Reservations Confirmed

Related poetry:

1. Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire-nil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumus-the gondola Stopped, the old palace was there, how charming its grey and pink-goats and Monkeys, with such hair too!-so the countess passed on until she came through the Little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed. BURBANK crossed a little bridge Descending at a […]...
2. A Day At Union Station Departure At last, I’m leaving the familiar roof! I’m undeterred by rain and wind. This presentation should be quite a feather In my cap. Eager, I clutch my ticket. I’m going places. Not letting any grass Grow, not under these clever feet! Pigeons We admire one another’s tiny coral feet. Coooooo, coooooo under the roof. […]...
3. Images of snow – february 1996 snow is a thousand flowers The chinese probably said Hundreds and thousands this morning Drop their garlands on my head Last night the festoons started Long before we went to bed Snow is a white-furred rabbit The chinese probably wrote Hedgerows and fields this morning Wear a similar fluffy coat Last night the winter danced […]...
4. Preludes I THE WINTER evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street […]...
5. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
6. Lottery Ticket ‘A ticket for the lottery I’ve purchased every week,’ said she ‘For years a score Though desperately poor am I, Oh how I’ve scrimped and scraped to buy One chance more. Each week I think I’ll gain the prize, And end my sorrows and my sighs, For I’ll be rich; Then nevermore I’ll eat bread […]...
7. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
8. The duel The gingham dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; ‘T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t’ other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. […]...
9. Dear Colette Dear Colette, I want to write to you About being a woman For that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face Enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . Hangs above my desk Like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands Reach out from your […]...
10. Sandpipers Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and […]...
11. Very Early Spring The fields are snowbound no longer; There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green. The snow has been caught up into the sky So many white clouds and the blue of the sky is cold. Now the sun walks in the forest, He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers; They […]...
12. Inheritance/Improvisation Inheritance. I wasn’t raised to call Myself Black, Indian, Chinese “You’re human,” said my parents. That was all. By the west window sits a Chinese camphor chest Folded full of blankets and grandmother’s dresses. Tiny Chinese bones she had. They’ll never fit me But the fabric’s pretty. Atop the chest: a set of Mali drums. […]...
13. Bells Of Gray Crystal Bells of gray crystal Break on each bough The swans’ breath will mist all The cold airs now. Like tall pagodas Two people go, Trail their long codas Of talk through the snow. Lonely are these And lonely and I…. The clouds, gray Chinese geese Sleek through the sky....
14. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
15. From The Long Sad Party Someone was saying Something about shadows covering the field, about How things pass, how one sleeps towards morning And the morning goes. Someone was saying How the wind dies down but comes back, How shells are the coffins of wind But the weather continues. It was a long night And someone said something about the […]...
16. A poor torn heart a tattered heart A poor torn heart a tattered heart That sat it down to rest Nor noticed that the Ebbing Day Flowed silver to the West Nor noticed Night did soft descend Nor Constellation burn Intent upon the vision Of latitudes unknown. The angels happening that way This dusty heart espied Tenderly took it up from toil […]...
17. His Dream Of The Skyland The seafarers tell of the Eastern Isle of Bliss, It is lost in a wilderness of misty sea waves. But the Sky-land of the south, the Yueh-landers say, May be seen through cracks of the glimmering cloud. This land of the sky stretches across the leagues of heaven; It rises above the Five Mountains and […]...
18. I should not dare to leave my friend I should not dare to leave my friend, Because because if he should die While I was gone and I too late Should reach the Heart that wanted me If I should disappoint the eyes That hunted hunted so to see And could not bear to shut until They “noticed” me they noticed me If […]...
19. LETTER FROM LEEDS Would ‘any woman’ find me difficult to live with? My tastes are simple: space for several thousand books, The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil My duties as a carer, unending phone calls And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best […]...
20. Leaving White King City White King City I left at dawn In the morning-glow of the clouds; The thousand miles to Chiang-ling We sailed in a single day. On either shore the gibbons’ chatter Sounded without pause While my light boat skimmed past Ten thousand sombre crags....
21. Thirty-nine O hapless day! O wretched day! I hoped you’d pass me by Alas, the years have sneaked away And all is changed but I! Had I the power, I would remand You to a gloom condign, But here you’ve crept upon me and I I am thirty-nine! Now, were I thirty-five, I could Assume a […]...
22. Christmas Trees (A Christmas Circular Letter) THE CITY had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city, Yet did in country fashion in that there He […]...
23. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
24. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
25. Shagbark Hickory IN the moonlight under a shag-bark hickory tree Watching the yellow shadows melt in hoof-pools, Listening to the yes and the no of a woman’s hands, I kept my guess why the night was glad. The night was lit with a woman’s eyes. The night was crossed with a woman’s hands, The night kept humming […]...
26. Nora, the Maid of Killarney Down by the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, Off times I have met my own dear Barney, In the sweet summer time of the year, In the silvery moonlight so clear, I’ve rambled with my sweetheart Barney, Along the green banks of the Lakes of Killarney. The Lakes of Killarney are most lovely to be seen […]...
27. Observation Car To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting. The present and past were enough. […]...
28. Post-Vacation Tristesse The Jumbo Jet has barely shuddered off The ground, and I’m depressed. My scuba mask And fins, my fly rod and beach hat Crush each other in an overhead locker Dark as the bedroom closet they’re returning to. Already the week’s good times melt Together like caramels in a hot car. My vow to “Do […]...
29. On – On – Poet I to the open road, You to the hunchbacked street – Which of us two Shall the earlier rue That day we chanced to meet? I with a heart that’s sound, You with sick fancies of pain – Which of us two Would the earlier rue If we chanced to meet again? I jingle homely […]...
30. Hostel Beach, Oneroa The cliff sprang from the sea at end of Hostel Beach, If the tide was out you’d reach a tiny bay beyond The cape without wet feet, an easy stroll but too effete For blood as hot as ours. We watched it at full flood; A risky place to contemplate the games we planned, We […]...
31. After the Engagement Well, Mabel, ’tis over and ended – The ball I wrote was to be; And oh! it was perfectly splendid – If you could have been here to see. I’ve a thousand things to write you That I know you are wanting to hear, And one, that is sure to delight you – I am […]...
32. Some one prepared this mighty show Some one prepared this mighty show To which without a Ticket go The nations and the Days Displayed before the simplest Door That all may witness it and more, The pomp of summer Days....
33. 1985 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. Psalm 58 It was the fortieth year since Buchenwald: two thousand Jewish refugees in Sudan starved while Reagan visited The graves of Nazis. CBS paid off Westmoreland For their rude disclosure of his lies and […]...
34. Pastoral The Dove walks with sticky feet Upon the green crowns of the almond tree, Its feathers smeared over with warmth Like honey That dips lazily down into the shadow… Anyone standing in that orchard. So filled with peace and sleep, Would hardly have noticed the hill Nearby With its three strange wooden arms Lifted above […]...
35. Song of the Artesian Water Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought; But we’re sick of prayers and Providence we’re going to do without; With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below, We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go. Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we’ll […]...
36. Jonathan Houghton There is the caw of a crow, And the hesitant song of a thrush. There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away, And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill. The forest beyond the orchard is still With midsummer stillness; And along the road a wagon chuckles, Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury. […]...
37. The Genesis of the Butterfly The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings, That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide, With muffled music, murmured far and wide. Ah, the Spring time, when we […]...
38. Epitaph For Our Children Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos; Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear; Playing their blind-man’s-bluff in our gutted mansions, Their follow-my-leader on a stair that ended in air....
39. By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
40. Near Keokuk THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek. Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water. All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel. Now they hold their toes and ankles to the drift of running water. Then they go to the bunk cars and […]...