Who am I?

Related poetry:

1. A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign I LOOK on the specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary […]...
2. Last Night As I Was Sleeping Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That a spring was breaking Out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, Water of a new life That I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That I had a beehive […]...
3. Sonnet VIII Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw […]...
4. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
5. Sonnet 68: Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away To live a second life on second head; […]...
6. Sonnet LXVII Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before the bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head; […]...
7. The Abnormal Is Not Courage The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question The bravery. Say it’s not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isn’t that. Not at its best. […]...
8. Who is now Reading This? WHO is now reading this? May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life, Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me, Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision, Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I […]...
9. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
10. Ethiopia Saluting the Colors 1 WHO are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human, With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet? Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? 2 (‘Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sand and pines, Forth from thy hovel door, thou, Ethiopia, com’st to me, As, under doughty Sherman, […]...
11. The Christening What shall I call My dear little dormouse? His eyes are small, But his tail is e-nor-mouse. I sometimes call him Terrible John, ‘Cos his tail goes on – And on – And on. And I sometimes call him Terrible Jack, ‘Cos his tail goes on to the end of his back. And I sometimes […]...
12. To Daisies, Not To Shut So Soon Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night Has not as yet begun To make a seizure on the light, Or to seal up the sun. No marigolds yet closed are; No shadows great appear; Nor doth the early shepherds’ star Shine like a spangle here. Stay but till my Julia close Her life-begetting eye, And […]...
13. To E I have remembered beauty in the night, Against black silences I waked to see A shower of sunlight over Italy And green Ravello dreaming on her height; I have remembered music in the dark, The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach’s, And running water singing on the rocks When once in English woods […]...
14. Real Estate News ARMOUR AVENUE was the name of this street and door signs on empty houses read “The Silver Dollar,” “Swede Annie” and the Christian names of madams such as “Myrtle” and “Jenny.” Scrap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan & Co. are running junk […]...
15. For Hans Carossa Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting Still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation. When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center Of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve....
16. The Wonderer I wish that I could understand The moving marvel of my Hand; I watch my fingers turn and twist, The supple bending of my wrist, The dainty touch of finger-tip, The steel intensity of grip; A tool of exquisite design, With pride I think: “It’s mine! It’s mine!” Then there’s the wonder of my Eyes, […]...
17. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
18. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
19. Blue Girls Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward Under the towers of your seminary, Go listen to your teachers old and contrary Without believing a word. Tie the white fillets then about your hair And think no more of what will come to pass Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass And chattering on the […]...
20. Easter, 1916 I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe […]...
21. Try To Remember Some Details Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing Of the one you love So that on the day of loss you’ll be able to say: last seen Wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. Try to remember some details. For they have no face And their soul is hidden and their crying Is the same as […]...
22. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
23. The Dream O God, in the dream the terrible horse began To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows, Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane, And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose. Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground When some strong creature appeared, and […]...
24. Strange Fruit Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth. They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her leathery beauty. Pash of tallow, perishable treasure: Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod, Her eyeholes blank as pools […]...
25. THE MAN WITH THE HOE BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to […]...
26. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
27. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
28. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
29. Peekabo, I Almost See You Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to Lead it, But there comes a day when your eyes Are all right but your arm isn’t long Enough To hold the telephone book where you can read it, And your friends get jocular, so you go To the oculist, And of all your friends he is […]...
30. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
31. Rosemary Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – Since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, Its flowers – white originally – […]...
32. Martha “Once…Once upon a time…” Over and over again, Martha would tell us her stories, In the hazel glen. Hers were those clear gray eyes You watch, and the story seems Told by their beautifulness Tranquil as dreams. She’d sit with her two slim hands Clasped round her bended knees; While we on our elbows lolled, […]...
33. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
34. Peter Strong and slippery, Built for the midnight grass-party Confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away The detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding To the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds Or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units In each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth […]...
35. At Mass No doubt to-morrow I will hide My face from you, my King. Let me rejoice this Sunday noon, And kneel while gray priests sing. It is not wisdom to forget. But since it is my fate Fill thou my soul with hidden wine To make this white hour great. My God, my God, this marvelous […]...
36. Anthem The birds they sang At the break of day Start again I heard them say Don’t dwell on what Has passed away Or what is yet to be. Ah the wars they will Be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again Bought and sold And bought again The dove is never free. […]...
37. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
38. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
39. Sonnet XXVIII: You That With Allegory's Curious Frame You that with allegory’s curious frame, Of others’ children changelings use to make, With me those pains for God’s sake do not take: I list not dig so deep for brazen fame. When I say “Stella,” I do mean the same Princess of Beauty, for whose only sake The reins of Love I love, though […]...
40. Oh, Oh, You Will Be Sorry Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give me back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, “What a big book for such a little head!” Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and […]...