25 Dark Poems for When You Want to Explore the Shadows
Poetry can portray joy and pleasure as well as sadness, anguish, and the transience of existence. These dark poems, at their best, help us find catharsis. They express the broken mirror that occasionally allows us to see our world.
Darkness and sadness are close relatives in nature. Black has been the color of mourning since the dawn of mankind. Sunlight draws happiness, whereas darkness draws sadness.
Darkness and sorrow have a certain romance. There is something enigmatic about what is concealed and unknowable. Dark poetry could try to romanticize melancholy and misery.
The poetry listed below illustrate darkness in all its manifestations. Poems that honor the night or convey the burdens of mortality, pain, grief, or any other unfavorable feelings are available.
1. Nothing But Death By Pablo Neruda
There are cemeteries that are lonely,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.
2. Forgetfulness By Karinna Alves Gulias
Time could carry our weight
if only we could paint dice
to wait on the windowsill
Wait for a guest
Wait for a moment of your pride
or patience
And let it be
Dusty or kept
3. Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree —
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most contantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who wil call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.
4. The Door in the Dark by Robert Frost
In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don’t pair any more
With what they used to pair with before.
5. Haiku by Jack Kerouac
Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.
6. If Death Is Kind By Sara Teasdale
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
7. Old Photographs By Babeba Baderoon
On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.
In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground. In this one,
her body is not that far from yours.
Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?
8. The Street by Octavio Paz
It’s a long and silent street.
I walk in the dark and trip and fall
and get up and step blindly
on the mute stones and dry leaves
and someone behind me is also walking:
if I stop, he stops;
if I run,, he runs. I turn around: no one.
Everything is black, there is no exit,
and I turn and turn corners
that always lead to the street
where no one waits for me, no one follows,
where I follow a man who trips
and gets up and says when he sees me: no one.
9. If He dissolve — then by Emily Dickinson
If He dissolve — then —
there is nothing — more —
Eclipse — at Midnight —
It was dark — before —
Sunset — at Easter —
Blindness — on the Dawn —
Faint Star of Bethlehem —
Gone down!
Would but some God — inform Him —
Or it be too late!
Say — that the pulse just lisps —
The Chariots wait —
Say — that a little life — for His —
Is leaking — red —
His little Spaniel — tell Him!
Will He heed?
10. Good night! which put the candle out? by Emily Dickinson
Good night! which put the candle out?
A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.
Ah! friend, you little knew
How long at that celestial wick
The angels labored diligent;
Extinguished, now, for you!
It might have been the lighthouse spark
Some sailor, rowing in the dark,
Had importuned to see!
It might have been the waning lamp
That lit the drummer from the camp
To purer reveille!
11. Through the Dark Sod — as Education by Emily Dickinson
Through the Dark Sod — as Education —
The Lily passes sure —
Feels her white foot — no trepidation —
Her faith — no fear —
Afterward — in the Meadow —
Swinging her Beryl Bell —
The Mold-life — all forgotten — now —
In Ecstasy — and Dell —
12. Woods by Wendell Berry
I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.
13. The Villain by William Henry Davies
While joy gave clouds the light of stars,
That beamed wher’er they looked;
And calves and lambs had tottering knees,
Excited, while they sucked;
While every bird enjoyed his song,
Without one thought of harm or wrong–
I turned my head and saw the wind,
Not far from where I stood,
Dragging the corn by her golden hair,
Into a dark and lonely wood.
14. Looking into a Face by Robert Bly
Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body
Bringing fish up near the sun
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!
I have wandered in a face for hours
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.
15. Changed by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.
Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.
Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run.
16. Spilled Sugar By Thylias Moss
I cannot forget the sugar on the table.
The hand that spilled it was not that of
my usual father, three layers of clothes
for a wind he felt from hallway to kitchen,
the brightest room though the lightbulbs
were greasy.
17. Lot’s Wife By Wislawa Szymborska
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn’t so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind…
18. Autobiographical by Erica Jong
The lover in these poems
is me;
the doctor,
Love.
He appears
as husband, lover
analyst & muse,
as father, son
& maybe even God
& surely death.
All this is true.
The man you turn to
in the dark
is many men.
This is an open secret
women share
& yet agree to hide
as if
they might then
hide it from themselves.
I will not hide.
I write in the nude.
I name names.
I am I.
The doctor’s name is Love.
19. In Those Years by Adrienne Rich
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I
20. All The Names We Will Not Know By Naomi Shihab Nye
Before dawn, trembling in air down to the old river,
circulating gently as a new season
delicate still in its softness, rustling raiment
of hopes never stitched tightly enough to any hour.
I was almost, maybe, just about, going to do that.
21. Song Of Some Ruin By Marilyn Krysl
We loved
like we fought, slugging our way toward each other,
sending up flares to announce our advance. And when our city
burned, we stood in the ashes, and admired each other’s
bodies. Now I ask you: how will we manage
without the steadiness of our long unhappiness?
22. Child by Sylvia Plath
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate —
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little
Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.
23. The Wish by Alexander Pushkin
I shed my tears; my tears – my consolation;
And I am silent; my murmur is dead,
My soul, sunk in a depression’s shade,
Hides in its depths the bitter exultation.
I don’t deplore my passing dream of life —
Vanish in dark, the empty apparition!
I care only for my love’s infliction,
And let me die, but only die in love!
24. The Night by Alexander Pushkin
My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,
Disturbs the velvet of the dark night’s mantle,
By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,
Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood —
And run the streams of love, run, full of you alone,
And in the dark, your eyes shine like the precious stones,
And smile to me, and hear I the voice:
My friend, my sweetest friend.
.
.
I love.
.
.
I’m yours.
.
.
I’m yours!
25. A Hymn To Childhood By Li-Young Lee
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder to the attic?
You can read these poems about death or any of these gloomy literature if these dark poems have whetted your appetite for the melancholy side of existence.
