Bronzes

Related poetry:

1. Ready to Kill TEN minutes now I have been looking at this. I have gone by here before and wondered about it. This is a bronze memorial of a famous general Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver On him. I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be […]...
2. In a Back Alley REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this. The newsies are pitching pennies. And on the copper disk is the man’s face. Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?...
3. Crying to be written Dawn has reached the ridges to the north and a thin Line of light chased the night west; it is the best Time of day for me – a cup of coffee, Benson & Scud Pretending to sleep in their baskets at my feet, I am seated, ready to write knowing the lounge fire Is […]...
4. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
5. Song of an Old General When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. Fighting single – handed for a thousand miles, With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. …Granted that the troops of […]...
6. Thinking Of A Friend At Night In this evil year, autumn comes early… I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters, The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing maybe and seeing the sickle moon Move in a small arc over the forests And bivouac fire, red in the black valley. You are […]...
7. Limitations If you could crowd them into forty lines! Yes; you can do it, once you get a start; All that you want is waiting in your head, For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart. . . . . Begin: your mind’s the room where you have slept, (Don’t pause for rhymes), till twilight woke […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Boot And Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens the blue from its silvery grey, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!” Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, […]...
10. Cavalier Tunes: Boot and Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, (Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay (Chorus) Boot, saddle, […]...
11. Potomac River Mist ALL the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor. Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit from zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters, scavengers. The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for us and […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. Legends CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face. STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races […]...
14. The Ride The horse beneath me seemed To know what course to steer Through the horror of snow I dreamed, And so I had no fear, Nor was I chilled to death By the wind’s white shudders, thanks To the veils of his patient breath And the mist of sweat from his flanks. It seemed that all […]...
15. Momus Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray Against horizons purple, silent. Yes, Momus, Men have flung your face in bronze To gaze in gargoyle downward on […]...
16. Sonnet I HAppy ye leaues when as those lilly hands, Which hold my life in their dead doing might Shall handle you and hold in loues soft bands, Lyke captiues trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines, on which with starry light, Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look And reade the sorrowes of my […]...
17. Manitoba Childe Roland LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf Song under the eaves. I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was […]...
18. Girl (three) and the black horse i want to hold the horse’s string Cried the girl (three) stamping her foot Told by adults she was much too young The black horse stood staring at the wall It worries us you may get hurt The adults whispered – meaning to offer Comfort to the little madam (not convinced) The black horse stood […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. Old Timers I AM an ancient reluctant conscript. On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans. On the march of Miltiades’ phalanx I had a haft and head; I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle. Red-headed Cæsar picked me for a teamster. He said, “Go to work, you Tuscan bastard, Rome calls for a […]...
21. He Has Lived In Many Houses furnished rooms, flats, a hayloft, A tent, motels, under a table, Under an overturned rowboat, in a villa (briefly) but not, As yet, a yurt. In these places He has slept, eaten, Put his forehead to the window glass, Looking out. He’s in a stilt-house now, The water passing beneath him half the day; The […]...
22. Savoir Faire CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king’s street. Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel. The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November […]...
23. Sonnet XLIX: Thou Leaden Brain Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and do not move, I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight, Which never felt’st my fiery touch of love. But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv’d, Whose stomach unto gall hath turn’d thy food, Whose senses, like poor […]...
24. Anonymous Drawing A delicate young Negro stands With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands; So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature Beside him Until the master shall arrive to ride him. Already the animal’s nostrils widen with rage or fear. But if we imagine him snorting, about […]...
25. Pastoral If it were only still!- With far away the shrill Crying of a cock; Or the shaken bell From a cow’s throat Moving through the bushes; Or the soft shock Of wizened apples falling From an old tree In a forgotten orchard Upon the hilly rock! Oh, grey hill, Where the grazing herd Licks the […]...
26. Illusions Noiseless wrinkles On our forehead The frontiers of history, Shed oblique glances At Homer’s verses. Illusions Full of guilt Redeem Wounded whispers That became echoes In lighted caves Of the fools and the innocent....
27. Always the Mob JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob. The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they […]...
28. Lost in the Prairie In one of fhe States of America, some years ago, There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow, Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen, Who had finished their day’s work – nine or ten of them. The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp, And with the thick falling […]...
29. OBSTACLES A thousand visits to the supermarket A thousand acts of sexual intimacy Spread over forty years. Your essence was quite other A smile of absolute connection Repeated a thousand times. Your daily visits to the outside lavatory While I stood talking outside, An intimacy I have sought With no other. My greatest fear is that […]...
30. Images of snow – february 1996 snow is a thousand flowers The chinese probably said Hundreds and thousands this morning Drop their garlands on my head Last night the festoons started Long before we went to bed Snow is a white-furred rabbit The chinese probably wrote Hedgerows and fields this morning Wear a similar fluffy coat Last night the winter danced […]...
31. Out of Sight They held a polo meeting at a little country town, And all the local sportsmen came to win themselves renown. There came two strangers with a horse, and I am much afraid They both belonged to what is called “the take-you-down brigade”. They said their horse could jump like fun, and asked an amateur To […]...
32. Being Me! Wild are my ways, wilder than you think You will find me standing a little left of frame You will find me a little away from the meeting place I am that and much more, insignificant me. Yes I am the one with the faraway look Of sailors of vast dreamy oceans I look at […]...
33. The Fever Monument I walked across the park to the fever monument. It was in the center of a glass square surrounded By red flowers and fountains. The monument Was in the shape of a sea horse and the plaque read We got hot and died....
34. Bringing in the Wine See how the Yellow River’s water move out of heaven. Entering the ocean, never to return. See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers, Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow. … Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases And never tip his golden cup empty toward […]...
35. Ballad of the Moon The moon came into the forge In her bustle of flowering nard. The little boy stares at her, stares. The boy is staring hard. In the shaken air The moon moves her amrs, And shows lubricious and pure, Her breasts of hard tin. “Moon, moon, moon, run! If the gypsies come, They will use your […]...
36. North Atlantic WHEN the sea is everywhere From horizon to horizon.. when the salt and blue fill a circle of horizons.. I swear again how I know The sea is older than anything else And the sea younger than anything else. My first father was a landsman. My tenth father was a sea-lover, a gipsy sea-boy, a […]...
37. Ballad of the Old Cypress In front of the temple of Chu-ko Liang there is an old cypress. Its branches Are like green bronze; its roots like rocks; around its great girth of forty Spans its rimy bark withstands the washing of the rain. Its jet-colored top Rises two thousand feet to greet the sky. Prince and statesman have long […]...
38. It seldom snowed – Part II It seldom snowed in Camp they said, on the mountains, yes, And in the Styx, aka zone six. That’s where we were afoot In alpine grass, garbed to test our winter skills, Tramp the craggy hills and camp a night or two, Spy a special site, an outing planned To ready us for troop command. […]...
39. The Sins of Kalamazoo THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. They run to drabs and grays-and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow-and some: We should worry. […]...
40. Lapis Lazuli (For Harry Clifton) I HAVE heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow. Of poets that are always gay, For everybody knows or else should know That if nothing drastic is done Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out. Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in Until the town lie beaten flat. […]...