Late September

Related poetry:

1. Late Afternoon: The Onslaught Of Love For William and Emily Maxwell At this time of day One could hear the caulking irons sound Against the hulls in the dockyard. Tar smoke rose between trees And large oily patches floated on the water, Undulating unevenly In the purple sunlight Like the surfaces of Florentine bronze. At this time of day Sounds carried […]...
2. September 1913 What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they […]...
3. Waiting For The Miracle (co-written by Sharon Robinson) Baby, I’ve been waiting, I’ve been waiting night and day. I didn’t see the time, I waited half my life away. There were lots of invitations And I know you sent me some, But I was waiting For the miracle, for the miracle to come. I know you really loved me. […]...
4. A Calendar of Sonnets: September O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped! The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung On wands; the chestnut’s yellow pennons tongue To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped; And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among The yellow gourds, which from the earth […]...
5. Three Violins THREE violins are trying their hearts. The piece is MacDowell’s Wild Rose. And the time of the wild rose And the leaves of the wild rose And the dew-shot eyes of the wild rose Sing in the air over three violins. Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell. Somebody like you is in […]...
6. Late Autumn October – and the skies are cool and gray O’er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf, Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf. The dignity of woods in rich decay Accords full well with this majestic grief That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day, Whose afternoon is hush’d, and wintry brief Only a robin sings […]...
7. The Halt Before Rome September 1867 Is it so, that the sword is broken, Our sword, that was halfway drawn? Is it so, that the light was a spark, That the bird we hailed as the lark Sang in her sleep in the dark, And the song we took for a token Bore false witness of dawn? Spread in the sight […]...
8. Sea Shell Sea Shell, Sea Shell, Sing me a song, O Please! A song of ships, and sailor men, And parrots, and tropical trees, Of islands lost in the Spanish Main Which no man ever may find again, Of fishes and corals under the waves, And seahorses stabled in great green caves. Sea Shell, Sea Shell, Sing […]...
9. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
10. Tho' I get home how late how late Tho’ I get home how late how late So I get home – ’twill compensate Better will be the Ecstasy That they have done expecting me When Night descending dumb and dark They hear my unexpected knock Transporting must the moment be Brewed from decades of Agony! To think just how the fire will burn […]...
11. Angelus A deep bell that links the downs To the drowsy air; Every loop of sound that swoons, Finds a circle fair, Whereon it doth rest and fade; Every stroke that dins is laid Like a node, Spinning out the quivering, fine, Vibrant tendrils of a vine: (Bim – bim – bim.) How they wreathe and […]...
12. Late Summer (ALCAICS) Confused, he found her lavishing feminine Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors Be as they were, without end, her playthings? And why were dead years hungrily telling her Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? If now she knew, there might be […]...
13. The Dragon-Fly Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream; I wish no happier one than to be laid Beneath a cool syringa’s scented shade, Or wavy willow, by the running stream, Brimful of moral, where the dragon-fly, Wanders as careless and content as I. Thanks for this fancy, insect king, Of purple crest and filmy […]...
14. Chuang Tzu And The Butterfly Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly, And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking. Which was the real-the butterfly or the man? Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things? The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream. The […]...
15. September On Jessore Road Millions of babies watching the skies Bellies swollen, with big round eyes On Jessore Road long bamboo huts Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts Millions of fathers in rain Millions of mothers in pain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of sisters nowhere to go One Million aunts are dying for bread One Million […]...
16. The Marionettes Of Distant Masters A pianist dreams that he’s hired by a wrecking company to Ruin a piano with his fingers. . . On the day of the piano wrecking concert, as he’s Dressing, he notices a butterfly annoying a flower in his window Box. He wonders if the police should be called. Then he thinks Maybe the butterfly […]...
17. To-Day, This Insect To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe, Now that my symbols have outelbowed space, Time at the city spectacles, and half The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence, In trust and tale I have divided sense, Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double Of head and tail made witnesses to this […]...
18. A Winter Day I The air is silent save where stirs A bugling breeze among the firs; The virgin world in white array Waits for the bridegroom kiss of day; All heaven blooms rarely in the east Where skies are silvery and fleeced, And o’er the orient hills made glad The morning comes in wonder clad; Oh, ’tis […]...
19. September We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold: No clock counts this. When kisses are repeated and the arms hold There is no telling where time is. It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still: Behind the eye a star, Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell Time is nowhere. We stand; […]...
20. September Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days Gleaned by the year in autumn’s harvest ways, With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, Some crimson poppy of a late delight Atoning in its splendor for the flight Of summer blooms and joys­ This is September....
21. September I, from a window where the Meuse is wide, Looked eastward out to the September night; The men that in the hopeless battle died Rose, and deployed, and stationed for the fight; A brumal army, vague and ordered large For mile on mile by some pale general,- I saw them lean by companies to the […]...
22. September 1 The golden-rod is yellow; 2 The corn is turning brown; 3 The trees in apple orchards 4 With fruit are bending down. 5 The gentian’s bluest fringes 6 Are curling in the sun; 7 In dusty pods the milkweed 8 Its hidden silk has spun. 9 The sedges flaunt their harvest, 10 In every […]...
23. September 22 It’s the day of the ram And the head of the year Rosh Ha’Shanah at Services I sat next to Mel Torme who outshone All comers with his bar Mitzvah heroics while on My left is Barnett Newman Big talker whose favorite Subjects include the horses And the stock market he Knows the odds the […]...
24. The September Gale I’M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When […]...
25. September Song born 19.6.32 – deported 24.9.42 Undesirable you may have been, untouchable You were not. Not forgotten Or passed over at the proper time. As estimated, you died. Things marched, Sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented Terror, so many routine cries. (I have made An elegy for myself it Is true) […]...
26. September's Baccalaureate September’s Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets Crows and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher....
27. September, The First Day Of School I My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade door He cries a little but is brave; he does Let go. My selfish tears remind me how I cried before that door a life ago. I may have had a hard time letting go. […]...
28. The Snakes of September All summer I heard them Rustling in the shrubbery, Outracing me from tier To tier in my garden, A whisper among the viburnums, A signal flashed from the hedgerow, A shadow pulsing In the barberry thicket. Now that the nights are chill And the annuals spent, I should have thought them gone, In a torpor […]...
29. Nimrod in September When half the drowsy world’s a-bed And misty morning rises red, With jollity of horn and lusty cheer, Young Nimrod urges on his dwindling rout; Along the yellowing coverts we can hear His horse’s hoofs thud hither and about: In mulberry coat he rides and makes Huge clamour in the sultry brakes....
30. Let Us play Yesterday Let Us play Yesterday I the Girl at school You and Eternity the Untold Tale Easing my famine At my Lexicon Logarithm had I for Drink ‘Twas a dry Wine Somewhat different must be Dreams tint the Sleep Cunning Reds of Morning Make the Blind leap Still at the Egg-life Chafing the Shell When you […]...
31. September 1961 This is the year the old ones, The old great ones Leave us alone on the road. The road leads to the sea. We have the words in our pockets, Obscure directions. The old ones Have taken away the light of their presence, We see it moving away over a hill Off to one side. […]...
32. The Day Is A Poem (September 19, 1939) This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice. A man of genius: that is, of amazing Ability, courage, devotion, cored on a sick child’s soul, Heard clearly through the dog wrath, a sick child Wailing in Danzig; invoking destruction and wailing at it. Here, the day was extremely hot; about noon A south […]...
33. Aloneness Loneliness and aloneness They are not the same For the shell of the mind Hears echoes of many seas It hears the calling of gulls From this savage sky And an ebbing tide Lapping the small white stones....
34. In heaven In heaven, Some little blades of grass Stood before God. “What did you do?” Then all save one of the little blades Began eagerly to relate The merits of their lives. This one stayed a small way behind, Ashamed. Presently, God said, “And what did you do?” The little blade answered, “Oh my Lord, Memory […]...
35. The Vixen Among the taller wood with ivy hung, The old fox plays and dances round her young. She snuffs and barks if any passes by And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly. The horseman hurries by, she bolts to see, And turns agen, from danger never free. If any stands she runs among the […]...
36. A Miracle For Breakfast At six o’clock we were waiting for coffee, Waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb That was going to be served from a certain balcony -like kings of old, or like a miracle. It was still dark. One foot of the sun Steadied itself on a long ripple in the river. The first ferry of […]...
37. Values '67 Pass by citizen Don’t look left or right Keep those drip dry eyes straight ahead A tree? Chop it down – it’s a danger To lightning! Pansies calling for water, Let ’em die – queer bastards- Seek comfort in the scarlet, labour Saving plastic rose Fresh with the frangrance of Daz! Sunday! Pray citizen; Pray […]...
38. The Curse Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows across the sea. And I shall meet a fisherman Out of Capri, And he will say, seeing me, “What a Strange Thing! Like a fish’s scale or a Butterfly’s wing.” Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows away the fog. And I shall meet […]...
39. Miracles Each time that I switch on the light A Miracle it seems to me That I should rediscover sight And banish dark so utterly. One moment I am bleakly blind, The next exultant life I find. Below the sable of the sky My eyelids double darkness make. Sleep is divine, yet oh how I Am […]...
40. Sudden Movements My father’s head has become a mystery to him. We finally have something in common. When he moves his head his eyes Get big as roses filled With the commotion of spring. Not long ago he was a man Who had tomato soup for lunch And dusted with the earnestness Of a gun fight. Now […]...