Watch these poems come to life

It’s National Poetry Month like you’ve never seen it before

We asked 10 designers to put 10 poems in motion in honor of National Poetry Month. Here are four of our favorites.

Illustration by Rafael Verona

NOT FADE AWAY

By Michael Robbins

Half of the Beatles have fallen
and half are yet to fall.
Keith Moon has set. Hank Williams
hasn’t answered yet.

Children sing for Alex Chilton.
Whitney Houston’s left the Hilton.
Hendrix, Guru, Bonham, Janis.
They have a tendency to vanish.

Bolan, Bell, and Boon by car.
How I wonder where they are.
Hell is now Jeff Hanneman’s.
Adam Yauch and three Ramones.

[This space held in reserve
for Zimmerman and Osterberg,
for Bruce and Neil and Keith,
that sere and yellow leaf.]

Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings,
Stinson, Sterling, Otis Redding.
Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer,
Ronnie Dio, Donna Summer.

Randy Rhoads and Kurt Cobain,
Patsy Cline and Ronnie Lane.
Poly Styrene, Teena Marie.
Timor mortis conturbat me.

“Not Fade Away”, from “The Second Sex” by Michael Robbins, copyright © 2014 by Michael Robbins. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Illustration by Charlie Brand

FACE DOWN

By Mary Karr

What are you doing on this side of the dark?
You chose that side, and those you left
feel your image across their sleeping lids
as a blinding atomic blast.
Last we knew,
you were suspended midair
like an angel for a pageant off the room
where your wife slept. She had
to cut you down who’d been (I heard)
so long holding you up. We all tried to,
faced with your need, which we somehow
understood and felt for and took
into our veins like smack. And you
must be lured by that old pain smoldering
like woodsmoke across the death boundary.
Prowl here, I guess, if you have to bother somebody.
Or, better yet, go bother God, who shaped
that form you despised from common clay.
That light you swam so hard away from
still burns, like a star over a desert or atop
a tree in a living room where a son’s photos
have been laid face down for the holiday.

Courtesy of Mary Karr

Illustration by Hannah Jaocobs

A SECOND LIFE

By Dunya Mikhail

After this life
we’ll need a second life
to apply what we learned
in the first.

We make one mistake
after another
and need a second life
to forget.

We hum endlessly
as we wait for the departed:
we need a second life
for the whole song.

We go to war
and do everything Simon says:
we need a second life
for love alone.

We need time
to serve out our prison terms
so we can live free
in our second life.

We learn a new language
but need a second life
to practice it.

We write poetry and pass away,
and need a second life
to know the critics’ opinions.

We rush around
all over the place
and need a second life
to stop and take pictures.

Suffering takes time:
we need a second life
to learn to live
without pain.

“A Second Life” By Dunya Mikhail, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, from “The Iraqi Nights,” copyright © 2013 by Dunya Mikhail. Translation copyright © 2014 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Illustration by Bran Dougherty-Johnson

PORTRAIT

By John Yau

Or is it
a poor trait

I am a
parasite

I lift off
the wings

of others

Courtesy of John Yau/Bran Dougherty-Johnson/FCC.tv

Want to read the rest of our animated poems? Visit the Washington Post to see — and hear — the writing come to life.