Chasers

Related poetry:

1. Dutch lullaby Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe, Sailed on a river of misty light Into a sea of dew. “Where are you going, and what do you wish?” The old moon asked the three. “We have come to fish for the herring-fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of […]...
2. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe, Sailed on a river of crystal light Into a sea of dew. “Where are you going, and what do you wish?” The old moon asked the three. “We have come to fish for the herring-fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of […]...
3. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the […]...
4. Sandpipers Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and […]...
5. Yesterday is History Yesterday is History, ‘Tis so far away Yesterday is Poetry ‘Tis Philosophy Yesterday is mystery Where it is Today While we shrewdly speculate Flutter both away...
6. Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The Little Cowboy, what have you heard, Up on the lonely rath’s green mound? Only the plaintive yellow bird Sighing in sultry fields around, Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee! – Only the grasshopper and the bee? – “Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather, sewn together, This will make a shoe. Left, right, pull it tight; Summer days are […]...
7. The Self-Unseeing Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a […]...
8. Opposites The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child Walked out into the street And splashed in all the pubbles till She had such shocking feet The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child Stayed quietly in the house And sat upon the fender stool As still as any mouse. The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child Her hands were black as ink; She would come running through the house And begging for […]...
9. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
10. The Wounded Breakfast A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, Squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, Even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda Is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost The size of the night. . . He looks up and sees a huge shoe Ponderously mounting out of the earth. Up […]...
11. Near Keokuk THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek. Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water. All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel. Now they hold their toes and ankles to the drift of running water. Then they go to the bunk cars and […]...
12. Where? My snowy eupatorium has dropped Its silver threads of petals in the night; No signal told its blossoming had stopped; Its seed-films flutter silent, ghostly white: No answer stirs the shining air, As I ask, “Where?” Beneath the glossy leaves of winter-green Dead lilly-bells lie low, and in their place A rounded disk of pearly […]...
13. Yesterday I’ve trod the links with many a man, And played him club for club; ‘Tis scarce a year since I began And I am still a dub. But this I’ve noticed as we strayed Along the bunkered way, No one with me has ever played As he did yesterday. It makes no difference what the […]...
14. The Sea-Child Into the world you sent her, mother, Fashioned her body of coral and foam, Combed a wave in her hair’s warm smother, And drove her away from home In the dark of the night she crept to the town And under a doorway she laid her down, The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown. […]...
15. Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse-for you must justify me-you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance […]...
16. Chords IN the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes… horseback in leather boots and leather gauntlets by the sea. In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls on her white shoulders… and a speaking, brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless… battering Russian marches on a […]...
17. I could not prove the Years had feet I could not prove the Years had feet Yet confident they run Am I, from symptoms that are past And Series that are done I find my feet have further Goals I smile upon the Aims That felt so ample Yesterday Today’s have vaster claims I do not doubt the self I was Was competent […]...
18. The Companion Let him answer as he will, Or be lightsome as he may, Now nor after shall he say Worn-out words enough to kill, Or to lull down by their craft, Doubt, that was born yesterday, When he lied and when she laughed. Let him and another name For the starlight on the snow, Let him […]...
19. I Have Some Friends I have some friends, some worthy friends, And worthy friends are rare: These carpet slippers on my feet, That padded leather chair; This old and shabby dressing-gown, So well the worse of wear. I have some friends, some honest friends, And honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that’s […]...
20. My young son asks me My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics? What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces Of bread are more than one’s about all you’ll end up with. My young son asks me: Must I learn French? What is the use, I feel like saying. This State’s collapsing. And if you […]...
21. Sonnet V: Nothing But No Nothing but “No,” and “Aye,” and “Aye,” and “No”? How falls it out so strangely you reply? I tell ye, Fair, I’ll not be answer’d so, With this affirming “No,” denying “Aye.” I say, “I love,” you slightly answer “Aye”; I say, “You love,” you pule me out a “No”; I say, “I die,” you […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. Butterfly Butterfly, the wind blows sea-ward, strong beyond the garden-wall! Butterfly, why do you settle on my shoe, and sip the dirt on my shoe, Lifting your veined wings, lifting them? big white butterfly! Already it is October, and the wind blows strong to the sea From the hills where snow must have fallen, the wind […]...
24. The Answer You have spoken the answer. A child searches far sometimes Into the red dust On a dark rose leaf And so you have gone far For the answer is: Silence. In the republic Of the winking stars and spent cataclysms Sure we are it is off there the answer Is hidden and folded over, Sleeping […]...
25. Tides O patient shore, thou canst not go to meet Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest Thou all thy loneliness? Art thou at rest, When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet, He turns away? Know’st thou, however sweet That other shore may be, that to thy breast He must return? And when in […]...
26. Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur “How shall I be a poet? How shall I write in rhyme? You told me once the very wish Partook of the sublime: Then tell me how. Don’t put me off With your ‘another time’.” The old man smiled to see him, To hear his sudden sally; He liked the lad to speak his mind […]...
27. It was a quiet way It was a quiet way He asked if I was his I made no answer of the Tongue But answer of the Eyes And then He bore me on Before this mortal noise With swiftness, as of Chariots And distance, as of Wheels. This World did drop away As Acres from the feet Of one […]...
28. Reluctance Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended. The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save those that the oak is keeping […]...
29. Leather Leggings THEY have taken the ball of earth and made it a little thing. They were held to the land and horses; they were held to the little seas. They have changed and shaped and welded; they have broken the old tools and made new ones; they are ranging the white scarves of cloudland; they are […]...
30. Old-fashioned Requited Love I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias And slid my fingers among topics and titles Looking for you. And the answer comes slow. There seems to be no answer. I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it. Or-the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight-maybe he […]...
31. After Auschwitz Anger, As black as a hook, Overtakes me. Each day, Each Nazi Took, at 8:00 A. M., a baby And sauteed him for breakfast In his frying pan. And death looks on with a casual eye And picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower That […]...
32. To learn the Transport by the Pain To learn the Transport by the Pain As Blind Men learn the sun! To die of thirst suspecting That Brooks in Meadows run! To stay the homesick homesick feet Upon a foreign shore Haunted by native lands, the while And blue beloved air! This is the Sovereign Anguish! This the signal woe! These are the […]...
33. The Quip The merry world did on a day With his train-bands and mates agree To meet together where I lay, And all in sport to jeer at me. First, Beauty crept into a rose, Which when I plucked not, “Sir,” said she, “Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?” But thou shalt answer, Lord, for […]...
34. My Father’s Hats Sunday mornings I would reach High into his dark closet while standing on a chair and tiptoeing reach Higher, touching, sometimes fumbling the soft crowns and imagine I was in a forest, wind hymning through pines, where the musky scent Of rain clinging to damp earth was his scent I loved, lingering on Bands, leather, […]...
35. Upon Watts' Picture Sic Transit “What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.” But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life, The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears, The clash of sword and harness, and the madness of the strife; To-night begin the silence and the peace […]...
36. To The Students Of The Workers' And Peasants' Faculty So there you sit. And how much blood was shed That you might sit there. Do such stories bore you? Well, don’t forget that others sat before you Who later sat on people. Keep your head! Your science will be valueless, you’ll find And learning will be sterile, if inviting Unless you pledge your intellect […]...
37. In Hardwood Groves The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove. Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade, They must go down past things coming up. They must go down into the […]...
38. All in June A week ago I had a fire To warm my feet, my hands and face; Cold winds, that never make a friend, Crept in and out of every place. Today the fields are rich in grass, And buttercups in thousands grow; I’ll show the world where I have been With gold-dust seen on either shoe. […]...
39. A Prison gets to be a friend A Prison gets to be a friend Between its Ponderous face And Ours a Kinsmanship express And in its narrow Eyes We come to look with gratitude For the appointed Beam It deal us stated as our food And hungered for the same We learn to know the Planks That answer to Our feet So […]...
40. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...