Stravinsky's Three Pieces

Related poetry:

1. Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn SMOKE of autumn is on it all. The streamers loosen and travel. The red west is stopped with a gray haze. They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks, They make a long-tailed rider In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . . Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River. […]...
2. What the Captain Said at the Point-to-Point I’ve had a good bump round; my little horse Refused the brook first time, Then jumped it prime; And ran out at the double, But of course There’s always trouble at a double: And then-I don’t know how It was-he turned it up At that big, hairy fence before the plough; And some young silly […]...
3. Chorus Give away her gowns, Give away her shoes; She has no more use For her fragrant gowns; Take them all down, Blue, green, blue, Lilac, pink, blue, From their padded hangers; She will dance no more In her narrow shoes; Sweep her narrow shoes From the closet floor....
4. Indian Weavers WEAVERS, weaving at break of day, Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . . Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, We weave the robes of a new-born child. Weavers, weaving at fall of night, Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . Like the plumes of a […]...
5. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
6. Circe's Power I never turned anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs; I make them Look like pigs. I’m sick of your world That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren’t bad men; Undisciplined life Did that to them. As pigs, Under the care of Me and my ladies, they Sweetened right up. Then […]...
7. Each small gleam was a voice Each small gleam was a voice, A lantern voice In little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold. A chorus of colours came over the water; The wondrous leaf-shadow no longer wavered, No pines crooned on the hills, The blue night was elsewhere a silence, When the chorus of colours came over the water, Little songs […]...
8. Dead Cow Farm An ancient saga tells us how In the beginning the First Cow (For nothing living yet had birth But Elemental Cow on earth) Began to lick cold stones and mud: Under her warm tongue flesh and blood Blossomed, a miracle to believe: And so was Adam born, and Eve. Here now is chaos once again, […]...
9. The Mowed Hollow When yellow leaves the sky They pipe it to the houses To go on making red And warm and floral and brown But gradually people tire of it, Return it inside metal, and go To be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside Forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. […]...
10. The Cross-Roads A bullet through his heart at dawn. On The table a letter signed With a woman’s name. A wind that goes howling round the House, And weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through The windows, Cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs, Creeping over his cold body, creeping across […]...
11. Colours in lamplight Colours in lamplight are previews, Scarcely eschewed as wave-length turbulence Tuned to closeness and friendship. Colours in firelight are skin-warmed Glowings, harbouring contentment, Revealing intuitive insight. Colours in moonlight are barely shown Shy smiles recalled with eidetic Intensity from reservoirs of sight. Colours in candlelight are filigree Reflections, decorative shimmers Of sympathetic enchantment. But in […]...
12. I look at the swaling sunset I look at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar. I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of […]...
13. A Roxbury Garden I Hoops Blue and pink sashes, Criss-cross shoes, Minna and Stella run out into the garden To play at hoop. Up and down the garden-paths they race, In the yellow sunshine, Each with a big round hoop White as a stripped willow-wand. Round and round turn the hoops, Their diamond whiteness cleaving the yellow sunshine. […]...
14. Memoir of a Proud Boy HE lived on the wings of storm. The ashes are in Chihuahua. Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks. Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain. They killed swearing to remember The shot […]...
15. One Morning Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter Rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage Valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes Came echoing through the rocky cove Where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay And a heron rose off a boulder where he’d […]...
16. A Change of Menu Now the new chum loaded his three-nought-three, It’s a small-bore gun, but his hopes were big. “I am fed to the teeth with old ewe,” said he, “And I might be able to shoot a pig.” And he trusted more to his nose than ear To give him warning when pigs were near. Out of […]...
17. In the Highlands IN the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesses, And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies O to mount again where erst I haunted; Where the old red hills are […]...
18. 1777 I The Trumpet-Vine Arbour The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are Wide open, And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight. They bray and blare at the burning sky. Red! Red! Coarse notes of red, Trumpeted at the blue sky. In long streaks of sound, molten metal, The vine declares itself. Clang! […]...
19. Phases of the Moon Once upon a time I heard That the flying moon was a Phoenix bird; Thus she sails through windy skies, Thus in the willow’s arms she lies; Turn to the East or turn to the West In many trees she makes her nest. When she’s but a pearly thread Look among birch leaves overhead; When […]...
20. Singing Of speckled eggs the birdie sings And nests among the trees; The sailor sings of ropes and things In ships upon the seas. The children sing in far Japan, The children sing in Spain; The organ with the organ man Is singing in the rain....
21. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
22. In The Virgins You can’t put in the ground swell of the organ From the Christiansted, St. Croix, Anglican Church Behind the paratrooper’s voice: “Turned cop After Vietnam. I made thirty jumps.” Bells punish the dead street and pigeons lurch From the stone belfry, opening their chutes, Circling until the rings of ringing stop. “Salud!” The paratrooper’s glass […]...
23. The Dormouse and the Doctor There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red), And all the day long he’d a wonderful view Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue). A Doctor came hurrying round, and he said: “Tut-tut, I am sorry to find you in bed. Just say ‘Ninety-nine’ while I look at […]...
24. Half-And-Half You can’t be, says a Palestinian Christian On the first feast day after Ramadan. So, half-and-half and half-and-half. He sells glass. He knows about broken bits, Chips. If you love Jesus you can’t love Anyone else. Says he. At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa, He’s sweeping. The rubbed stones Feel holy. […]...
25. Schroeder the Fisherman I sat on the bank above Bernadotte And dropped crumbs in the water, Just to see the minnows bump each other, Until the strongest got the prize. Or I went to my little pasture, Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow, Or nosing each other lovingly, And emptied a basket of yellow corn, […]...
26. A Martian Sends A Postcard Home Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but Sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight And rests its soft machine on […]...
27. Smoke Smoke, it is all smoke In the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of witches Whistling up chimneys On their spiky brooms Cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe, As they flew over rooftops Blessing & cursing their Kind. We banished & burned them Making them smoke in the […]...
28. The Paper Windmill The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane And looked out At the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of The square Glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and Pranced, And shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown Water Of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long […]...
29. Villanelle At Sundown Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow. The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened. Why this is, I’ll never be able to tell you. Or are Americans half in love with failure? One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened. (That Viking Portable, all water spotted and yellow Remember?) […]...
30. Night Song Among rocks, I am the loose one, Among aarows, I am the heart, Among daughters, I am the recluse, Among sons, the one who dies young. Among answers, I am the question, Between lovers, I am the sword, Among scars, I am the fresh wound, Among confetti, the black flag. Among shoes, I am the […]...
31. Nature rarer uses Yellow Nature rarer uses Yellow Than another Hue. Saves she all of that for Sunsets Prodigal of Blue Spending Scarlet, like a Woman Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly Like a Lover’s Words....
32. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
33. Bump Things that go ‘bump’ in the night Should not really give one a fright. It’s the hole in each ear That lets in the fear, That, and the absence of light!...
34. Song of Karen, the Dancing Child (O little white feet of mine) Out in the storm and the rain you fly; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Can the children hear my cry? (O little white feet of mine) Never a child in the whole great town; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Lights out and the blinds pulled […]...
35. Sheep From where I stand the sheep stand still As stones against the stony hill. The stones are gray And so are they. And both are weatherworn and round, Leading the eye back to the ground. Two mingled flocks – The sheep, the rocks. And still no sheep stirs from its place Or lifts its Babylonian […]...
36. Joys of the chase Colours fade into nameless shades of grey And where the tonsure of bas-relief crudely Stands effete, semantic symbolism degrades Into meaninglessness. The artefacts of an old Existence deny you humanity but you don’t Recognise them anyway, they are not bound To objects of power that belay access to reason. In this flat world of monochrome […]...
37. At Ithaca Over and back, The long waves crawl And track the sand with foam; Night darkens, and the sea Takes on that desperate tone Of dark that wives put on When all their love is done. Over and back, The tangled thread falls slack, Over and up and on; Over and all is sewn; Now while […]...
38. Is White a Color? White, pristine, unblemished They say it is not a color I love white mists, clouds Lingering on blue mountains. White, no shades No off white, cream Pure as snow on shimmering peaks Is my favorite sight. Nurses, priests, politicians Are bound, chained to white White nebulous clouds Evoke deep nostalgic thoughts. They swaddled my father […]...
39. JOY Joy from that in type we borrow, Which in life gives only sorrow. JOY. A DRAGON-FLY with beauteous wing Is hov’ring o’er a silv’ry spring; I watch its motions with delight, Now dark its colours seem, now bright; Chameleon-like appear, now blue, Now red, and now of greenish hue. Would it would come still nearer […]...
40. Shiela When I played my penny whistle on the braes above Lochgyle The heather bloomed about us, and we heard the peewit call; As you bent above your knitting something fey was in your smile, And fine and soft and slow the rain made silver on your shawl. Your cheeks were pink like painted cheeks, your […]...