War Profit Litany

Related poetry:

1. Reconstruction So, the bank has bust it’s boiler! And in six or seven year It will pay me all my money back of course! But the horse will perish waiting while the grass is germinating, And I reckon I’ll be something like the horse. There’s the ploughing to be finished and the ploughmen want their pay, […]...
2. Child Margaret THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers. All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child’s room. Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps. The 6 and 9 […]...
3. Ai There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five. There’s a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice Just won the National Book Award. The name “Ai” is pronounced “I” So that whenever I talk about the poet Ai Such as I’m teaching Ai’s poems again this semester It sounds like I’m teaching […]...
4. The Litany Of Nations CHORUS If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee, We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth, We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth, O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee, By the sealed and secret ages of thy life; By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces; By […]...
5. Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all You hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which […]...
6. A Little Litany When God turned back eternity and was young, Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth (As under the low arch the land is bright) Peered through you, gate of heaven and saw the earth. Or shutting out his shining skies awhile Built you about him for a house of gold To see in pictured […]...
7. How We Heard the Name The river brought down Dead horses, dead men And military debris, Indicative of war Or official acts upstream, But it went by, it all Goes by, that is the thing About the river. Then A soldier on a log Went by. He seemed drunk And we asked him Why Had he and this junk Come […]...
8. Litany You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine… – Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass And the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, And the marsh […]...
9. The Lovers' Litany Eyes of grey a sodden quay, Driving rain and falling tears, As the steamer wears to sea In a parting storm of cheers. Sing, for Faith and Hope are high None so true as you and I Sing the Lovers’ Litany: “Love like ours can never die!” Eyes of black a throbbing keel, Milky foam […]...
10. His Litany to the Holy Spirit In the hour of my distress, When temptations me oppress, And when I my sins confess, Sweet Spirit comfort me! When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart, and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted, Sweet Spirit comfort me! When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drown’d in sleep, […]...
11. Litany to the Holy Spirit IN the hour of my distress, When temptations me oppress, And when I my sins confess, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drown’d in sleep, […]...
12. At the California Institute of Technology I don’t care how God-damn smart These guys are: I’m bored. It’s been raining like hell all day long And there’s nothing to do. Written January 24, 1967 While poet-in-residence at The California Institute of Technology....
13. The Beautiful Poem I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking About you. Pissing a few moments ago I looked down at my penis Affectionately. Knowing it has been inside You twice today makes me Feel beautiful. 3 A. M. January 15, 1967...
14. Anthony Findlay Both for the country and for the man, And for a country as well as a man, ‘Tis better to be feared than loved. And if this country would rather part With the friendship of every nation Than surrender its wealth, I say of a man ’tis worse to lose Money than friends. And I […]...
15. "Daddy" Warbucks In Memoriam What’s missing is the eyeballs In each of us, but it doesn’t matter Because you’ve got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks. You let me touch them, fondle the green faces Lick at their numbers and it lets you be My “Daddy!” “Daddy!” and though I fought all alone With molesters and crooks, […]...
16. The Bustle in a House The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity....
17. A Faery Song Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, In their bridal sleep under a Cromlech. We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told: Give to these children, new from the world, Silence and love; And the long dew-dropping hours of the […]...
18. Sonnet to Lake Leman Rousseau Voltaire our Gibbon De Staлl Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore, Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall: To them thy banks were lovely as to all, But they have made them lovelier, for the lore Of mighty minds doth hallow in the […]...
19. Hymn 4 part 2 The inward witness to Christianity. 1 Jn. 5:10. Questions and doubts be heard no more, Let Christ and joy be all our theme; His Spirit seals his gospel sure, To every soul that trusts in him. Jesus, thy witness speaks within; The mercy which thy words reveal Refines the heart from sense and sin, And […]...
20. Sheep Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep One by one going up the hill and over the fence one by One four-footed pattering up and over one by one wiggling Their stub tails as they take the short jump and go Over one by one silently unless for the multitudinous Drumming of their hoofs as they […]...
21. Poseidonians The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language After so many centuries of mingling With Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners. The only thing surviving from their ancestors Was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites, With lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths. And it was their habit toward the festival’s end To tell each other about their ancient […]...
22. Money Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me: ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully? I am all you never had of goods and sex, You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’ So I look at others, what they do with theirs: They certainly don’t keep it upstairs. By now they’ve a second […]...
23. A Cap of Lead across the sky A Cap of Lead across the sky Was tight and surly drawn We could not find the mighty Face The Figure was withdrawn A Chill came up as from a shaft Our noon became a well A Thunder storm combines the charms Of Winter and of Hell....
24. Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon To ward off complicity the ordered life Our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife, Our chance to live depends on such a sign While others talk and The Pentagon from the moon Is bouncing exact commands: “Forget your faith; Be ready for whatever […]...
25. Money When I had money, money, O! I knew no joy till I went poor; For many a false man as a friend Came knocking all day at my door. Then felt I like a child that holds A trumpet that he must not blow Because a man is dead; I dared Not speak to let […]...
26. The things we thought that we should do The things we thought that we should do We other things have done But those peculiar industries Have never been begun The Lands we thought that we should seek When large enough to run By Speculation ceded To Speculation’s Son The Heaven, in which we hoped to pause When Discipline was done Untenable to Logic […]...
27. At Grass The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter in, Till wind distresses tail and main; Then one crops grass, and moves about – The other seeming to look on – And stands anonymous again Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps Two dozen distances surficed To fable them: faint afternoons Of Cups […]...
28. John Cabanis Neither spite, fellow citizens, Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness, And the lawlessness and waste Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River Made me desert the party of law and order And lead the liberal party. Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight That every man of the millions of men Who give themselves to […]...
29. Divine Detachment One day the Great Designer sought His Clerk of Birth and Death. Said he: “Two souls are in my thought, To whom I gave life-breath. I deemed my work was fitly done, But yester-eve I saw That in the finished brain of one There was a tiny flaw. “It worried me, and I would know, […]...
30. A Death Song What cometh here from west to east awending? And who are these, the marchers stern and slow? We bear the message that the rich are sending Aback to those who bade them wake and know. Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay, But one and all if they would dusk the day. We […]...
31. These Things these things that we support most well Have nothing to do with up, And we do with them Out of boredom or fear or money Or cracked intelligence; Our circle and our candle of light Being small, So small we cannot bear it, We heave out with Idea And lose the Center: All wax without […]...
32. MCMXIV Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And […]...
33. The Lost Legion 1895 There’s a Legion that never was listed, That carries no colours or crest, But, split in a thousand detachments, Is breaking the road for the rest. Our fathers they left us their blessing They taught us, and groomed us, and crammed; But we’ve shaken the Clubs and the Messes To go and find out […]...
34. The Naming Of Cats The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or […]...
35. Cats Cats no less liquid than their shadows Offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes Less than themselves; will not be pinned To rules or routes for journeys; counter Attack with non-resistance; twist Enticing through the curving fingers And leave an angered empty fist. They wait obsequious as darkness Quick to […]...
36. WINTER BLUES For Penny Abraham I wish I had Auden’s penchant For going about in carpet slippers Or the late HRH Margaret’s panache- A chauffered Rolls with six outriders- This late December day with its sparkle of sun on frost I’d so much rather be in Haworth’s cobbled street With cascades of carols in torchlit procession Or […]...
37. Stanzas IN a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne’er remember Apollo’s summer look; But with a sweet […]...
38. In Drear-Nighted December In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne’er remember Apollo’s summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They […]...
39. The Final Tax Said Statesman A to Statesman Z: “What can we tax that is not paying? We’re taxing every blessed thing- Here’s what our people are defraying: “Tariff tax, income tax, Tax on retail sales, Club tax, school tax, Tax on beers and ales, “City tax, county tax, Tax on obligations, War tax. wine tax, Tax on […]...
40. Kin BROTHER, I am fire Surging under the ocean floor. I shall never meet you, brother Not for years, anyhow; Maybe thousands of years, brother. Then I will warm you, Hold you close, wrap you in circles, Use you and change you Maybe thousands of years, brother. Where the moon slants and wavers....