An Opera House

Related poetry:

1. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 04: Nightmare ‘Draw three cards, and I will tell your future. . . Draw three cards, and lay them down, Rest your palms upon them, stare at the crystal, And think of time. . . My father was a clown, My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt; And she was gotten with child in a strange […]...
2. Tampa Robins The robin laughed in the orange-tree: “Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time’s scythe shall reap but bliss for me Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree. Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, My orange-planets: crimson I Will shine and […]...
3. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain. . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while […]...
4. The Sage Foreguarded and unfevered and serene, Back to the perilous gates of Truth he went – Back to fierce wisdom and the Orient, To the Dawn that is, that shall be, and has been: Previsioned of the madness and the mean, He stood where Asia, crowned with ravishment, The curtain of Love’s inner shrine had rent, […]...
5. With A Copy Of 'A House Of Pomegranates&#039 Go, little book, To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl, Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl: And bid him look Into thy pages: it may hap that he May find that golden maidens dance through thee....
6. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,- Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circle of our consciousness, Beyond which lies the dark. Some […]...
7. The Fallow Deer At The Lonely House One without looks in tonight Through the curtain-chink From the sheet of glistening white; One without looks in tonight As we sit and think By the fender-brink. We do not discern those eyes Watching in the snow; Lit by lamps of rosy dyes We do not discern those eyes Wandering, aglow Four-footed, tiptoe....
8. The Visionary If fortune had not granted me To suck the Muse’s teats, I think I would have liked to be A sweeper of the streets; And city gutters glad to groom, Have heft a bonny broom. There as amid the crass and crush The limousines swished by, I would have leaned upon my brush With visionary […]...
9. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 10: Sudden Death ‘Number four-the girl who died on the table- The girl with golden hair-‘ The purpling body lies on the polished marble. We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare. . . One, who held the ether-cone, remembers Her dark blue frightened eyes. He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast More hurriedly […]...
10. Hymn 145 Christ and Aaron. Heb. 7; 9. Jesus, in thee our eyes behold A thousand glories more, Than the rich gems and polished gold The sons of Aaron wore. They first their own burnt-offerings brought, To purge themselves from sin; Thy life was pure without a spot, And all thy nature clean. [Fresh blood as constant […]...
11. Faith Since all that is was ever bound to be; Since grim, eternal laws our Being bind; And both the riddle and the answer find, And both the carnage and the calm decree; Since plain within the Book of Destiny Is written all the journey of mankind Inexorably to the end; since blind And mortal puppets […]...
12. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-Song No, I shall not say why it is that I love you- Why do you ask me, save for vanity? Surely you would not have me, like a mirror, Say ‘yes,-your hair curls darkly back from the temples, Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness, Your eyes are April grey. . . .with jonquils […]...
13. Leda Where the slow river Meets the tide, A red swan lifts red wings And darker beak, And underneath the purple down Of his soft breast Uncurls his coral feet. Through the deep purple Of the dying heat Of sun and mist, The level ray of sun-beam Has caressed The lily with dark breast, And flecked […]...
14. House Of Silence The winter sun, golden and tired, Settles on the irregular army Of bottles. Outside the trucks Jostle toward the open road, Outside it’s Saturday afternoon, And young women in black pass by Arm in arm. This bar Is the house of silence, and we drink To silence without raising our voices In the old way. […]...
15. The House Of Dust: Introduction THE HOUSE OF DUST A Symphony BY CONRAD AIKEN To Jessie NOTE . . . Parts of this poem have been printed in “The North American Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review”. . . . I am Indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called “The Screen Maiden” In Part II. This text […]...
16. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema As evening falls, The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by […]...
17. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple, Two lovers blow together like music blowing: And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea. Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them, They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree. ‘Well, am I late?’ Upward they look and laugh, They look at […]...
18. It was given to me by the Gods It was given to me by the Gods When I was a little Girl They given us Presents most you know When we are new and small. I kept it in my Hand I never put it down I did not dare to eat or sleep For fear it would be gone I heard such […]...
19. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 09: Interlude The days, the nights, flow one by one above us, The hours go silently over our lifted faces, We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. We sit at tables and sip our morning coffee, […]...
20. The House That Was Of the old house, only a few, crumbled Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock, Or a shaped stone lying mossy where it tumbled! Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock What once was fire-lit floor and private charm, Whence, seen in a windowed picture, were hills fading At night, and all was memory-coloured and […]...
21. TO HIS COY ONE SEEST thou yon smiling Orange? Upon the tree still hangs it; Already March bath vanish’d, And new-born flow’rs are shooting. I draw nigh to the tree then, And there I say: Oh Orange, Thou ripe and juicy Orange, Thou sweet and luscious Orange, I shake the tree, I shake it, Oh fall into my lap! […]...
22. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms He, in the room above, grown old and tired, She, in the room below-his floor her ceiling- Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light, And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . . She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night, His watch-the same he has heard these cycles […]...
23. The Vine I dreamed this mortal part of mine Was metamorphosed to a vine, Which, crawling one and every way, Enthralled my dainty Lucia. Methought, her long small legs and thighs I with my tendrils did surprise: Her belley, buttocks, and her waist By my soft nervelets were embraced About her head I writhing hung And with […]...
24. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour: At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly. . . The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones. We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky. We are like music, each voice of it […]...
25. Sonnet XXX: Whether the Turkish New Moon Whether the Turkish new moon minded be To fill his horns this year on Christian coast; How Poles’ right king means, with leave of host, To warm with ill-made fire cold Muscovy; If French can yet three parts in one agree; What now the Dutch in their full diets boast; How Holland hearts, now so […]...
26. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 01: The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea. The walls and towers are warmed and gleam. Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves. The city stirs like one that is half in dream. And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows, Where one by one we wake and rise. We […]...
27. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 01: As evening falls As evening falls, And the yellow lights leap one by one Along high walls; And along black streets that glisten as if with rain, The muted city seems Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain. . . Along dark veins, like lights the quick […]...
28. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 02: One, from his high bright window in a tower One, from his high bright window in a tower, Leans out, as evening falls, And sees the advancing curtain of the shower Splashing its silver on roofs and walls: Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city, And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea, Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark […]...
29. The Panther His vision, from the constantly passing bars, Has grown so weary that it cannot hold Anything else. It seems to him there are A thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, The movement of his powerful soft strides Is like a ritual dance around a […]...
30. Adonis 1. Each of us like you Has died once, Has passed through drift of wood-leaves, Cracked and bent And tortured and unbent In the winter-frost, The burnt into gold points, Lighted afresh, Crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, Gold turned and re-welded In the sun; Each of us like you Has died once, Each of us […]...
31. The Eve of Crecy Gold on her head, and gold on her feet, And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet, And a golden girdle round my sweet; Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite. Margaret’s maids are fair to see, Freshly dress’d and pleasantly; Margaret’s hair falls down to her knee; Ah! qu’elle est belle La Marguerite. If […]...
32. TO THE GENIUS OF HIS HOUSE Command the roof, great Genius, and from thence Into this house pour down thy influence, That through each room a golden pipe may run Of living water by thy benizon; Fulfil the larders, and with strength’ning bread Be ever-more these bins replenished. Next, like a bishop consecrate my ground, That lucky fairies here may dance […]...
33. The Little House of Lost Play (Mar Vanwa Tyalieva) We knew that land once, You and I, And once we wandered there In the long days now long gone by, A dark child and a fair. Was it on the paths of firelight thought In winter cold and white, Or in the blue-spun twilit hours Of little early tucked-up beds In drowsy summer night, […]...
34. Nightfall In The City Of Hyderabad SEE how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon’s throat, Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote. See the white river that flashes and scintillates, Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates. Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin’s call Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall. From trellised balconies, languid […]...
35. You Begin You begin this way: This is your hand, This is your eye, This is a fish, blue and flat On the paper, almost The shape of an eye This is your mouth, this is an O Or a moon, whichever You like. This is yellow. Outside the window Is the rain, green Because it is […]...
36. I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice I hear the oriole’s always-grieving voice, And the rich summer’s welcome loss I hear In the sickle’s serpentine hiss Cutting the corn’s ear tightly pressed to ear. And the short skirts of the slim reapers Fly in the wind like holiday pennants, The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping From under dusty lashes, the long […]...
37. Theme In Yellow I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am a jack-o’-lantern With terrible […]...
38. The Apartment House Severe against the pleasant arc of sky The great stone box is cruelly displayed. The street becomes more dreary from its shade, And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die. Here sullen convicts in their chains might lie, Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade. How worse than folly is their labor made Who […]...
39. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office, And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly Towards the dazzling street. Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing. The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet. Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting To tear her secret out. . . We laugh, […]...
40. Tz'u No. 9 (Weary) To the tune of “Rinsing Silk Stream” Saddened by the dying spring, I am too weary To rearrange my hair. Plum flowers, newly fallen, drift about the courtyard In the evening wind. The moon looks pale and light clouds float To and fro. Incense lies idle in the jade duck-shaped burner. The cherry-red bed-curtain is […]...