Two Poems from the War

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1. Illusion WHAT is the love of shadowy lips That know not what they seek or press, From whom the lure for ever slips And fails their phantom tenderness? The mystery and light of eyes That near to mine grow dim and cold; They move afar in ancient skies Mid flame and mystic darkness rolled. O beauty, […]...
2. Thoughts On The Shape Of The Human Body How can we find? how can we rest? how can We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man? We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate, Who love the unloving and lover hate, Forget the moment ere the moment slips, Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips, Who want, and know not […]...
3. The Last Supper Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, And the mouth so mocking gay, A wanton you to the finger-tips, Who break men’s hearts in play; A thing of dust I have striven for, Honour and manhood given for, Headlong to ruin driven for, And this is the last, you say. . . . Drinking your wine […]...
4. Evening Song Full moon rising on the waters of my heart, Lakes and moon and fires, Cloine tires, Holding her lips apart. Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon, Miracle made vesper-keeps, Cloine sleeps, And I’ll be sleeping soon. Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters whtere the moonwaves start, Radiant, resplendently she gleams, Cloine dreams, […]...
5. The Bride My love looks like a girl to-night, But she is old. The plaits that lie along her pillow Are not gold, But threaded with filigree silver, And uncanny cold. She looks like a young maiden, since her brow Is smooth and fair, Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed. She sleeps a rare […]...
6. The White Birds I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness […]...
7. Ghosts Some ghosts are women, Neither abstract nor pale, Their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts Who come, moving their useless arms Like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; Fat, white-bellied men, Wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching […]...
8. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet II Why dost thou beat thy breast and rend thine hair, And to the deaf sea pour thy frantic cries? Before the gale the laden vessel flies; The Heavens all-favoring smile, the breeze is fair; Hark to the clamors of the exulting crew! Hark how their thunders mock the patient skies! Why dost thou shriek and […]...
9. Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign To put upon the cover of this book? Who heard thee singing in the distance dim, The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood, When the damp freshness of the morning earth Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song? Who followed over moss and twisted […]...
10. Poems Done on a Late Night Car I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and barns, Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, Slender supple girls with shapely legs, Lure in the […]...
11. To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems As, when a lofty pile is raised, We never hear the workmen praised, Who bring the lime, or place the stones; But all admire Inigo Jones: So, if this pile of scattered rhymes Should be approved in aftertimes; If it both pleases and endures, The merit and the praise are yours. Thou, Stella, wert no […]...
12. Of Death & Resurrection Like to the rowling of an eye, Or like a starre shott from the skye, Or like a hand upon a clock, Or like a wave upon a rock, Or like a winde, or like a flame, Or like false newes which people frame, Even such is man, of equall stay, Whose very growth leades […]...
13. Epilogue WELL, when all is said and done Best within my narrow way, May some angel of the sun Muse memorial o’er my clay: “Here was beauty all betrayed From the freedom of her state; From her human uses stayed On an idle rhyme to wait. “Ah, what deep despair might move If the beauty lit […]...
14. The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my […]...
15. The Voice of the Sea THE SEA was hoary, hoary, Beating on rock and cave: The winds were white and weeping With foam dust of the wave. They thundered louder, louder, With storm-lips curled in scorn- And dost thou tremble before us, O fallen star of morn?...
16. Music This shape without space, This pattern without stuff, This stream without dimension Surrounds us, flows through us, But leaves no mark. This message without meaning, These tears without eyes This laughter without lips Speaks to us but does not Disclose its clue. These waves without sea Surge over us, smooth us. These hands without fingers […]...
17. 372. Song-Kellyburn Braes THERE lived a carl in Kellyburn Braes, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; And he had a wife was the plague of his days, And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime. Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang glen, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; […]...
18. The Norsemen ( From Narrative and Legendary Poems ) GIFT from the cold and silent Past! A relic to the present cast, Left on the ever-changing strand Of shifting and unstable sand, Which wastes beneath the steady chime And beating of the waves of Time! Who from its bed of primal rock First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, […]...
19. The Morning Star IN the black pool of the midnight Lu has slung the morning star, And its foam in rippling silver whitens into day afar Falling on the mountain rampart piled with pearl above our glen, Only you and I, beloved, moving in the fields of men. In the dark tarn of my spirit, love, the morning […]...
20. The Tide of Sorrow ON the twilight-burnished hills I lie and long and gaze Where below the grey-lipped sands drink in the flowing tides, Drink, and fade and disappear: interpreting their ways A seer in my heart abides. Once the diamond dancing day-waves laved thy thirsty lips: Now they drink the dusky night-tide running cold and fleet, Drink, and […]...
21. Moonlight What time the meanest brick and stone Take on a beauty not their own, And past the flaw of builded wood Shines the intention whole and good, And all the little homes of man Rise to a dimmer, nobler span; When colour’s absence gives escape To the deeper spirit of the shape, Then earth’s great […]...
22. Gamajun, the Prophetic Bird On waters, spread without end, Dressed with the sunset so purple, It sings and prophesies for land, Unable to lift the smashed wings’ couple… The charge of Tartars’ hordes it claims, And bloody set of executions, Earthquake, and hunger and the flames, The death of justice, crime’s intrusion… And caught with fear, cold and smooth, […]...
23. Sea Sorcery Oh how I love the laughing sea, Sun lances splintering; Or with a virile harmony In salty caves to sing; Or mumbling pebbles on the shore, Or roused to monster might: By day I love the sea, but more I love it in the night. High over ocean hangs my home And when the moon […]...
24. The Glory The glory of the beauty of the morning, – The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love; White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay; The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy Of sky and meadow and […]...
25. Premonition ‘Twas a year ago and the moon was bright (Oh, I remember so well, so well); I walked with my love in a sea of light, And the voice of my sweet was a silver bell. And sudden the moon grew strangely dull, And sudden my love had taken wing; I looked on the face […]...
26. Villonaud for This Yule Towards the Noel that morte saison (Christ make the shepherds’ homage dear!) Then when the grey wolves everychone Drink of the winds their chill small-beer And lap o’ the snows food’s gueredon Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer (Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!) Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. Ask ye […]...
27. Southern Mansion Poplars are standing there still as death And ghosts of dead men Meet their ladies walking Two by two beneath the shade And standing on the marble steps. There is a sound of music echoing Through the open door And in the field there is Another sound tinkling in the cotton: Chains of bondmen dragging […]...
28. Modern Love V: A Message from Her A message from her set his brain aflame. A world of household matters filled her mind, Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed: She treated him as something that is tame, And but at other provocation bites. Familiar was her shoulder in the glass, Through that dark rain: yet it may come to pass That a changed […]...
29. Fatima O Love, Love, Love! O withering might! O sun, that from thy noonday height Shudderest when I strain my sight, Throbbing thro’ all thy heat and light, Lo, falling from my constant mind, Lo, parch’d and wither’d, deaf and blind, I whirl like leaves in roaring wind. Last night I wasted hateful hours Below the […]...
30. Song of the Moon The moonlight breaks upon the city’s domes, And falls along cemented steel and stone, Upon the grayness of a million homes, Lugubrious in unchanging monotone. Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines. There is no magic […]...
31. Ballad of a Ship Down by the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay. Then off they flew on their roystering way, And the keen moon fired the light foam flying Up from the flood […]...
32. Song of the Sea-Wind When the sun sets over the long blue wave I spring from my couch of rest, And I hurtle and boom over leagues of foam That toss in the weltering west, I pipe a hymn to the headlands high, My comrades forevermore, And I chase the tricksy curls of foam O’er the glimmering sandy shore. […]...
33. As The Poems Go as the poems go into the thousands you Realize that you’ve created very Little. It comes down to the rain, the sunlight, The traffic, the nights and the days of the Years, the faces. Leaving this will be easier than living It, typing one more line now as A man plays a piano through the […]...
34. Road and Hills I shall go away To the brown hills, the quiet ones, The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, Sun-fired and drowsy! My horse snuffs delicately At the strange wind; He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. The road winds, straightens, Slashes a marsh, Shoulders out a bridge, Then Again the hills. Unchanged, […]...
35. Two spanish poems (a) orihuela-time The sun in orihuela calms the dust And people glide about the streets at ease (problems left indoors to cool themselves) Time has grown fat and no one cares To pin each minute to its proper place The day is long tomorrow’s not yet real Doves and old men occupy the squares Nattering […]...
36. WANTS POEMS AND HAS NEVER REJECTED ANYONE Eamer o’ Keefe with your tinge of brogue And Irish warmth, Daisy and Debjani With your karma and cool verse, I salute you. ( III ) “Ecoutez la voix du vent” – listen to the wind’s voice As Milosz commands “All your griefs, My sad ones, are in vain” but offering In recompense soaring sonatas […]...
37. All That is Gold Does Not Glitter All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again […]...
38. The Sleeper At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, Exhales from out her golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; […]...
39. To The Whore Who Took My Poems some say we should keep personal remorse from the Poem, Stay abstract, and there is some reason in this, But jezus; Twelve poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have My Paintings too, my best ones; its stifling: Are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them? Why didn’t you […]...
40. Occasional Poems I Christmas Poem for Nancy Noel, Noel We live and we die Between heaven and hell Between the earth and the sky And all shall be well And all shall be unwell And once again! all shall once again! All shall be well By the ringing and the swinging of the great beautiful holiday bell […]...