In Modern Dress

Related poetry:

1. House On A Cliff Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp. Outdoors The winking signal on the waste of sea. Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind. Indoors the locked heart and the lost key. Outdoors the chill, the void, the siren. Indoors The strong man pained to find his red blood cools, While the blind […]...
2. Blue dress i can see through the blue Dress when you stand In the doorway – the light Come indoors softly like A cat between your legs When you walk and The dress flows Over the curved pebble Of your belly into The blue pool my eye Is already there Waiting for the ripple I have the […]...
3. Pictures of Home In the red-roofed stucco house Of my childhood, the dining room Was screened off by folding doors With small glass panes. Our neighbors The Bertins, who barely escaped Hitler, Often joined us at table. One night Their daughter said, In Vienna Our dining room had doors like these. For a moment, we all sat quite […]...
4. Modern Love VIII: Yet It Was Plain She Struggled Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt Of righteous feeling made her pitiful. Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful! Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault? My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped As balm for any bitter wound of mine: My breast will open for thee at a […]...
5. Hiawathas' photographing ( Part II ) First the Governor, the Father: He suggested velvet curtains Looped about a massy pillar; And the corner of a table, Of a rosewood dining-table. He would hold a scroll of something, Hold it firmly in his left-hand; He would keep his right-hand buried (Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat; He would contemplate the distance With a […]...
6. Modern Love XLI: How Many a Thing How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up becomes a gem! We grasp at all the wealth it is to them; And by reflected light its worth is found. Yet for us still ’tis nothing! and that zeal Of false appreciation quickly fades. This truth is little known […]...
7. Storm Windows People are putting up storm windows now, Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon, I saw storm windows lying on the ground, Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream Away in lines like seaweed on […]...
8. The Having To Love Something Else There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his Father for his mother’s hand in marriage, and was told he could Not marry his mother’s hand because it was attached to all The rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that He’d have to love something else. . . […]...
9. Peril as a Possesssion Peril as a Possesssion ‘Tis Good to hear Danger disintegrates Satiety There’s Basis there Begets an awe That searches Human Nature’s creases As clean as Fire....
10. My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer 1 When the moon appears And a few wind-stricken barns stand out In the low-domed hills And shine with a light That is veiled and dust-filled And that floats upon the fields, My mother, with her hair in a bun, Her face in shadow, and the smoke From their cigarette coiling close To the faint […]...
11. Picture Puzzle Piece One picture puzzle piece Lyin’ on the sidewalk, One picture puzzle piece Soakin’ in the rain. It might be a button of blue On the coat of the woman Who lived in a shoe. It might be a magical bean, Or a fold in the red Velvet robe of a queen. It might be the […]...
12. The Red Dress I always saw, I always said If I were grown and free, I’d have a gown of reddest red As fine as you could see, To wear out walking, sleek and slow, Upon a Summer day, And there’d be one to see me so And flip the world away. And he would be a gallant […]...
13. Eyes I used to believe that comprehension began right there; That what eyes failed to make sense of, was insensibility. Every time a picture offers a thousand words, They claim the first to know; and if it were not through them, how would we fall for the beauty of a look? Then I learned that deception […]...
14. The Plaid Dress Strong sun, that bleach The curtains of my room, can you not render Colourless this dress I wear?- This violent plaid Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done Through indolence high judgments given here in haste; The recurring checker of the […]...
15. Fancy Dress Some Brave, awake in you to-night, Knocked at your heart: an eagle’s flight Stirred in the feather on your head. Your wide-set Indian eyes, alight Above high cheek-bones smeared with red, Unveiled cragg’d centuries, and led You, the snared wraith of bygone things – Wild ancestries of trackless Kings – Out of the past… So […]...
16. New England Mind My mind matches this understand land. Outdoors the pencilled tree, the wind-carved drift, Indoors the constant fire, the careful thrift Are facts that I accept and understand. I have brought in red berries and green boughs- Berries of black alder, boughs of pine. They and the sunlight on them, both are mine. I need no […]...
17. The Dress-Maker A CLOISTERED nun had a lover Dwelling in the neighb’ring town; Both racked their brains to discover How they best their love might crown. The swain to pass the convent-door! No easy matter! Thus they swore, And wished it light. I ne’er knew a nun In such a pass to be outdone: In woman’s clothes […]...
18. The Satin Dress Needle, needle, dip and dart, Thrusting up and down, Where’s the man could ease a heart Like a satin gown? See the stitches curve and crawl Round the cunning seams- Patterns thin and sweet and small As a lady’s dreams. Wantons go in bright brocade; Brides in organdie; Gingham’s for the plighted maid; Satin’s for […]...
19. One Cigarette No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, Your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray And sent up a long thread of such quiet grey I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal Of so much love. One cigarette In the non-smoker’s tray. As the last spire Trembles up, a sudden draught Blows […]...
20. A Reminiscence It is so long gone by, and yet How clearly now I see it all! The glimmer of your cigarette, The little chamber, narrow and tall. Perseus; your picture in its frame; (How near they seem and yet how far!) The blaze of kindled logs; the flame Of tulips in a mighty jar. Florence and […]...
21. Modern Love XLIII: Mark Where the Pressing Wind Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like, Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave! Here is a fitting spot to dig Love’s grave; Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike, And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand: In hearing of the ocean, and in sight Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white. […]...
22. The House This poem has a door, a locked door, And curtains drawn against the day, But at night the lights come on, one In each room, and the neighbors swear They hear music and the sound of dancing. These days the neighbors will swear To anything, but that is not why The house is locked up […]...
23. Poem (The spirit likes to dress up…) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, Shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning In the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather Plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, […]...
24. Infelice Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening They said: […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Modern Love XL: I Bade My Lady Think I bade my Lady think what she might mean. Know I my meaning, I? Can I love one, And yet be jealous of another? None Commits such folly. Terrible Love, I ween, Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave The lightless seas of selfishness amain: Seas that in a man’s heart have no rain […]...
27. I Sit and Look Out I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by […]...
28. Worm Either Way If you live along with all the other people And are just like them, and conform, and are nice You’re just a worm And if you live with all the other people And you don’t like them and won’t be like them and won’t conform Then you’re just the worm that has turned, In either […]...
29. Modern Love L: Thus Piteously Love Thus piteously Love closed what he begat: The union of this ever-diverse pair! These two were rapid falcons in a snare, Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers: But they fed not on the advancing hours: Their hearts […]...
30. Like A Flower In The Rain I cut the middle fingernail of the middle Finger Right hand Real short And I began rubbing along her cunt As she sat upright in bed Spreading lotion over her arms Face And breasts After bathing. Then she lit a cigarette: “don’t let this put you off,” An smoked and continued to rub The lotion […]...
31. Modern Love XX: I Am Not of Those I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear: I lay it […]...
32. Enigma Some men are born to gather women’s tears, To give a harbour to their timorous fears, To take them as the dry earth takes the rain, As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain; Yet their own tears remain unshed, Their own tumultuous fears unsaid, And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the […]...
33. Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people’s feet, Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With […]...
34. Meaning When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add Up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. – And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is […]...
35. Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child. SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como. HELEN Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. ‘T is long since thou and I have met; And yet methinks it were unkind Those moments to forget. Come, sit by me. I see thee stand By this lone lake, in this far land, Thy […]...
36. Apples Behold the apples’ rounded worlds: Juice-green of July rain, The black polestar of flowers, the rind Mapped with its crimson stain. The russet, crab and cottage red Burn to the sun’s hot brass, Then drop like sweat from every branch And bubble in the grass. They lie as wanton as they fall, And where they […]...
37. Modern Love XV: I Think She Sleeps I think she sleeps: it must be sleep, when low Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor; The face turned with it. Now make fast the door. Sleep on: it is your husband, not your foe. The Poet’s black stage-lion of wronged love, Frights not our modern dames: well if he did! Now will I […]...
38. Modern Love XXIX: Am I Failing Am I failing? For no longer can I cast A glory round about this head of gold. Glory she wears, but springing from the mould; Not like the consecration of the Past! Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth I cry for still: I cannot be at peace In having Love upon a’ mortal […]...
39. Smoke Last summer, lazing by the sea, I met a most entrancing creature, Her black eyes quite bewildered me – She had a Spanish cast of feature. She often smoked a cigarette, And did it in the cutest fashion. Before a week passed by she set My young heart in a raging passion. I swore I […]...
40. Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life All other joys of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. Or if Delusion came, ’twas but to show The coming minute mock the one that went. Cold as a mountain in its […]...