A Fence

Related poetry:

1. Over the fence Over the fence Strawberries grow Over the fence I could climb if I tried, I know Berries are nice! But if I stained my Apron God would certainly scold! Oh, dear, I guess if He were a Boy He’d climb if He could!...
2. The Panther His vision, from the constantly passing bars, Has grown so weary that it cannot hold Anything else. It seems to him there are A thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, The movement of his powerful soft strides Is like a ritual dance around a […]...
3. 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...
4. The Circuit Judge Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred Were marking scores against me, But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches, Deciding cases on the points the lawyers […]...
5. 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?)...
6. Science-fiction Cradlesong By and by Man will try To get out into the sky, Sailing far beyond the air From Down and Here to Up and There. Stars and sky, sky and stars Make us feel the prison bars. Suppose it done. Now we ride Closed in steel, up there, outside Through our port-holes see the vast […]...
7. Slants at Buffalo, New York A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky. It says: This way! this way! Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft. They too are the dream of a sculptor. They too say: This way! this way! The street cars swing at a curve. The middle-class passengers witness […]...
8. Mamie MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana Town and dreamed of romance and big things off Somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran. She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down Where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and When the newspapers came in on […]...
9. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
10. Apologia Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? Is it thy will – Love that I love so well – That my Soul’s House should be a tortured […]...
11. Under A Telephone Pole I AM a copper wire slung in the air, Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow. Night and day I keep singing humming and thrumming: It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the Tears, the work and want, Death and laughter of men and […]...
12. Other side The dung was recent, not an event Unusual in itself but difficult to explain Of cows grazing the other side of the fence. Too new to be dismissed without a thought, Disturbing evidence which brought A desired state of bovine restraint Into an irksome disgrace. We couldn’t see a beast Ranging free, eating And defecating […]...
13. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
14. We to Sigh Instead of Sing “Rain and Rain! and rain and rain!” Yesterday we muttered Grimly as the grim refrain That the thunders uttered: All the heavens under cloud All the sunshine sleeping; All the grasses limply bowed With their weight of weeping. Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh! Never end of sighing; Rain and rain for our reply […]...
15. Black On Black Serrations of chimneys Stone-black perforate Velvet-black dark. A tree coils in core of darkness. My swinging Hands Incise the night. A man slips into a doorway, Black hole in blackness, and drowns there. A second man passing traces The diagram of his steps On invisible pavement. Rain Draws black parallel threads Through the hollow of […]...
16. An Autumn Rain-Scene There trudges one to a merry-making With sturdy swing, On whom the rain comes down. To fetch the saving medicament Is another bent, On whom the rain comes down. One slowly drives his herd to the stall Ere ill befall, On whom the rain comes down. This bears his missives of life and death With […]...
17. Grand-Pa's Whim While for me gapes the greedy grave It don’t make sense That I should have a crazy crave To paint our fence. Yet that is what I aim to do, Though dim my sight: Jest paint them aged pickets blue, Or green or white. Jest squat serenely in the sun Wi’ brush an’ paint, An’ […]...
18. Ashes Of Life Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; Eat I must, and sleep I will,-and would that night were here! But ah!-to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again!-with twilight near! Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do; […]...
19. Potomac Town in February THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am. The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up. The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on. A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got me last year. […]...
20. Sappho I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh When the dull day is passing by. I sigh at evening, and again I sigh when night brings sleep to men. Oh! it were far better to die Than thus forever mourn and sigh, And in death’s dreamless sleep to be Unconscious that none weep for me; Eased […]...
21. Good neighbours To my shame I’ve been mending fences again… A quaint habit I inherited from my father; He would rather fix a fence than parley Repair, and that it is where our views diverged. He said fences were meant to make good Neighbours. In the intervening years I had it Wrong, believing a fence was a […]...
22. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
23. To a Very Wise Man I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering […]...
24. Sleepless If I could have your arms tonight- But half the world and the broken sea Lie between you and me. The autumn rain reverberates in the courtyard, Beating all night against the barren stone, The sound of useless rain in the desolate courtyard Makes me more alone. If you were here, if you were only […]...
25. How Much? HOW much do you love me, a million bushels? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather....
26. Roundel She’s passing fair; but so demure is she, So quiet is her gown, so smooth her hair, That few there are who note her and agree She’s passing fair. Yet when was ever beauty held more rare Than simple heart and maiden modesty? What fostered charms with virtue could compare? Alas, no lover ever stops […]...
27. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
28. The Old Stone Cross A statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat; So stay at home’ and drink your beer And let the neighbours’ vote, Said the man in the golden breastplate Under the old stone Cross. Because this age and the next […]...
29. For You THE PEACE of great doors be for you. Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs. Wait for the great hinges. The peace of great churches be for you, Where the players of loft pipe organs Practice old lovely fragments, alone. The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on […]...
30. Sandhill People I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come. One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing […]...
31. Alone In contact, lo! the flint and steel, By sharp and flame, the thought reveal That he the metal, she the stone, Had cherished secretly alone. Booley Fito....
32. Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath […]...
33. Ships that Pass in the Night Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing; I look far out into the pregnant night, Where I can hear the solemn booming gun And catch the gleaming of a random light, That tells me that the ship I seek Is passing, passing. My tearful eyes my soul’s deep hurt are glassing; For […]...
34. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
35. Elegy Before Death There will be rose and rhododendron When you are dead and under ground; Still will be heard from white syringas Heavy with bees, a sunny sound; Still will the tamaracks be raining After the rain has ceased, and still Will there be robins in the stubble, Brown sheep upon the warm green hill. Spring will […]...
36. Spring Rain I thought I had forgotten, But it all came back again To-night with the first spring thunder In a rush of rain. I remembered a darkened doorway Where we stood while the storm swept by, Thunder gripping the earth And lightning scrawled on the sky. The passing motor busses swayed, For the street was a […]...
37. Rain Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: […]...
38. The Procession The legislators pass along A solemn, self-important throng! Just raised from the common mass, They feel themselves another class. But let them in the sunshine play For every dog must have his day. There moves the law’s close-wedged band The scourge and terror of the land! Pandora’s box replete with ills Not half so baleful […]...
39. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
40. Passing showers Yesterday a passing, transient shower, Slaked my thirst so gently, softly, Showers in March are unheard – In this arid part of the world. They say the world is dying, I know, I remember how you said love died, It was a passing shower, a fancy, That left you cold and shivering. This distance, these […]...