The Final Poem

Related poetry:

1. Poem This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter. The poem will go on without you. It has […]...
2. Poem Of Night 1 I move my hand over Slopes, falls, lumps of sight, Lashes barely able to be touched, Lips that give way so easily It’s a shock to feel underneath them The bones smile. Muffled a little, barely cloaked, Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate. 2 I put my hand On the side of your face, You lean your […]...
3. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
4. AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY The day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead. Through clouds like ashes The red sun flashes On village windows That glimmer red. The snow recommences; The buried fences Mark no longer The road o’er the plain; While through the meadows, Like fearful shadows, Slowly passes A funeral train. […]...
5. Poem About the size of an old-style dollar bill, American or Canadian, Mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?) Has never earned any money in its life. Useless and free, it has spent seventy years As a minor family relic Handed along collaterally to owners […]...
6. The Unborn Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, The glimmer of them. Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing In some antechamber – servants, half- Listening for the bell. Sometimes I see them lying like love letters In the Dead Letter Office And sometimes, […]...
7. Morning Poem #48 cold bed Gray day Memories Of “birds of prey” Talk for the sake Of words shaping Mouth moving Thoughts changing Energy moving Outside of self Talk for the sake Of a warm bed A sanny day And memories Of birds at play...
8. Thomas Ross, Jr This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff-swallow Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank There near Miller’s Ford. But no sooner were the young hatched Than a snake crawled up to the nest To devour the brood. Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings And shrill cries Fought at the […]...
9. The Plowboy AFTER the last red sunset glimmer, Black on the line of a low hill rise, Formed into moving shadows, I saw A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. The turf had a gleam of brown, And smell of soil was in the air, And, cool and […]...
10. The Going Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow’s dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! Never to bid good-bye Or lip me the […]...
11. Poem In the early evening, a now, as man is bending Over his writing table. Slowly he lifts his head; a woman Appears, carrying roses. Her face floats to the surface of the mirror, Marked with the green spokes of rose stems. It is a form Of suffering: then always the transparent page Raised to the […]...
12. From The Short Story What The Swallows Did Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have grown empty, one by one. Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, Are you ready for your flight? Are all […]...
13. The Way Of The Wind The wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow None may measure, as none can say How the heart in her shows the swallow The wind’s way. Hope nor fear can avail to stay Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow, Times and seasons that wane and slay. Life and love, till the strong night swallow […]...
14. Million Man March Poem The night has been long, The wound has been deep, The pit has been dark, And the walls have been steep. Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach, I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach. Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound, You couldn’t even call out my name. […]...
15. Last Poem of my 45th Year I thought of how a whale’s white ribs Could choke the sky’s blue neck, Massive vertebrae half-buried in sand, And how a keel cleaves the sea While the wind zephyrs canvas to swell And propel the long black ship toward shore, Heaven in a blue mussel shell, smooth As the firmament. I believe there is […]...
16. The Pity of the Leaves Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak – Words of the past that shook the old […]...
17. Listening I listen to the stillness of you, My dear, among it all; I feel your silence touch my words as I talk, And take them in thrall. My words fly off a forge The length of a spark; I see the night-sky easily sip them Up in the dark. The lark sings loud and glad, […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. Landscapes Behind faces and gestures We remain mute And spoken words heavy With what we ignore or keep silent Betray us I dare not speak for mankind I know so little of myself But the Landscape I see as a reflection Is also a lie stealing into My words I speak without remorse Of this image […]...
20. A final journeying Steve is gone, I hardly can believe The man wont cry again, I cannot credit that His energy wont bloom And burst the candid pane That kept us so aware of just How much he really, really cared. I grieve for Bindi Sue And Robert who’ll despair, For Terri who has lost the man With […]...
21. Her final Summer was it Her final Summer was it And yet We guessed it not If tenderer industriousness Pervaded Her, We thought A further force of life Developed from within When Death lit all the shortness up It made the hurry plain We wondered at our blindness When nothing was to see But Her Carrara Guide post At Our […]...
22. Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Then crouch within the door Red is the Fire’s common tint But when the vivid Ore Has vanquished Flame’s conditions, It quivers from the Forge Without a color, but the light Of unanointed Blaze. Least Village has its Blacksmith Whose Anvil’s even ring Stands symbol for […]...
23. Credo I cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I can hear it only as a bar Of lost, imperial music, played when fair And angel fingers wove, and unaware, Dead […]...
24. The Great Hunt I cannot tell you now; When the wind’s drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind’s a whisper at last Maybe I’ll tell you then some other time. When the rose’s flash to the sunset Reels to the rack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face […]...
25. Nocturne of the Wharves All night they whine upon their ropes and boom Against the dock with helpless prows: These little ships that are too worn for sailing Front the wharf but do not rest at all. Tugging at the dim gray wharf they think No doubt of China and of bright Bombay, And they remember islands of the […]...
26. Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single […]...
27. Night Poem There is nothing to be afraid of, It is only the wind Changing to the east, it is only Your father the thunder Your mother the rain In this country of water With its beige moon damp as a mushroom, Its drowned stumps and long birds That swim, where the moss grows On all sides […]...
28. The Grave Of The Kitchen Mouse The stone says “Coors” The gay carpet says “Camels” Spears of dried grass The little sticks the children gathered The leaves the wind gathered The cat did not kill him The dog did not, not the trap Or lightning, or the rain’s anger The tree’s claws The black teeth of the moon The sun drilled […]...
29. Morning Poem #1 floating gray web pages Step into a crowded vacuum Clouds sweating There’s a gauzy scrim In front of my eyes Between me and The rest of the world Afternoon birds...
30. To My Fairy Fancies NAY, no longer I may hold you, In my spirit’s soft caresses, Nor like lotus-leaves enfold you In the tangles of my tresses. Fairy fancies, fly away To the white cloud-wildernesses, Fly away! Nay, no longer ye may linger With your laughter-lighted faces, Now I am a thought-worn singer In life’s high and lonely places. […]...
31. Poem in Prose This poem is for my wife. I have made it plainly and honestly: The mark is on it Like the burl on the knife. I have not made it for praise. She has no more need for praise Than summer has Or the bright days. In all that becomes a woman Her words and her […]...
32. Modern Love XXII: What May the Woman What may the woman labour to confess? There is about her mouth a nervous twitch. ‘Tis something to be told, or hidden: which? I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess. She has desires of touch, as if to feel That all the household things are things she knew. She stops before the […]...
33. The Praying Mantis From whence arrived the praying mantis? From outer space, or lost Atlantis? Glimpse the grin, green metal mug At masks the pseudo-saintly bug, Orthopterous, also carnivorous, And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us....
34. The Captive's Dream Methought I saw him but I knew him not; He was so changed from what he used to be, There was no redness on his woe-worn cheek, No sunny smile upon his ashy lips, His hollow wandering eyes looked wild and fierce, And grief was printed on his marble brow, And O I thought he […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think Praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting For paintings to sigh is science. In another […]...
37. Cliff Klingenhagen Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine With him one day; and after soup and meat, And all the other things there were to eat, Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign For me to choose at all, he took the draught Of bitterness himself, […]...
38. A Poem For Myself (or Blues for a Mississippi Black Boy) I was born in Mississippi; I walked barefooted thru the mud. Born black in Mississippi, Walked barefooted thru the mud. But, when I reached the age of twelve I left that place for good. My daddy chopped cotton And he drank his liquor straight. Said my daddy chopped […]...
39. Poem With Refrains The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog Uncurling over the tainted city river, A young girl rowing and her anxious father Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began With someone dying. When her mother died, My mother refused to attend […]...
40. Romance To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed, Scented and warm against my beating breast; To whisper soft and quivering your name, And drink the passion burning in your frame; To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek, And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak Love words, mad words, dream […]...