On The Breakwater

Related poetry:

1. Adrift! A little boat adrift! Adrift! A little boat adrift! And night is coming down! Will no one guide a little boat Unto the nearest town? So Sailors say on yesterday Just as the dusk was brown One little boat gave up its strife And gurgled down and down. So angels say on yesterday Just as the dawn was red […]...
2. Over The Range Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed, Playing alone in the creek-bed dry, In the small green flat on every side Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high; Tell me the tale of your lonely life ‘Mid the great grey forests that know no change. “I never have left my home,” she said, “I have never been over […]...
3. Dead Men's Love There was a damned successful Poet; There was a Woman like the Sun. And they were dead. They did not know it. They did not know their time was done. They did not know his hymns Were silence; and her limbs, That had served Love so well, Dust, and a filthy smell. And so one […]...
4. A BREAK IN THE RHYTHM OF LIFE Bhaskar Roy Barman When the world itself looked exhausted, Revolving round the sun; When a bumble-bee sounded tired Of humming round a ternate leaf; When a few fishermen were venting their rage on their net -they looked fed up of mending their net off and on – And when the fish were leaping and playing […]...
5. The Answer You have spoken the answer. A child searches far sometimes Into the red dust On a dark rose leaf And so you have gone far For the answer is: Silence. In the republic Of the winking stars and spent cataclysms Sure we are it is off there the answer Is hidden and folded over, Sleeping […]...
6. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
7. Here, Sailor WHAT ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning? Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect pilot needs? Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot, Whom, in a little boat, putting off, and rowing, I, hailing you, offer....
8. Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn SMOKE of autumn is on it all. The streamers loosen and travel. The red west is stopped with a gray haze. They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks, They make a long-tailed rider In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . . Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River. […]...
9. At play Play that you are mother dear, And play that papa is your beau; Play that we sit in the corner here, Just as we used to, long ago. Playing so, we lovers two Are just as happy as we can be, And I’ll say “I love you” to you, And you say “I love you” […]...
10. It troubled me as once I was It troubled me as once I was For I was once a Child Concluding how an Atom fell And yet the Heavens held The Heavens weighed the most by far Yet Blue and solid stood Without a Bolt that I could prove Would Giants understand? Life set me larger problems Some I shall keep to […]...
11. Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...
12. Lemures In Nineveh And beyond Nineveh In the dusk They were afraid. In Thebes of Egypt In the dust They chanted of them to the dead. In my Lesbos and Achaia Where the God dwelt We knew them. Now men say “They are not”: But in the dusk Ere the white sun comes – A gay […]...
13. Who is now Reading This? WHO is now reading this? May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life, Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me, Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision, Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I […]...
14. River Roads LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw. They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere. Let ’em hawk their caw and caw. Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump. He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years And the blue has gone […]...
15. Sandhill People I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come. One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing […]...
16. The Kiss My mouth blooms like a cut. I’ve been wronged all year, tedious Nights, nothing but rough elbows in them And delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby Crybaby, you fool! Before today my body was useless. Now it’s tearing at its square corners. It’s tearing old Mary’s garments off, knot by knot And see Now it’s […]...
17. 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. […]...
18. Lover's Gifts XXVIII: I Dreamt I dreamt that she sat by my head, tenderly ruffling my hair with Her fingers, playing the melody of her touch. I looked at her face And struggled with my tears, till the agony of unspoken words burst My sleep like a bubble. I sat up and saw the glow of the Milky Way above […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. Blue Blue, but you are Rose, too, And buttermilk, but with blood Dots showing through. A little salty your white Nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs Shoot back of your ears’ Rose That tongues like to feel The maze of, slip into the funnel, Tell a thunder-whisper to. When I kiss, your eyes’ straight Lashes down crisp go […]...
21. Waiting TODAY I will let the old boat stand Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway. And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck Watching the world go by And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember. I will choose […]...
22. Dreams in the dusk DREAMS in the dusk, Only dreams closing the day And with the day’s close going back To the gray things, the dark things, The far, deep things of dreamland. Dreams, only dreams in the dusk, Only the old remembered pictures Of lost days when the day’s loss Wrote in tears the heart’s loss. Tears and […]...
23. Lessons In Hunger “Do you like me?” I asked the blue blazer. No answer. Silence bounced out of his books. Silence fell off his tongue And sat between us And clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, And I did not cry, And I did not beg, […]...
24. For M. W There is no transcience of twilight in The beauty of your soft dusk-dimpled face, No flicker of a slender flame in space, In crucibles, fragility crystalline. There is no fragrance of the jessamine About you, no pathos of some old place At dusk, that crumbles like moth-eaten lace Beneath the touch. Nor has there ever […]...
25. No Return I like divorce. I love to compose Letters of resignation; now and then I send one in and leave in a lemon- Hued Huff or a Snit with four on the floor. Do you like the scent of a hollyhock? To each his own. I love a burning bridge. I like to watch the small […]...
26. Picnic Boat SUNDAY night and the park policemen tell each other it Is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan. A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach Farms of Saugatuck. Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night’s darkness, a Flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. […]...
27. On the Way LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with Lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been Getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike Along sand stretches on the great […]...
28. Lost “He ought to be home,” said the old man, “without there’s something amiss. He only went to the Two-mile he ought to be back by this. He would ride the Reckless filly, he would have his wilful way; And, here, he’s not back at sundown and what will his mother say? “He was always his […]...
29. The Heart of Night When all the stars are sown Across the night-blue space, With the immense unknown, In silence face to face. We stand in speechless awe While Beauty marches by, And wonder at the Law Which wears such majesty. How small a thing is man In all that world-sown vast, That he should hope or plan Or […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. Handfuls BLOSSOMS of babies Blinking their stories Come soft On the dusk and the babble; Little red gamblers, Handfuls that slept in the dust. Summers of rain, Winters of drift, Tell off the years; And they go back Who came soft- Back to the sod, To silence and dust; Gray gamblers, Handfuls again....
32. Lucindy Jane When I was young I was too proud To wheel my daughter in her pram. “It’s infra dig,” I said aloud, Bot now I’m old, behold I am Perambulating up and down Grand-daughter through the town. And when I come into the Square, Beside the fountain I will stop; And as to rest I linger […]...
33. Morning Song Of Senlin from Senlin: A Biography It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do. Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, […]...
34. Lover's Gifts VIII: There Is Room for You There is room for you. You are alone with your few sheaves of rice. My boat is crowded, it is heavily laden, but how can I turn you Away? Your young body is slim and swaying; there is a twinkling Smile in the edge of your eyes, and your robe is coloured like the Rain […]...
35. Firelight Playing in the fire and twilight together, My little son and I, Suddenly woefully I stoop to catch him. “Try, mother, try!” Old Nurse Silence lifts a silent finger: “Hush! cease your play!” What happened? What in that tiny moment Flew away?...
36. This Morning Enter without knocking, hard-working ant. I’m just sitting here mulling over What to do this dark, overcast day? It was a night of the radio turned down low, Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams. I woke up lovesick and confused. I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing And some bird answering her, But it […]...
37. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
38. Bringers COVER me over In dusk and dust and dreams. Cover me over And leave me alone. Cover me over, You tireless, great. Hear me and cover me, Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams....
39. Pennsylvania I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and the hills laughed. And in places Along the Appalachian chain, I saw steel arms handling coal and iron, And I saw […]...
40. The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence Silence is a great blue bell Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing, In measure’s pleasure, and in the supple symmetry of the soaring of the immense intense wings glinting against All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their singing. And this is the […]...