Celebrate

Related poetry:

1. It seldom snowed – Part III It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful Seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller Fall, an over-night preceded heavy snow. And heavy snow remained a week, Blocked drains and closed the Desert Road; but no complaints, our children Played in […]...
2. Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow) Old man in the crystal morning after snow, Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent Figure building the snow man which is meant For the grandchild’s target, do you know This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal Nears you each time your breath smokes the air, Lewdly grinning out of a private […]...
3. Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and […]...
4. My Husky Team I met an ancient man who mushed With Peary to the Pole. Said I, “In all that land so hushed What most inspired your soul?” He looked at me with bleary eye, He scratched a hoary head: “You know that Sourdoughs jest cain’t lie So here’s the dope,” he said. “That hike was like a […]...
5. Images of snow – february 1996 snow is a thousand flowers The chinese probably said Hundreds and thousands this morning Drop their garlands on my head Last night the festoons started Long before we went to bed Snow is a white-furred rabbit The chinese probably wrote Hedgerows and fields this morning Wear a similar fluffy coat Last night the winter danced […]...
6. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
7. The Plough Of Time Night closed my windows and The sky became a crystal house The crystal windows glowed The moon Shown through them Through the whole house of crystal A single star beamed down Its crystal cable And drew a plough through the earth Unearthing bodies clasped together Couples embracing Around the earth They clung together everywhere Emitting […]...
8. For Osip Mandelstam And the town is frozen solid in a vice, Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass. Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice, The painted sleighs and I, together, pass. And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows There’s a pale green dome there that glows, Dim in the sun-shrouded dust. The field of heroes lingers […]...
9. The Winter's Spring The winter comes; I walk alone, I want no bird to sing; To those who keep their hearts their own The winter is the spring. No flowers to please-no bees to hum- The coming spring’s already come. I never want the Christmas rose To come before its time; The seasons, each as God bestows, Are […]...
10. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
11. The Imaginary Iceberg We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship, Although it meant the end of travel. Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock And all the sea were moving marble. We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship; We’d rather own this breathing plain of snow Though the ship’s sails were laid upon the sea As […]...
12. Corn and Catholics “What! still those two infernal questions, That with our meals our slumbers mix That spoil our tempers and digestions Eternal Corn and Catholics! Gods! were there ever two such bores? Nothing else talk’d of night or morn Nothing in doors, or out of doors, But endless Catholics and Corn! Never was such a brace of […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. From the Antique It’s a weary life, it is, she said: Doubly blank in a woman’s lot: I wish and I wish I were a man: Or, better then any being, were not: Were nothing at all in all the world, Not a body and not a soul: Not so much as a grain of dust Or a […]...
15. 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...
16. I'll have to change my mind I’ll have to change my mind on war, I need to take a break From structured thought; there’s more to peace – it dictates A longer oar to keep the calm than takes to make a little war. Our history as a people is a theatre of strife and where We celebrate the life of […]...
17. The Snowman in the Yard (For Thomas Augustine Daly) The Judge’s house has a splendid porch, with pillars And steps of stone, And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across The seas; In the Hales’ garage you could put my house and everything I own, And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a […]...
18. A Hymn for Christmas Day Almighty Framer of the Skies! O let our pure devotion rise, Like Incense in thy Sight! Wrapt in impenetrable Shade The Texture of our Souls were made Till thy Command gave light. The Sun of Glory gleam’d the Ray, Refin’d the Darkness into Day, And bid the Vapours fly; Impell’d by his eternal Love He […]...
19. The Onset Always the same, when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods, and with a song It shall not make again all winter long Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground, I almost stumble looking up and round, As one who overtaken by the […]...
20. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
21. July Fourth By The Ocean The continent’s a tamed ox, with all its mountains, Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is for park and playground, this helpless Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel All docile between this ocean and the other. If flood troubles the lowlands, or earthquake Cracks walls, it is only a slave’s […]...
22. The Snow that never drifts The Snow that never drifts The transient, fragrant snow That comes a single time a Year Is softly driving now So thorough in the Tree At night beneath the star That it was February’s Foot Experience would swear Like Winter as a Face We stern and former knew Repaired of all but Loneliness By Nature’s […]...
23. Good Hours I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms […]...
24. America I love thine inland seas, Thy groves of giant trees, Thy rolling plains; Thy rivers’ mighty sweep, Thy mystic canyons deep, Thy mountains wild and steep, All thy domains; Thy silver Eastern strands, Thy Golden Gate that stands Wide to the West; Thy flowery Southland fair, Thy sweet and crystal air, O land beyond compare, […]...
25. March The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath; The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below. Spring that corn-fed, husky milkmaid Is busy at her chores with never a letup. The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?) Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming, And the […]...
26. At Sea As night hath stars, more rare than ships In ocean, faint from pole to pole, So all the wonder of her lips Hints her innavigable soul. Such lights she gives as guide my bark; But I am swallowed in the swell Of her heart’s ocean, sagely dark, That holds my heaven and holds my hell. […]...
27. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
28. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
29. Snow beneath whose chilly softness Snow beneath whose chilly softness Some that never lay Make their first Repose this Winter I admonish Thee Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor We so new bestow Than thine acclimated Creature Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?...
30. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
31. She Tells Her Love She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And put out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow....
32. The Forsaken I Once in the winter Out on a lake In the heart of the north-land, Far from the Fort And far from the hunters, A Chippewa woman With her sick baby, Crouched in the last hours Of a great storm. Frozen and hungry, She fished through the ice With a line of the twisted Bark […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise Into the seamless life proclaimed in your […]...
35. Sonnet XX: Oh! I Could Toil For Thee Oh! I could toil for thee o’er burning plains; Could smile at poverty’s disastrous blow; With thee, could wander ‘midst a world of snow, Where one long night o’er frozen Scythia reigns. Sever’d from thee, my sick’ning soul disdains The thrilling thought, the blissful dream to know, And can’st thou give my days to endless […]...
36. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
37. Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people’s feet, Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With […]...
38. Sacrifice THOSE delicate wanderers, The wind, the star, the cloud, Ever before mine eyes, As to an altar bowed, Light and dew-laden airs Offer in sacrifice. The offerings arise: Hazes of rainbow light, Pure crystal, blue, and gold, Through dreamland take their flight; And ‘mid the sacrifice God moveth as of old. In miracles of fire […]...
39. 90 North At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe, I clambered to bed; up the globe’s impossible sides I sailed all night-till at last, with my black beard, My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole. There in the childish night my companions lay frozen, The stiff fur knocked […]...
40. Two Seasons I The stars were wild that summer evening As on the low lake shore stood you and I And every time I caught your flashing eye Or heard your voice discourse on anything It seemed a star went burning down the sky. I looked into your heart that dying summer And found your silent woman’s […]...