The Red Son

Related poetry:

1. Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
2. Crapshooters SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins. This was known to the Chaldeans long ago. And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses. This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans. They take it heaven’s hereafter is an eternity of crap games where they try their wrists years and years and no police come with a wagon; […]...
3. Never Give All The Heart Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips […]...
4. The Song Of The Soldier-Born Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant; Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant; Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant. Give me to live and love in the old, bold fashion; A soldier’s billet at night and a soldier’s ration; A heart […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. The Routine Things Around The House When Mother died I thought: now I’ll have a death poem. That was unforgivable. Yet I’ve since forgiven myself As sons are able to do Who’ve been loved by their mothers. I stared into the coffin Knowing how long she’d live, How many lifetimes there are In the sweet revisions of memory. It’s hard to […]...
7. John Ericsson Day Memorial, 1918 INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer-they remember or forget-the man whose […]...
8. Psalm 72 part 1 The kingdom of Christ. Great God, whose universal sway The known and unknown worlds obey, Now give the kingdom to thy Son, Extend his power, exalt his throne. Thy sceptre well becomes his hands, All heav’n submits to his commands; His justice shall avenge the poor, And pride and rage prevail no more. With power […]...
9. Thy Name My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I will declare thy name unto my brethren…. Psalm 102 OK. Let’s not call what ditched us God: Ghu, the root in Sanskrit, means not God, But only the calling thereupon. Let’s call God Fun. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word Was Fun. […]...
10. The City Revisited The grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set, Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like a jewelled spire Thrust up from some drowned city. […]...
11. NO FAULT IN WOMEN No fault in women, to refuse The offer which they most would chuse. No fault: in women, to confess How tedious they are in their dress; No fault in women, to lay on The tincture of vermilion; And there to give the cheek a dye Of white, where Nature doth deny. No fault in women, […]...
12. Why FOR a name unknown, Whose fame unblown Sleeps in the hills For ever and aye; For her who hears The stir of the years Go by on the wind By night and day; And heeds no thing Of the needs of spring, Of autumn’s wonder Or winter’s chill; For one who sees The great sun […]...
13. Blue Ridge BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years… Watching the women come and live and be laid away… You and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely. So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star. I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains....
14. Long Plighted Is it worth while, dear, now, To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed For marriage-rites discussed, decried, delayed So many years? Is it worth while, dear, now, To stir desire for old fond purposings, By feints that Time still serves for dallyings, Though quittance nears? Is it worth while, dear, when The day being […]...
15. The Wishing-Caps Life’s all getting and giving, I’ve only myself to give. What shall I do for a living? I’ve only one life to live. End it? I’ll not find another. Spend it? But how shall I best? Sure the wise plan is to live like a man And Luck may look after the rest! Largesse! Largesse, […]...
16. Lambert Hutchins I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk: One, the house I built on the hill, With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate; The other, the lake-front in Chicago, Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, With whistling engines and crunching wheels, And smoke and soot thrown over the city, And the crash […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. Snow SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk. Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances. Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought […]...
19. On the March So the time seems come at last, And the drums go rolling past, And above them in the sunlight Labour’s banners float and flow; They are marching with the sun, But I look in vain for one Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago. They were men who did the […]...
20. An Irish Airman Forsees His Death I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My county is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty […]...
21. Haunts THERE are places I go when I am strong. One is a marsh pool where I used to go with a long-ear hound-dog. One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there a moonlight night with a girl. The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these places when there is no […]...
22. I Will Not Fight I will not fight: though proud of pith I hold no one worth striving with; And should resentment burn my breast I deem that silence serves me best: So having not a word to say, Contemptuous I turn away. I will not fret: my rest of life Free I will keep from hate and strife; […]...
23. In The Village Of My Ancestors Someone embraces me Someone looks at me with the eyes of a wolf Someone takes off his hat So I can see him better Everyone asks me Do you know how I’m related to you Unknown old men and women Appropriate the names Of young men and women from my memory I ask one of […]...
24. The Children's Song Puck of Poock’s Hills Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place As men and women with our race. Father in Heaven who lovest all, Oh, help Thy children when they call; That they may build from age […]...
25. The Floods The rain it rains without a stay In the hills above us, in the hills; And presently the floods break way Whose strength is in the hills. The trees they suck from every cloud, The valley brooks they roar aloud Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills! The first wood down is sere […]...
26. The Turning Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more a child, Only a man, one who has Looked upon his own nakedness Without shame, and in defeat Has seen nothing to bless. Touched once, like a plum, I turned Rotten in the meat, or […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. City of Ships CITY of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful, sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here; All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling […]...
29. Hymn 120 Faith of things unseen. Heb. 11 Faith is the brightest evidence Of things beyond our sight, Breaks through the clouds of flesh and sense, And dwells in heav’nly light. It sets times past in present view, Brings distant prospects home, Of things a thousand years ago, Or thousand years to come. By faith we know […]...
30. Cavalier Tunes: Give a Rouse King Charles, and who’ll do him right now? King Charles, and who’s ripe for fight now? Give a rouse: here’s, in Hell’s despite now, King Charles! Who gave me the goods that went since? Who raised me the house that sank once? Who helped me to gold I spent since? Who found me in wine […]...
31. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. A Faery Song Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, In their bridal sleep under a Cromlech. We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told: Give to these children, new from the world, Silence and love; And the long dew-dropping hours of the […]...
34. Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
35. Songs Dawn coming in over the fields Of darkness takes me by surprise And I look up from my solitary road Pleased not to be alone, the birds Now choiring from the orange groves Huddling to the low hills. But sorry That this night has ended, a night In which you spoke of how little love […]...
36. Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
37. Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun 1 GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; Give me fresh corn and wheat-give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; Give me nights […]...
38. Dedication To the City of Bombay The Cities are full of pride, Challenging each to each This from her mountain-side, That from her burthened beach. They count their ships full tale Their corn and oil and wine, Derrick and loom and bale, And rampart’s gun-flecked line; City by City they hail: “Hast aught to match with […]...
39. Psalm 97 v.1,3,5-7,11 C. M. Christ’s incarnation, and the last judgment. Ye islands of the northern sea, Rejoice, the Savior reigns; His word, like fire, prepares his way, And mountains melt to plains. His presence sinks the proudest hills, And makes the valleys rise; The humble soul enjoys his smiles, The haughty sinner dies. The heav’ns his […]...
40. Bastard The very skies wee black with shame, As near my moment drew; The very hour before you cam I felt I hated you. But now I see how fair you are, How divine your eyes, It seems I step upon a star To leap to Paradise. What care I who your father was: (‘Twas better […]...