This is an amazing one by the younger Sylvia Plath
Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.
The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.
So this poem is twenty two lines, oh well...
The Dead Slaver's Tale
Dim an grey was the silent sea,
Dim was the crescent moon;
From the jungle back of the shadowed lea
Came a tom-tom's eerie croon
When we glutted the waves with a hundred slavers
From a Jerkra barracoon
Our was to bar, with a man of war
Was sailing with a canvas full;
So the doomed men up from the hold we bore,
Hacked them to pieces and hurled them o'er,
And we heard the grim sharks as they tore
The flesh from each sword-cleft skull.
Then fast we fled to the rising sun
But we could not flee the dead
And ever behind our flying ship
Wavered a trail of red.
She sank like a stone off Calabar
With all of her bloody crew.
There was no breeze to shake a spar,
No reef her hull to hew.
But ducky hands rose out of the deep,
And dragged her under the blue.
I like different things than the rest of everyone, as you can tell.