Understanding

Related poetry:

1. Resolutions Resolutions I have made, Kept, I have none, Why do I have to make, Resolutions anymore? I pause through endless time, For this year to pass, And the lights of celebration to die, On this New Year day. Remember those magical days, When the promise of togetherness, Held us together, tentatively, Alas! No more! Years […]...
2. Understanding lemons lemons don’t let you admire yourself too much They stick from their tree like awkward thoughts Demanding a truth be told even if the tongue Would prefer a far more sickly explanation Lemons are perfect though for the need to jump Straight out of bed on the eagerest of mornings Into the task that must […]...
3. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
4. Understanding I understood the rest too well, And all their thoughts have come to be Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell Of a sunny shallow sea. But you I never understood, Your spirit’s secret hides like gold Sunk in a Spanish galleon Ages ago in waters cold....
5. You Are Old, Father William “You are old, Father william,” the young man said, “And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head Do you think, at your age, it is right? “In my youth,” Father William replied to his son, “I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I’m perfectly sure […]...
6. The River of Life The more we live, more brief appear Our life’s succeeding stages; A day to childhood seems a year, And years like passing ages. The gladsome current of our youth, Ere passion yet disorders, Steals lingering like a river smooth Along its grassy borders. But as the careworn cheek grows wan, And sorrow’s shafts fly thicker, […]...
7. A HOPE FOR POETRY: REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES There was a hope for poetry in the sixties And for education and society, teachers free To do as they wanted: I could and did teach Poetry and art all day and little else – That was my way. I threw rainbows against the classroom walls, Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and Halls; […]...
8. Youth and Calm ‘Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. There’s nothing can dismarble now The smoothness of that limpid brow. But is a calm like this, in truth, The crowning end of life and youth, And when this boon rewards the dead, Are all debts paid, has all been […]...
9. At a Poetry Party I Am Given the Rhyme Chih Although I’ve studied poetry for thirty years I try to keep my mouth shut and avoid reputation. Now who is this nosy gentleman talking about my poetry Like Yang Ching-chih Who spoke of Hsiang Ssu everywhere he went....
10. Modern Love X: But Where Began the Change But where began the change; and what’s my crime? The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned, Chafes at his sentence. Shall I, unsustained, Drag on Love’s nerveless body thro’ all time? I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of […]...
11. WANTS POEMS AND HAS NEVER REJECTED ANYONE Eamer o’ Keefe with your tinge of brogue And Irish warmth, Daisy and Debjani With your karma and cool verse, I salute you. ( III ) “Ecoutez la voix du vent” – listen to the wind’s voice As Milosz commands “All your griefs, My sad ones, are in vain” but offering In recompense soaring sonatas […]...
12. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
13. ON HIMSELF A wearied pilgrim I have wander’d here, Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year; Long I have lasted in this world; ’tis true But yet those years that I have lived, but few. Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell, Lives not those years, but he that lives them well: One man has […]...
14. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
15. George Gray I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life. For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; Ambition called […]...
16. Dream On Some people go their whole lives Without ever writing a single poem. Extraordinary people who don’t hesitate To cut somebody’s heart or skull open. They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease. And play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing. These same people stroll into a church As if […]...
17. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
18. Job Interview Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife He would have written sonnets all his life? DON JUAN, III, 63-4 “Where do you see yourself five years from now?” The eldest male member (or is “male member” A redundancy?) of the committee Asked me. “Not here,” I thought. A good thing I Speak fluent Fog. […]...
19. Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. The Chilterns Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness Oh, I’ve loved you faithfully and well, Three years, or a bit less. It wasn’t a success. Thank God, that’s done! and I’ll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley Hoo, As a free man […]...
22. 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; […]...
23. So Much I Gazed So much I gazed on beauty, That my vision is replete with it. Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs. Hair as if taken from greek statues; Always beautiful, even when uncombed, And it falls, slightly, over white foreheads. Faces of love, as my poetry Wanted them…. in the nights of my youth, In […]...
24. Sonnet XXVI: I Ever Love To Despair I ever love where never hope appears, Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care, And my life’s hope would die, but for despair; My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears; Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope, Yet my hope’s wings are laden so with fear As they cannot ascend to my hope’s sphere; […]...
25. Remembrance Cold in the earth-and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave? Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains, on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath […]...
26. Sonnet 103: Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O, blame me not if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That overgoes my blunt […]...
27. Hymn 160 Custom in sin. Let the wild leopards of the wood Put off the spots that nature gives, Then may the wicked turn to God, And change their tempers and their lives. As well might Ethiopian slaves Wash out the darkness of their skin, The deed as well might leave their graves, As old transgressors cease […]...
28. Change Change Said the sun to the moon, You cannot stay. Change Says the moon to the waters, All is flowing. Change Says the fields to the grass, Seed-time and harvest, Chaff and grain. You must change said, Said the worm to the bud, Though not to a rose, Petals fade That wings may rise Borne […]...
29. Fragment What is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that’s taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for religion’s […]...
30. Should Lanterns Shine Should lanterns shine, the holy face, Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light, Would wither up, an any boy of love Look twice before he fell from grace. The features in their private dark Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come And from her lips the faded pigments fall, The mummy cloths […]...
31. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
32. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
33. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
34. Resolution People are still expecting this annus horribilis To close its black box of monstrosities; If I asked you about resolutions You’d probably give me that look And say “May this year fare us well.” I would know the answer too well And you, carefully folding the question, Tuck it back into my pocket and zip […]...
35. The butterfly obtains The butterfly obtains But little sympathy Though favorably mentioned In Entomology Because he travels freely And wears a proper coat The circumspect are certain That he is dissolute Had he the homely scutcheon Of modest Industry ‘Twere fitter certifying For Immortality...
36. Petals Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never […]...
37. Remember, Body Body, remember not only how much you were loved, Not only the beds on which you lay, But also those desires which for you Plainly glowed in the eyes, And trembled in the voice and some Chance obstacle made them futile. Now that all belongs to the past, It is almost as if you had […]...
38. De Profundis Oh why is heaven built so far, Oh why is earth set so remote? I cannot reach the nearest star That hangs afloat. I would not care to reach the moon, One round monotonous of change; Yet even she repeats her tune Beyond my range. I never watch the scatter’d fire Of stars, or sun’s […]...
39. Dead poet I’m sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet, I mean it in the surmise that I won’t be tempted To revise or rewrite the poem I wrote last night, or the Poems I wrote last week (which make me cringe when I Read them again), or when I read poetry of […]...
40. Called Into Play Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: Some flurries have whitened the edges of roads And lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & Turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to Find something to write about I haven’t already Written away: I will have to stop short, look Down, look […]...