The Lay of the Motor-Car

Related poetry:

1. Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens Last night I dreamed of chickens, There were chickens everywhere, They were standing on my stomach, They were nesting in my hair, They were pecking at my pillow, They were hopping on my head, They were ruffling up their feathers As they raced about my bed. They were on the chairs and tables, They were […]...
2. Portrait of a Motor Car IT’S a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car. The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills. Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep. It is in Danny’s life […]...
3. A Motor Courtship Into her presence he gaily pranced, A very fat spark, and a bit advanced. With a Samson tread on the earth he trod, He was stayed and gaitered, and fifty odd. And she was a tulip just unfurled, The sweetest thing in the motor world. Her body was one of which poets dreamed; Eighteen twenty, […]...
4. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
5. The Way Through the Woods They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove […]...
6. Blue Island Intersection SIX street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles […]...
7. The Light By The Barn The light by the barn that shines all night Pales at dawn when a little breeze comes. A little breeze comes breathing the fields From their sleep and waking the slow windmill. The slow windmill sings the long day About anguish and loss to the chickens at work. The little breeze follows the slow windmill […]...
8. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
9. O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
10. The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los (from The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe: And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds […]...
11. Merops What care I, so they stand the same,- Things of the heavenly mind,- How long the power to give them fame Tarries yet behind? Thus far to-day your favors reach, O fair, appeasing Presences! Ye taught my lips a single speech, And a thousand silences. Space grants beyond his fated road No inch to the […]...
12. Loud Music My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers Throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so Each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut. But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four And likes the music […]...
13. It's Ours there is always that space there Just before they get to us That space That fine relaxer The breather While say Flopping on a bed Thinking of nothing Or say Pouring a glass of water from the Spigot While entranced by Nothing That Gentle pure Space It’s worth Centuries of Existence Say Just to scratch […]...
14. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
15. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
16. Roadways ONE road leads to London, One road leads to Wales, My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails. One road leads to the river, And it goes singing slow; My road leads to shipping, Where the bronzed sailors go. Leads me, lures me, calls me To salt green tossing sea; A road without […]...
17. What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space What birds plunge through is not the intimate space, In which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, Would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: To become the very essence of a tree, Throw inner space around it, from that space That lives in […]...
18. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
19. Anxiety The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun, The crisping steam of a train Melts in the air, while two black birds Sweep past the window again. Along the vacant road, a red Bicycle approaches; I wait In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy To leap down at our gate. He has passed us by; but […]...
20. No Road Since we agreed to let the road between us Fall to disuse, And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us, And turned all time’s eroding agents loose, Silence, and space, and strangers – our neglect Has not had much effect. Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown; No other change. So clear it […]...
21. Experience is the Angled Road Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the Mind By Paradox the Mind itself Presuming it to lead Quite Opposite How Complicate The Discipline of Man Compelling Him to Choose Himself His Preappointed Pain...
22. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
23. Maya Through an ascending emptiness of night, Leaving the flesh and complacent mind Together in their suffciency behind, The soul of man went up to a far height; And where those others would have had no sight Or sense of else than terror for the blind, Soul met the Will, and was again consigned To the […]...
24. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
25. Progress Let there be many windows to your soul, That all the glory of the universe May beautify it. Not the narrow pane Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays That shine from countless sources. Tear away The blinds of superstition; let the light Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself And high […]...
26. The Tramps Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together, And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet; When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether, Along the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet Along the road to Anywhere, when […]...
27. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
28. A Note Left In Jimmy Leonard's Shack Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even if the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I […]...
29. The Seekers FRIENDS and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blessed abode, But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road. Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, For we go seeking a city that we shall never find. There is no solace on earth for […]...
30. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
31. The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green Over the green and yellow rice-fields Sweep the shadows of the autumn Clouds followed by the swift-chasing Sun. The bees forget to sip their honey; Drunken with light they foolishly hover And hum. The ducks in the islands of the river Clamour in joy for mere nothing. Let none go back home, brothers, This morning, […]...
32. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
33. An Emu Hunt West of Dubbo the west begins The land of leisure and hope and trust, Where the black man stalks with his dogs and gins And Nature visits the settlers’ sins With the Bogan shower, that is mostly dust. When the roley-poley’s roots dry out With the fierce hot winds and the want of rain, They […]...
34. Out of sight? What of that? Out of sight? What of that? See the Bird reach it! Curve by Curve Sweep by Sweep Round the Steep Air Danger! What is that to Her? Better ’tis to fail there Than debate here Blue is Blue the World through Amber Amber Dew Dew Seek Friend and see Heaven is shy of Earth that’s […]...
35. Rosemary Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – Since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, Its flowers – white originally – […]...
36. Little Orphant Annie INSCRIBED WITH ALL FAITH AND AFFECTION To all the little children: The happy ones; and sad ones; The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones; The good ones Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones. Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay, An’ wash the cups […]...
37. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
38. Poem For My 43rd Birthday To end up alone In a tomb of a room Without cigarettes Or wine Just a lightbulb And a potbelly, Grayhaired, And glad to have The room. …in the morning They’re out there Making money: Judges, carpenters, Plumbers, doctors, Newsboys, policemen, Barbers, carwashers, Dentists, florists, Waitresses, cooks, Cabdrivers… And you turn over To your left […]...
39. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
40. That Half-Crown Sweep The run of Billabong-go-dry Is just beyond Lime Burner’s Gap; Its waterhole and tank supply Is excellent upon the map. But lacking nature’s liquid drench, The station staff are wont to try With “Bob-in Sweeps” their thirst to quench, Or nearly quench, at Bong-go-dry. The parson made five-yearly rounds That soil of arid souls to […]...