Woe!

Related poetry:

1. Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the window pane The blizzard sculptured on the […]...
2. Dream Song 123: Daples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north, I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floor And it would dapple me If I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwith I have done, trying well to mount a thought Not carelessly In times forgotten, except by the New York Times Which can’t […]...
3. Strong Mercy My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, But ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; And this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through. Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, Great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked – this sky and the […]...
4. The New House NOW first, as I shut the door, I was alone In the new house; and the wind Began to moan. Old at once was the house, And I was old; My ears were teased with the dread Of what was foretold, Nights of storm, days of mist, without end; Sad days when the sun Shone […]...
5. Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving, Go no further; come hither; there have been who have found it, And these know the House of Fulfilment of Craving; These know the Cup with the roses around it; These know the World’s Wound and the balm that hath bound it: Cry out, the World heedeth […]...
6. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
7. Respectability I. Dear, had the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim ”I know you both, ”Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!” – How many precious months and years Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears? […]...
8. The Poet O hour of my muse: why do you leave me, Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight? Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter? How shall I pass my days? And how my nights? I have no one to love. I have no home. There is no center to sustain my life. […]...
9. Dream Song 126: A Thurn A Thurn Among them marble where the man may lie Lie chieftains grand in final phase, or pause, ‘O rare Ben Jonson’, Dictator too, & the thinky other Johnson, Dictator too, backhanders down of laws, Men of fears, weird & sly. Not of these least is borne to rest. If grandeur & mettle prompted his […]...
10. A Tongue to tell Him I am true! A Tongue to tell Him I am true! Its fee to be of Gold Had Nature in Her monstrous House A single Ragged Child To earn a Mine would run That Interdicted Way, And tell Him Charge thee speak it plain That so far Truth is True? And answer What I do Beginning with the […]...
11. God fashioned the ship of the world carefully God fashioned the ship of the world carefully. With the infinite skill of an All-Master Made He the hull and the sails, Held He the rudder Ready for adjustment. Erect stood He, scanning His work proudly. Then at fateful time a wrong called, And God turned, heeding. Lo, the ship, at this opportunity, slipped slyly, […]...
12. Summer Nights Lamoni, Iowa The factory siren tells workers time to go home Tells them the evening has begun. When living with the tall man Whom I didn’t love, I would wander The streets, dreaming of Italy. Trekking the handful of avenues With him, he would say look there Between pink cobblestones, There’s manure like mortar. The […]...
13. AUBADE Dawn’s my Mr Right, already Cocks have crowed, birds flown from nests, The neon lights of Leeds last night still Sovereign in my sights, limousines and Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled Dates of wedding days to come, the worn dance floor, Jingling arcades where chrome fendered fruit machines Rest on plush carpets like […]...
14. Look not in my eyes, for fear Look not in my eyes, for fear Thy mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me. One the long nights through must lie Spent in star-defeated sighs, But why should you as well as I Perish? gaze not in my eyes. […]...
15. Shells Reaching down arm-deep into bright water I gathered on white sand under waves Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone Inhabit a finite world of years and days. I reached my arm down a myriad years To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor, Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation. […]...
16. Sleeping at last Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, Sleeping at last. No more a tired heart downcast or overcast, No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover, Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep […]...
17. Song Unsung The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; Only there is the agony of wishing in my heart. The blossom has not opened; only the wind […]...
18. Exhortation: Summer 1919 Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder, And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake! In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills […]...
19. Raw With Love little dark girl with Kind eyes When it comes time to Use the knife I won’t flinch and I won’t blame You, As I drive along the shorealone As the palms wave, The ugly heavy palms, As the living does not arrive As the dead do notleave, I won’tblame you, Insteaad I will remeber the […]...
20. Young and Old 1 When all the world is young, lad, 2 And all the trees are green; 3 And every goose a swan, lad, 4 And every lass a queen; 5 Then hey for boot and horse, lad, 6 And round the world away! 7 Young blood must have its course, lad, 8 And every dog his […]...
21. 282. Extemporaneous Effusion on being appointed to an Excise Division SEARCHING auld wives’ barrels, Ochon the day! That clarty barm should stain my laurels: But-what’ll ye say? These movin’ things ca’d wives an’ weans, Wad move the very hearts o’ stanes!...
22. Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams 1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do And its wooden beams were so inviting. 2 We laughed at the hollyhocks together And then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do […]...
23. Charlene-n-Booker 4ever And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews, Any man a boy given this chance of making A new sidewalk outside the apartment building where Some of them live, three old men and their wives, The aging unmarrying children, and the child Who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here Because she doesn’t […]...
24. Grace and Providence Almighty King! whose wondrous hand Supports the weight of sea and land; Whose grace is such a boundless store, No heart shall break that sighs for more. Thy providence supplies my food, And ’tis Thy blessing makes it good; My soul is nourish’d by Thy Word, Let soul and body praise the Lord! My streams […]...
25. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 06: Adele And Davis She turned her head on the pillow, and cried once more. And drawing a shaken breath, and closing her eyes, To shut out, if she could, this dingy room, The wigs and costumes scattered around the floor,- Yellows and greens in the dark,-she walked again Those nightmare streets which she had walked so often. . […]...
26. The Old Chimaeras. Old Recipts THE old Chimaeras, old receipts For making “happy land,” The old political beliefs Swam close before my hand. The grand old communistic myths In a middle state of grace, Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell, And walking for a space, Quite dead, and looking it, and yet All eagerness to show The Social-Contract […]...
27. My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost dreams laid on you Oh bed […]...
28. The Candle Indoors Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack […]...
29. Misconceptions This is a spray the Bird clung to, Making it blossom with pleasure, Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, Fit for her nest and her treasure. Oh, what a hope beyond measure Was the poor spray’s, which the flying feet hung to,- So to be singled out, built in, and sung to! This is […]...
30. On Faith How do people stay true to each other? When I think of my parents all those years In the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever Longing for anything else – or: no, they must Have longed; there must have been flickerings, Stray desires, nights she turned from him, Sleepless, and wept, nights he rose […]...
31. Last Night As I Was Sleeping Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That a spring was breaking Out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, Water of a new life That I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That I had a beehive […]...
32. Graydigger's Home Paw marks near one burrow show Graydigger At home, I bend low, from down there swivel My head, grasstop level the world Goes on forever, the mountains a bigger Burrow, their snow like last winter. From a room Inside the world even the strongest wind Has a soft sound: a new house will hide In […]...
33. Sonnet 43 – How do I love thee? Let me count the ways How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee […]...
34. The Explosion On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead. In the sun the slagheap slept. Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering off the freshened silence. One chased after rabbits; lost them; Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses. […]...
35. Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered Figuring what anything is for: Enough for her devotions that things are And can be contemplated soon as gathered. She knows how every living thing was fathered, She calculates the climate of each star, She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care Why any one of them […]...
36. An Autumn Rain-Scene There trudges one to a merry-making With sturdy swing, On whom the rain comes down. To fetch the saving medicament Is another bent, On whom the rain comes down. One slowly drives his herd to the stall Ere ill befall, On whom the rain comes down. This bears his missives of life and death With […]...
37. Ancestors Behold these jewelled, merchant Ancestors, Foregathered in some chancellery of death; Calm, provident, discreet, they stroke their beards And move their faces slowly in the gloom, And barter monstrous wealth with speech subdued, Lustreless eyes and acquiescent lids. And oft in pauses of their conference, They listen to the measured breath of night’s Hushed sweep […]...
38. Message Of Love Unveil onto me, the true message of the heart. Fill me with it’s knowledge, so I may learn the art. Supply me with the needed tools, to create a lasting love. One, that not even Cupid and his arrow has ever heard of....
39. THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS L’eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans Cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux: “Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!” JACQUES BRIDAINE. Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient […]...
40. The Iron Wedding Rings In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. In the days of black oppression, when […]...