Crimson Rambler

Related poetry:

1. Flash Crimson I SHALL cry God to give me a broken foot. I shall ask for a scar and a slashed nose. I shall take the last and the worst. I shall be eaten by gray creepers in a bunkhouse where no runners of the sun come and no dogs live. And yet-of all “and yets” this […]...
2. Rusty Crimson (Chirstmas Day, 1917)THE FIVE O’CLOCK prairie sunset is a strong man going to sleep after a long day in a cornfield. The red dust of a rusty crimson is fixed with two fingers of lavender. A hook of smoke, a woman’s nose in charcoal and… nothing. The timberline turns in a cover of purple. A […]...
3. Crimson CRIMSON is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold, Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his Coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows And smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)...
4. The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
5. There was crimson clash of war There was crimson clash of war. Lands turned black and bare; Women wept; Babes ran, wondering. There came one who understood not these things. He said, “Why is this?” Whereupon a million strove to answer him. There was such intricate clamour of tongues, That still the reason was not....
6. The Guest is gold and crimson The Guest is gold and crimson An Opal guest and gray Of Ermine is his doublet His Capuchin gay He reaches town at nightfall He stops at every door Who looks for him at morning I pray him too explore The Lark’s pure territory Or the Lapwing’s shore!...
7. Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font; The firefly wakens, waken thou with me. Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danae […]...
8. The Princess: A Medley: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me. Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the earth all Danaë […]...
9. The Rambler I do not see the hills around, Nor mark the tints the copses wear; I do not note the grassy ground And constellated daisies there. I hear not the contralto note Of cuckoos hid on either hand, The whirr that shakes the nighthawk’s throat When eve’s brown awning hoods the land. Some say each songster, […]...
10. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
11. A House upon the Height A House upon the Height That Wagon never reached No Dead, were ever carried down No Peddler’s Cart approached Whose Chimney never smoked Whose Windows Night and Morn Caught Sunrise first and Sunset last Then held an Empty Pane Whose fate Conjecture knew No other neighbor did And what it was we never lisped Because […]...
12. Ossawatomie I DON’T know how he came, Shambling, dark, and strong. He stood in the city and told men: My people are fools, my people are young and strong, my people must learn, my people are terrible workers and fighters. Always he kept on asking: Where did that blood come from? They said: You for the […]...
13. Crimson Changes People DID I see a crucifix in your eyes And nails and Roman soldiers And a dusk Golgotha? Did I see Mary, the changed woman, Washing the feet of all men, Clean as new grass When the old grass burns? Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths, With a flutter of wings that meant: […]...
14. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. A Tall Man THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth. The head of this man is a gaunt strong head. The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians. The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans, Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown. The neck of this […]...
17. An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus&quot iiGloria Praise the wet snow Falling early. Praise the shadow My neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roof Even this gray October day that should, they say, Have been golden. Praise The invisible sun burning beyond The white cold sky, giving us Light and the chimney’s shadow. Praise God or the gods, the unknown, That […]...
18. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
19. The Helmet All the way On the road to Gary He could see Where the sky shone Just out of reach And smell the rich Smell of work As strong as money, But when he got there The night was over. People were going To work and back, The sidewalks were lakes No one walked on, The […]...
20. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
21. Testimony Regarding a Ghost THE ROSES slanted crimson sobs On the night sky hair of the women, And the long light-fingered men Spoke to the dark-haired women, “Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier.” How could he sit there among us all Guzzling blood into his guts, Goblets, mugs, buckets- Leaning, toppling, laughing With a slobber on his mouth, A smear of […]...
22. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
23. Rutherford McDowell They brought me ambrotypes Of the old pioneers to enlarge. And sometimes one sat for me- Some one who was in being When giant hands from the womb of the world Tore the republic. What was it in their eyes?- For I could never fathom That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, And the serene sorrow […]...
24. She Hears The Storm There was a time in former years While my roof-tree was his When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this! I should have murmured anxiously, ‘The prickling rain strikes cold; His road is bare of hedge or tree, And he is getting old.’ But now the fitful chimney-roar, The […]...
25. A Requisition to the Queen Smiths Buildings No. 19 Patons Lane, Dundee. Sept the 6th. 1877. Most August! Empress of India, and of great Britain the Queen, I most humbly beg your pardon, hoping you will not think it mean That a poor poet that lives in Dundee, Would be so presumptous to write unto Thee Most lovely Empress of […]...
26. Loud And Low In The Chimney LOUD and low in the chimney The squalls suspire; Then like an answer dwindles And glows the fire, And the chamber reddens and darkens In time like taken breath. Near by the sounding chimney The youth apart Hearkens with changing colour And leaping heart, And hears in the coil of the tempest The voice of […]...
27. Any Woman I am the pillars of the house; The keystone of the arch am I. Take me away, and roof and wall Would fall to ruin me utterly. I am the fire upon the hearth, I am the light of the good sun, I am the heat that warms the earth, Which else were colder than […]...
28. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
29. A Million Young Workmen, 1915 A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads, And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses. Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands. And oh, it would have been […]...
30. Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation How should the world be luckier if this house, Where passion and precision have been one Time out of mind, became too ruinous To breed the lidleSs eye that loves the sun? And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts that grow Where wings have memory of wings, and all That comes of the best knit to […]...
31. A Day At Union Station Departure At last, I’m leaving the familiar roof! I’m undeterred by rain and wind. This presentation should be quite a feather In my cap. Eager, I clutch my ticket. I’m going places. Not letting any grass Grow, not under these clever feet! Pigeons We admire one another’s tiny coral feet. Coooooo, coooooo under the roof. […]...
32. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
33. Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think Praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting For paintings to sigh is science. In another […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Silas Dement It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled With new-fallen frost. It was midnight and not a soul abroad. Out of the chimney of the court-house A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased The northwest wind. I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door In […]...
36. I dwell in Possibility I dwell in Possibility A fairer House than Prose More numerous of Windows Superior for Doors Of Chambers as the Cedars Impregnable of Eye And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky Of Visitors the fairest For Occupation This The spreading wide of narrow Hands To gather Paradise...
37. 5.7 I don’t care if you are you and I am I. I am not some exotic flower. Whatever coat you have on, I will put it on to warm me… and the shoes however small… I will walk in them to balance our height difference. You don’t need to convert for me; I have already […]...
38. Elegy The page opens to snow on a field: boot-holed month, black hour The bottle in your coat half voda half winter light. To what and to whom does one say yes? If God were the uncertain, would you cling to him? Beneath a tattoo of stars the gate open, so silent so like a tomb. […]...
39. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
40. The Hermit NOW the quietude of earth Nestles deep my heart within; Friendships new and strange have birth Since I left the city’s din. Here the tempest stays its guile, Like a big kind brother plays, Romps and pauses here awhile From its immemorial ways. Now the silver light of dawn, Slipping through the leaves that fleck […]...