Again and Again and Again

Related poetry:

1. Blackberry-Picking Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and […]...
2. Sonnets xix TH’ expense of Spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait On purpose laid to […]...
3. Sonnet CXXIX The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait On purpose laid to […]...
4. Sonnet 129: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and, till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to […]...
5. Full Moon and Little Frieda A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket – And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with […]...
6. Places among the stars Places among the stars, Soft gardens near the sun, Keep your distant beauty; Shed no beams upon my weak heart. Since she is here In a place of blackness, Not your golden days Nor your silver nights Can call me to you. Since she is here In a place of blackness, Here I stay and […]...
7. Sister Cat Cat stands at the fridge, Cries loudly for milk. But I’ve filled her bowl. Wild cat, I say, Sister, Look, you have milk. I clink my fingernail Against the rim. Milk. With down and liver, A word I know she hears. Her sad miaow. She runs To me. She dips In her whiskers but Doesn’t […]...
8. Ode To Wine Day-colored wine, Night-colored wine, Wine with purple feet Or wine with topaz blood, Wine, Starry child Of earth, Wine, smooth As a golden sword, Soft As lascivious velvet, Wine, spiral-seashelled And full of wonder, Amorous, Marine; Never has one goblet contained you, One song, one man, You are choral, gregarious, At the least, you must […]...
9. Dreaming The Breasts Mother, Strange goddess face Above my milk home, That delicate asylum, I ate you up. All my need took You down like a meal. What you gave I remember in a dream: The freckled arms binding me, The laugh somewhere over my woolly hat, The blood fingers tying my shoe, The breasts hanging like two […]...
10. When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer When once the twilight locks no longer Locked in the long worm of my finger Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist, The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge, The milky acid on each hinge, And swallowed dry the waters of the breast. When the galactic sea was sucked And all the […]...
11. The Wattle I saw it in the days gone by, When the dead girl lay at rest, And the wattle and the native rose We placed upon her breast. I saw it in the long ago (And I’ve seen strong men die), And who, to wear the wattle, Hath better right than I? I’ve fought it through […]...
12. Julia Miller We quarreled that morning, For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty, And I was nervous and heavy with the child Whose birth I dreaded. I thought over the last letter written me By that estranged young soul Whose betrayal of me I had concealed By marrying the old man. Then I took morphine and […]...
13. The Right to Grief To Certain Poets About to Die TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow, Over the dead child of a millionaire, And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank Which the millionaire might order his secretary to Scratch off And get cashed. Very well, You for your grief and I for mine. […]...
14. A Dead Boche To you who’d read my songs of War And only hear of blood and fame, I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before) ВЂќWar’s Hell! ” and if you doubt the same, Today I found in Mametz Wood A certain cure for lust of blood: Where, propped against a shattered trunk, In a great mess of […]...
15. Eating and Drinking chapter VI Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, “Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.” And he said: Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light. But since you must kill to eat, and rob the young of its mother’s […]...
16. 473. On Chloris requesting a sprig of blossom'd thorn FROM the white-blossom’d sloe my dear Chloris requested A sprig, her fair breast to adorn: No, by Heavens! I exclaim’d, let me perish, if ever I plant in that bosom a thorn!...
17. The Breast This is the key to it. This is the key to everything. Preciously. I am worse than the gamekeeper’s children Picking for dust and bread. Here I am drumming up perfume. Let me go down on your carpet, Your straw mattress whatever’s at hand Because the child in me is dying, dying. It is not […]...
18. The Other Under my bowels, yellow with smoke, It waits. Under my eyes, those milk bunnies, It waits. It is waiting. It is waiting. Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse. Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover. When truth comes spilling out like peas It hangs up the phone. When the child is soothed and resting on the […]...
19. The Touch For months my hand was sealed off In a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings. Perhaps it is bruised, I thought, And that is why they have locked it up. You could tell time by this, I thought, Like a clock, by its five knuckles And the thin underground veins. It lay […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. The Brook I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorpes, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip’s farm I flow To join […]...
22. Columbus Cheney This weeping willow! Why do you not plant a few For the millions of children not yet born, As well as for us? Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep Without mind? Or do they come to earth, their birth Rupturing the memory of previous being? Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours. But […]...
23. Sicilian Lullaby Hush, little one, and fold your hands; The sun hath set, the moon is high; The sea is singing to the sands, And wakeful posies are beguiled By many a fairy lullaby: Hush, little child, my little child! Dream, little one, and in your dreams Float upward from this lowly place, Float out on mellow, […]...
24. The Consecrating Mother I stand before the sea And it rolls and rolls in its green blood Saying, “Do not give up one god For I have a handful.” The trade winds blew In their twelve-fingered reversal And I simply stood on the beach While the ocean made a cross of salt And hung up its drowned And […]...
25. The Refugees In the shabby train no seat is vacant. The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of […]...
26. Chanson A ring of gold and a milk-white dove Are goodly gifts for thee, And a hempen rope for your own love To hang upon a tree. For you a House of Ivory, (Roses are white in the rose-bower)! A narrow bed for me to lie, (White, O white, is the hemlock flower)! Myrtle and jessamine […]...
27. Sea Lullaby The old moon is tarnished With smoke of the flood, The dead leaves are varnished With colour like blood. A treacherous smiler With teeth white as milk, A savage beguiler In sheathings of silk The sea creeps to pillage, She leaps on her prey; A child of the village Was murdered today. She came up […]...
28. Milkmaid The girl’s far treble, muted to the heat, Calls like a fainting bird across the fields To where her flock lies panting for her voice, Their black horns buried deep in marigolds. They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies, And press their red flanks through the tall branched grass, And as they go their wandering tongues […]...
29. Elizabeth Childers Dust of my dust, And dust with my dust, O, child who died as you entered the world, Dead with my death! Not knowing breath, though you tried so hard, With a heart that beat when you lived with me, And stopped when you left me for Life. It is well, my child. For you […]...
30. Go Plant a Tree God, what a joy it is to plant a tree, And from the sallow earth to watch it rise, Lifting its emerald branches to the skies In silent adoration; and to see Its strength and glory waxing with each spring. Yes, ’tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing To plant a tree. Nature has many […]...
31. Circe's Torment I regret bitterly The years of loving you in both Your presence and absence, regret The law, the vocation That forbid me to keep you, the sea A sheet of glass, the sun-bleached Beauty of the Greek ships: how Could I have power if I had no wish To transform you: as You loved my […]...
32. The Learner I’ve learned Of all the friends I’ve won Dame Nature is the best, And to her like a child I run Craving her mother breast To comfort me in soul distress, And in green glade to find Far from the world’s unloveliness Pure peace of mind. I’ve learned the worth of simple ways, And though […]...
33. Archaic Bust Of Apollo (After Rilke) We cannot know the indescribable face Where the eyes like apples ripened. Even so, His torso has a candelabra’s glow, His gaze, contained as in a mirror’s grace, Shines within it. Otherwise his breast Would not be dazzling. Nor would you recognize The smile that moves along his curving thighs, There where love’s […]...
34. Hypochondriac Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm Humming like a clump of bees in my chest. Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit, A blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain. Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray, A kind of cancerous seed […]...
35. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
36. The Fairy Bridal-Hymn [This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose] This is a song to the white-armed one Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring, Whose feet are slow on the hills of life, Whose round […]...
37. Christmas Eve Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost Of all your faces, your moods That present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, My jewel-fingered lady, Your portrait flickered all night By the bulbs of the tree. Your face as calm as the moon Over a mannered sea, Presided at the family […]...
38. If We Must Die If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even […]...
39. BEFORE A COURT OF JUSTICE THE father’s name ye ne’er shall be told Of my darling unborn life; “Shame, shame,” ye cry, “on the strumpet bold!” Yet I’m an honest wife. To whom I’m wedded, ye ne’er shall be told, Yet he’s both loving and fair; He wears on his neck a chain of gold, And a hat of straw […]...
40. Symbols A storm-beaten old watch-tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All-destroying sword-blade still Carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade, Beauty and fool together laid....