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Related poetry:

1. Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because the lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above […]...
2. Housewife Some women marry houses. It’s another kind of skin; it has a heart, A mouth, a liver and bowel movements. The walls are permanent and pink. See how she sits on her knees all day, Faithfully washing herself down. Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah Into their fleshy mothers. A woman is her […]...
3. Tortoise Gallantry Making his advances He does not look at her, nor sniff at her, No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank. Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin That work beneath her while she sprawls along In her ungainly pace, Her folds of skin that work and row Beneath the earth-soiled hovel […]...
4. Race Some bite from the others A leg an arm or whatever Take it between their teeth Run out as fast as they can Cover it up with earth The others scatter everywhere Sniff look sniff look Dig up the whole earth If they are lucky and find an arm Or leg or whatever It’s their […]...
5. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
6. The Beautiful Changes One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes. The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s […]...
7. Sea Rose Rose, harsh rose, Marred and with stint of petals, Meagre flower, thin, Sparse of leaf, More precious Than a wet rose Single on a stem You are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, You are flung on the sand, You are lifted In the crisp sand That drives in the wind. Can the […]...
8. Sea Poppies Amber husk Fluted with gold, Fruit on the sand Marked with a rich grain, Treasure Spilled near the shrub-pines To bleach on the boulders: Your stalk has caught root Among wet pebbles And drift flung by the sea And grated shells And split conch-shells. Beautiful, wide-spread, Fire upon leaf, What meadow yields So fragrant a […]...
9. Old Man Old Man, or Lads-Love, – in the name there’s nothing To one that knows not Lads-Love, or Old Man, The hoar green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to one that knows it well, the names Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is: At least, what that is clings […]...
10. Send Me A Leaf Send me a leaf, but from a bush That grows at least one half hour Away from your house, then You must go and will be strong, and I Thank you for the pretty leaf....
11. What Are Big Girls Made Of? The construction of a woman: A woman is not made of flesh Of bone and sinew Belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned Every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, Her […]...
12. Dream Song 120: Foes I sniff, when I have less to shout Foes I sniff, when I have less to shout Or murmur. Pals alone enormous sounds Downward & up bring real. Loss, deaths, terror. Over & out, Beloved: thanks for cabbage on my wounds: I’ll feed you how I feel:— Of avocado moist with lemon, yea Formaldehyde & rotting sardines O In our appointed time I […]...
13. Who occupies this House? Who occupies this House? A Stranger I must judge Since No one know His Circumstance ‘Tis well the name and age Are writ upon the Door Or I should fear to pause Where not so much as Honest Dog Approach encourages. It seems a curious Town Some Houses very old, Some newly raised this Afternoon, […]...
14. The Truro Bear There’s a bear in the Truro woods. People have seen it – three or four, Or two, or one. I think Of the thickness of the serious woods Around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds; I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles, The cranberry bogs. And the sky With its new moon, […]...
15. Armies in the Fire The lamps now glitter down the street; Faintly sound the falling feet; And the blue even slowly falls About the garden trees and walls. Now in the falling of the gloom The red fire paints the empty room: And warmly on the roof it looks, And flickers on the back of books. Armies march by […]...
16. The Trees The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the […]...
17. Four in the Morning Cried the navy-blue ghost Of Mr. Belaker The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker, “Why did the cock crow, Why am I lost, Down the endless road to Infinity toss’d? The tropical leaves are whispering white As water; I race the wind in my flight. The white lace houses are carried away By the tide; far out they […]...
18. The House In The Woods At the back of the houses there is the wood. While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song, Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House In the Wood. It is […]...
19. The house where I was born (10) And then life; and once again A house where I was born. Around us The granary above what once had been a church, The gentle play of shadow from the dawn clouds, And in us that smell of the dry straw That had seemed to be waiting for us From the moment the last sack, […]...
20. Walking Around It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses Dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt Steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want […]...
21. Her Kind I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in […]...
22. To Bessie Drennan Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her sisters lived. . .she attended an adult education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . . The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter Bessie, you’ve made […]...
23. The Red Dance There was a girl Who danced in the city that night, That April 22nd, All along the Charles River. It was as if one hundred men were watching Or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God? The yellow patches in the sycamores Glowed like miniature flashlights. The shadows, the skin of them Were […]...
24. Night-piece what’s that i’m awake A bang like a door or a foot Knocking a chair who’s there Tense i lie in my bed my face Stretching out on the black air My ears strain……a creak this time Like a cat on the stair – but we have no cat If the door-handle turned and a…. […]...
25. Baby Picture It’s in the heart of the grape Where that smile lies. It’s in the good-bye-bow in the hair Where that smile lies. It’s in the clerical collar of the dress Where that smile lies. What smile? The smile of my seventh year, Caught here in the painted photograph. It’s peeling now, age has got it, […]...
26. Neighbors ON Forty First Street Near Eighth Avenue A frame house wobbles. If houses went on crutches This house would be One of the cripples. A sign on the house: Church of the Living God And Rescue Home for Orphan Children. From a Greek coffee house Across the street A cabalistic jargon Jabbers back. And men […]...
27. Thesaurus It could be the name of a prehistoric beast That roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up On its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary, Or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book. It means treasury, but it is just a place Where words congregate with their relatives, A big […]...
28. Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath […]...
29. Canine Conversation If dogs could speak, O Mademoiselle, What funny stories they could tell! For instance, take your little “peke,” How awkward if the dear could speak! How sad for you and all of us, Who round you flutter, flirt and fuss; Folks think you modest, mild and meek. . . But would they – if Fi-Fi […]...
30. The Seeing Eye The small dogs look at the big dogs; They observe unwieldy dimensions And curious imperfections of odor. Here is the formal male group: The young men look upon their seniors, They consider the elderly mind And observe its inexplicable correlations. Said Tsin-Tsu: It is only in small dogs and the young That we find minute […]...
31. Ida Frickey Nothing in life is alien to you: I was a penniless girl from Summum Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. All the houses stood before me with closed doors And drawn shades I was barred out; I had no place or part in any of them. And I walked past the old […]...
32. There's been a Death, in the Opposite House There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, As lately as Today I know it, by the numb look Such Houses have alway The Neighbors rustle in and out The Doctor drives away A Window opens like a Pod Abrupt mechanically Somebody flings a Mattress out The Children hurry by They wonder if it died […]...
33. The house where I was born (03) I woke up, it was the house where I was born, It was night, trees were crowding On all sides around our door, I was alone on the doorstep in the cold wind, No, not alone, for two huge beings Were speaking to each other above me, through me. One, behind, an old woman, stooped, […]...
34. Now Returned Home Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the year; I noticed most an old shepherd, Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed girl Who […]...
35. On Turning Ten The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I’m coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light A kind of measles of the spirit, A mumps of the psyche, A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too […]...
36. The Frog Be kind and tender to the Frog, And do not call him names, As “Slimy skin,” or “Polly-wog,” Or likewise “Ugly James,” Or “Gap-a-grin,” or “Toad-gone-wrong,” Or “Bill Bandy-knees”: The Frog is justly sensitive To epithets like these. No animal will more repay A treatment kind and fair; At least so lonely people say Who […]...
37. Wedding Each strips his own skin Each bares his own constellation Which has never seen the night Each fills his skin with rocks And plays with it Lit by his own stars Who doesn’t stop till dawn Who doesn’t bat an eyelid or fall Earns his own skin (This game is rarely played)...
38. For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further Not that it was beautiful, But that, in the end, there was A certain sense of order there; Something worth learning In that narrow diary of my mind, In the commonplaces of the asylum Where the cracked mirror Or my own selfish death Outstared me. And if I tried To give you something else, Something […]...
39. Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay....
40. It Is A Spring Afternoon Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks Into a narrow winter cave. The scarecrow has plucked out His two eyes like diamonds And walked into the village. The […]...