PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY

Related poetry:

1. HUGHES' VOICE IN MY HEAD As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain Like a tattered lacework window; Black glisten on roof slates, Tarmac turned to shining ice, Blusters of naked wind whipping The wavelets of shifting water To imaginary floating islets On the turbulent river Glumly he […]...
2. Pennsylvania I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and the hills laughed. And in places Along the Appalachian chain, I saw steel arms handling coal and iron, And I saw […]...
3. TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER This is one spring you will not see. The fifty roses of your spray Smelt soft across that February day Where trees, heavy as only crematoria Can bear, sloped down the fallen banks To where we waited in the chapel, me Clutching Father Kevin’s hand, remembering My given grace and faith renewed In answer to […]...
4. Jangling Memory Heavens above! here’s an old tie of your Sea-green dragons stamped on a golden ground. Ha! Ha! Ha! What children we were in those days. Do you love me enough to wear it now? Have you the courage of your pristine glories? Ha! Ha! Ha! You laugh and shrug your shoulders. Those were the days […]...
5. Wind This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the […]...
6. A Few Rules for Beginners Babies must not eat the coal And they must not make grimaces, Nor in party dresses roll And must never black their faces. They must learn that pointing’s rude, They must sit quite still at table, And must always eat the food Put before them if they’re able. If they fall, they must not cry, […]...
7. The Keys of Morning While at her bedroom window once, Learning her task for school, Little Louisa lonely sat In the morning clear and cool, She slanted her small bead-brown eyes Across the empty street, And saw Death softly watching her In the sunshine pale and sweet. His was a long lean sallow face; He sat with half-shut eyes, […]...
8. Georgic on Memory Make your daily monument the Ego, Use a masochist’s epistemology Of shame and dog-eared certainty That others less exacting might forgo. If memory’s an elephant, then feed The animal. Resist revision: the stand Of feral raspberry, contraband Fruit the crows stole, ferrying seed For miles… No. It was a broken hedge, Not beautiful, sunlight tacking […]...
9. The Boy The Boy from his bedroom-window Look’d over the little town, And away to the bleak black upland Under a clouded moon. The moon came forth from her cavern, He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the whole was a dream. For I never could find that water In […]...
10. Death In Leamington She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev’ning star That shone through the plate glass window From over Leamington Spa Beside her the lonely crochet Lay patiently and unstirred, But the fingers that would have work’d it Were dead as the spoken word. And Nurse came in with the tea-things Breast […]...
11. Remorse is Memory awake Remorse is Memory awake Her Parties all astir A Presence of Departed Acts At window and at Door Its Past set down before the Soul And lighted with a Match Perusal to facilitate And help Belief to stretch Remorse is cureless the Disease Not even God can heal For ’tis His institution and The Adequate […]...
12. A Memory of June When June comes dancing o’er the death of May, With scarlet roses tinting her green breast, And mating thrushes ushering in her day, And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest, I always see the evening when we met The first of June baptized in tender rain And walked home through the wide streets, gleaming […]...
13. Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow) Old man in the crystal morning after snow, Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent Figure building the snow man which is meant For the grandchild’s target, do you know This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal Nears you each time your breath smokes the air, Lewdly grinning out of a private […]...
14. Memory When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time Across […]...
15. In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that tomb by him and her His son George, the astrologer; And Masons drove from miles away To scatter the Acacia spray […]...
16. The Faces of Memory DREAM faces bloom around your face Like flowers upon one stem; The heart of many a vanished race Sighs as I look on them. The sun rich face of Egypt glows, The eyes of Eire brood, With whom the golden Cyprian shows In lovely sisterhood. Your tree of life put forth these flowers In ages […]...
17. Father The long lines of diesels Groan toward evening Carrying off the breath Of the living. The face of your house Is black, It is your face, black And fire bombed In the first street wars, A black tooth planted in the earth Of Michigan And bearing nothing, And the earth is black, Sick on used […]...
18. A Book Full of Pictures Father studied theology through the mail And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the faces Of dead kings and queens. There was a black raincoat in the upstairs bedroom Swaying from the ceiling, But what was it doing there? […]...
19. In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory I Now that we’re almost settled in our house I’ll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf in th’ ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed: Discoverers of forgotten truth Or mere companions of my youth, All, all are […]...
20. Memoir of a Proud Boy HE lived on the wings of storm. The ashes are in Chihuahua. Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks. Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain. They killed swearing to remember The shot […]...
21. The Memory of Earth IN the wet dusk silver sweet, Down the violet scented ways, As I moved with quiet feet I was met by mighty days. On the hedge the hanging dew Glassed the eve and stars and skies; While I gazed a madness grew Into thundered battle cries. Where the hawthorn glimmered white, Flashed the spear and […]...
22. Hanging Fire I am fourteen And my skin has betrayed me The boy I cannot live without Still sucks his tumb In secret How come my knees are Always so ashy What if I die Before the morning comes And momma’s in the bedroom With the door closed. I have to learn how to dance In time […]...
23. Memory A black ringlet Curls to lie At the nape of her neck, Glistening with sweat In the evaporate moonlight… This is what I remember Now that I cannot forget. And tonight, If I have forgotten her name, I remember: Rigid wire and white lace Half-impressed in her flesh… Our soft cries, like regret, … the […]...
24. A Memory YOU remember, dear, together Two children, you and I, Sat once in the autumn weather, Watching the autumn sky. There was some one round us straying The whole of the long day through, Who seemed to say, “I am playing At hide and seek with you.” And one thing after another Was whispered out of […]...
25. Ice Handler I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with Pearl buttons the size of a dollar, And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice- Box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be Hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus, And is on […]...
26. In Memory I Serene and beautiful and very wise, Most erudite in curious Grecian lore, You lay and read your learned books, and bore A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs. The song within your heart could never rise Until love bade it spread its wings and soar. Nor could you look on Beauty’s face before […]...
27. First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels Cool black night thru redwoods Cars parked outside in shade Behind the gate, stars dim above The ravine, a fire burning by the side Porch and a few tired souls hunched over In black leather jackets. In the huge Wooden house, a yellow chandelier At 3 A. M. the blast of loudspeakers Hi-fi Rolling Stones […]...
28. Operation Memory We were smoking some of this knockout weed when Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs And apartments and wives. Nobody […]...
29. Lament When I was a windy boy and a bit And the black spit of the chapel fold, (Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women), I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood, The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit, I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled Nine-pin down on donkey’s common, […]...
30. Christ Crucified Now ere I slept, my prayer had been that I might see my way To do the will of Christ, our Lord and Master, day by day; And with this prayer upon my lips, I knew not that I dreamed, But suddenly the world of night a pandemonium seemed. From forest, and from slaughter house, […]...
31. Ox Tamer, The IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen: There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them; He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him; He will go, fearless, […]...
32. THE CARDINAL LOOKS BACK I was a good father to my people, Their houses among the terraced hills Adored God every day, grape-clusters on the vines Made Christ’s blood richer in the goblet My father gave me: the chased silver had vines Round the stem and Cellini made it, ‘Let him take it to Rome’, he had said, ‘The […]...
33. A MEMORY AT SIXTY They have vanished, the pop men with their varnished crates Of Tizer and dandy, American ice-cream soda and one percent shandy. The clunk of frothy quarts dumped on donkey-stoned doorsteps Is heard no more, nor the neighs of restless mares between the shafts. The shining brass of harness hangs in bar-rooms or droops From imitation […]...
34. The Census-Taker I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A hundred square miles round it in the mountains: And that not dwelt in now by men or women. (It never had been dwelt in, though, […]...
35. 247. Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive DWELLER in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation! mark, Who in widow-weeds appears, Laden with unhonour’d years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse? STROPHE View the wither’d Beldam’s face; Can thy keen inspection trace Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace? Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows; Pity’s flood there […]...
36. Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady What beck’ning ghost, along the moon-light shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? ‘Tis she! but why that bleeding bosom gor’d, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, To […]...
37. Bridge Over The Aire Book 4 THE LANDS OF MY CHILDHOOD 1 I am leaving the holy city of Leeds For the last time for the first time Leaded domes of minarets in Kirkgate Market, the onion-dome of Ellerby Lane School, the lands of my childhood empty Or gone. Market stalls under wrought Iron balconies strewn with roses and Green imitation […]...
38. FACES IN A CROWD The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves, Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes, Crinkly green gloss, store it in stocking-tops For next year abroad, that Pill, so perfect! Flashing smiles from shiny domes and polished eye-lenses, The men […]...
39. Light Hearted William Light hearted William twirled His November moustaches And, half dressed, looked From the bedroom window Upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily Leaning out to see Up and down the street Where a heavy sunlight Lay beyond some blue shadows. Into the room he drew His head again and laughed To himself quietly Twirling […]...
40. In Memory of Walter Savage Landor Back to the flower-town, side by side, The bright months bring, New-born, the bridegroom and the bride, Freedom and spring. The sweet land laughs from sea to sea, Filled full of sun; All things come back to her, being free; All things but one. In many a tender wheaten plot Flowers that were dead Live, […]...