Eleventh Avenue Racket

Related poetry:

1. The Song Of The Strange Ascetic If I had been a Heathen, I’d have praised the purple vine, My slaves should dig the vineyards, And I would drink the wine. But Higgins is a Heathen, And his slaves grow lean and grey, That he may drink some tepid milk Exactly twice a day. If I had been a Heathen, I’d have […]...
2. Home Fires IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street… faces… coffee spots… children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders […]...
3. The Avenue Now that we’ve come to the end I’ve been trying to piece it together, Not that distance makes anything clearer. It began in the half-light While we walked through the dawn chorus After a party that lasted all night, With the blackbird, the wood-pigeon, The song-thrush taking a bludgeon To a snail, our taking each […]...
4. Young Bullfrogs JIMMY WIMBLETON listened a first week in June. Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs. Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke, Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles. They made his head ache with riddles of music. They rested his head with beaten […]...
5. Astrophel And Stella-Eleventh Song “Who is it that this dark night Underneath my window plaineth?” ‘It is one who from thy sight Being, ah! exiled, disdaineth Every other vulgar light.’ “Why, alas! and are you he? Be not yet those fancies changed?” ‘Dear, when you find change in me, Though from me you be estranged, Let my change to […]...
6. Eleventh Hour The bloom was off the economic recovery. “I just want to know one thing,” she said. What was that one thing? He’ll never know, Because at just that moment he heard the sound Of broken glass in the bathroom, and when he got there, It was dark. His hand went to the wall But the […]...
7. 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, […]...
8. Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue He felt the entrance’s green darkness Wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak That he was still accepting and arranging; When at the opposite transparent end, far off, Through green sunlight, as through green window panes, Whitely a solitary shape Flared up, long remaining distant And then finally, the downdriving light Boiling over it […]...
9. The Married Man The bachelor ‘e fights for one As joyful as can be; But the married man don’t call it fun, Because ‘e fights for three For ‘Im an’ ‘Er an’ It (An’ Two an’ One make Three) ‘E wants to finish ‘is little bit, An’ e’ wants to go ‘ome to is tea! The bachelor pokes […]...
10. Jimmy Dooley's Army There’s a dashin’ sort of boy Which they call his Party’s Joy, And his smile-that-won’t-come-off would quite disarm ye; And he played the leadin’ hand In the Helter-Skelter Band, Known as Jimmy Dooley’s Circulating Army. When the rank and file they found, They were marchin’ round and round, They one and all began to act […]...
11. The Convict's Return Ye mountains and glens of fair Scotland I’m with ye once again, During my absence from ye my heart was like to break in twain; Oh! How I longed to see you and the old folks at home, And with my lovely Jeannie once more in the green woods to roam. Now since I’ve returned […]...
12. Spring When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks […]...
13. SORRY I MISSED YOU (or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’) What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland? “Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising A benefit reading, he’d love to hear from you and have your help.” ‘Like hell he would’ I thought but I […]...
14. 402. Song-Meg o' the Mill (Another Version) O KEN ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten, An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten? A braw new naig wi’ the tail o’ a rottan, And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten. O ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly, An’ ken ye what Meg o’ […]...
15. The Shanty On The Rise When the caravans of wool-teams climbed the ranges from the West, On a spur among the mountains stood ‘The Bullock-drivers’ Rest’; It was built of bark and saplings, and was rather rough inside, But ’twas good enough for bushmen in the careless days that died Just a quiet little shanty kept by ‘Something-in-Disguise’, As the […]...
16. The Cow-Juice Cure The clover was in blossom, an’ the year was at the June, When Flap-jack Billy hit the town, likewise O’Flynn’s saloon. The frost was on the fodder an’ the wind was growin’ keen, When Billy got to seein’ snakes in Sullivan’s shebeen. Then in meandered Deep-hole Dan, once comrade of the cup: “Oh Billy, for […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. Father Riley's Horse ‘Twas the horse thief, Andy Regan, that was hunted like a dog By the troopers of the upper Murray side, They had searched in every gully they had looked in every log, But never sight or track of him they spied, Till the priest at Kiley’s Crossing heard a knocking very late And a whisper […]...
19. Old Crony Said she: ‘Although my husband Jim Is with his home content, I never should have married him, We are so different. Oh yes, I know he loves me well, Our children he adores; But he’s so dull, and I rebel Against a life that bores. ‘Of course there is another man, Quite pennyless is he; […]...
20. TO MY WIFE I You buy my freedom with your love. With every book you catalogue or stamp My imagination hacks a strand from the hawser That for three years has held it In the grubbing estuary of mud and time. Your early waking with tired eyes And late return at evening, all Contribute to the store of […]...
21. The Song Of Old Joe Swallow When I was up the country in the rough and early days, I used to work along ov Jimmy Nowlett’s bullick-drays; Then the reelroad wasn’t heered on, an’ the bush was wild an’ strange, An’ we useter draw the timber from the saw-pits in the range Load provisions for the stations, an’ we’d travel far […]...
22. Nellie Clark I was only eight years old; And before I grew up and knew what it meant I had no words for it, except That I was frightened and told my Mother; And that my Father got a pistol And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. […]...
23. Drumnotes DAYS of the dead men, Danny. Drum for the dead, drum on your remembering heart. Jaurès, a great love-heart of France, a slug of lead in the red valves. Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold, proud, a shark’s mouthful. Franz Josef, the old man of forty haunted kingdoms, in a tomb with the Hapsburg fathers, moths […]...
24. The Irish Convict's Return Ye mountains and glens of Old Ireland, I’ve returned home to ye again; During my absence from ye My heart always felt great pain. Oh, how I long’d to see you dear Nora, And the old folks at home; And the beautiful Lakes o’ Killarney, Where we oft together did roam. Ye beautiful Lakes of […]...
25. The Chances I mind as ‘ow the night afore that show Us five got talking, we was in the know, “Over the top to-morrer; boys, we’re for it, First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that’s tore it.” “Ah well,” says Jimmy, an’ ‘e’s seen some scrappin’ “There ain’t more nor five things as can ‘appen; Ye […]...
26. Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart Só heavy, if he had a hundred years & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time Henry could not make good. Starts again always in Henry’s ears The little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime. And there is another thing he has in mind Like […]...
27. The Mylora Elopement By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep, And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep, Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, “cocky” on Mylora Run. Jimmy loved the super’s daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath. Long and earnestly he sought […]...
28. Nora, the Maid of Killarney Down by the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, Off times I have met my own dear Barney, In the sweet summer time of the year, In the silvery moonlight so clear, I’ve rambled with my sweetheart Barney, Along the green banks of the Lakes of Killarney. The Lakes of Killarney are most lovely to be seen […]...
29. Cumulatives STORMS have beaten on this point of land And ships gone to wreck here And the passers-by remember it With talk on the deck at night As they near it. Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter And his battles have held the sporting pages And on the street they indicate him […]...
30. O Daedalus, Fly Away Home (For Maia and Julie) Drifting night in the Georgia pines, Coonskin drum and jubilee banjo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me. Night is juba, night is congo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me. Night is an African juju man Weaving a wish and a weariness together To make two wings. O fly away home fly away Do […]...
31. Birthday (16th January 1949) I thank whatever gods may be For all the happiness that’s mine; That I am festive, fit and free To savour women, wit and wine; That I may game of golf enjoy, And have a formidable drive: In short, that I’m a gay old boy Though I be Seventy-and-five. My daughter thinks. […]...
32. In Defence of the Bush So you’re back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went, And you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent; Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear That it wasn’t cool and shady and there wasn’t whips of beer, And the looney bullock snorted when you first […]...
33. Ballad of women i love Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate Hid away in an oaken chest, And a Franklin platter of ancient date Beareth Amandy Baker’s crest; What times soever I’ve been their guest, Says I to myself in an undertone: “Of womenfolk, it must be confessed, These do I love, and these alone.” Well, again, in the […]...
34. Reaping You want to know what’s the matter with me, do yer? My! ain’t men blinder’n moles? It ain’t nothin’ new, be sure o’ that. Why, ef you’d had eyes you’d ha’ seed Me changin’ under your very nose, Each day a little diff’rent. But you never see nothin’, you don’t. Don’t touch me, Jake, Don’t […]...
35. ON FIRST READING JOHN GOODBY'S 'IRISH POETRY SINCE 1950&#039 Barbarous insult to Yeats’ memory and Claudel’s Allen, thank God you are dead, you who breathed the air of Apollinaire, Ghost of Reverdy bear witness to the mendacity of his clamour, Hart Crane, rise from the estuary of the great river you drowned in, John Clare, rise from your country churchyard grave, Gray, from your […]...
36. Smoke and Steel SMOKE of the fields in spring is one, Smoke of the leaves in autumn another. Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel, They all go up in a line with a smokestack, Or they twist… in the slow twist… of the wind. If the north wind comes they run to the south. If […]...
37. Owls and pussy cats and seven-year – old boys owls and pussy cats can make up their minds To sail out to sea and even get married But they don’t have parents or other such binds Whose one job in life is to see that they’re harried Now a seven year old boy whose mind is quite clear About what the world is and […]...
38. The Sergeant's Weddin&#039 ‘E was warned agin’ ‘er That’s what made ‘im look; She was warned agin’ ‘im That is why she took. ‘Wouldn’t ‘ear no reason, ‘Went an’ done it blind; We know all about ’em, They’ve got all to find! Cheer for the Sergeant’s weddin’ Give ’em one cheer more! Grey gun-‘orses in the lando, An’ […]...
39. Who is Kator Anyhow? Why, oh why was Kater lifted From the darkness, where he drifted All unknown, and raised to honour, Side by side with Dick O’connor, In the Council, free from row? Who is Kater, anyhow? Did he lend our armies rally, Like the recent Billy Dalley? Did he lend a Premier money, Like (No libels here, […]...
40. The Merman I Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone Singing alone Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne? II I would be a merman bold, I would sit and sing the whole of the day; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power; But at night I would roam […]...