TEXTURES

Related poetry:

1. Air Naturally it is night. Under the overturned lute with its One string I am going my way Which has a strange sound. This way the dust, that way the dust. I listen to both sides But I keep right on. I remember the leaves sitting in judgment And then winter. I remember the rain with […]...
2. My November Guest My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She’s glad the birds are gone away, […]...
3. Mad As The Mist And Snow Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below, And here is Tully’s open page. How many years ago Were you and […]...
4. A March Day in London The east wind blows in the street to-day; The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey. ‘Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire, Of cold despair and of hot desire, Which chills the flesh to aches and pains, And sends a fever through all the veins. From end to end, with aimless […]...
5. It seldom snowed – Part III It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful Seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller Fall, an over-night preceded heavy snow. And heavy snow remained a week, Blocked drains and closed the Desert Road; but no complaints, our children Played in […]...
6. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
7. Underground System Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the world-it is thin. Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunneled the sub-soil With separate chambers; which at an appointed knock Could be as one, could intersect and interlock. We walk on the skin Of life. No toil Of rake or hoe, no […]...
8. Swing high and swing low Swing high and swing low While the breezes they blow – It’s off for a sailor thy father would go; And it’s here in the harbor, in sight of the sea, He hath left his wee babe with my song and with me: “Swing high and swing low While the breezes they blow!” Swing high […]...
9. Verse-Making Was Least of My Virtues Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with despair Wealth that never yet was but might be all that verse-making were If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare. So I said, “To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse” And made verse. Love-making, how simple […]...
10. A November Night There! See the line of lights, A chain of stars down either side the street Why can’t you lift the chain and give it to me, A necklace for my throat? I’d twist it round And you could play with it. You smile at me As though I were a little dreamy child Behind whose […]...
11. Panels THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions. Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards. The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace. (How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)...
12. The Burning of the Leaves Now is the time for the burning of the leaves, They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke Wandering slowly into the weeping mist. Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is […]...
13. Nellie Clark I was only eight years old; And before I grew up and knew what it meant I had no words for it, except That I was frightened and told my Mother; And that my Father got a pistol And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. […]...
14. Aspens All day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. Out of the blacksmith’s cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the […]...
15. Shoveling Snow With Buddha In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok You would never see him doing such a thing, Tossing the dry snow over a mountain Of his bare, round shoulder, His hair tied in a knot, A model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word For what he […]...
16. The Charm Of 5:30 It’s too nice a day to read a novel set in England. We’re within inches of the perfect distance from the sun, The sky is blueberries and cream, And the wind is as warm as air from a tire. Even the headstones in the graveyard Seem to stand up and say “Hello! My name is…” […]...
17. Love In The Asylum A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room, At large […]...
18. Kitanomaru Park 1/ Here’s a picture of us Taking an impromptu walk Side by side in the park Our park, you dubbed Underneath the darkened Canopy of drizzle-wet foliage Two-three Japanese frogs Suspended their croaks And returned the quiet To the nearby loch 2/ This is the very photo That framed your radiance That warmed the shuddering […]...
19. Interior IN the cool of the night time The clocks pick off the points And the mainsprings loosen. They will need winding. One of these days… they will need winding. Rabelais in red boards, Walt Whitman in green, Hugo in ten-cent paper covers, Here they stand on shelves In the cool of the night time And […]...
20. Bronzes I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr By in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment For dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of […]...
21. Lines For Winter Tell yourself As it gets cold and gray falls from the air That you will go on Walking, hearing The same tune no matter where You find yourself Inside the dome of dark Or under the cracking white Of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold Tell yourself What […]...
22. Cat's Dream How neatly a cat sleeps, Sleeps with its paws and its posture, Sleeps with its wicked claws, And with its unfeeling blood, Sleeps with ALL the rings a series Of burnt circles which have formed The odd geology of its sand-colored tail. I should like to sleep like a cat, With all the fur of […]...
23. In the footsteps of the walking air In the footsteps of the walking air Sky’s prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying. Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth. Now is the China of the spirit at walking In […]...
24. Her Letter “I’m taking pen in hand this night, and hard it is for me; My poor old fingers tremble so, my hand is stiff and slow, And even with my glasses on I’m troubled sore to see. . . . You’d little know your mother, boy; you’d little, little know. You mind how brisk and bright […]...
25. Love Poem There is always something to be made of pain. Your mother knits. She turns out scarves in every shade of red. They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm While she married over and over, taking you Along. How could it work, When all those years she stored her widowed heart As though the […]...
26. The First Extra A Waltz Song. O sway, and swing, and sway, And swing, and sway, and swing! Ah me, what bliss like unto this, Can days and daylight bring? A rose beneath your feet Has fallen from my head; Its odour rises sweet, All crushed it lies, and dead. O Love is like a rose, Fair-hued, of […]...
27. I Sit and Think I sit beside the fire and think Of all that I have seen, Of meadow-flowers and butterflies In summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer In autumns that there were, With morning mist and silver sun And wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think Of how the world will […]...
28. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
29. In the Park You have forty-nine days between Death and rebirth if you’re a Buddhist. Even the smallest soul could swim The English Channel in that time Or climb, like a ten-month-old child, Every step of the Washington Monument To travel across, up, down, over or through you won’t know till you get there which to do. He […]...
30. Alone The abode of the nightingale is bare, Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air, The fox howls from his frozen lair: Alas, my loved one is gone, I am alone: It is winter. Once the pink cast a winy smell, The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell, Light in effulgence of beauty fell: I […]...
31. The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound […]...
32. The Upstairs Room It must have been in March the rug wore through. Now the day passes and I stare At warped pine boards my father’s father nailed, At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows, Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations’ shoes Stumble and scrape and fall To the floor my father stained, The new […]...
33. Winter in Durnover Field Scene. A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and Frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, And wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a Dull grey. (Triolet) Rook. Throughout the field I find no grain; The cruel frost encrusts the cornland! Starling. Aye: patient pecking now […]...
34. The Snowman in the Yard (For Thomas Augustine Daly) The Judge’s house has a splendid porch, with pillars And steps of stone, And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across The seas; In the Hales’ garage you could put my house and everything I own, And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a […]...
35. Called Into Play Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: Some flurries have whitened the edges of roads And lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & Turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to Find something to write about I haven’t already Written away: I will have to stop short, look Down, look […]...
36. Roads Go Ever On Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea; Over snow by winter sown, And through the merry flowers of June, Over grass and over stone, And under mountains in the moon. Roads go ever ever on, Under cloud and […]...
37. Corn Hut Talk WRITE your wishes on the door and come in. Stand outside in the pools of the harvest moon. Bring in the handshake of the pumpkins. There’s a wish for every hazel nut? There’s a hope for every corn shock? There’s a kiss for every clumsy climbing shadow? Clover and the bumblebees once, High winds and […]...
38. The Human Face I. Soon Of all the springtimes of the world This one is the ugliest Of all of my ways of being To be trusting is the best Grass pushes up snow Like the stone of a tomb But I sleep within the storm And awaken eyes bright Slowness, brief time ends Where all streets must […]...
39. The Call Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night’s primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe! The eternal silences were broken; Hell became […]...
40. Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people’s feet, Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With […]...