Keep Telling Me

Related poetry:

1. A Tree Telling of Orpheus White dawn. Stillness. When the rippling began I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog Didn’t stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving. Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if […]...
2. Telling You All Telling you all would take too long. Besides, we read in the Bible How the good is harmful And how misfortune is good. Let’s invite something new By unifying our silences; If, then and there, we advance, We’ll know it soon enough. And yet towards evening, When his memory is persistent, One belated curiousity Stops […]...
3. Telling the Bees Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing […]...
4. Dead man's clothes Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is the fear Of not fitting the role, or where Your forbear made a name or leashed A reputation, which by imputation […]...
5. Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time He reads my latest attempt at a poem And is silent for a long time, until it feels Like that night we waited for Apollo, My mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking, Haven’t they landed yet? At last Dugan throws it on the table and says, This reads like a cheap detective […]...
6. Death And Birth Death and birth should dwell not near together: Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth: Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether Death and birth. Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether Death be best, who knows, or life on […]...
7. Birth And Death Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother, Night and day, on all things that draw breath, Reign, while time keeps friends with one another Birth and death. Each brow-bound with flowers diverse of wreath, Heaven they hail as father, earth as mother, Faithful found above them and beneath. Smiles may lighten tears, and tears may smother […]...
8. The Leaning Tower Having an aged hate of height I forced myself to climb the Tower, Yet paused at every second flight Because my heart is scant of power; Then when I gained the sloping summit Earthward I stared, straight as a plummet. When like a phantom by my side I saw a man cadaverous; At first I […]...
9. Peace after a Storm When darkness long has veil’d my mind, And smiling day once more appears, Then, my Redeemer, then I find The folly of my doubts and fears. Straight I upbraid my wandering heart, And blush that I should ever be Thus prone to act so base a part, Or harbour one hard thought of Thee! Oh! […]...
10. On My Birthday, July 21 I, MY dear, was born to-day So all my jolly comrades say: They bring me music, wreaths, and mirth, And ask to celebrate my birth: Little, alas! my comrades know That I was born to pain and woe; To thy denial, to thy scorn, Better I had ne’er been born: I wish to die, even […]...
11. The Lovers See how in their veins all becomes spirit; Into each other they mature and grow. Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit, Round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow. Thirsters, and they receive drink, Watchers, and see: they receive sight. Let them into one another sink So as to endure each other outright....
12. Another Song Words go on travelling from voice To voice while the phones are still And the wires hum in the cold. Now And then dark winter birds settle Slowly on the crossbars, where huddled They caw out their loneliness. Except For them the March world is white And barely alive. The train to Providence Moans somewhere […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
15. Quantum Est Quod Desit ‘Twas a new feeling – something more Than we had dar’d to own before, Which then we hid not; We saw it in each other’s eye, And wish’d in every broken sigh To speak, but did not! She felt my lips’ impassion’d touch; ‘Twas the first time I dar’d so much, And yet, she chid […]...
16. A Birthday Song. To S. G For ever wave, for ever float and shine Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine, A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead, Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o’erhead. This vine bore […]...
17. Sonnet XXXII If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp’d by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
18. Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover, Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
19. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
20. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
21. Did Not ‘Twas a new feeling – something more Than we had dared to own before, Which then we hid not; We saw it in each other’s eye, And wished, in every half-breathed sigh, To speak, but did not. She felt my lips’ impassioned touch – ‘Twas the first time I dared so much, And yet she […]...
22. The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly Why do you whisper so faintly in My ears, O Death, my Death? When the flowers droop in the Evening and cattle come back to their Stalls, you stealthily come to my side And speak words that I do not Understand. Is this how you must woo and win Me with the opiate of drowsy […]...
23. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
24. Design I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings […]...
25. Red Dust This harpie with dry red curls Talked openly of her husband, His impotence, his death, the death Of her lover, the birth and death Of her own beauty. She stared Into the mirror next to Our table littered with the wreck Of her appetite and groaned: Look what you’ve done to me! As though only […]...
26. Mohini Chatterjee I asked if I should pray. But the Brahmin said, ‘pray for nothing, say Every night in bed, ‘I have been a king, I have been a slave, Nor is there anything. Fool, rascal, knave, That I have not been, And yet upon my breast A myriad heads have lain.’ That he might Set at […]...
27. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
28. Summer Sun Great is the sun, and wide he goes Through empty heaven with repose; And in the blue and glowing days More thick than rain he showers his rays. Though closer still the blinds we pull To keep the shady parlour cool, Yet he will find a chink or two To slip his golden fingers through. […]...
29. Habitation Marriage is not A house or even a tent It is before that, and colder: The edge of the forest, the edge Of the desert the unpainted stairs At the back where we squat Outside, eating popcorn Where painfully and with wonder At having survived even This far We are learning to make fire...
30. The Future A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he […]...
31. Light Hearted Author The birches are mad with green points The wood’s edge is burning with their green, Burning, seething-No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one By one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold And separate, one by one. Slender tassels Hang swaying from the delicate branch tips – Oh, I cannot say it. There is […]...
32. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
33. Hymn 122 Believers buried with Christ in baptism. Rom. 6:3,4,etc. Do we not know that solemn word, That we are buried with the Lord, Baptized into his death, and then Put off the body of our sin? Our souls receive diviner breath, Raised from corruption, guilt, and death; So from the grave did Christ arise, And lives […]...
34. Against the ladling of doom crisis has a fact to get straight It needn’t be the end of the world Beginnings too are coated with death Because we’ve had enough of the old’s Dirty jokes doesn’t mean there’s no More grass ready to push itself up Or dreams can’t go on being lived The dreamers’ necks having been twisted (visions […]...
35. The World Wee falsely think it due unto our friends, That we should grieve for their too early ends: He that surveys the world with serious eys, And stripps Her from her grosse and weak disguise, Shall find ’tis injury to mourn their fate; He only dy’s untimely who dy’s Late. For if ’twere told to children […]...
36. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
37. Limitless There is nothing, I hold, in the way of work That a human being may not achieve If he does not falter, or shrink, or shirk, And more than all, if he will believe. Believe in himself and the power behind That stands like an aid on a dual ground, With hope for the spirit […]...
38. Father Death Blues (Don't Grow Old, Part V) Hey Father Death, I’m flying home Hey poor man, you’re all alone Hey old daddy, I know where I’m going Father Death, Don’t cry any more Mama’s there, underneath the floor Brother Death, please mind the store Old Aunty Death Don’t hide your bones Old Uncle Death I hear your groans O Sister Death how […]...
39. Sonnets xviii LET me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth ‘s unknown, […]...
40. Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...