In Harbour

Related poetry:

1. The Harbour This harbour was made by art and force. And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire. And holds the sea behind its barrier Less than five miles from my house. Lord be with us say the makers of a nation. Lord look down say the builders of a harbour. They came and cut a shape out […]...
2. Some say goodnight at night Some say goodnight at night I say goodnight by day Good-bye the Going utter me Goodnight, I still reply For parting, that is night, And presence, simply dawn Itself, the purple on the height Denominated morn....
3. My Boy Jack 1914-18 Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?: “ Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, […]...
4. The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like hearts asking: What departures on this tide? Breath of land, warm […]...
5. The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me Snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting You were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain Brown envelopes for the return of your very Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer Of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues Give the fullest treatment in literature yet To the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you […]...
6. No, Not More Welcome No, not more welcome the fairy numbers Of music fall on the sleeper’s ear, When half awaking from fearful slumbers, He thinks the full quire of heaven is near Than came that voice, when, all forsaken, This heart long had sleeping lain, Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken To such benign blessed sounds […]...
7. Down Time's quaint stream Down Time’s quaint stream Without an oar We are enforced to sail Our Port a secret Our Perchance a Gale What Skipper would Incur the Risk What Buccaneer would ride Without a surety from the Wind Or schedule of the Tide...
8. We grow accustomed to the Dark We grow accustomed to the Dark When light is put away As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye A Moment We uncertain step For newness of the night Then fit our Vision to the Dark And meet the Road erect And so of larger Darkness Those Evenings of the Brain When […]...
9. Psalm 124 A song for the fifth of November. Had not the Lord, may Isr’el say, Had not the Lord maintained our side, When men, to make our lives a prey, Rose like the swelling of the tide; The swelling tide had stopped our breath, So fiercely did the waters roll, We had been swallowed deep in […]...
10. Good Friday O my chief good, How shall I measure out thy blood? How shall I count what thee befell, And each grief tell? Shall I thy woes Number according to thy foes? Or, since one star show’d thy first breath, Shall all thy death? Or shall each leaf, Which falls in Autumn, score a grief? Or […]...
11. A Flower-Piece By Fantin Heart’s ease or pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart’s ease. Surely by glad and divine degrees The heart impelling the hand that wrought Wrought comfort here for a soul’s disease. Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught, From glass that gleams […]...
12. When WHEN mine hour is come Let no teardrop fall And no darkness hover Round me where I lie. Let the vastness call One who was its lover, Let me breathe the sky. Where the lordly light Walks along the world, And its silent tread Leaves the grasses bright, Leaves the flowers uncurled, Let me to […]...
13. The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart Turn from that road’s beguiling ease; return To your hunger’s turret. Enter, climb the stair Chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time Regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent And the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone To show you how your longing waits alone. What alchemy shines from under that […]...
14. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
15. Dark Night (John of the Cross) In a dark night, when the light burning was the burning of love (fortuitous night, fated, free, ) as I stole from my dark house, dark house that was silent, grave, sleeping, by the staircase that was secret, hidden, safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous night, fated, free, ) by darkness and […]...
16. The Rest The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear no sounds, or we hear Sounds but no language; or we know It is not a language we know Yet. We […]...
17. A Charm Take of English earth as much As either hand may rightly clutch. In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath. Not the great nor well-bespoke, But the mere uncounted folk Of whose life and death is none Report or lamentation. Lay that earth upon thy heart, And thy sickness shall depart! […]...
18. The Farewell They say the ice will hold So there I go, Forced to believe them by my act of trusting people, Stepping out on it, And naturally it gaps open And I, forced to carry on coolly By my act of being imperturbable, Slide erectly into the water wearing my captain’s helmet, Waving to the shore […]...
19. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
20. CABBAGE KEY Once Hemingway Sat across this bay And touched the endless sea The gulf-stretched sun Guides everyone Who dreams the dreams like he Through the tropical heat You can hear the beat That sings God’s poetry Just close your eyes Beneath the bright skies On beautiful Cabbage Key And if by chance The ospreys dance Across […]...
21. The Thatch Out alone in the winter rain, Intent on giving and taking pain. But never was I far out of sight Of a certain upper-window light. The light was what it was all about: I would not go in till the light went out; It would not go out till I came in. Well, we should […]...
22. Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave Slides over my head And walk with you through that lucent Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves With its watery sun & […]...
23. Belly Good A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs But I’ve never seen wheat in a pile. Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots Make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek As a seal hauled out in the winter sun. I can see you as a great goose egg Or a single juicy and fully ripe peach. You […]...
24. Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s […]...
25. Sleeping Together Sleeping together… how tired you were… How warm our room… how the firelight spread On walls and ceiling and great white bed! We spoke in whispers as children do, And now it was I and then it was you Slept a moment, to wake “My dear, I’m not at all sleepy,” one of us said…. […]...
26. A June-Tide Echo (After a Richter Concert.) In the long, sad time, when the sky was grey, And the keen blast blew through the city drear, When delight had fled from the night and the day, My chill heart whispered, ” June will be here! ” June with its roses a-sway in the sun, Its glory of green […]...
27. Blue The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide Slowly into another day; slowly the rover Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide. I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting Me who am issued […]...
28. The Hill Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill. One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in jail, One fell from a bridge […]...
29. All that I do All that I do Is in review To his enamored mind I know his eye Where e’er I ply Is pushing close behind Not any Port Nor any flight But he doth there preside What omnipresence lies in wait For her to be a Bride...
30. Sleeping at last Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, Sleeping at last. No more a tired heart downcast or overcast, No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover, Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep […]...
31. The red man says hello the red man says hello The green tree says i’m here All grown-ups are sleeping Only the children hear Decorations are delighted Presents hug the floor The room in its festive hat Hides behind the door Through the glittering day Two worlds split the one Grown-ups lose their tempers Children have the fun The red […]...
32. Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
33. Dreaming of Li Po After the separation of death one can eventually swallow back one’s grief, but The separation of the living is an endless, unappeasable anxiety. From Pestilent Chiang-nan no news arrives of the poor exile. That my old friend Should come into my dream shows how constantly he is in my thoughts. I fear That this is […]...
34. Now Finale to the Shore NOW finale to the shore! Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port, and hawser’s tie, returning: -But now obey, thy cherish’d, secret wish, Embrace thy friends-leave all […]...
35. GONE THE last, late guest To the gate we followed; Goodbye and the rest The night-wind swallowed. House, garden, street, Lay tenfold gloomy, Where accents sweet Had made music to me. It was but a feast With the dark coming on; She was but a guest And now, she is gone....
36. To Be Blind Is it sounds converging, Sounds nearing, Infringement, impingement, Impact, contact With surfaces of the sounds Or surfaces without the sounds: Diagrams, skeletal, strange? Is it winds curling round invisible corners? Polyphony of perfumes? Antennae discovering an axis, erecting the architecture of a world? Is it orchestration of the finger-tips, graph of a fugue: Scaffold for […]...
37. Birds Of Passage Black shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall Against the southern sky; And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelm The fields that round us lie. But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near; And […]...
38. This Beautiful Black Marriage Photograph negative Her black arm: a diving porpoise, Sprawled across the ice-banked pillow. Head: a sheet of falling water. Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light. This woman, Photographed sleeping. The man, Making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain. Sleep stain them both, As if cloudy semen Rubbed shiningly over the surface […]...
39. Ecce Puer Of the dark past A child is born; With joy and grief My heart is torn. Calm in his cradle The living lies. May love and mercy Unclose his eyes! Young life is breathed On the glass; The world that was not Comes to pass. A child is sleeping: An old man gone. O, father […]...
40. This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life I mention it to you, When Sunrise through a fissure drop The Day must follow too. If we demur, its gaping sides Disclose as ’twere a Tomb Ourself am lying straight wherein The Favorite of Doom. When it has just contained a Life Then, Darling, it will close And […]...