Samuel Beckett is best known as a playwright and novelist, but his poetry is an essential part of his literary vision. Beckett’s poems are marked by extreme minimalism, philosophical depth, and emotional austerity. Unlike lyrical or decorative poetry, his verse strips language down to its barest elements, often reflecting themes of existence, silence, failure, loneliness, time, and death.
Beckett’s poetic voice is closely linked to existentialism and absurdism. His poems frequently explore the struggle to find meaning in a world that resists explanation. Words appear hesitant, broken, or fragmented, mirroring the human mind confronting emptiness. Silence is as important as speech in his poetry, and what is left unsaid often carries more weight than what is written.
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| Samuel beckett |
He wrote poetry in both English and French, sometimes translating his own work. Collections such as Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates reveal his early modernist influences, while later poems become increasingly sparse and meditative. Beckett’s poetic style aligns closely with his dramatic works like Waiting for Godot, emphasizing repetition, stillness, and uncertainty.
Samuel Beckett’s poems challenge readers to confront the limits of language and existence. Though often difficult, they reward careful reading with profound insight into the human condition and the quiet despair—and persistence—of being alive.
Untitled
My way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life,
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end
My peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
je suis ce cour de sable qui glisse
entre le galet et le dune
le pluie d'etre pleur sur ma vie
sur moi ma vie qui me fuit me poursuit
et finira le jour de son commencement
cher instant je te vois
dan ce rideau de brume qui recule
ou je n'aurai plus a fouler ces long seuils mouvants
et vivrai le temps d'une porte
qui s'ouvre et se referme
Yoke of Liberty
The lips of her desire are grey
and parted like a silk loop
threatening
a slight wanton wound
She preys wearily
on sensitive wild things
proud to be torn
by the grave crouch of her beauty.
But she will die and her snare
tendered so patiently
to my tamed watchful sorrow
will break and hang
in a pitiful crescent.
Dortmunder
In the magic of the Homer dusk
past the red spire of sanctuary
I null she royal hulk
hasten to the violet lamp to the K’in music of the bawd.
She stands before me in the bright stall
sustaining the jade splinters
the scarred signaculum of purity quiet
the eyes the eyes black till the plagal east
shall resolve the long night phrase.
Then, as a scroll, folded,
and the glory of her dissolution enlarged
in me, Habbakuk, mard of all sinners.
Schopenhauer is dead, the bawd
The Vulture
dragging his hunger through the sky
of my skull shell of sky and earth
stooping to the prone who must
soon take up their life and walk
mocked by a tissue that may not serve
till hunger earth and sky be offal
Serena I
without the grand old British Museum
Thales and the Arentino
on the bosom of the Regent’s Park the Phlox
crackles under the thunder
scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift
all things full of gods
pressed down and bleeding
a weaver-bird is tangerine the harpy is past caring
the condor likewise in his mangy boa
they stare out across monkey hill the elephant
Ireland
the light creeps down their old home canyon
sucks me aloof to that old reliable
the burning btm of George the drill
ah across the way a adder
broaches her rat
white as snow
in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
limae labor
ah father father who art in heaven
I find me taking the Crystal Palace
for the Blessed Isles from Primose Hill
alas I must be that kind of person
hence in Ken Wood who shall find me
my breath held in the midst of thickets
none but the most quarried lovers
I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged
for the obeisance to Tower Bridge
the viper’s curtsy to and from the City
till in the dusk a lighter
blind with pride
tosses aside the scarf of the bascules
then in the grey hold of the ambulance
throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs
then I hug me below among the canaille
until a guttersnipe blast his cerned eyes
demanding ‘ave I done with the mirror
I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men’s Quarters
Bloody Tower
and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren’s giant bully
and curse the day caged panting on the platform
under the flaring urn
I was not born Defoe
but in Ken Wood
who shall find me
my brother the fly
the common housefly
sidling out of darkness into light
fastens on his place in the sun
whets his six legs
revels in his planes his poisers
it is the autumn of his life
he could not serve typhoid and mammon
Cascando
1
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives
2
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you
