Illinois Farmer

Related poetry:

1. How Much? HOW much do you love me, a million bushels? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather....
2. Laughing Corn THERE was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow corn. And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn There will be high majestic fooling. The ears ripen in late summer And come on with a conquering laughter, Come on with a high and conquering laughter. The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse. One of […]...
3. The Angel and the Clown I saw wild domes and bowers And smoking incense towers And mad exotic flowers In Illinois. Where ragged ditches ran Now springs of Heaven began Celestial drink for man In Illinois. There stood beside the town Beneath its incense-crown An angel and a clown In Illinois. He was as Clowns are: She was snow and […]...
4. Baltic Fog Notes (Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk […]...
5. 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...
6. The Illinois Village O you who lose the art of hope, Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, Who weep that Liberty must die, Turn to the little prairie towns, Your higher hope shall yet begin. On every side awaits you there Some gate where glory enters in. Yet when I […]...
7. Now When The Number Of My Years NOW when the number of my years Is all fulfilled, and I From sedentary life Shall rouse me up to die, Bury me low and let me lie Under the wide and starry sky. Joying to live, I joyed to die, Bury me low and let me lie. Clear was my soul, my deeds were […]...
8. 4. Song-In the Character of a Ruined Farmer THE SUN he is sunk in the west, All creatures retirиd to rest, While here I sit, all sore beset, With sorrow, grief, and woe: And it’s O, fickle Fortune, O! The prosperous man is asleep, Nor hears how the whirlwinds sweep; But Misery and I must watch The surly tempest blow: And it’s O, […]...
9. Northern Farmer: New Style Dosn’t thou ‘ear my ‘erse’s legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty that’s what I ‘ears ’em saäy. Proputty, proputty, proputty Sam, thou’s an ass for thy paaïns: Theer’s moor sense i’ one o’ ‘is legs, nor in all thy braaïns. Woä theer’s a craw to pluck wi’ tha, Sam; yon ‘s parson’s ‘ouse […]...
10. The Fury Of Hating Eyes I would like to bury All the hating eyes Under the sand somewhere off The North Atlantic and suffocate Them with the awful sand And put all their colors to sleep In that soft smother. Take the brown eyes of my father, Those gun shots, those mean muds. Bury them. Take the blue eyes of […]...
11. Buried Love I have come to bury Love Beneath a tree, In the forest tall and black Where none can see. I shall put no flowers at his head, Nor stone at his feet, For the mouth I loved so much Was bittersweet. I shall go no more to his grave, For the woods are cold. I […]...
12. Letter S THE RIVER is gold under a sunset of Illinois. It is a molten gold someone pours and changes. A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs Knows what the sunset is pouring on the river here. The river twists in a letter S. A gold S now speaks to the Illinois sky....
13. Françoise And The Fruit Farmer In town to sell his fruit, he saw her- Françoise in her summer slacks- Turning to him, coming back To feel the swelling plums, One held in each soft hand, breast-high, Above them her eyes enclosing him In quietness brushed up to colors, Urgings green, thrustings yellow. A vine-like touch, her promise seemed all profit, […]...
14. The Proud Farmer [In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana] Into the acres of the newborn state He poured his strength, and plowed his ancient name, And, when the traders followed him, he stood Towering above their furtive souls and tame. That brow without a stain, that fearless eye Oft left the passing stranger wondering To […]...
15. Schroeder the Fisherman I sat on the bank above Bernadotte And dropped crumbs in the water, Just to see the minnows bump each other, Until the strongest got the prize. Or I went to my little pasture, Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow, Or nosing each other lovingly, And emptied a basket of yellow corn, […]...
16. 86. The Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie A GUID New-year I wish thee, Maggie! Hae, there’s a ripp to thy auld baggie: Tho’ thou’s howe-backit now, an’ knaggie, I’ve seen the day Thou could hae gaen like ony staggie, Out-owre the lay. Tho’ now thou’s dowie, stiff, an’ crazy, An’ thy auld hide as white’s a daisie, I’ve seen thee dappl’t, sleek […]...
17. Parting AS from our dream we died away Far off I felt the outer things; Your wind-blown tresses round me play, Your bosom’s gentle murmurings. And far away our faces met As on the verge of the vast spheres; And in the night our cheeks were wet, I could not say with dew or tears. As […]...
18. Farmer, Dying for Hank and Nancy Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow From his cough. These limp days, his anger, Legend forty years from moon to Stevensville, Lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore. Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam Unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves Of cottonwoods […]...
19. The Farmer's Daughter The Rector met a little lass Who led a heifer by a rope. Said he: “Why don’t you go to Mass? Do you not want to please the Pope?” The village maiden made reply, As on the rope she ceased to pull: “My father said this morning I Must take Paquerette to see the bull.” […]...
20. Corn Hut Talk WRITE your wishes on the door and come in. Stand outside in the pools of the harvest moon. Bring in the handshake of the pumpkins. There’s a wish for every hazel nut? There’s a hope for every corn shock? There’s a kiss for every clumsy climbing shadow? Clover and the bumblebees once, High winds and […]...
21. 25. My Father was a Farmer: A Ballad MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O, And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O; He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O; For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O. Then out into the world my course I did […]...
22. Corn and Catholics “What! still those two infernal questions, That with our meals our slumbers mix That spoil our tempers and digestions Eternal Corn and Catholics! Gods! were there ever two such bores? Nothing else talk’d of night or morn Nothing in doors, or out of doors, But endless Catholics and Corn! Never was such a brace of […]...
23. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front Love the quick profit, the annual raise, Vacation with pay. Want more Of everything ready-made. Be afraid To know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery Any more. Your mind will be punched in a card And shut away in […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. Lines Written In The Fannie Farmer Cookbook You won’t become a gourmet* cook By studying our Fannie’s book Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss. Nevertheless, you’ll find, Frank dear, The basic elements** are here. And if a problem should arise: The Soufflé fall before your eyes, Or strange things happen to the Rice You know I […]...
26. For A Picture Of St. Dorothea I bear a basket lined with grass; I am so light, I am so fair, That men must wonder as I pass And at the basket that I bear, Where in a newly-drawn green litter Sweet flowers I carry, sweets for bitter. Lilies I shew you, lilies none, None in Caesar’s gardens blow, And a […]...
27. Summer Dawn Pray but one prayer for me ‘twixt thy closed lips, Think but one thought of me up in the stars. The summer night waneth, the morning light slips, Faint and grey ‘twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold Waits […]...
28. Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
29. Wind on the Hill No one can tell me, Nobody knows, Where the wind comes from, Where the wind goes. It’s flying from somewhere As fast as it can, I couldn’t keep up with it, Not if I ran. But if I stopped holding The string of my kite, It would blow with the wind For a day and […]...
30. The Island Does the wind sing in your ears at night, in the town, Rattling the windows and doors of the cheap-built place? Do you hear its song as it flies over marsh and down? Do you feel the kiss that the wind leaves here on my face? Or, wrapt in a lamplit quiet, do you restrain […]...
31. The Aim was Song Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught. Man came to tell it what was wrong: I hadn’t found the place to blow; It blew too hard the aim was song. And listen how it ought […]...
32. November 6 Remember when Khrushchev said “We will bury you!” On the cover Of Time I thought he was Employing a metaphor As in “Braves Scalp Giants!” On the back page Of the Daily News I pictured the Russians Burying us under a mound Of all the rubble That rubles could buy When what he meant was […]...
33. The Funeral Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign, you must not touch, For ’tis my outward Soul, Viceroy to that which then to heaven being gone Will leave this to control And keep these limbs, her Provinces, from dissolution. […]...
34. The New World A man roams the streets with a basket Of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, Peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout The Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles Along the river. Hamtramck hungered For yellow freestone peaches, downriver Wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced Into the […]...
35. Lotus On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, And I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded. Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my Dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind. […]...
36. Call To Account! The drum of war thunders and thunders. It calls: thrust iron into the living. From every country Slave after slave Are thrown onto bayonet steel. For the sake of what? The earth shivers Hungry And stripped. Mankind is vapourised in a blood bath Only so Someone Somewhere Can get hold of Albania. Human gangs bound […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. The Great Hunt I cannot tell you now; When the wind’s drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind’s a whisper at last Maybe I’ll tell you then some other time. When the rose’s flash to the sunset Reels to the rack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face […]...
39. Going Gone Over stone walls and barns, Miles from the black-eyed Susans, Over circus tents and moon rockets You are going, going. You who have inhabited me In the deepest and most broken place, Are going, going. An old woman calls up to you From her deathbed deep in sores, Asking, “What do you keep of her?” […]...
40. 29. Song-The Rigs o' Barley IT was upon a Lammas night, When corn rigs are bonie, Beneath the moon’s unclouded light, I held awa to Annie; The time flew by, wi’ tentless heed, Till, ‘tween the late and early, Wi’ sma’ persuasion she agreed To see me thro’ the barley. Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs, An’ corn rigs are bonie: […]...