Sleepyheads

Related poetry:

1. Song of the Little White Girl Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, what is the matter? Why are you shaking so? Why do you chatter? Because it is just a white baby you see, And it’s the black ones you like, cabbage tree? Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, you’re a strange fellow With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow. Wouldn’t you like to […]...
2. The bottle tree A bottle tree bloometh in Winkyway land – Heigh-ho for a bottle, I say! A snug little berth in that ship I demand That rocketh the Bottle-Tree babies away Where the Bottle Tree bloometh by night and by day And reacheth its fruit to each wee, dimpled hand; You take of that fruit as much […]...
3. Trinity Place THE GRAVE of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street. The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops. And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. The Perch Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver, Perch they called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready, I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body That is passable through, but they’re bluntly holding the Pass, Under the water-roof, over the bottom, […]...
6. Cities Can we believe by an effort Comfort our hearts: It is not waste all this, Not placed here in disgust, Street after street, Each patterned alike, No grace to lighten A single house of the hundred Crowded into one garden-space. Crowded can we believe, Not in utter disgust, In ironical play But the maker of […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Beautiful Rothesay Beautiful Rothesay, your scenery is most grand, You cannot be surpassed in fair Scotland. Tis healthy for holiday makers, to go there, For the benefit of their health, by inhaling the pure air And to hear the innocent birds, on a fine Summer day, Carolling their sweet songs, so lively and gay, Therefore, holiday makers, […]...
9. The Eagle That is Forgotten Sleep softly… eagle forgotten… under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. “We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced. They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day […]...
10. The Shower we like to shower afterwards (I like the water hotter than she) And her face is always soft and peaceful And she’ll watch me first Spread the soap over my balls Lift the balls Squeeze them, Then wash the cock: “hey, this thing is still hard!” Then get all the hair down there,- The belly, […]...
11. Poem Of Night 1 I move my hand over Slopes, falls, lumps of sight, Lashes barely able to be touched, Lips that give way so easily It’s a shock to feel underneath them The bones smile. Muffled a little, barely cloaked, Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate. 2 I put my hand On the side of your face, You lean your […]...
12. Hanging Fire I am fourteen And my skin has betrayed me The boy I cannot live without Still sucks his tumb In secret How come my knees are Always so ashy What if I die Before the morning comes And momma’s in the bedroom With the door closed. I have to learn how to dance In time […]...
13. Norse lullaby The sky is dark and the hills are white As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night, And this is the song the storm-king sings, As over the world his cloak he flings: “Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;” He rustles his wings and gruffly sings: “Sleep, little one, sleep.” On yonder mountain-side a vine Clings […]...
14. Style STYLE go ahead talking about style. You can tell where a man gets his style just As you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs Or Ty Cobb his batting eye. Go on talking. Only don’t take my style away. It’s my face. Maybe no good But anyway, my face. I talk with it, I […]...
15. Klage Dreamless sleep – the dusky Eagles Nightlong rush about my head, Man’s golden image drowned In timeless icy tides. On jagged reefs His purpling body. Dark Echoes sound above the seas. Stormy sadness’ sister, see Our lonely skiff sunk down By starry skies: The silent face of night....
16. Moonrise I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa […]...
17. Blue dress i can see through the blue Dress when you stand In the doorway – the light Come indoors softly like A cat between your legs When you walk and The dress flows Over the curved pebble Of your belly into The blue pool my eye Is already there Waiting for the ripple I have the […]...
18. Wild Grapes What tree may not the fig be gathered from? The grape may not be gathered from the birch? It’s all you know the grape, or know the birch. As a girl gathered from the birch myself Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn, I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of. […]...
19. Tiny Warrior You never saw the spring my love Or the red tailed hawk circling high above On feathered wings my love You only knew the snow You never saw the prairie grasses bend and blow And undulate like the shimmering indigo sea You never saw me Your eyes were closed so tight They say you put […]...
20. Children’s Song We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge. And though you probe and pry With analytic eye, And eavesdrop all our talk With an amused look, You cannot find the centre Where we dance, where we play, […]...
21. Talk to me of love Talk to me of love with wonder in your eyes, Of limber magic flying through the veiling air And soft-edged silks trailing in a vintage plume, The bloom of fragrant lavender intimate in your hair – and I will recline there in the sweetest ease. Talk to me of love in honeyed tones, in whispered […]...
22. Along the field as we came by ALONG the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. ‘Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she […]...
23. Glimmer LET down your braids of hair, lady. Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass And gaze long on lines under your eyes. Life writes; men dance. And you know how men pay women....
24. Settling I was welcomed here-clear gold Of late summer, of opening autumn, The dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree, The mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow Tinted apricot as she looked west, Tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun Forever rising and setting. Now I am given A taste of the grey foretold […]...
25. The Carver See, as the carver carves a rose, A wing, a toad, a serpent’s eye, In cruel granite, to disclose The soft things that in hardness lie, So this one, taking up his heart, Which time and change had made a stone, Carved out of it with dolorous art, Laboring yearlong and alone, The thing there […]...
26. The Idealist Oh you who have daring deeds to tell! And you who have felt Ambition’s spell! Have you heard of the louse who longed to dwell In the golden hair of a queen? He sighed all day and he sighed all night, And no one could understand it quite, For the head of a slut is […]...
27. A Man George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T. V. His Dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash From his rolled cigarettes dropped onto his undershirt. Some of the ash was still burning. Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and […]...
28. Hymn 4 part 1 The nativity of Christ. Luke 2:10ff “Shepherds, rejoice! lift up your eyes, And send your fears away; News from the regions of the skies, Salvation’s born to-day. “Jesus, the God whom angels fear, Comes down to dwell with you; Today he makes his entrance here, But not as monarchs do. “No gold nor purple swaddling […]...
29. The Dolls A doll in the doll-maker’s house Looks at the cradle and bawls: ‘That is an insult to us.’ But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the whole shelf: ‘Although There’s not a man can report Evil of this place, The man and the […]...
30. Trees (For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden) I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest […]...
31. Insomniac There are some nights when Sleep plays coy, Aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles That I employ to win Its service to my side Are useless as wounded pride, And much more painful....
32. Lady Love She is standing on my eyelids And her hair is in my hair She has the color of my eye She has the body of my hand In my shade she is engulfed As a stone against the sky She will never close her eyes And she does not let me sleep And her dreams […]...
33. Egypt, Tobago There is a shattered palm On this fierce shore, Its plumes the rusting helm- Et of a dead warrior. Numb Antony, in the torpor Stretching her inert Sex near him like a sleeping cat, Knows his heart is the real desert. Over the dunes Of her heaving, To his heart’s drumming Fades the mirage of […]...
34. The Lesson Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should, We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good. Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain, But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again, Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilde- […]...
35. To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies You know there is not much That I desire, a few chrysanthemums Half lying on the grass, yellow And brown and white, the Talk of a few people, the trees, An expanse of dried leaves perhaps With ditches among them. But there comes Between me and these things A letter Or even a look-well placed, […]...
36. Mammy Hums THIS is the song I rested with: The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under. The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot […]...
37. Runner, The ON a flat road runs the well-train’d runner; He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs; He is thinly clothed-he leans forward as he runs, With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais’d....
38. Talking (and Singing) of the Nordic Man I Behold, my child, the Nordic man, And be as like him, as you can; His legs are long, his mind is slow, His hair is lank and made of tow. II And here we have the Alpine Race: Oh! What a broad and foolish face! His skin is of a dirty yellow. He is […]...
39. A Cradle Song Sweet dreams form a shade, O’er my lovely infants head. Sweet dreams of pleasant streams, By happy silent moony beams Sweet sleep with soft down. Weave thy brows an infant crown. Sweet sleep Angel mild, Hover o’er my happy child. Sweet smiles in the night, Hover over my delight. Sweet smiles Mothers smiles, All the […]...
40. Lullaby My mother’s an expert in one thing: Sending people she loves into the other world. The little ones, the babies these She rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can’t say What she did for my father; Whatever it was, I’m sure it was right. It’s the same thing, really, preparing a person For sleep, for […]...