Today

Related poetry:

1. The room you know how it is with the room The door is frequently locked As i pass a white sigh Is pushed out from under As i bend to retrieve it The wood quivers with a woman’s breath There is a ruffle of crying Through the keyhole i am able To glimpse a red dress Clawing […]...
2. Ippolit Konovaloff I was a gun-smith in Odessa. One night the police broke in the room Where a group of us were reading Spencer. And seized our books and arrested us. But I escaped and came to New York And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, Where I could study my Kant in peace And […]...
3. The Partial Explanation Seems like a long time Since the waiter took my order. Grimy little luncheonette, The snow falling outside. Seems like it has grown darker Since I last heard the kitchen door Behind my back Since I last noticed Anyone pass on the street. A glass of ice-water Keeps me company At this table I chose […]...
4. No Lilies For Lisette Said the Door: “She came in With no shadow of sin; Turned the key in the lock, Slipped out of her frock, The robe she liked best When for supper she dressed. Then a letter she tore. . . What a wan look she wore!” Said the Door. Said the Chair: “She sat down With […]...
5. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
6. The House This poem has a door, a locked door, And curtains drawn against the day, But at night the lights come on, one In each room, and the neighbors swear They hear music and the sound of dancing. These days the neighbors will swear To anything, but that is not why The house is locked up […]...
7. When I Met My Muse I glanced at her and took my glasses Off they were still singing. They buzzed Like a locust on the coffee table and then Ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the Sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and Knew that nails up there took a new grip On whatever they touched. “I am your […]...
8. The Glass On The Bar Three bushmen one morning rode up to an inn, And one of them called for the drinks with a grin; They’d only returned from a trip to the North, And, eager to greet them, the landlord came forth. He absently poured out a glass of Three Star. And set down that drink with the rest […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
11. Stroke The literate are ill-prepared for this Snap in the line of life: The day turns a trick Of twisted tongues and is Untiable, the month by no mere root Moon-ridden, and the yearly eloquences yielding more Than summer’s part of speech times four. We better learn The buried meaning in the grave: here All we […]...
12. Love In A Life I Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her, Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume! As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,- Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather. II Yet the […]...
13. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
14. The house where I was born (01) I woke up, it was the house where I was born, Sea foam splashed against the rock, Not a single bird, only the wind to open and close the wave, Everywhere on the horizon the smell of ashes, As if the hills were hiding a fire That somewhere else was burning up a universe. I […]...
15. Night Words after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps Again and dreams of another city On a high hill above a wide river Bathed […]...
16. Happiness A man and a woman lie on a white bed. It is morning. I think Soon they will waken. On the bedside table is a vase Of lilies; sunlight Pools in their throats. I watch him turn to her As though to speak her name But silently, deep in her mouth At the window ledge, […]...
17. Portrait Of An Old Woman On The College Tavern Wall Oh down at the tavern The children are singing Around their round table And around me still. Did you hear what it said? I only said How there is a pewter urn Pinned to the tavern wall, As old as old is able To be and be there still. I said, the poets are tere […]...
18. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
19. Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the window pane The blizzard sculptured on the […]...
20. Coda There’s little in taking or giving, There’s little in water or wine; This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work […]...
21. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
22. Snow The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink rose against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of […]...
23. Snow White's Acne At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice, Or a fleck of her mother’s red nail polish that had flaked off When she’d patted her daughter to sleep the night before. But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering Under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up […]...
24. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
25. Third Avenue In Sunlight Third Avenue in sunlight. Nature’s error. Already the bars are filled and John is there. Beneath a plentiful lady over the mirror He tilts his glass in the mild mahogany air. I think of him when he first got out of college, Serious, thin, unlikely to succeed; For several months he hung around the Village, […]...
26. I Ask You What scene would I want to be enveloped in More than this one, An ordinary night at the kitchen table, Floral wallpaper pressing in, White cabinets full of glass, The telephone silent, A pen tilted back in my hand? It gives me time to think About all that is going on outside Leaves gathering in […]...
27. Promises Like Pie-Crust Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know? You, so warm, may once have been Warmer towards […]...
28. Us I was wrapped in black Fur and white fur and You undid me and then You placed me in gold light And then you crowned me, While snow fell outside The door in diagonal darts. While a ten-inch snow Came down like stars In small calcium fragments, We were in our own bodies (that room […]...
29. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
30. Locked Doors For the angels who inhabit this town, Although their shape constantly changes, Each night we leave some cold potatoes And a bowl of milk on the windowsill. Usually they inhabit heaven where, By the way, no tears are allowed. They push the moon around like A boiled yam. The Milky Way is their hen With […]...
31. Song of the Forge The forge-fire sets a glow in the heavens, The hammer thunders, showering the smoke with sparks. A ruddy smithy, the white face of the moon, And the hammer, ringing down cold dark canyons....
32. Slant Yesterday, for a long while, The early morning sunlight In the trees was sufficient, Replaced by a hello From a long-limbed woman Pedaling her bike, Whereupon the wind came up, Dispersing the mosquitoes. Blessings, all. I’d come so far, it seemed, Happily looking for so little. But then I saw a cow in a room […]...
33. A Rhyme of Death’s Inn A rhyme of good Death’s inn! My love came to that door; And she had need of many things, The way had been so sore. My love she lifted up her head, “And is there room?” said she; “There was no room in Bethlehem’s inn For Christ who died for me.” But said the keeper […]...
34. Torn Shades How, in the first place, did They get torn-pulled down hard Too many times: to hide a blow, Or sex, or a man In stained pajamas? The tear blade-shaped, Serrated, in tatters. And once, In a house flatside to a gas station, As snow fell at a speed and angle you could lean on, Two […]...
35. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
36. The Lonesome Child The baby in the looking-glass Is smiling through at me; She has her teaspoon in her hand, Her feeder on for tea. And if I look behind her I Can see the table spread; I wonder if she has to eat The nasty crusts of bread. Her doll, like mine, is sitting close Beside her […]...
37. Another Day having the low down blues and going Into a restraunt to eat. You sit at a table. The waitress smiles at you. She’s dumpy. her ass is too big. She radiates kindess and symphaty. Live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony. O. k., you’ll tip her 15 percent. You order […]...
38. Happy As The Day Is Long I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room. Today’s big news: they found Amelia Earhart’s shoe, size 9. 1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton’s in 1941. Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again. We’ll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow That is falling, in tomorrow’s […]...
39. Grass The living room is overgrown with grass. It has Come up around the furniture. It stretches through The dining room, past the swinging door into the Kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the Walls. . . There’s treasure in grass, things dropped or put There; a stick of rust that was once a […]...
40. Pensive and Faltering PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition-I the spectre.) 5...