Flight Of Stairs
Stairs fly as straight as hawks;
Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing
At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching.
Stairs sway at the height of their flight
Like a melody in Tristan;
Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers
Before they close them.
They curiously investigate
The shells of buildings,
A hollow core,
Shell in a shell.
Useless to produce their path to infinity
Or turn it to a moral symbol,
For their flight is ambiguous, upwards or downwards as you please;
Their fountain is frozen,
Their concertina is silent.
Similar poems:
- Epitaph For Our Children Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos; Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear; Playing […]...
- Black On Black Serrations of chimneys Stone-black perforate Velvet-black dark. A tree coils in core of darkness. My swinging Hands Incise the night. […]...
- Cats Cats no less liquid than their shadows Offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes Less […]...
- Meeting Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell, Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive. Monkeys exchange their fleas before they […]...
- Night Piece Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No […]...
- Attack On The Ad-Man This trumpeter of nothingness, employed To keep our reason dull and null and void. This man of wind and froth […]...
- Houses People who are afraid of themselves Multiply themselves into families And so divide themselves And so become less afraid. People […]...
- Discovery When you are slightly drunk Things are so close, so friendly. The road asks to be walked upon, The road […]...
- The Man In The Bowler Hat I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man: The man who sat on your right in the morning train: The man […]...
- The Children Look At The Parents We being so hidden from those who Have quietly borne and fed us, How can we answer civilly Their innocent […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least […]...
- Bells, Pool And Sleep Bells overbrim with sound And spread from cupolas Out through the shaking air Endless unbreaking circles Cool and clear as […]...
- Symphony In Red Within the church The solemn priests advance, And the sunlight, stained by the heavy windows, Dyes a yet richer red […]...
- Polyphony In A Cathedral Music curls In the stone shells Of the arches, and rings Their stone bells. Music lips Each cold groove Of […]...
- Empty Room The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax. The clock’s voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats. The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating, […]...
- June Sick Room The birds’ shrill fluting Beats on the pink blind, Pierces the pink blind At whose edge fumble the sun’s Fingers […]...
- Don Juan Under the lips and limbs, the embraces, faces, Under the sharp circumference, the brightness, Under the fence of shadows, Is […]...
- Never Suddenly, desperately I thought, “No, never In millions of minutes Can I for one second Calm-leaving my own self Like […]...
- Any Man Speaks I, after difficult entry through my mother’s blood And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world); I, intricate, easily […]...
- Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times We expected the violin’s finger on the upturned nerve; Its importunate cry, too laxly curved: And you drew us an […]...
- Epilogue “Why can’t you say what you mean straight out in prose?” Well, say it yourself: then say “It’s that, but […]...
- Cinema Screen Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes… Light sinks and rusts […]...
- Sea 1 (Windless Summer) Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of […]...
- Quickstep Acknowledge the drum’s whisper. Yield to its velvet Nudge. Cut a slow air- Curve. Then dip (hip to hip): Sway, […]...
- Chaplin The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky. The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only […]...
- Birch Tree The birch tree in winter Leaning over the secret pool Is Narcissus in love With the slight white branches, The […]...
- The British We are a people living in shells and moving Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious; Watching the world from a corner […]...
- Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, […]...
- Day Dream One day people will touch and talk perhaps Easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as Sunlight, And […]...
- To Be Blind Is it sounds converging, Sounds nearing, Infringement, impingement, Impact, contact With surfaces of the sounds Or surfaces without the sounds: […]...