Silver Nails

Related poetry:

1. 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 […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. The City of Perth Beautiful Ancient City of Perth, One of the fairest on the earth, With your stately mansions and scenery most fine, Which seems very beautiful in the summer time; And the beautiful silvery Tay, Rolling smoothly on its way, And glittering like silver in the sunshine – And the Railway Bridge across it is really sublime. […]...
4. Glasgow Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean, Your stateley mansions, and beautiful Green! Likewise your beautiful bridges across the River Clyde, And on your bonnie banks I would like to reside. Chorus Then away to the west to the beautiful west! To the fair city of Glasgow that I like the […]...
5. The Spider holds a Silver Ball The Spider holds a Silver Ball In unperceived Hands And dancing softly to Himself His Yarn of Pearl unwinds He plies from Nought to Nought In unsubstantial Trade Supplants our Tapestries with His In half the period An Hour to rear supreme His Continents of Light Then dangle from the Housewife’s Broom His Boundaries forgot...
6. AUTOBIOGRAPHY (POLISH IT LIKE A PIECE OF SILVER) I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas. What did Judy say? “God-forsaken is beautiful, too.” A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes Care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a Manner as to almost (polish it like a piece of silver. An old dog stands […]...
7. Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls Not in a silver casket cool with pearls Or rich with red corundum or with blue, Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls Have given their loves, I give my love to you; Not in a lovers’-knot, not in a ring Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain- Semper fidelis, where a secret […]...
8. The Silver Lily The nights have grown cool again, like the nights Of early spring, and quiet again. Will Speech disturb you? We’re Alone now; we have no reason for silence. Can you see, over the garden-the full moon rises. I won’t see the next full moon. In spring, when the moon rose, it meant Time was endless. […]...
9. Silver Wedding Silver Wedding The party is over and I sit among The flotsam that its passing leaves, The dirty glasses and fag-ends: Outside, a black wind grieves. Two decades and a half of marriage; It does not really seem as long, Of youth’s ebullient song. David, my son, my loved rival, And Julia, my tapering daughter, […]...
10. The Burns Statue This Statue, I must confess, is magnificent to see, And I hope will long be appreciated by the people of Dundee; It has been beautifully made by Sir John Steell, And I hope the pangs of hunger he will never feel. This statue is most elegant in its design, And I hope will defy all […]...
11. Maternity There once was a Square, such a square little Square, And he loved a trim Triangle; But she was a flirt and around her skirt Vainly she made him dangle. Oh he wanted to wed and he had no dread Of domestic woes and wrangles; For he thought that his fate was to procreate Cute […]...
12. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 08: The Box With Silver Handles Well,-it was two days after my husband died- Two days! And the earth still raw above him. And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall. In number four-the room with the red wall-paper- Some chorus girls and men were singing that song ‘They’ll soon be lighting candles Round a box with silver handles’-and hearing […]...
13. Grumpy Grandpa Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails, As if they had been dipped in gore, I’d like to set you lugging pails And make you scrub the kitchen floor. I’m old and crotchety of course, And on this point my patience fails; I’d sue my old girl for divorce If she showed up with painted nails. Grand-daughter […]...
14. A Ballad of John Silver We were schooner-rigged and rakish, With a long and lissome hull, And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; We’d a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. We’d a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted […]...
15. Picture Dealer There were twin artists A. and B. Who painted pictures two, And hung them in my galley For everyone to view; The one exhibited by A. The name “A Sphere” did bear, While strangely brother B’s display Was catalogued: “A Square”. Now although A. (and this is queer) Could squeeze a pretty tube, The picture […]...
16. Band Concert BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues. Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white […]...
17. Silver Filigree The icicles wreathing On trees in festoon Swing, swayed to our breathing: They’re made of the moon. She’s a pale, waxen taper; And these seem to drip Transparent as paper From the flame of her tip. Molten, smoking a little, Into crystal they pass; Falling, freezing, to brittle And delicate glass. Each a sharp-pointed flower, […]...
18. Inscription for my little son's silver plate When thou dost eat from off this plate, I charge thee be thou temperate; Unto thine elders at the board Do thou sweet reverence accord; And, though to dignity inclined, Unto the serving-folk be kind; Be ever mindful of the poor, Nor turn them hungry from the door; And unto God, for health and food […]...
19. The Victims Of The Little Box Not even in a dream Should you have anything to do With the little box If you saw her full of stars once You’d wake up Without heart or soul in your chest If you slid your tongue Into her keyhole once You’d wake up with a hole in your forehead If you ground her […]...
20. I'll have to change my mind I’ll have to change my mind on war, I need to take a break From structured thought; there’s more to peace – it dictates A longer oar to keep the calm than takes to make a little war. Our history as a people is a theatre of strife and where We celebrate the life of […]...
21. The Sins of Kalamazoo THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. They run to drabs and grays-and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow-and some: We should worry. […]...
22. What Can We Do? at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity. Some understanding and, at times, acts of Courage But all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t Have too much. It is like a large animal deep in sleep and Almost nothing can awaken it. When activated it’s best at brutality, Selfishness, unjust judgments, […]...
23. Gargoyle I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth. A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm. The fist hit […]...
24. Sacrifices All winter the fire devoured everything Tear-stained elegies, old letters, diaries, dead flowers. When April finally arrived, I opened the woodstove one last time And shoveled the remains of those long cold nights Into a bucket, ash rising Through shafts of sunlight, As swirling in bright, angelic eddies. I shoveled out the charred end of […]...
25. What He Thought We were supposed to do a job in Italy And, full of our feeling for Ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went From Rome to Fano, met The Mayor, mulled a couple Matters over. The Italian literati seemed Bewildered by the language of America: they asked us What does “flat drink” mean? […]...
26. The Late Sir John Ogilvy Alas! Sir John Ogilvy is dead, aged eighty-seven, But I hope his soul is now in heaven; For he was a generous-hearted gentleman I am sure, And, in particular, very kind unto the poor. He was a Christian gentleman in every degree, And, for many years, was an M. P. for Bonnie Dundee, And, while […]...
27. Voltaire Johnson Why did you bruise me with your rough places If you did not want me to tell you about them? And stifle me with your stupidities, If you did not want me to expose them? And nail me with the nails of cruelty, If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth And […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Grief is a Mouse Grief is a Mouse And chooses Wainscot in the Breast For His Shy House And baffles quest Grief is a Thief quick startled Pricks His Ear report to hear Of that Vast Dark That swept His Being back Grief is a Juggler boldest at the Play Lest if He flinch the eye that way Pounce […]...
30. The Criminal V A young man of strong body, weakened by hunger, sat on the walker’s portion of the street stretching his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating the sad song of his defeat in life, while suffering from hunger and from humiliation. When night came, his […]...
31. Dolor I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher, Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma, Endless duplication of lives and objects. And […]...
32. Spring Pastoral Liza, go steep your long white hands In the cool waters of that spring Which bubbles up through shiny sands The colour of a wild-dove’s wing. Dabble your hands, and steep them well Until those nails are pearly white Now rosier than a laurel bell; Then come to me at candlelight. Lay your cold hands […]...
33. Seth Compton When I died, the circulating library Which I built up for Spoon River, And managed for the good of inquiring minds, Was sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence. For those of you who could not see the virtue Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” […]...
34. The Destroying Angel I dreamt a dream the other night That an Angel appeared to me, clothed in white. Oh! it was a beautiful sight, Such as filled my heart with delight. And in her hand she held a flaming brand, Which she waved above her head most grand; And on me she glared with love-beaming eyes, Then […]...
35. Isaiah Beethoven They told me I had three months to live, So I crept to Bernadotte, And sat by the mill for hours and hours Where the gathered waters deeply moving Seemed not to move: O world, that’s you! You are but a widened place in the river Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her […]...
36. The Gardener XLII: O Mad, Superbly Drunk O mad, superbly drunk; If you kick open your doors and Play the fool in public; If you empty your bag in a night, And snap your fingers at prudence; If you walk in curious paths and Play with useless things; Reck not rhyme or reason; If unfurling your sails before the Storm you snap […]...
37. The Gift “He gave her class. She gave him sex.” Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers He gave her money. She gave him head. He gave her tips on “aggressive growth” mutual funds. She gave him a red rose and a little statue of eros. He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis […]...
38. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
39. Sign-Post Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how. Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity, Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow, Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let […]...
40. LE PANNEAU Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade There stands a little ivory girl, Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl With pale green nails of polished jade. The red leaves fall upon the mould, The white leaves flutter, one by one, Down to a blue bowl where the sun, Like a great dragon, writhes in gold. The […]...