Still Life

Related poetry:

1. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 02: One, from his high bright window in a tower One, from his high bright window in a tower, Leans out, as evening falls, And sees the advancing curtain of the shower Splashing its silver on roofs and walls: Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city, And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea, Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark […]...
2. Cool Tombs WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs. And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes… in the dust, in the cool tombs. Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a […]...
3. Spring Comes To Murray Hill I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue And say to myself You have a responsible job havenue? Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel? If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggeral, If you have a sore foot you can get it […]...
4. Bronzes I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr By in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment For dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of […]...
5. Night Movement-New York IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms, And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon; In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city, The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city; In the night, when the trains […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Farm Boy After Summer A seated statue of himself he seems. A bronze slowness becomes him. Patently The page he contemplates he doesn’t see. The lesson, the long lesson, has been summer. His mind holds summer, as his skin holds sun. For once the homework, all of it, was done. What were the crops, where were the fiery fields […]...
8. Silver Nails A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger, Was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging. Laughed at the crowd. “The nails are iron,” he Said, “You are cheap. In my country when we crucify We use silver nails. . .” So he went jeering. They Did not understand him […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. Streets Too Old I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years. How old, how old, how old, we are:-the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Topography After we flew across the country we Got in bed, laid our bodies Delicately together, like maps laid Face to face, East to West, my San Francisco against your New York, your Fire Island against my Sonoma, my New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho Bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas Burning against […]...
13. Sing All Ye People! Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor, For the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever, And the Dark Tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard, For your watch hath not been in vain, And the Black Gate is broken, And your King hath passed through, […]...
14. Long Point Light Long Pont’s apparitional This warm spring morning, The strand a blur of sandy light, And the square white Of the lighthouse-separated from us By the bay’s ultramarine As if it were nowhere We could ever go-gleams Like a tower’s ghost, hazing Into the rinsed blue of March, Our last outpost in the huge Indetermination of […]...
15. The Dream Called Life From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca A dream it was in which I found myself. And you that hail me now, then hailed me king, In a brave palace that was all my own, Within, and all without it, mine; until, Drunk with excess of majesty and pride, Methought I towered so […]...
16. Tower Of Song Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on I’m just paying my rent every day Oh in the Tower of Song I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams […]...
17. America, America! I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it, the lights, the stars, and the bridges I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic – of the peoples’ hearts, crossing it to new America. I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope, acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage […]...
18. A London Thoroughfare. 2 A. M They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is […]...
19. A Poet's Death is His Life IV The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow […]...
20. A Night-Rain in Summer Open the window, and let the air Freshly blow upon face and hair, And fill the room, as it fills the night, With the breath of the rain’s sweet might. Hark! the burthen, swift and prone! And how the odorous limes are blown! Stormy Love’s abroad, and keeps Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps. Not a […]...
21. The Witch's Life When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes she would open the window And yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp And a voice like […]...
22. Wind and Window Flower LOVERS, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. When the frosty window veil Was melted down at noon, And the cagèd yellow bird Hung over her in tune, He marked her through the pane, He could not help but mark, And only passed […]...
23. The City That Will Not Repent Climbing the heights of Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer’s girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth, Scorning her cleansing fire. See, like a burning city Sets now the red sun’s dome. See, mystic firebrands sparkle There on each store […]...
24. The End Of Your Life First light. This misted field is the world, that man slipping the greased bolt Back and forth, that man tunneled with blood the dark smudges of whose eyes Call for sleep, calls for quiet, and the woman down your line, The woman who screamed the loudest, will be quiet. The rushes, the grassless shale, The […]...
25. Just Thinking Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held For awhile. Some dove somewhere. Been on probation most of my life. And The rest of my life been condemned. So these moments Count for a lot peace, you know. Let the bucket of memory down into […]...
26. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms He, in the room above, grown old and tired, She, in the room below-his floor her ceiling- Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light, And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . . She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night, His watch-the same he has heard these cycles […]...
27. Redolence Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; Cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway; And night bends near, a deepening shade of gray; The bass concerto of a bullfrog fills What silence there once was; globed searchlights play. Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills, All drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares; Mosquitoes whine; the lissome […]...
28. Read Your Fate A world’s disappearing. Little street, You were too narrow, Too much in the shade already. You had only one dog, One lone child. You hid your biggest mirror, Your undressed lovers. Someone carted them off In an open truck. They were still naked, travelling On their sofa Over a darkening plain, Some unknown Kansas or […]...
29. Ebony Life A frightening stillness will mark that day And the shadow of streetlights and fire-alarms will exhaust the light All things, the quietest and the loudest, will be silent The suckling brats will die The tugboats the locomotives the wind will glide by in silence We will hear the great voice which coming from far away […]...
30. The Dove of Dacca 1892 The freed dove flew to the Rajah’s tower Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings And the thorns have covered the city of Guar. Dove dove oh, homing dove! Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings! The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall; He set in his bosom a dove of flight […]...
31. The Children's Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupation, That is know as the children’s hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study […]...
32. Advance is Life's condition Advance is Life’s condition The Grave but a Relay Supposed to be a terminus That makes it hated so The Tunnel is not lighted Existence with a wall Is better we consider Than not exist at all...
33. ASYLUM SEEKERS When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket, Hair blowing in the wind. Could we but turn that bronze To flesh I would have asked him to meet the two Asylum-seekers I met in Huddersfield’s main street […]...
34. A still Volcano Life A still Volcano Life That flickered in the night When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight A quiet Earthquake Style Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples The North cannot detect The Solemn Torrid Symbol The lips that never lie Whose hissing Corals part and shut And Cities ooze away...
35. City of Orgies CITY of orgies, walks and joys! City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious, Not the pageants of you-not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles, repay me; Not the interminable rows of your houses-nor the ships at the wharves, Nor the processions in the streets, nor the […]...
36. December 7 As I sit at my desk wishing I did not have to edit a book On poetry and painting a Subject that fascinates me Usually, but today is not as Usual, being today, white sky, Decent amount of sunlight, Forty one degrees in Central Park, And it makes sense to dream of Chicago, another big […]...
37. Thinking Of A Friend At Night In this evil year, autumn comes early… I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters, The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing maybe and seeing the sickle moon Move in a small arc over the forests And bivouac fire, red in the black valley. You are […]...
38. In Bertram's Garden Jane looks down at her organdy skirt As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the dirt, And she catches it up about her waist, Smooths it out along one hip, And pulls it over the crumpled slip. On the porch, green-shuttered, cool, Asleep is Bertram that bronze […]...
39. 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. […]...
40. An Image From A Past Life He. Never until this night have I been stirred. The elaborate starlight throws a reflection On the dark stream, Till all the eddies gleam; And thereupon there comes that scream From terrified, invisible beast or bird: Image of poignant recollection. She. An image of my heart that is smitten through Out of all likelihood, or […]...