Going Gone

Related poetry:

1. Refrain The air is dark, the night is sad, I lie sleepless and I groan. Nobody cares when a man goes mad: He is sorry, God is glad. Shadow changes into bone. Every shadow has a name; When I think of mine I moan, I hear rumors of such fame. Not for pride, but only shame, […]...
2. The Old Prison The rows of cells are unroofed, A flute for the wind’s mouth, Who comes with a breath of ice From the blue caves of the south. O dark and fierce day: The wind like an angry bee Hunts for the black honey In the pits of the hollow sea. Waves of shadow wash The empty […]...
3. A Tall Man THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth. The head of this man is a gaunt strong head. The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians. The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans, Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown. The neck of this […]...
4. Some Last Questions What is the head A. Ash What are the eyes A. The wells have fallen in and have Inhabitants What are the feet A. Thumbs left after the auction No what are the feet A. Under them the impossible road is moving Down which the broken necked mice push Balls of blood with their noses […]...
5. Lotus On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, And I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded. Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my Dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind. […]...
6. Mattins I cannot ope mine eyes, But thou art ready there to catch My morning-soul and sacrifice: Then we must needs for that day make a match. My God, what is a heart? Silver, or gold, or precious stone, Or star, or rainbow, or a part Of all these things or all of them in one? […]...
7. On that dear Frame the Years had worn On that dear Frame the Years had worn Yet precious as the House In which We first experienced Light The Witnessing, to Us Precious! It was conceiveless fair As Hands the Grave had grimed Should softly place within our own Denying that they died....
8. 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 […]...
9. The Mother Here I lean over you, small son, sleeping Warm in my arms, And I con to my heart all your dew-fresh charms, As you lie close, close in my hungry hold. . . Your hair like a miser’s dream of gold, And the white rose of your face far fairer, Finer, and rarer Than all […]...
10. Troll Sat Alone on His Seat of Stone Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone, And meat was hard to come by. Up came Tom […]...
11. Loitering with a Vacant Eye Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery, And brooding on my heavy ill, I met a statue standing still. Still in marble stone stood he, And stedfastly he looked at me. “Well met,” I thought the look would say, “We both were fashioned far away; We neither knew, when we were young, These […]...
12. Torn Shades How, in the first place, did They get torn-pulled down hard Too many times: to hide a blow, Or sex, or a man In stained pajamas? The tear blade-shaped, Serrated, in tatters. And once, In a house flatside to a gas station, As snow fell at a speed and angle you could lean on, Two […]...
13. The Token Send me some token, that my hope may live, Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest; Send me some honey to make sweet my hive, That in my passions I may hope the best. I beg no riband wrought with thine own hands, To knit our loves in the fantastic strain Of new-touched […]...
14. False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me Bears up like stone, Beneath some ritual I see: The blinding axe Swings up, holds, That moment of its weightlessness Inscrutable Till I confirm the arm is mine; I will it, grip, Feel moist the swelling handle, The shudder rude, The difference fallen. Toward that chopping block I carry […]...
15. The Bridge In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, Guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while Eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I Shall be crossing it shortly. […]...
16. The Clasp She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds, We had been in the apartment two weeks straight, I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his Face, again, and when I had her wrist In my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple Of seconds, to make […]...
17. An Apple-Gathering I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree And wore them all that evening in my hair: Then in due season when I went to see I found no apples there. With dangling basket all along the grass As I had come I went the selfsame track: My neighbours mocked me while they saw me […]...
18. A lane of Yellow led the eye A lane of Yellow led the eye Unto a Purple Wood Whose soft inhabitants to be Surpasses solitude If Bird the silence contradict Or flower presume to show In that low summer of the West Impossible to know...
19. Funk When your marrer bone seems ‘oller, And you’re glad you ain’t no taller, And you’re all a-shakin’ like you ‘ad the chills; When your skin creeps like a pullet’s, And you’re duckin’ all the bullets, And you’re green as gorgonzola round the gills; When your legs seem made of jelly, And you’re squeamish in the […]...
20. A Stone Is Nobody's A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner. Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the Rest of his life. His mother asked why. He said, because it’s held captive, because it is Captured. Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know Whether it’s […]...
21. Wrestling Match What guts he had, the Dago lad Who fought that Frenchman grim with guile; For nigh an hour they milled like mad, And mauled the mat in rare old style. Then up and launched like catapults, And tangled, twisted, clinched and clung, Then tossed in savage somersaults, And hacked and hammered, ducked and swung; And […]...
22. The Black Art A woman who writes feels too much, Those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands Weren’t enough; as if mourners and gossips And vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl. A man who writes knows too […]...
23. One Year When I got to his marker, I sat on it, Like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed And I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. I took some tears from my jaw and neck And started to wash a corner of his stone. Then a black and amber ant Ran out onto the granite, and […]...
24. A Last Word Let us go hence: the night is now at hand; The day is overworn, the birds all flown; And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown; Despair and death; deep darkness o’er the land, Broods like an owl; we cannot understand Laughter or tears, for we have only known Surpassing vanity: vain things […]...
25. Reflections of caernarvon i I shall die yearning A hand Reaching out to A face that isn’t there A face Seeking a hand A stone Leaving its mountain- Wall in a wind Anxious to be a bird A bird Crying to be a wall Ii North wales The goat pisses The hawk hangs The mountain leans forward out […]...
26. The Wind tapped like a tired Man The Wind tapped like a tired Man And like a Host “Come in” I boldly answered entered then My Residence within A Rapid footless Guest To offer whom a Chair Were as impossible as hand A Sofa to the Air No Bone had He to bind Him His Speech was like the Push Of numerous […]...
27. Black On Black Serrations of chimneys Stone-black perforate Velvet-black dark. A tree coils in core of darkness. My swinging Hands Incise the night. A man slips into a doorway, Black hole in blackness, and drowns there. A second man passing traces The diagram of his steps On invisible pavement. Rain Draws black parallel threads Through the hollow of […]...
28. Under The Waterfall ‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. Hence the only prime And real love-rhyme That I know by heart, And that leaves no smart, Is the purl of a little valley […]...
29. All in June A week ago I had a fire To warm my feet, my hands and face; Cold winds, that never make a friend, Crept in and out of every place. Today the fields are rich in grass, And buttercups in thousands grow; I’ll show the world where I have been With gold-dust seen on either shoe. […]...
30. One Step Backward Taken Not only sands and gravels Were once more on their travels, But gulping muddy gallons Great boulders off their balance Bumped heads together dully And started down the gully. Whole capes caked off in slices. I felt my standpoint shaken In the universal crisis. But with one step backward taken I saved myself from going. […]...
31. I started Early Took my Dog I started Early Took my Dog And visited the Sea The Mermaids in the Basement Came out to look at me And Frigates in the Upper Floor Extended Hempen Hands Presuming Me to be a Mouse Aground upon the Sands But no Man moved Me till the Tide Went past my simple Shoe And past […]...
32. Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid? Where be ye going, you Devon maid? And what have ye there i’ the basket? Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy, Will ye give me some cream if I ask it? I love your meads, and I love your flowers, And I love your junkets mainly, But ‘hind the door, I love […]...
33. The Wonderer I wish that I could understand The moving marvel of my Hand; I watch my fingers turn and twist, The supple bending of my wrist, The dainty touch of finger-tip, The steel intensity of grip; A tool of exquisite design, With pride I think: “It’s mine! It’s mine!” Then there’s the wonder of my Eyes, […]...
34. Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning Lightning lets away Power to perceive His Process With Vitality. Maimed was I yet not by Venture Stone of stolid Boy Nor a Sportsman’s Peradventure Who mine Enemy? Robbed was I intact to Bandit All my Mansion torn Sun withdrawn to Recognition Furthest shining done Yet was not […]...
35. Balbus I’ll tell you the story of Balbus, You know, him as builded a wall; I’ll tell you the reason he built it, And the place where it happened an’ all. This ‘ere Balbus, though only a Tackler, Were the most enterprising of men; He’d heard Chicken Farms were lucrative, So he went out and purchased […]...
36. Property The red-roofed house of dream design Looks three ways on the sea; For fifty years I’ve made it mine, And held it part of me. The pines I planted in my youth Triumpantly are tall. . . Yet now I know with sorry sooth I have to leave it all. Hard-hewn from out the living […]...
37. In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII: 3. O Sorrow, cruel O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? “The stars,” she whispers, “blindly run; A web is wov’n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun: “And all the phantom, Nature, […]...
38. Bone-fable one morning the bone was there Set in the centre of waste ground Against the early morning sun The frost along its concave rim Sparkled – raised a hundredfold The price a passing dog Would place on it but the dogs Who came (barking amongst themselves About the food shining at them Across the rubbled […]...
39. A single Screw of Flesh A single Screw of Flesh Is all that pins the Soul That stands for Deity, to Mine, Upon my side the Veil Once witnessed of the Gauze Its name is put away As far from mine, as if no plight Had printed yesterday, In tender solemn Alphabet, My eyes just turned to see, When it […]...
40. Gorgeous Surfaces They are, the surfaces, gorgeous: a master Pastry chef at work here, the dips and whorls, The wrist-twist Squeezes of cream from the tube To the tart, sweet bleak sugarwork, needlework Toward the perfect lace doily Where sit the bone-china teacups, a little maze Of meaning maybe in their arrangement Sneaky obliques, shadow Allusives all […]...