Contraband

Related poetry:

1. Moments Of Vision That mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see Of you and me? That mirror Whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror And throws our mind back on us, and our heart, Until we start? That mirror Works well in these […]...
2. January 31 (The sky is crumbling…) The sky is crumbling into millions of paper dots The wind blows in my face So I duck into my favorite barber shop And listen to Vivaldi and look in the mirror Reflecting the shopfront windows, Broadway And 104th, and watch the dots blown by the wind Blow into the faces of the walkers outside […]...
3. Bar Italia How beautiful it would be to wait for you again In the usual place, Not looking at the door, Keeping a lookout in the long mirror, Knowing that if you are late It will not be too late, Knowing that all I have to do Is wait a little longer And you will be pushing […]...
4. Up Scoble Scobble for whoredom whips his wife and cries He’ll slit her nose; but blubbering she replies, “Good sir, make no more cuts i’ th’ outward skin, One slit’s enough to let adultery in....
5. A Seed See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power in it weaves Out of […]...
6. Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground From bristly foliage You fell Complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany, As perfect As a violin newly Born of the treetops, That falling Offers its sealed-in gifts, The hidden sweetness That grew in secret Amid birds and leaves, A model of form, Kin to wood and flour, An oval instrument That holds within it Intact delight, […]...
7. Don Juan Under the lips and limbs, the embraces, faces, Under the sharp circumference, the brightness, Under the fence of shadows, Is something I am seeking; Under the faces a face, Under the new an old or a not-yet-come-to; Under the voices a peace. Am I a darkness all your flames must light? A mirror all your […]...
8. The Borders To say that she came into me, From another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe And nothing leaves it. My mother-I mean my daughter did not Enter me. She began to exist Inside me-she appeared within me. And my mother did not enter me. When she lay down, to pray, on me, […]...
9. The Refugees In the shabby train no seat is vacant. The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of […]...
10. Late Ripeness Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered The clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, Like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas Assigned to my brush came closer, […]...
11. Lip-Stick Liz Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That’s the oldest known in history; She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst’ry. She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander, And he used to beat her up because he couldn’t understand her. Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved […]...
12. Dream Song 12: Sabbath There is an eye, there was a slit. Nights walk, and confer on him fear. The strangler tree, the dancing mouse Confound his vision; then they loosen it. Henry widens. How did Henry House Himself ever come here? Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent When loth at landfall soft I leave. The soldiers, Coleridge […]...
13. Vision (For Aline) Homer, they tell us, was blind and could not see the beautiful Faces Looking up into his own and reflecting the joy of his dream, Yet did he seem Gifted with eyes that could follow the gods to their holiest places. I have no vision of gods, not of Eros with love-arrows laden, […]...
14. Civilization Send your army home to their wives and children. It is late. Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty. Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness lie down beside me. Speak of anything we possess in common: Ground or law or sense. Only speak it softly. Spiders crawl the crevices. Violent voices ruin their balance, […]...
15. Trees (For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden) I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest […]...
16. The Snakes of September All summer I heard them Rustling in the shrubbery, Outracing me from tier To tier in my garden, A whisper among the viburnums, A signal flashed from the hedgerow, A shadow pulsing In the barberry thicket. Now that the nights are chill And the annuals spent, I should have thought them gone, In a torpor […]...
17. A Hero Three times I had the lust to kill, To clutch a throat so young and fair, And squeeze with all my might until No breath of being lingered there. Three times I drove the demon out, Though on my brow was evil sweat. . . . And yet I know beyond a doubt He’ll get […]...
18. The Daughter Goes To Camp In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept Creeping over the smooth plastic To find your strong meaty little hand and Squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the Noble ribbing of the corduroy, Straight and regular as anything in nature, to Find the slack […]...
19. With The Face With the face goes a mirror As with the mind a world. Likeness tells the doubting eye That strangeness is not strange. At an early hour and knowledge Identity not yet familiar Looks back upon itself from later, And seems itself. To-day seems now. With reality-to-be goes time. With the mind goes a world. Wit […]...
20. Sonnet XXXVIII: Sitting Alone, Love Sitting alone, Love bids me go and write; Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay, Boasting that she doth still direct the way, Or else Love were unable to endite. Love, growing angry, vexed at the spleen And scorning Reason’s maimed argument, Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent, Where she with Love conversing hath not […]...
21. Cut While Shaving It’s never quite right, he said, the way people look, The way the music sounds, the way the words are Written. It’s never quite right, he said, all the things we are Taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we Die, all the lives we live, They are never quite right, They are […]...
22. The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand Attests to a deed of hell; But of else than of bale is the mystic tale That ancient Vale-folk tell. Ere Cernel’s Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest, (In later life sub-prior Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare In the field […]...
23. Countrywomen These be two Countrywomen. What a size! Grand big arms And round red faces; Big substantial Sit-down-places; Great big bosoms firm as cheese Bursting through their country jackets; Wide big laps And sturdy knees; Hands outspread, Round and rosy, Hands to hold A country posy Or a baby or a lamb And such eyes! Stupid, […]...
24. Ernest Hyde My mind was a mirror: It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. Then in time Great scratches were made on the mirror, Letting the outside world come in, And letting my […]...
25. A Work Of Artifice The bonsai tree In the attractive pot Could have grown eighty feet tall On the side of a mountain Till split by lightning. But a gardener Carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he Whittles back the branches The gardener croons, It is your nature To be small and cozy, Domestic […]...
26. Snow Walking through a field with my little brother Seth I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels Had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground. He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer. Then […]...
27. Poem In the early evening, a now, as man is bending Over his writing table. Slowly he lifts his head; a woman Appears, carrying roses. Her face floats to the surface of the mirror, Marked with the green spokes of rose stems. It is a form Of suffering: then always the transparent page Raised to the […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. SEA-BLOWN AH! there be souls none understand; Like clouds, they cannot touch the land. Unanchored ships, they blow and blow, Sail to and fro, and then go down In unknown seas that none shall know, Without one ripple of renown. Call these not fools, the test of worth Is not the hold you have of earth. […]...
30. A Poem About George Doty In The Death House Lured by the wall, and drawn To stare below the roof, Where pigeons nest aloof From prowling cats and men, I count the sash and bar Secured to granite stone, And note the daylight gone, Supper and silence near. Close to the wall inside, Immured, empty of love, A man I have wondered of Lies […]...
31. The Art Of Poetry To gaze at a river made of time and water And remember Time is another river. To know we stray like a river And our faces vanish like water. To feel that waking is another dream That dreams of not dreaming and that the death We fear in our bones is the death That every […]...
32. One Flesh Lying apart now, each in a separate bed, He with a book, keeping the light on late, She like a girl dreaming of childhood, All men elsewhere – it is as if they wait Some new event: the book he holds unread, Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead. Tossed up like flotsam from a […]...
33. FACES IN A CROWD The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves, Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes, Crinkly green gloss, store it in stocking-tops For next year abroad, that Pill, so perfect! Flashing smiles from shiny domes and polished eye-lenses, The men […]...
34. The River Of Rivers In Connecticut There is a great river this side of Stygia Before one comes to the first black cataracts And trees that lack the intelligence of trees. In that river, far this side of Stygia, The mere flowing of the water is a gayety, Flashing and flashing in the sun. On its banks, No shadow walks. The […]...
35. Last Curtain I know that the day will come When my sight of this earth shall be lost, And life will take its leave in silence, Drawing the last curtain over my eyes. Yet stars will watch at night, And morning rise as before, And hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains. When I […]...
36. A Day Like Any Other Such insignificance: a glance At your record on the doctor’s desk Or a letter not meant for you. How could you have known? It’s not true That your life passes before you In rapid motion, but your watch Suddenly ticks like an amplified heart, The hands freezing against a white That is a judgment. Otherwise […]...
37. I reason, Earth is short I reason, Earth is short And Anguish absolute And many hurt, But, what of that? I reason, we could die The best Vitality Cannot excel Decay, But, what of that? I reason, that in Heaven Somehow, it will be even Some new Equation, given But, what of that?...
38. 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 […]...
39. Sonnet X: Reason Reason, in faith thou art well serv’d, that still Wouldst brabbling be with sense and love in me: I rather wish’d thee climb the Muses’ hill, Or reach the fruit of Nature’s choicest tree, Or seek heav’n’s course, or heav’n’s inside to see: Why shouldst thou toil our thorny soil to till? Leave sense, and […]...
40. Ageing Schoolmaster And now another autumn morning finds me With chalk dust on my sleeve and in my breath, Preoccupied with vague, habitual speculation On the huge inevitability of death. Not wholly wretched, yet knowing absolutely That I shall never reacquaint myself with joy, I sniff the smell of ink and chalk and my mortality And think […]...