Pick Offs

Related poetry:

1. The Pick I watched him swinging the pick in the sun, Breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock, And the rocks into dust, And the dust into earth again. I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence, Just watching him. My father’s body glistened with sweat, His arms flew like […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. A rhine-land drinking song If our own life is the life of a flower (And that’s what some sages are thinking), We should moisten the bud with a health-giving flood And ’twill bloom all the sweeter Yes, life’s the completer For drinking, And drinking, And drinking. If it be that our life is a journey (As many wise folk […]...
5. 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. […]...
6. Interior IN the cool of the night time The clocks pick off the points And the mainsprings loosen. They will need winding. One of these days… they will need winding. Rabelais in red boards, Walt Whitman in green, Hugo in ten-cent paper covers, Here they stand on shelves In the cool of the night time And […]...
7. Der mann im keller How cool and fair this cellar where My throne a dusky cask is; To do no thing but just to sing And drown the time my task is. The cooper he’s Resolved to please, And, answering to my winking, He fills me up Cup after cup For drinking, drinking, drinking. Begrudge me not This cosy […]...
8. Boy and Father THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn. Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books. The rain beats […]...
9. The Fallen Angels They come on to my clean Sheet of paper and leave a Rorschach blot. They do not do this to be mean, They do it to give me a sign They want me, as Aubrey Beardsley once said, To shove it around till something comes. Clumsy as I am, I do it. For I am […]...
10. The List of Famous Hats Napoleon’s hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous Hat, but that’s not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for Show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon- Esty wasn’t much different than the one any jerk might buy at a Corner […]...
11. Silver Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon; This way, and that, she peers, and sees Silver fruit upon silver trees; One by one the casements catch Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; Couched in his kennel, like a log, With paws of silver sleeps the dog; From their shadowy cote […]...
12. Symptom begin at a chapter you have read before With new words and a new hand turning The pages where the print vibrates and the white Paper runs in a stream of many colours Stand with a new light at your shoulder And wander slowly through familiar doors Into tomorrows no shadows yet have trodden Or […]...
13. They Ask Each Other Where They Came From AM I the river your white birds fly over? Are you the green valley my silver channels roam? The two of us a bowl of blue sky day time and a bowl of red stars night time? Who picked you out of the first great whirl of nothings and threw you here?...
14. Early Moon THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west. A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon. One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers. O foxes, baby […]...
15. Yad Mordechai Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here Still look out the windows like sick children Who are not allowed outside to play. And on the hillside, the battle is reenacted For the benefit of hikers and tourists. Soldiers of thin sheet iron Rise and fall and rise again. Sheet iron dead and a sheet iron life […]...
16. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind “The past is a bucket of ashes.” 1 THE WOMAN named To-morrow Sits with a hairpin in her teeth And takes her time And does her hair the way she wants it And fastens at last the last braid and coil And puts the hairpin where it belongs And turns and drawls: Well, what of […]...
17. Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
18. The Rose of Midnight THE moon is now an opening flower, The sky a cliff of blue. The moon is now a silver rose; Her pollen is the dew. Her pollen is the mist that swings Across her face of dreams: Her pollen is the April rain, Filling the April streams. Her pollen is eternal life, Endless ambrosial foam. […]...
19. Chicago Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders; They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your Painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me […]...
20. Peach-power peaches exude this thrall – Reminders of those luscious Whereabouts that lips Best find their precious sips To cry let this be all They lull so well endowed With dreams of wanting flesh Who can resist their touch Not they who wishing much Sigh o you do me proud And yield in fruitful dreams To […]...
21. In Tall Grass BEES and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner-a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters. And I ask no better a winding sheet (over the earth and under the sun.) Let the bees go honey-hunting with yellow blur of wings […]...
22. Heroic Love WHEN our glowing dreams were dead, Ruined our heroic piles, Something in your dark eyes said: “Think no more of love or smiles.” Something in me still would say, “Though our dreamland palace goes, I have seen how in decay Still the wild rose clings and blows.” But your dark eyes willed it thus: “Build […]...
23. Ice Handler I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with Pearl buttons the size of a dollar, And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice- Box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be Hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus, And is on […]...
24. What Do You Do About Dry Periods In Your Writing? When the writing is going well, I am a prince in a desert palace, Fountains flowing in the garden. I lean an elbow on a velvet pillow And drink from a silver goblet, Poems like a banquet Spread before me on rugs With rosettes the damask of blood. But exiled From the palace, I wander […]...
25. Clark Street Bridge DUST of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers, Stars and mist again, No more feet or wheels, No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood . […]...
26. For You THE PEACE of great doors be for you. Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs. Wait for the great hinges. The peace of great churches be for you, Where the players of loft pipe organs Practice old lovely fragments, alone. The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on […]...
27. Back Yard Shine on, O moon of summer. Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, All silver under your rain to-night. An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses. An old man […]...
28. Dreams Old I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone. The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine, Like savage music striking far off, […]...
29. Chiang Chin Chiu See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror In the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks – In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys Of life as they come […]...
30. The Prarie Battlements (To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect) HERE upon the prarie Is our ancestral hall. Agate is the dome, Cornelian the wall. Ghouls are in the cellar, But fays upon the stairs. And here lived old King Silver Dreams, Always at his prayers. Here lived gray Queen Silver Dreams, Always signing psalms, And haughty Grandma […]...
31. Between Games Nobody rests This one constantly shifts his eyes Hangs them on his head And whether he wants it or not starts walking backwards He puts them on the soles of his feet And whether he wants it or not returns walking on his head This one turns into an ear He hears all that won’t […]...
32. Here I Am drunk again at 3 a. m. at the end of my 2nd bottle Of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of Poesy An old man Maddened for the flesh of young girls in this Dwindling twilight Liver gone Kidneys going Pancrea pooped Top-floor blood pressure While all the fear of the […]...
33. Suitcase Its silver clasp looks like a man grasping His hands above his head in victory; The latches, like twin hatchbacks headed away. There are no wheels, just four steel nipples for sliding. A hexagonal seal announces the defunct “U. S. Trunk Company.” The frame is wood- Big, heavy, cheap-covered with imitation leather, Its blue just […]...
34. Mist Forms THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath […]...
35. My November Guest My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She’s glad the birds are gone away, […]...
36. A curious Cloud surprised the Sky A curious Cloud surprised the Sky, ‘Twas like a sheet with Horns; The sheet was Blue The Antlers Gray It almost touched the lawns. So low it leaned then statelier drew And trailed like robes away, A Queen adown a satin aisle Had not the majesty....
37. We can but follow to the Sun We can but follow to the Sun As oft as He go down He leave Ourselves a Sphere behind ‘Tis mostly following We go no further with the Dust Than to the Earthen Door And then the Panels are reversed And we behold no more....
38. A Passing Bell Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving; What did you say, my dear? The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob – Yes, my love, I hear. One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving, Why not let it […]...
39. Winter Milk THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga, Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes. Let your mammy keep hands off the chin. This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and blues. Before the bottle was taken away, Before you so […]...
40. The Palace Grimy men with picks and shovels Who in darkness sweat unseen, Climb from out your lousy hovels, Build a palace for the Queen; Praise the powers that be for giving You a chance to make a living. Yet it would be better far Could you build with cosy lure Skyey tenements where are Rabbit-warrens of […]...