A FORMER LIFE

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1. Each Day A Life I count each day a little life, With birth and death complete; I cloister it from care and strife And keep it sane and sweet. With eager eyes I greet the morn, Exultant as a boy, Knowing that I am newly born To wonder and to joy. And when the sunset splendours wane And ripe […]...
2. My Earlier Life I’ve been home a long time among the vast porticos, Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires, Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires. The swells’ overwhelming accords of rich music, Heaving images of heaven to the skies, Mingle in a […]...
3. Life CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst. Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move Your […]...
4. Life and Art Not while the fever of the blood is strong, The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless The poet-sould to help and soothe with song. Not then she bids his trembling lips express The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. Life is his poem then; […]...
5. There was a man who lived a life of fire There was a man who lived a life of fire. Even upon the fabric of time, Where purple becomes orange And orange purple, This life glowed, A dire red stain, indelible; Yet when he was dead, He saw that he had not lived....
6. Morning (Love Sonnet XXVII) Naked you are simple as one of your hands; Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round. You’ve moon-lines, apple pathways Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba; You’ve vines and stars in your hair. Naked you are spacious and yellow As summer in a golden […]...
7. A Country Life A bird that I don’t know, Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow, Looks sideways out into the wheat The wind waves under the waves of heat. The field is yellow as egg-bread dough Except where (just as though they’d let It live for looks) a locust billows In leaf-green and shade-violet, A standing mercy. […]...
8. This Life Which Seems So Fair This Life, which seems so fair, Is like a bubble blown up in the air By sporting children’s breath, Who chase it everywhere And strive who can most motion it bequeath. And though it sometimes seem of its own might Like to an eye of gold to be fixed there, And firm to hover in […]...
9. Petropolis From a fearful height, a wandering light, But does a star glitter like this, crying? Transparent star, wandering light Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight, And a green star is crying. Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. A […]...
10. He lived the Life of Ambush He lived the Life of Ambush And went the way of Dusk And now against his subtle name There stands an Asterisk As confident of him as we Impregnable we are The whole of Immortality intrenched Within a star...
11. Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life Within the circuit of this plodding life There enter moments of an azure hue, Untarnished fair as is the violet Or anemone, when the spring strews them By some meandering rivulet, which make The best philosophy untrue that aims But to console man for his grievances I have remembered when the winter came, High in […]...
12. Life All in the dark we grope along, And if we go amiss We learn at least which path is wrong, And there is gain in this. We do not always win the race, By only running right, We have to tread the mountain’s base Before we reach its height. The Christs alone no errors made; […]...
13. O Me! O Life! O ME! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless-of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light-of the objects mean-of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results […]...
14. The best days of my life What is it about Bryan Adams and his song ‘Summer of 69’? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it 90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end Of the golden weather, or the impending closure Of a glorious decade? He should have called it ‘The best days of my life’, it would have […]...
15. Human Life's Mystery We sow the glebe, we reap the corn, We build the house where we may rest, And then, at moments, suddenly, We look up to the great wide sky, Inquiring wherefore we were born… For earnest or for jest? The senses folding thick and dark About the stifled soul within, We guess diviner things beyond, […]...
16. An Ending Early March. The cold beach deserted. My kids Home in a bare house, bundled up And listening to rock music Pirated from England. My wife Waiting for me in a bar, alone For an hour over her sherry, and none Of us knows why I have to pace Back and forth on this flat And […]...
17. Love In A Life I Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her, Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume! As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,- Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather. II Yet the […]...
18. As You Go Through Life Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life; And even when you find them, It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind And look for the virtue behind them. For the cloudiest night has a hint of light Somewhere in its shadows hiding; It is better by far to hunt for a […]...
19. This Life My friend tells me A man in my house jumped off the roof The roof is the eighth floor of this building The roof door was locked how did he manage? His girlfriend had said goodbye I’m leaving He was 22 His mother and father were hurrying At that very moment From upstate to help […]...
20. 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 […]...
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. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
23. Modern Love V: A Message from Her A message from her set his brain aflame. A world of household matters filled her mind, Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed: She treated him as something that is tame, And but at other provocation bites. Familiar was her shoulder in the glass, Through that dark rain: yet it may come to pass That a changed […]...
24. A Noon Song There are songs for the morning and songs for the night, For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon; But who will give praise to the fulness of light, And sing us a song of the glory of noon? Oh, the high noon, the clear noon, The noon with golden crest; When the blue […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
27. A Life-Lesson There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your doll, I know; And your tea-set blue, And your play-house, too, Are things of the long ago; But childish troubles will soon pass by. There! little girl; don’t cry! There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your slate, I know; And the glad, wild ways […]...
28. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
29. The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life All this was written on the next day’s list. On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots, Pale but effective, And the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events, Built-up its tiniest cathedral… (Or is it the sum of what takes place? ) If I lean down, to whisper, to them, Down into […]...
30. An old life Snow fell in the night. At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish Mounded softness where The Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made, I broomed snow off the car And drove to the Kearsarge Mini-Mart Before Amy opened To yank my Globe out of the bundle. Back, I set my cup of coffee Beside Jane, […]...
31. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
32. The Playground of Life XIX One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty And Love is worth a full century of glory Given by the frightened weak to the strong. From that hour comes man’s Truth; and During that century Truth sleeps between The restless arms of disturbing dreams. In that hour the soul sees for herself The Natural Law, […]...
33. Adelaide Crapsey AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July, I read your heart in a book. And your mouth of blue pansy-I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered. And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held […]...
34. Wood Rides Who hath not felt the influence that so calms The weary mind in summers sultry hours When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers That verge the little ride who hath not made A minutes waste of time and sat him down Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Naked And The Nude For me, the naked and the nude (By lexicographers construed As synonyms that should express The same deficiency of dress Or shelter) stand as wide apart As love from lies, or truth from art. Lovers without reproach will gaze On bodies naked and ablaze; The Hippocratic eye will see In nakedness, anatomy; And naked shines […]...
37. Theodore the Poet As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours On the shore of the turbid Spoon With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow, Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, Gemmed with eyes of jet. And […]...
38. Life I leave the office, take the stairs, In time to mail a letter Before 3 in the afternoon the last dispatch. The red, white and blue air mail Falls past the slot for foreign mail And hits bottom with a sound That tells me my letter is alone. They will have to bring in a […]...
39. Recollection THROUGH the blue shadowy valley I hastened in a dream: Flower rich the night, flower soft the air, a blue flower the stream I hurried over before I came to the cabin door, Where the orange flame-glow danced within on the beaten floor. And the lovely mother who drooped by the sleeping child arose: And […]...
40. Between the form of Life and Life Between the form of Life and Life The difference is as big As Liquor at the Lip between And Liquor in the Jug The latter excellent to keep But for ecstatic need The corkless is superior I know for I have tried...