LEEDS 2002

Related poetry:

1. LETTER FROM LEEDS Would ‘any woman’ find me difficult to live with? My tastes are simple: space for several thousand books, The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil My duties as a carer, unending phone calls And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best […]...
2. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
3. LEEDS O my beloved city, How many times have I deserted you For the sights and sounds of Babylon? How often and from how far Have I conjured your broad boulevards O Quartier Latin, crowded street cafйs With white and scarlet awnings, gold Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes And plinths of equine statuary before The […]...
4. TO LEEDS BIG ISSUE SELLERS When I come from the Smoke to visit my son on the ward I see you everywhere: by the station, by the neon sign of ‘Squares’ By every shopping mall. Leeds seems to have more of you than anywhere: How do you stand there for so many hours in freezing winds When most you solicit […]...
5. PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
6. Year's End for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright Twice in my quickly disappearing forties Someone called while someone I loved and I were Making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer. Seven years apart, and two different lovers: Underneath the numbers, how lives are braided, How those women’s death and lives, lived and died, […]...
7. A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty Unwillingly Miranda wakes, Feels the sun with terror, One unwilling step she takes, Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda’s sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, […]...
8. Thirty-nine O hapless day! O wretched day! I hoped you’d pass me by Alas, the years have sneaked away And all is changed but I! Had I the power, I would remand You to a gloom condign, But here you’ve crept upon me and I I am thirty-nine! Now, were I thirty-five, I could Assume a […]...
9. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
10. At Thirty-Five Three score and ten, the psalmist saith, And half my course is well-nigh run; I’ve had my flout at dusty death, I’ve had my whack of feast and fun. I’ve mocked at those who prate and preach; I’ve laughed with any man alive; But now with sobered heart I reach The Great Divide of Thirty-five. […]...
11. As plan for Noon and plan for Night As plan for Noon and plan for Night So differ Life and Death In positive Prospective The Foot upon the Earth At Distance, and Achievement, strains, The Foot upon the Grave Makes effort at conclusion Assisted faint of Love....
12. 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 […]...
13. Boots We’re foot slog slog slog sloggin’ over Africa Foot foot foot foot sloggin’ over Africa (Boots boots boots boots movin’ up an’ down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! Seven six eleven five nine-an’-twenty mile to-day Four eleven seventeen thirty-two the day before (Boots boots boots boots movin’ up an’ down again!) There’s no […]...
14. Autobiography I was born in 1902 I never once went back to my birthplace I don’t like to turn back At three I served as a pasha’s grandson in Aleppo At nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University At forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party’s guest And I’ve been a poet […]...
15. The Trapper's Christmas Eve It’s mighty lonesome-like and drear. Above the Wild the moon rides high, And shows up sharp and needle-clear The emptiness of earth and sky; No happy homes with love a-glow; No Santa Claus to make believe: Just snow and snow, and then more snow; It’s Christmas Eve, it’s Christmas Eve. And here am I where […]...
16. Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one! Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one! I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done. The hospitals were fun In certain ways, and an honour or so, But on the whole fifty was a mess as though Heavy clubs from below And from—God save the bloody mark—above Were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love, […]...
17. Her Dilemma THE two were silent in a sunless church, Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones, And wasted carvings passed antique research; And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones. Leaning against a wormy poppy-head, So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand, For he was soon to die, he softly said, “Tell me you love me!” holding […]...
18. Cahoots PLAY it across the table. What if we steal this city blind? If they want any thing let ’em nail it down. Harness bulls, dicks, front office men, And the high goats up on the bench, Ain’t they all in cahoots? Ain’t it fifty-fifty all down the line, Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns-what’s to […]...
19. The Patriot An Old Story I It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad. The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day! II The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the […]...
20. Mortification How soon doth man decay! When clothes are taken from a chest of sweets To swaddle infants, whose young breath Scarce knows the way; Those clouts are little winding-sheets, Which do consign and send them unto Death. When boyes go first to bed, They step into their voluntarie graves; Sleep binds them fast; onely their […]...
21. No Neck-Tie Party A prisoner speaks: Majority of twenty-three, I face the Judge with joy and glee; For am I not a lucky chap – No more hanging, no more cap; A “lifer,” yes, but well I know In fifteen years they’ll let me go; For I’ll be pious in my prison, Sing with gusto: Christ Is Risen; […]...
22. New Year's Morning Only a night from old to new! Only a night, and so much wrought! The Old Year’s heart all weary grew, But said: The New Year rest has brought.” The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down, As in a grave; but trusting, said: “The blossoms of the New Year’s crown Bloom from the ashes […]...
23. Penance My lover died a century ago, Her dear heart stricken by my sland’rous breath, Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know The peace of death. Men pass my grave, and say, “‘Twere well to sleep, Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!” How should they know the vigils that I keep, The tears […]...
24. My House I have a house I’ve lived in long: I can’t recall my going in. ‘Twere better bartered for a song Ere ruin, rot and rust begin. When it was fresh and fine and fair, I used it with neglect, I fear; But now I husband it with care And cherish it form year to year. […]...
25. Enigma Come riddle-me-ree, come riddle-me-ree, And tell me, what my name may be. I am nearly one hundred and thirty years old, And therefore no chicken, as you may suppose; Though a dwarf in my youth (as my nurses have told), I have, ev’ry year since, been outgrowing my clothes; Till, at last, such a corpulent […]...
26. Suttee LAMP of my life, the lips of Death Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath; Naught shall revive thy vanished spark. . . Love, must I dwell in the living dark? Tree of my life, Death’s cruel foot Hath crushed thee down to thy hidden root; Nought shall restore thy glory fled. . . […]...
27. The Smile on the Face of a Kouros This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that Might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel He was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps, And this carved stone remembers him Not as he may have looked, but as if to define The naked virtue the stone describes as his. One foot is […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Another Version Our trees are aspens, but people Mistake them for birches; They think of us as characters In a Russian novel, Kitty and Levin Living contentedly in the country. Our friends from the city watch the birds And rabbits feeding together On top of the deep, white snow. (We have Russian winters in Illinois, But no […]...
30. Before the arthritis set in It’s Wednesday, September 6th and a birthday, Again, these things arrive tediously on time With wry regularity – and sadly, no sense Of providence or charity. Instead of counting a year less I am Said to be blessed with sixty one While actually I’m the age where I want To regress about six, hover around […]...
31. Knocked Up I’m lyin’ on the barren ground that’s baked and cracked with drought, And dunno if my legs or back or heart is most wore out; I’ve got no spirits left to rise and smooth me achin’ brow I’m too knocked up to light a fire and bile the billy now. Oh it’s trampin’, trampin’, tra-a-mpin’, […]...
32. Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy YOU just maturing youth! You male or female! Remember the organic compact of These States, Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man, Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at […]...
33. Tom Beatty I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, For I tried the rights of property, Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, In that poker room in the opera house. And I say to you that Life’s a gambler Head and shoulders above us all. No mayor alive can close the […]...
34. What Has Happened? The industrialist is having his aeroplane serviced. The priest is wondering what he said in his sermon eight weeks ago About tithes. The generals are putting on civvies and looking like bank clerks. Public officials are getting friendly. The policeman points out the way to the man in the cloth cap. The landlord comes to […]...
35. Good-by and Keep Cold This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don’t want it girdled by rabbit […]...
36. Water I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, For the men to come back in the evenings, Bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. And all my life I have dreaded the return […]...
37. A Message to Commissioner Li At Zizhou From ten thousand valleys the trees touch heaven; On a thousand peaks cuckoos are calling; And, after a night of mountain rain, From each summit come hundreds of silken cascades. …If girls are asked in tribute the fibre they weave, Or farmers quarrel over taro fields, Preside as wisely as Wenweng did…. Is fame to […]...
38. This Life My friend tells me A man in my house jumped off the roof The roof is the eighth floor of this building The roof door was locked how did he manage? His girlfriend had said goodbye I’m leaving He was 22 His mother and father were hurrying At that very moment From upstate to help […]...
39. How dare the robins sing How dare the robins sing, When men and women hear Who since they went to their account Have settled with the year! Paid all that life had earned In one consummate bill, And now, what life or death can do Is immaterial. Insulting is the sun To him whose mortal light Beguiled of immortality Bequeaths […]...
40. Slough Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death! Come, bombs and blow to smithereens Those air – conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath. Mess up the mess they call a town- […]...