Jabberers

Related poetry:

1. The Gulf A Gulf of silence separates us from each other. I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other. I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there. Often I call you by your childish name And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice. How can […]...
2. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
3. Good-night MANY ways to spell good night. Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes. They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit. Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out. Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar. […]...
4. The Universal Language Of Love There is a universal language that is spoken by all – Both on earth and in the heavens above. It’s a beautiful language that flows from the heart And it’s universal name is love. The language of love uses thoughts and feelings To express what it wants to say, It’s the language that God uses […]...
5. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
6. It does not matter in what language one writes It does not matter in what language one writes. All language is foreign, incomprehensible. Every word, as soon as pronounced, Flees far away, where nothing or nobody can reach it. It does not matter how much is known. Nobody can read. Nobody knows what a lightning is And even less when it is reflected In […]...
7. The Red Son I LOVE your faces I saw the many years I drank your milk and filled my mouth With your home talk, slept in your house And was one of you. But a fire burns in my heart. Under the ribs where pulses thud And flitting between bones of skull Is the push, the endless mysterious […]...
8. Verse-Making Was Least of My Virtues Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with despair Wealth that never yet was but might be all that verse-making were If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare. So I said, “To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse” And made verse. Love-making, how simple […]...
9. The Human Face I. Soon Of all the springtimes of the world This one is the ugliest Of all of my ways of being To be trusting is the best Grass pushes up snow Like the stone of a tomb But I sleep within the storm And awaken eyes bright Slowness, brief time ends Where all streets must […]...
10. The Death Of Richard Wagner Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend, Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend Mourning on earth. The soul wherein her songs of death and birth, Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend, Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth. Winds […]...
11. River Moons THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last […]...
12. Self-Knowledge XVII And a man said, “Speak to us of Self-Knowledge.” And he answered, saying: Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always know in thought. You would touch with your […]...
13. The Remains I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my […]...
14. All the letters I can write All the letters I can write Are not fair as this Syllables of Velvet Sentences of Plush, Depths of Ruby, undrained, Hid, Lip, for Thee Play it were a Humming Bird And just sipped me...
15. Unity ONE thing in all things have I seen: One thought has haunted earth and air: Clangour and silence both have been Its palace chambers. Everywhere I saw the mystic vision flow And live in men and woods and streams, Until I could no longer know The dream of life from my own dreams. Sometimes it […]...
16. Put Off the Wedding Five Times and Nobody Comes to It (Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms. I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.” I might have said, “He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day.” So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for […]...
17. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
18. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
19. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
20. Out of sight? What of that? Out of sight? What of that? See the Bird reach it! Curve by Curve Sweep by Sweep Round the Steep Air Danger! What is that to Her? Better ’tis to fail there Than debate here Blue is Blue the World through Amber Amber Dew Dew Seek Friend and see Heaven is shy of Earth that’s […]...
21. Time's Revenges I’ve a Friend, over the sea; I like him, but he loves me. It all grew out of the books I write; They find such favour in his sight That he slaughters you with savage looks Because you don’t admire my books. He does himself though, – and if some vein Were to snap to-night […]...
22. To Music Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: Silence of paintings. You language where all language Ends. You time Standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation Of feelings into what? : into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space Grown out of us. The deepest space in us, Which, rising […]...
23. By The Sea Why does the sea moan evermore? Shut out from heaven it makes its moan, It frets against the boundary shore; All earth’s full rivers cannot fill The sea, that drinking thirsteth still. Sheer miracles of loveliness Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed: Anemones, salt, passionless, Blow flower-like; just enough alive To blow and multiply and […]...
24. The Sun Weilds Mercy and the sun weilds mercy But like a jet torch carried to high, And the jets whip across its sight And rockets leap like toads, And the boys get out the maps And pin-cuishon the moon, Old green cheese, No life there but too much on earth: Our unwashed India boys Crosssing their legs, playing […]...
25. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
26. Seeking the Beloved To those who love the Lord I speak; Is my Beloved near? The Bridegroom of my soul I seek, Oh! when will He appear? Though once a man of grief and shame, Yet now He fills a throne, And bears the greatest, sweetest name, That earth or heaven have known. Grace flies before, and love […]...
27. Elevation Above the ponds, beyond the valleys, The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas, Farther than the sun, the distant breeze, The spheres that wilt to infinity My spirit, you move with agility And, like a good swimmer who swoons in the wave You groove the depths immensity gave, The inexpressible and male ecstasy. >From […]...
28. The Mutes Those groans men use Passing a woman on the street Or on the steps of the subway To tell her she is a female And their flesh knows it, Are they a sort of tune, An ugly enough song, sung By a bird with a slit tongue But meant for music? Or are they the […]...
29. Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like […]...
30. The Rest The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear no sounds, or we hear Sounds but no language; or we know It is not a language we know Yet. We […]...
31. A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, In two batches. Twice the hall filled With bodies dressed alike, each toting A copy of my book. What would my Shrink say, if I had one, about Such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, And […]...
32. Flight Of Stairs Stairs fly as straight as hawks; Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching. Stairs sway at the height of their flight Like a melody in Tristan; Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers Before they close them. They curiously investigate […]...
33. I Have Some Friends I have some friends, some worthy friends, And worthy friends are rare: These carpet slippers on my feet, That padded leather chair; This old and shabby dressing-gown, So well the worse of wear. I have some friends, some honest friends, And honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that’s […]...
34. Sonnet 33 – Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear The name I used to run at, when a child, From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled, To glance up in some face that proved me dear With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled Into […]...
35. LETTER TO MICHAEL HOROVITZ It is time after thirty years We had our Poetry Renaissance Rise, Children of Albion, rise! It is time after nightmares of sleep When we walked the streets of inner cities Our poems among the burnt-out houses And cars, whispering compassion To the addicts shaking and the homeless Waking and those who have come apart […]...
36. The Place of Rest UNTO the deep the deep heart goes, It lays its sadness nigh the breast: Only the Mighty Mother knows The wounds that quiver unconfessed. It seeks a deeper silence still; It folds itself around with peace, Where thoughts alike of good or ill In quietness unfostered cease. It feels in the unwounding vast For comfort […]...
37. Heredity I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion. The years-heired feature that can In curve and voice and eye Despise the human span Of durance that is I; The eternal thing in man, That heeds no […]...
38. Old I have seen peoples come and go Alike the Ocean’d ebb and flow; I have seen kingdoms rise and fall Like springtime shadows on a wall. I have seen houses rendered great That grew from life’s debased estate, And all, all, all is change I see, So, dearest God, take me, take me....
39. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
40. Informational Decay I heard an echo in a hollow place. No sound of blowing wind or drifting sand, Some ancient voice was this, a captive trace Of gone-by speech, of argument, demand, Of plea or question, comfort or command. Long years this message had remained unheard In empty halls, in untenanted lands, A letter lost, a homeless, […]...