sky,
And the afternoon is fierce, in its glare the wide plains lie
Empty as heaven and silent, smit with a vast despair,
The face of a Titan bound, for whom is no hope nor care.

Hoar are its leagues of bush, and tawny brown is its soil,
In that immensity lost are human effort and toil,
A few scattered sheep in the scrub hardly themselves to be seen;
One man in the wilderness lone; beside, a primaeval scene.

Firm and upright in his saddle as a soldier upon parade,

Thomas Heney

The Undertaker's Horse

"To-tschin-shu is condemned to death.
How can he drink tea with the Executioner?"
Japanese Proverb.


The eldest son bestrides him,
And the pretty daughter rides him,
And I meet him oft o' mornings on the Course;
And there kindles in my bosom
An emotion chill and gruesome
As I canter past the Undertaker's Horse.

Neither shies he nor is restive,
But a hideously suggestive
Trot, professional and placid, he affects;
And the cadence of his hoof-beats
To my mind this grim reproof beats:,
"Mend your pace, my friend, I'm coming. Who's the next?"

Ah! stud-bred of ill-omen,
I have watched the strongest go,men
Of pith and might and muscle,at your heels,
Down the plantain-bordered highway,
(Heaven send it ne'er be my way!)
In a l...

Rudyard

Fate

The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,
The spray of the tempest is white in air;
The winds are out with the waves at play,
And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.

The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
The panther clings to the arching limb;
And the lions whelps are abroad at play,
And I shall not join in the chase to-day.

But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
And the hunters came from the chase in glee;
And the town that was builded upon a rock
Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.

Bret Harte

Red Fox (Red Horse Lake)

    A magnificent Red Devil
    splayed out in his tracks;
    this tumultuous soul, baron of the backwoods
    with his provenance unknown ...
    this compromise to individuality
    abandons him to chorome death
    under a canopy-canapé dream-coated rock dome.

    Trepanned, empire of trees, dark matter
    & a castle of leaves,
    a fish-hawk for a tomahawk
    in his thermo-cline eyes ...
    dithyrambic young osprey in the offing,
    candelabra under stars.

    Going inland for freshwater prawns,
    sandalwood and tortoiseshells
    finding bewitchment amid moving cars.

Paul Cameron Brown