Coal

Related poetry:

1. What the Coal-Heaver Said The moon’s an open furnace door Where all can see the blast, We shovel in our blackest griefs, Upon that grate are cast Our aching burdens, loves and fears And underneath them wait Paper and tar and pitch and pine Called strife and blood and hate. Out of it all there comes a flame, A […]...
2. The Fury Of Jewels And Coal Many a miner has gone Into the deep pit To receive the dust of a kiss, An ore-cell. He has gone with his lamp Full of mole eyes Deep deep and has brought forth Jesus at Gethsemane. Body of moss, body of glass, Body of peat, how sharp You lie, emerald as heavy As a […]...
3. Crossing The Atlantic We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind, Over a terrible hardness. Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer In twenty weeks or twenty days I cross toward him in five. Wraped in robes Not like Caesar but like liver with bacon I rest on the stern Burning my mouth with a wind-hot ash, […]...
4. The Coal Picker He perches in the slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peacock’s eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud. The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal. His duty is to glean the whole, To […]...
5. An Afternoon In The Stacks Closing the book, I find I have left my head Inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open Their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound, Words adjusting themselves to their meaning. Long passages open at successive pages. An echo, Continuous from the title onward, hums Behind me. From in here, the world […]...
6. Lisette and Eileen “When he was here alive, Eileen, There was a word you might have said; So never mind what I have been, Or anything,-for you are dead. “And after this when I am there Where he is, you’ll be dying still. Your eyes are dead, and your black hair,- The rest of you be what it […]...
7. Fire and Sleet and Candlelight For this you’ve striven Daring, to fail: Your sky is riven Like a tearing veil. For this, you’ve wasted Wings of your youth; Divined, and tasted Bitter springs of truth. From sand unslakèd Twisted strong cords, And wandering naked Among trysted swords. There’s a word unspoken, A knot untied. Whatever is broken The earth may […]...
8. To See Him Again Never, never again? Not on nights filled with quivering stars, Or during dawn’s maiden brightness Or afternoons of sacrifice? Or at the edge of a pale path That encircles the farmlands, Or upon the rim of a trembling fountain, Whitened by a shimmering moon? Or beneath the forest’s Luxuriant, raveled tresses Where, calling his name, […]...
9. Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers I found that ivory image there Dancing with her chosen youth, But when he wound her coal-black hair As though to strangle her, no scream Or bodily movement did I dare, Eyes under eyelids did so gleam; Love is like the lion’s tooth. When She, and though some said she played I said that she […]...
10. When Man Enters Woman When man, Enters woman, Like the surf biting the shore, Again and again, And the woman opens her mouth with pleasure And her teeth gleam Like the alphabet, Logos appears milking a star, And the man Inside of woman Ties a knot So that they will Never again be separate And the woman Climbs into […]...
11. Coal Dismembered angel In whose heart the earth is still on fire, The moon still has not been split-off; Here is the message Your long night announces: Everything my eye encompasses this instant: This fire, the cupped-hand, this window With trees and miles of snow beyond it, Even this thought, this poem, Will be compressed Into […]...
12. The buddha's tooth (for matt – 15) In the first seven years you choose your howdah Having by then bare inklings of a journey But where or why – confusion there to cloud a Judgement no more ready than a sore knee To enter the lists of a whole life’s tourney – But after this howdah-do (this introduction) […]...
13. Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
14. Colors (For D. M. C.) The little man with the vague beard and guise Pulled at the wicket. “Come inside!” he said, “I’ll show you all we’ve got now it was size You wanted? oh, dry colors! Well” he led To a dim alley lined with musty bins, And pulled one fiercely. Violent and bold A […]...
15. The Craftsmen Of The Little Box Don’t open the little box Heaven’s hat will fall out of her Don’t close her for any reason She’ll bite the trouser-leg of eternity Don’t drop her on the earth The sun’s eggs will break inside her Don’t throw her in the air Earth’s bones will break inside her Don’t hold her in your hands […]...
16. Blackberry Eating I love to go out in late September Among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries To eat blackberries for breakfast, The stalks very prickly, a penalty They earn for knowing the black art Of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries Fall almost unbidden to my […]...
17. Some Advice To Those Who Will Serve Time In Prison If instead of being hanged by the neck you’re thrown inside for not giving up hope In the world, your country, your people, if you do ten or fifteen years apart from the time you have left, You won’t say, “Better I had swung from the end of a rope like a flag” You’ll put […]...
18. Adolescence II Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting. Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert. Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips. Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines. They bring the scent of […]...
19. HOPE Do you believe, in what you see Do you believe in reality Do you believe in the sun that’s bright Do you believe in the stars in the night Do you believe in the birds that fly Do you believe in clouds and the sky Do you believe in wind that flows Do you believe […]...
20. A Tooth upon Our Peace A Tooth upon Our Peace The Peace cannot deface Then Wherefore be the Tooth? To vitalize the Grace The Heaven hath a Hell Itself to signalize And every sign before the Place Is Gilt with Sacrifice...
21. Spelling My daughter plays on the floor With plastic letters, Red, blue & hard yellow, Learning how to spell, Spelling, How to make spells. * I wonder how many women Denied themselves daughters, Closed themselves in rooms, Drew the curtains So they could mainline words. * A child is not a poem, A poem is not […]...
22. Eugenia Todd Have any of you, passers-by, Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort? Or a pain in the side that never quite left you? Or a malignant growth that grew with time? So that even in profoundest slumber There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought Of the tooth, the side, the growth? […]...
23. I have no Life but this I have no Life but this To lead it here Nor any Death but lest Dispelled from there Nor tie to Earths to come Nor Action new Except through this extent The Realm of you...
24. I Come From There I come from there and I have memories Born as mortals are, I have a mother And a house with many windows, I have brothers, friends, And a prison cell with a cold window. Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls, I have my own view, And an extra blade of grass. Mine is the […]...
25. Colloquy In the broken light, in owl weather, Webs on the lawn where the leaves end, I took the thin moon and the sky for cover To pick the cat’s brains and descend A weedy hill. I found him groveling Inside the summerhouse, a shadowed bulge, Furred and somnolent.-“I bring,” I said, “besides this dish of […]...
26. Lovesong He loved her and she loved him His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and Sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing […]...
27. Ambition They brought the mighty chief to town; They showed him strange, unwonted sights; Yet as he wandered up and down, He seemed to scorn their vain delights. His face was grim, his eye lacked fire, As one who mourns a glory dead; And when they sought his heart’s desire: “Me like’um tooth same gold,” he […]...
28. Friend Art thou abroad on this stormy night On thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on The darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what […]...
29. I VENT MY WRATH ON ANIMALS I came alive When things went Crazy. I pulled the plug on The reports of Sturm & drang When someone Signaled I Left open What I Could not close. I broke a Covenant that Was more fierce Than murder. I vent my wrath On animals Pretending they will turn Divine. I open up Rare certainties […]...
30. In Memoriam Paul Celan Lay these words into the dead man’s grave Next to the almonds and black cherries – Tiny skulls and flowering blood-drops, eyes, And Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head. Lay these words on the dead man’s eyelids Like eyebrights, like medieval trumpet flowers That will flourish, this time, in the shade. Let the beheaded […]...
31. Going Home He came home. Said nothing. It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong. He lay down fully dressed. Pulled the blanket over his head. Tucked up his knees. He’s nearly forty, but not at the moment. He exists just as he did inside his mother’s womb, Clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered […]...
32. My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in […]...
33. The Remains I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my […]...
34. Climbing You I want to understand the steep thing That climbs ladders in your throat. I can’t make sense of you. Everywhere I look you’re there A vast landmark, a volcano Poking its head through the clouds, Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput. I climb into your eyes, looking. The pupils are black painted stage flats. They can be […]...
35. Fire This life that we call our own Is neither strong nor free; A flame in the wind of death, It trembles ceaselessly. And this all we can do To use our little light Before, in the piercing wind, It flickers into night: To yield the heat of the flame, To grudge not, but to give […]...
36. The Break Away Your daisies have come On the day of my divorce: The courtroom a cement box, A gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me And a perhaps land, a possibly promised land For the Jew in me, But still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us- And yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors […]...
37. Uganda cry i have lost touch over the years With the hot africa inside me Illness and all – i spread to root In the red earth siphoned the sun Loved the black inflections of my eyes Cut callow cords and found new forms Felt free to fashion and freely raised Orchards of feelings where the groves […]...
38. Dew-drop and Diamond The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; […]...
39. Perhaps I asked too large Perhaps I asked too large I take no less than skies For Earths, grow thick as Berries, in my native town My Basked holds just Firmaments Those dangle easy on my arm, But smaller bundles Cram....
40. 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 […]...