In a Breath

Related poetry:

1. The Earth Breath FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows Breathes a dim delight Through the woodland’s purple plumage To the diamond night. Aureoles of joy encircle Every blade of grass Where the dew-fed creatures silent And enraptured pass. And the restless ploughman pauses, Turns and, wondering, Deep beneath his rustic habit Finds himself a king; For a fiery […]...
2. Breath Is Enough I draw sweet air Deeply and long, As pure as prayer, As sweet as song. Where lilies glow And roses wreath, Heart-joy I know Is just to breathe. Aye, so I think By shore or sea, As deep I drink Of purity. This brave machine, Bare to the buff, I keep ice-clean, Breath is enough. […]...
3. Hoodlums I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlums-maybe so. I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all of us-maybe-maybe so. In the ends of my fingers the itch for another man’s neck, I want to see him hanging, […]...
4. Mack The Knife Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear And he shows them pearly white. Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear And he keeps it out of sight. When the shark bites with his teeth, dear Scarlet billows start to spread. Fancy gloves, though, wears Macheath, dear So there’s not a trace of red. On the […]...
5. Cool Tombs WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs. And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes… in the dust, in the cool tombs. Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a […]...
6. Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
7. Statistics NAPOLEON shifted, Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men, Soldiers, armies, guns, Twenty-one million Afoot, horseback, In the air, Under the sea.” And Napoleon turned to his sleep: “It is not my world answering; It is some dreamer who knows not The world I marched in […]...
8. Mowgli's Song The Song of Mowgli I, Mowgli, am singing. Let the jungle listen to the things I have done. Shere Khan said he would kill would kill! At the gates in the twilight he would kill Mowgli, the Frog! He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and […]...
9. O Breath Beneath that loved and celebrated breast, Silent, bored really blindly veined, Grieves, maybe lives and lets Live, passes bets, Something moving but invisibly, And with what clamor why restrained I cannot fathom even a ripple. (See the thin flying of nine black hairs Four around one five the other nipple, Flying almost intolerably on your […]...
10. For this accepted Breath For this accepted Breath Through it compete with Death The fellow cannot touch this Crown By it my title take Ah, what a royal sake To my necessity stooped down! No Wilderness can be Where this attendeth me No Desert Noon No fear of frost to come Haunt the perennial bloom But Certain June! Get […]...
11. The Great Breath ITS edges foamed with amethyst and rose, Withers once more the old blue flower of day: There where the ether like a diamond glows Its petals fade away. A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air; Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows; The great deep thrills, for through it everywhere The breath of Beauty blows. […]...
12. The Breath Of Night The moon rises. The red cubs rolling In the ferns by the rotten oak Stare over a marsh and a meadow To the farm’s white wisp of smoke. A spark burns, high in heaven. Deer thread the blossoming rows Of the old orchard, rabbits Hop by the well-curb. The cock crows From the tree by […]...
13. Three times we parted Breath and I Three times we parted Breath and I Three times He would not go But strove to stir the lifeless Fan The Waters strove to stay. Three Times the Billows tossed me up Then caught me like a Ball Then made Blue faces in my face And pushed away a sail That crawled Leagues off I […]...
14. The Law of the Jungle (From The Jungle Book) Now this is the Law of the Jungle as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back For the strength of […]...
15. Dream Song 107: Three 'coons come at his garbage. He be cross Three ‘coons come at his garbage. He be cross, I figuring porcupine & took Sir poker Unbarring Mr door, & then screen door. Ah, but the little ‘coon, Hardly a foot (not counting tail) got in with Two more at the porch-edge And they swirled, before some two swerve off This side of crab tree, […]...
16. The Twelve III Our sons have gone To serve the Reds To serve the Reds To risk their heads! O bitter, bitter pain, Sweet living! A torn overcoat An Austrian gun! -To get the bourgeosie We’ll start a fire A worldwide fire, and drench it In blood – The good Lord bless us! -O you bitter bitterness, […]...
17. Anna Imroth CROSS the hands over the breast here so. Straighten the legs a little more so. And call for the wagon to come and take her home. Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and Brothers. But all of the others got down and they are safe and This is the only one […]...
18. Hamlet Off-Stage: Laertes Cool Laertes has groupies, proof he has taste, Has cool. Wears skate-board clothes: elephant pants, The crotch snagging his knees, tent-size tee-shirt. He wants the play staged at a roller rink: Him, Fortinbras, and me wearing in-lines, The rest in quads. And instead of a duel, We throw ourselves a roller-derby brawl. Why not? Do something […]...
19. The Flaming Heart O heart, the equal poise of love’s both parts, Big alike with wounds and darts, Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same, And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame; Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill, And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still. Let this immortal life, […]...
20. The Parable Of The Old Men And The Young So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and […]...
21. They All Want to Play Hamlet THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers-O flowers, flowers […]...
22. Mr. Mistoffelees You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees! The Original Conjuring Cat (There can be no doubt about that). Please listen to me and don’t scoff. All his Inventions are off his own bat. There’s no such Cat in the metropolis; He holds all the patent monopolies For performing suprising illusions And creating eccentric confusions. At prestidigitation […]...
23. The Ape And I Said a monkey unto me: “How I’m glad I am not you! See, I swing from tree to tree, Something that you cannot do. In gay greenery I drown; Swift to skyey hights I scale: As you watch me hang head down Don’t you wish you had a tail? “Don’t you wish that you could […]...
24. Sonnet 135: Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, And Will to boot, and Will in overplus; More than enough am I that vex thee still, To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? Shall will in others seem right […]...
25. Why We Tell Stories For Linda Foster I Because we used to have leaves And on damp days Our muscles feel a tug, Painful now, from when roots Pulled us into the ground And because our children believe They can fly, an instinct retained From when the bones in our arms Were shaped like zithers and broke Neatly under […]...
26. Knife Something Just now Moved through my heart Like the thinnest of blades As that red-tail pumped Once with its great wings And flew above the gray, cracked Rock wall. It wasn’t About the bird, it was Something about the way Stone stays Mute and put, whatever Goes flashing by. Sometimes, When I sit like this, […]...
27. Clothes chapter X And the weaver said, “Speak to us of Clothes.” And he answered: Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind […]...
28. Choices They offer you many things, I a few. Moonlight on the play of fountains at night With water sparkling a drowsy monotone, Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk And a cross-play of loves and adulteries And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: All this they offer you. I come with: Salt and bread […]...
29. Fallen Leaves Why should I be the first to fall Of all the leaves on this old tree? Though sadly soon I know that all Will lose their hold and follow me. While my birth-brothers bravely blow, Why should I be first to go? Why should I be the last to cling Of all the leaves on […]...
30. The Mad Yak I am watching them churn the last milk they’ll ever get From me. They are waiting for me to die; They want to make buttons out of my bones. Where are my sisters and brothers? That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap. And that idiot student of his I never […]...
31. Vintage I will mix me a drink of stars, Large stars with polychrome needles, Small stars jetting maroon and crimson, Cool, quiet, green stars. I will tear them out of the sky, And squeeze them over an old silver cup, And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it, So that my drink […]...
32. Cold Poem Cold now. Close to the edge. Almost Unbearable. Clouds Bunch up and boil down From the north of the white bear. This tree-splitting morning I dream of his fat tracks, The lifesaving suet. I think of summer with its luminous fruit, Blossoms rounding to berries, leaves, Handfuls of grain. Maybe what cold is, is the […]...
33. The Voice of the Lobster ”Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare ‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.’ As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes. When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, […]...
34. The Christening What shall I call My dear little dormouse? His eyes are small, But his tail is e-nor-mouse. I sometimes call him Terrible John, ‘Cos his tail goes on – And on – And on. And I sometimes call him Terrible Jack, ‘Cos his tail goes on to the end of his back. And I sometimes […]...
35. Jonas Keene Why did Albert Schirding kill himself Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, Blest as he was with the means of life And wonderful children, bringing him honor Ere he was sixty? If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, I […]...
36. Road-Song of the Bandar-Log (From The Jungle Book) Here we go in a flung festoon, Half-way up to the jealous moon! Don’t you envy our pranceful bands? Don’t you wish you had extra hands? Would n’t you like if your tails were so Curved in the shape of a Cupid’s bow? Now you’re angry, but never mind, Brother, thy […]...
37. The Walking Man of Rodin LEGS hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors. You make us […]...
38. The Famous Tay Whale ‘TWAS in the month of December, and in the year l883, That a monster whale came to Dundee, Resolved for a few days to sport and play, And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay. So the monster whale did sport and play Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay, Until he […]...
39. The Wise Brothers FIRST VOICE So long adrift, so fast aground, What foam and ruin have we found – We, the Wise Brothers? Could heaven and earth be framed amiss, That we should land in fine like this- We, and no others? SECOND VOICE Convoyed by what accursèd thing Made we this evil reckoning – We, the Wise […]...
40. Modern Love XIV: What Soul Would Bargain What soul would bargain for a cure that brings Contempt the nobler agony to kill? Rather let me bear on the bitter ill, And strike this rusty bosom with new stings! It seems there is another veering fit Since on a gold-haired lady’s eyeballs pure, I looked with little prospect of a cure, The while […]...