Flanders
FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.
“Where is Flanders?” was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.
“Where is Flanders?” was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.
A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:
This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.
Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.
Related poetry:
- In Flanders Field In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In […]...
- The Floods The rain it rains without a stay In the hills above us, in the hills; And presently the floods break way Whose strength is in the hills. The trees they suck from every cloud, The valley brooks they roar aloud Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills! The first wood down is sere […]...
- The Wife of Flanders Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day, A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . . This is not Paris. You have lost your way. You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, Who, […]...
- The Songs of the Lathes 1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow The fans and the beltings they roar round me. The power is shaking the floor round me Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over. It is good for me to be here! Guns in Flanders […]...
- The Wildy Ones The sheep are in the silver wood, The cows are in the broom; The goats are in the wild mountain And won’t be home by noon. My mother sang that olden tune Most every night, And to her newest she would croon By candle light; While cuddling in the velvet gloom I’d dream of cows […]...
- Lollingdon Downs VIII THE Kings go by with jewled crowns; Their horses gleam, their banners shake, their spears are many. The sack of many-peopled towns Is all their dream: The way they take Leaves but a ruin in the brake, And, in the furrow that the plowmen make, A stampless penny, a tale, a dream. The Merchants reckon […]...
- The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel A poem moves forward, Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetetiveoccurrence A slow less and less heard Low thunder under all passengers Steel sounds tripping and tripled and Grinding, revolving, gripping, turning, and returning As the flung carpet of the wide countryside spreads out on […]...
- Sorrow Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain,- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start. People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair. All my thoughts are slow and brown: Standing up or sitting down Little […]...
- The Plowboy AFTER the last red sunset glimmer, Black on the line of a low hill rise, Formed into moving shadows, I saw A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. The turf had a gleam of brown, And smell of soil was in the air, And, cool and […]...
- As if I asked a common Alms As if I asked a common Alms, And in my wondering hand A Stranger pressed a Kingdom, And I, bewildered, stand As if I asked the Orient Had it for me a Morn And it should lift its purple Dikes, And shatter me with Dawn!...
- Palladiums IN the newspaper office-who are the spooks? Who wears the mythic coat invisible? Who pussyfoots from desk to desk with a speaking forefinger? Who gumshoes amid the copy paper with a whispering thumb? Speak softly-the sacred cows may hear. Speak easy-the sacred cows must be fed....
- The Dawn I would be ignorant as the dawn That has looked down On that old queen measuring a town With the pin of a brooch, Or on the withered men that saw From their pedantic Babylon The careless planets in their courses, The stars fade out where the moon comes. And took their tablets and did […]...
- Carmel Point The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses- How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads- Now the spoiler […]...
- Meadowsweet Through grass, through amber’d cornfields, our slow Stream Fringed with its flags and reeds and rushes tall, And Meadowsweet, the chosen of them all By wandering children, yellow as the cream Of those great cows winds on as in a dream By mill and footbridge, hamlet old and small (Red roofs, gray tower), and sees […]...
- Blue Island Intersection SIX street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles […]...
- Still Life COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car. Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour. Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun. A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the […]...
- Memoir We look on the shoulders filling the stage of the Chicago Auditorium. A fat mayor has spoken much English and the mud of his speech is crossed with quicksilver hisses elusive and rapid from floor and gallery. A neat governor speaks English and the listeners ring chimes to his clear thoughts. Joffre speaks a few […]...
- The Road and the End I SHALL foot it Down the roadway in the dusk, Where shapes of hunger wander And the fugitives of pain go by. I shall foot it In the silence of the morning, See the night slur into dawn, Hear the slow great winds arise Where tall trees flank the way And shoulder toward the sky. […]...
- Song of Hope O sweet To-morrow! – After to-day There will away This sense of sorrow. Then let us borrow Hope, for a gleaming Soon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray – No gray! While the winds wing us Sighs from The Gone, Nearer to dawn Minute-beats bring us; When there will sing us Larks of a […]...
- The Whale The Whale is found in seas and oceans, Indulging there in fishlike motions, But Science shows that Whales are mammals, Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels. When undisturbed, the Whale will browse Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows, On food that satisfies its tongue, Thus making milk to feed its young. Asking no costly […]...
- The Four Brothers MAKE war songs out of these; Make chants that repeat and weave. Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns; Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns. Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs, Going along, Going along, On the roads from San Antonio to […]...
- Lyonesse In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse. Came a term to that land’s old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless. Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, […]...
- Nights Nothings Again WHO knows what I know When I have asked the night questions And the night has answered nothing Only the old answers? Who picked a crimson cryptogram, The tail light of a motor car turning a corner, Or the midnight sign of a chile con carne place, Or a man out of the ashes of […]...
- She Spins Silk Far up river in Szechuan, Waters rise as spring winds roar. How can I dare to meet her now, To brave the dangerous gorge? The grass grows green in the valley below Where silk worms silently spin. Her hands work threads that never end, Dawn to dusk when the cuckoo sings....
- Does It Matter? Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing you sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace […]...
- At Galway Races There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind: We, too, had good attendance once, Hearers and hearteners of the work; Aye, horsemen for companions, Before the merchant and the clerk Breathed on the world with timid breath. Sing on: […]...
- Silver Wind DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer- Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam- And another long breath for […]...
- He fumbles at your Soul He fumbles at your Soul As Players at the Keys Before they drop full Music on He stuns you by degrees Prepares your brittle Nature For the Ethereal Blow By fainter Hammers further heard Then nearer Then so slow Your Breath has time to straighten Your Brain to bubble Cool Deals One imperial Thunderbolt That […]...
- Vegetation O never harm the dreaming world, The world of green, the world of leaves, But let its million palms unfold The adoration of the trees. It is a love in darkness wrought Obedient to the unseen sun, Longer than memory, a thought Deeper than the graves of time. The turning spindles of the cells Weave […]...
- A Gravestone Far from the churchyard dig his grave, On some green mound beside the wave; To westward, sea and sky alone, And sunsets. Put a mossy stone, With mortal name and date, a harp And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp; Then leave it free to winds that blow, And patient mosses creeping; slow, And wandering […]...
- There is a morn by men unseen There is a morn by men unseen Whose maids upon remoter green Keep their Seraphic May And all day long, with dance and game, And gambol I may never name Employ their holiday. Here to light measure, move the feet Which walk no more the village street Nor by the wood are found Here are […]...
- Requiescat Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too! Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be. Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and […]...
- Sweethearts of the Year Sweetheart Spring Our Sweetheart, Spring, came softly, Her gliding hands were fire, Her lilac breath upon our cheeks Consumed us with desire. By her our God began to build, Began to sow and till. He laid foundations in our loves For every good and ill. We asked Him not for blessing, We asked Him not […]...
- Harvest Sunset RED gold of pools, Sunset furrows six o’clock, And the farmer done in the fields And the cows in the barns with bulging udders. Take the cows and the farmer, Take the barns and bulging udders. Leave the red gold of pools And sunset furrows six o’clock. The farmer’s wife is singing. The farmer’s boy […]...
- Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight THE POLICEMAN buys shoes slow and careful; The teamster buys gloves slow and careful; They take care of their feet and hands; They live on their feet and hands. The milkman never argues; He works alone and no one speaks to him; The city is asleep when he is on the job; He puts a […]...
- Dream Song 46: I am, outside. Incredible I am, outside. Incredible panic rules. People are blowing and beating each other without mercy. Drinks are boiling. Iced Drinks are boiling. The worse anyone feels, the worse Treated he is. Fools elect fools. A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath, “Christ!” That word, so spoken, affected the vision Of, when they […]...
- Green The dawn was apple-green, The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between. She opened her eyes, and green They shone, clear like flowers undone, For the first time, now for the first time seen....
- Night Movement-New York IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms, And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon; In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city, The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city; In the night, when the trains […]...
- Clean Curtains NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets. The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun’s bonnet. One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons. The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the […]...
- Memoranda THIS handful of grass, brown, says little. This quarter mile field of it, waving seeds ripening in the sun, is a lake of luminous firefly lavender. Prairie roses, two of them, climb down the sides of a road ditch. In the clear pool they find their faces along stiff knives of grass, and cat-tails who […]...