Clowns' Houses

Related poetry:

1. Houses chapter IX A mason came forth and said, “Speak to us of Houses.” And he answered and said: Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. Your […]...
2. Sweet safe Houses Sweet safe Houses Glad gay Houses Sealed so stately tight Lids of Steel on Lids of Marble Locking Bare feet out Brooks of Plush in Banks of Satin Not so softly fall As the laughter and the whisper From their People Pearl No Bald Death affront their Parlors No Bold Sickness come To deface their […]...
3. Houses Of Dreams You took my empty dreams And filled them every one With tenderness and nobleness, April and the sun. The old empty dreams Where my thoughts would throng Are far too full of happiness To even hold a song. Oh, the empty dreams were dim And the empty dreams were wide, They were sweet and shadowy […]...
4. Houses People who are afraid of themselves Multiply themselves into families And so divide themselves And so become less afraid. People who might have to go out Into clanging strangers’ laughter, Crowd under roofs, make compacts To no more than smile at each other. People who might meet their own faces Or surprise their own voices […]...
5. Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses Tired and unhappy, you think of houses Soft-carpeted and warm in the December evening, While snow’s white pieces fall past the window, And the orange firelight leaps. A young girl sings That song of Gluck where Orpheus pleads with Death; Her elders watch, nodding their happiness To see time fresh again in her self-conscious eyes: […]...
6. I know some lonely Houses off the Road I know some lonely Houses off the Road A Robber’d like the look of Wooden barred, And Windows hanging low, Inviting to A Portico, Where two could creep One hand the Tools The other peep To make sure All’s Asleep Old fashioned eyes Not easy to surprise! How orderly the Kitchen’d look, by night, With […]...
7. Rivulose You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking With ups and downs will, though, Building constancy into the black foreground For each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams Wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep An image clear, but then you realize, time Going on, that time’s residual like the last Ice age’s cool still […]...
8. HOPE Do you believe, in what you see Do you believe in reality Do you believe in the sun that’s bright Do you believe in the stars in the night Do you believe in the birds that fly Do you believe in clouds and the sky Do you believe in wind that flows Do you believe […]...
9. God's Light-Houses 1 When night falls on the earth, the sea 2 From east to west lies twinkling bright 3 With shining beams from beacons high 4 Which flash afar a friendly light. 5 The sailor’s eyes, like eyes in prayer, 6 Turn unto them for guiding ray: 7 If storms obscure their radiance, 8 The great […]...
10. Never To Dream Of Spiders Time collapses between the lips of strangers My days collapse into a hollow tube Soon implodes against now Like an iron wall My eyes are blocked with rubble A smear of perspectives Blurring each horizon In the breathless precision of silence One word is made. Once the renegade flesh was gone Fall air lay against […]...
11. "Houses" so the Wise Men tell me “Houses” so the Wise Men tell me “Mansions”! Mansions must be warm! Mansions cannot let the tears in, Mansions must exclude the storm! “Many Mansions,” by “his Father,” I don’t know him; snugly built! Could the Children find the way there Some, would even trudge tonight!...
12. Four in the Morning Cried the navy-blue ghost Of Mr. Belaker The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker, “Why did the cock crow, Why am I lost, Down the endless road to Infinity toss’d? The tropical leaves are whispering white As water; I race the wind in my flight. The white lace houses are carried away By the tide; far out they […]...
13. The Geniuses Among Us They take us by surprise, these tall perennials That jut like hollyhocks above the canopy Of all the rest of us-bright testimonials To the scale of human possibility. They come to bloom for every generation, Blazing with extraordinary notions From the taproots of imagination- Dazzling us with incandescent visions. And soon, the things we never […]...
14. A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
15. Dream Variations To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! […]...
16. In Memoriam Mae Noblitt This is just a place: We go around, distanced, Yearly in a star’s Atmosphere, turning Daily into and out of Direct light and Slanting through the Quadrant seasons: deep Space begins at our Heels, nearly rousing Us loose: we look up Or out so high, sight’s Silk almost draws us away: This is just a […]...
17. Tears THANK God, bless God, all ye who suffer not More grief than ye can weep for. That is well That is light grieving! lighter, none befell Since Adam forfeited the primal lot. Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot, The mother singing, at her marriage-bell The bride weeps, and before the oracle […]...
18. Interior IN the cool of the night time The clocks pick off the points And the mainsprings loosen. They will need winding. One of these days… they will need winding. Rabelais in red boards, Walt Whitman in green, Hugo in ten-cent paper covers, Here they stand on shelves In the cool of the night time And […]...
19. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
20. Incantation A white well In a black cave; A bright shell In a dark wave. A white rose Black brambles hood; Smooth bright snows In a dark wood. A flung white glove In a dark fight; A white dove On a wild black night. A white door In a dark lane; A bright core To bitter […]...
21. Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
22. Large Bad Picture Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or Some northerly harbor of Labrador, Before he became a schoolteacher A great-uncle painted a big picture. Receding for miles on either side Into a flushed, still sky Are overhanging pale blue cliffs Hundreds of feet high, Their bases fretted by little arches, The entrances to caves Running in […]...
23. Sonnet 28 – My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said,-he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch […]...
24. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
25. Houses (For Aline) When you shall die and to the sky Serenely, delicately go, Saint Peter, when he sees you there, Will clash his keys and say: “Now talk to her, Sir Christopher! And hurry, Michelangelo! She wants to play at building, And you’ve got to help her play!” Every architect will help erect A palace […]...
26. He Has Lived In Many Houses furnished rooms, flats, a hayloft, A tent, motels, under a table, Under an overturned rowboat, in a villa (briefly) but not, As yet, a yurt. In these places He has slept, eaten, Put his forehead to the window glass, Looking out. He’s in a stilt-house now, The water passing beneath him half the day; The […]...
27. Go Down, Death Weep not, weep not, She is not dead; She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus. Heart-broken husband weep no more; Grief-stricken son weep no more; Left-lonesome daughter weep no more; She only just gone home. Day before yesterday morning, God was looking down from his great, high heaven, Looking down on all his children, And […]...
28. Three Faces I. VENTIMIGLIA The sky and sea glared hard and bright and blank: Down the one steep street, with slow steps firm and free, A tall girl paced, with eyes too proud to thank The sky and sea. One dead flat sapphire, void of wrath or glee, Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to […]...
29. Poetics I look for the way Things will turn Out spiralling from a center, The shape Things will take to come forth in So that the birch tree white Touched black at branches Will stand out Wind-glittering Totally its apparent self: I look for the forms Things want to come as From what black wells of […]...
30. The Dog of Art That dog with daisies for eyes Who flashes forth Flame of his very self at every bark Is the Dog of Art. Worked in wool, his blind eyes Look inward to caverns and jewels Which they see perfectly, And his voice Measures forth the treasure In music sharp and loud, Sharp and bright, Bright flaming […]...
31. Over the Carnage OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice, Be not dishearten’d-Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible-they shall yet make Columbia victorious. Sons of the Mother of All! you shall yet be victorious! You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the […]...
32. Your tiger (in china it is symbolic Of darkness and the new moon) In your night’s hollow The tiger stalks Black grasses have licked It into nothingness Hooked by moon I hover on your hollow’s lip I feel the smell of fire The leap of a bright cat-fur My eye is dumb Asking to be devoured I […]...
33. Tremble Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched in pinched expectation, Waits. Her clipped wings, Preened against reality, Tremble. Originally published by The Lyric...
34. The Turning Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more a child, Only a man, one who has Looked upon his own nakedness Without shame, and in defeat Has seen nothing to bless. Touched once, like a plum, I turned Rotten in the meat, or […]...
35. The White Room The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret Which they were about to Make known to me And then didn’t. Summer came. Each tree On my street had its own Scheherazade. My nights Were a part of their wild Storytelling. We […]...
36. The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said. Hush […]...
37. Shinto When sorrow lays us low For a second we are saved By humble windfalls Of the mindfulness or memory: The taste of a fruit, the taste of water, That face given back to us by a dream, The first jasmine of November, The endless yearning of the compass, A book we thought was lost, The […]...
38. Tz'u No. 13 To the tune of “Song of Peace” Year by year, in the snow, I have often gathered plum flowers, Intoxicated with their beauty. Fondling them impudently I got my robe wet with their lucid tears. This year I have drifted to the corner Of the sea and the edge Of the horizon, My temples have […]...
39. To A Poor Old Woman munching a plum on The street a paper bag Of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good To her. They taste Good to her You can see it by The way she gives herself To the one half Sucked out in her hand Comforted A solace of ripe plums Seeming […]...
40. A Winter Ride Who shall declare the joy of the running! Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight! Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather, Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light. Everything mortal has moments immortal, Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright. So with the stretch of the white road before me, Shining snowcrystals rainbowed […]...