The Pick

Related poetry:

1. Pick Offs THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust On the clean steel sky and sends it to me. The telephone picks off my voice and Sends it cross country a thousand miles. The eyes in my head pick off pages of Napoleon memoirs… a rag handler, A head of dreams walks in a sheet of Mist… the […]...
2. Siren Song I phone from time to time, to see if she’s Changed the music on her answerphone. ‘Tell me in two words’, goes the recording, ‘what you were going to tell in a thousand’. I peer into that thought, like peering out To sea at night, hearing the sound of waves Breaking on rocks, knowing she […]...
3. What we see we know somewhat What we see we know somewhat Be it but a little What we don’t surmise we do Though it shows so fickle I shall vote for Lands with Locks Granted I can pick ’em Transport’s doubtful Dividend Patented by Adam....
4. After the Earthquake After the first astounding rush, After the weeks at the lake, The crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks, The snow breaking under our boots like skin, & the long mornings in bed. . . After the tangos in the kitchen, & our eyes fixed on each other at dinner, As if we would […]...
5. Local Lad I never saw a face so bright With brilliant blood and joy, As was the grinning mug last night Of Dick, our local boy, When with a clumsy, lucky clout He knocked the champion out. A week ago he swung a pick And sweated in a ditch. Tonight he’s togged up mighty slick, And fancies […]...
6. Cardiac A mattock high he swung; I watched him at his toil; With never gulp of lung He gashed the ruddy soil. Thought I, I’d give my wealth To have his health. With fortune I would part, And privilege resign, Could I but have his heart, And he have mine. . . Then suddenly I knew […]...
7. Sea The Sea called I lay on the rocks and said: “I am come.” She mocked and showed her teeth, Stretching out her long green arms. “Go away!” she thundered. “Then tell me what I am to do,” I begged. “If I leave you, you will not be silent, But cry my name in the cities […]...
8. The To-Be-Forgotten I I heard a small sad sound, And stood awhile among the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?” II “O not at being here; But that our future second death is near; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes! III “These, […]...
9. Australian Scenery The Mountains A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below. A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake As those who sit […]...
10. The Deep-Sea Cables The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep. Here in the […]...
11. Dust there are times When you should listen To the world I think Like for instance The time a meteorite came Through the roof and Through the ceiling and Landed on my desk in the middle of The papers and things Undone to say it Smouldered would be To become poetic But it did smoulder And […]...
12. Elegy Upon Tiger Her dead lady’s joy and comfort, Who departed this life The last day of March, 1727: To the great joy of Bryan That his antagonist is gone. And is poor Tiger laid at last so low? O day of sorrow! – Day of dismal woe! Bloodhounds, or spaniels, lap-dogs, ’tis all one, When Death once […]...
13. The Handsome Heart at a Gracious Answer ‘But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy You?’-‘Father, what you buy me I like best.’ With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed, He swung to his first poised purport of reply. What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly- Doff darkness, homing nature knows […]...
14. I'm going to give up loving you i’m going to give up loving you I’m going to hate you instead Living’s so difficult difficult baby Hating’s like staying in bed You expect too much when i’m loving you I haven’t got it in me to give Love keeps on keeps on at me baby It makes a man frightened to live Hating’s […]...
15. King of the River If the water were clear enough, If the water were still, But the water is not clear, The water is not still, You would see yourself, Slipped out of your skin, Nosing upstream, Slapping, thrashing, Tumbling Over the rocks Till you paint them With your belly’s blood: Finned Ego, Yard of muscle that coils, Uncoils. […]...
16. WHO'LL BUY GODS OF LOVE? OF all the beauteous wares Exposed for sale at fairs, None will give more delight Than those that to your sight From distant lands we bring. Oh, hark to what we sing! These beauteous birds behold, They’re brought here to be sold. And first the big one see, So full of roguish glee! With light […]...
17. So Many Blood-Lakes We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were Slipped in. We have levelled the powers Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and Dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming. This one will not be so easy. We were at ease while […]...
18. Rivera Honeymoon Beneath the trees I lounged at ease And watched them speed the pace; They swerved and swung, they clutched and clung, They leapt in roaring chase; The crowd was thrilled, a chap was killed: It was a splendid race. Two men, they say, went West that day, But I knew only one; Geranium-red his blood […]...
19. Mirage The hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake, Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream’s sake. I hang my harp upon a tree, A weeping willow in a lake; I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped For a dream’s sake. Lie still, lie […]...
20. Poetics I look for the way Things will turn Out spiralling from a center, The shape Things will take to come forth in So that the birch tree white Touched black at branches Will stand out Wind-glittering Totally its apparent self: I look for the forms Things want to come as From what black wells of […]...
21. The Harlot's House We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers […]...
22. Alms My heart is what it was before, A house where people come and go; But it is winter with your love, The sashes are beset with snow. I light the lamp and lay the cloth, I blow the coals to blaze again; But it is winter with your love, The frost is thick upon the […]...
23. The School of Night What did I study in your School of Night? When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes Opened your body to be my book, I read My answers there and learned the spell aright, Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. Those others, familiar tenants of […]...
24. The Ape And God Son put a poser up to me That made me scratch my head: “God made the whole wide world,” quoth he; “That’s right, my boy,” I said. Said son: “He mad the mountains soar, And all the plains lie flat; But Dad, what did he do before He did all that? Said I: “Creation was […]...
25. In Charidemum YOU, Charidemus, who my cradle swung, And watched me all the days that I was young; You, at whose step the laziest slaves awake, And both the bailiff and the butler quake; The barber’s suds now blacken with my beard, And my rough kisses make the maids afeared; But with reproach your awful eyebrows twitch, […]...
26. The Quest Eternal O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come, Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum, On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub, I have followed the wandering teamster’s track, and it always […]...
27. CONSTRUCTIONS/RECONSTRUCTIONS I Living in a land Where only the dying correspond I am borne on the wings of love II I cannot join in a poem The interstices of clouds I watched a lapwing Hover in the air Glide in an arc Veer from the sheer cliff III Who shall I meet On this journey to […]...
28. Life in a Bottle Escape me? Never Beloved! While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue. My life is a fault at last, I fear: It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though I do […]...
29. I Remember Galileo I remember Galileo describing the mind As a piece of paper blown around by the wind, And I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree, Or jumping into the backseat of a car, And for years I watched paper leap through my cities; But yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught […]...
30. They All Want to Play Hamlet THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers-O flowers, flowers […]...
31. The Higher Pantheism The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,- Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He, tho’ He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this […]...
32. Psalm 8 part 2 v. 3ff, paraphrased. L. M. Adam and Christ, lords of the old and new creation. Lord, what was man, when made at first, Adam the offspring of the dust, That thou shouldst set him and his race But just below an angel’s place? That thou shouldst raise his nature so, And make him lord of […]...
33. For Jane: With All The Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough I pick up the skirt, I pick up the sparkling beads In black, This thing that moved once Around flesh, And I call God a liar, I say anything that moved Like that Or knew My name Could never die In the common verity of dying, And I pick Up her lovely Dress, All her […]...
34. The Maiden's Lament The clouds fast gather, The forest-oaks roar A maiden is sitting Beside the green shore, The billows are breaking with might, with might, And she sighs aloud in the darkling night, Her eyelid heavy with weeping. “My heart’s dead within me, The world is a void; To the wish it gives nothing, Each hope is […]...
35. How Fortunate The Man With None You saw sagacious Solomon You know what came of him, To him complexities seemed plain. He cursed the hour that gave birth to him And saw that everything was vain. How great and wise was Solomon. The world however did not wait But soon observed what followed on. It’s wisdom that had brought him to […]...
36. Genesis I was but a half-grown boy, You were a girl-child slight. Ah, how weary you were! You had led in the bullock-fight… We slew the bullock at length With knives and maces of stone. And so your feet were torn, Your lean arms bruised to the bone. Perhaps ’twas the slain beast’s blood We drank, […]...
37. A Case Of Murder They should not have left him there alone, Alone that is except for the cat. He was only nine, not old enough To be left alone in a basement flat, Alone, that is, except for the cat. A dog would have been a different thing, A big gruff dog with slashing jaws, But a cat […]...
38. Life In A Love Escape me? Never – Beloved! While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue. My life is a fault at last, I fear – It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though […]...
39. Wisdom of Hafiz: the Philosopher Takes to Racing My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo, Remember, it’s seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow; Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow. If ever an owner should tell you, “Back mine” don’t you be such a flat. He […]...
40. A Sign-Seeker I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry, The day-tides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude, And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by. I view the evening bonfires of the sun On hills where morning rains have hissed; The eyeless countenance of the mist Pallidly rising when the summer droughts […]...