The Satin Dress

Related poetry:

1. A Tribute to Mr J. Graham Henderson, The World's Fair Judge Thrice welcome home to Hawick, Mr J. Graham Henderson, For by your Scotch tweeds a great honour you have won; By exhibiting your beautiful tweeds at the World’s Fair You have been elected judge of Australian and American wools while there. You had to pass a strict examination on the wool trade, But you have […]...
2. In Modern Dress A pair of blackbirds Warring in the roses, One or two poppies Losing their heads, The trampled lawn A battlefield of dolls. Branch by pruned branch, A child has climbed The family tree To queen it over us: We groundlings search The flowering cherry Till we find her face, Its pale prerogative To rule our […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. Lines Draw a line. Write a line. There. Stay in line, hold the line, a glance Between the lines is fine but don’t Turn corners, cross, cut in, go over Or out, between two points of no Return’s a line of flight, between Two points of view’s a line of vision. But a line of thought […]...
5. Hide-And-Seek Someone hides from someone else Hides under his tongue The other looks for him under the earth He hides on his forehead The other looks for him in the sky He hides inside his forgetfulness The other looks for him in the grass Looks for him looks There’s no place he doesn’t look And looking […]...
6. Imagining you'd come to say goodbye Imagining you’d come to say goodbye, I made a doll of raffia and string. I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt Of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye I stitched thick lashes. Such a touching thing She was! That even you could not debate – Impassive, undemanding and inert. Yes, surely she’d cause […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Rich or Poor With thy true love I have more wealth Than Charon’s piled-up bank doth hold; Where he makes kings lay down their crowns And life-long misers leave their gold. Without thy love I’ve no more wealth Than seen upon that other shore; That cold, bare bank he rows them to – Those kings and misers made […]...
9. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
10. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
11. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro’ the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground: Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze. And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and […]...
12. The Proud Lady When Stiivoren town was in its prime And queened the Zuyder Zee, Its ships went out to every clime With costly merchantry. A lady dwelt in that rich town, The fairest in all the land; She walked abroad in a velvet gown, With many rings on her hand. Her hair was bright as the beaten […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. 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, […]...
17. Nimmo Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive At such a false and florid and far drawn Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive No longer, though I may have led you on. So much is told and heard and told again, So many with his legend are engrossed, That I, more sorry now than I was then, […]...
18. Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua Next, then, the peacock, gilt With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes Flow in the eyes! And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt Along the back, that like a sea-wave’s crest Scatters soft beauty o’er th’ emblazoned breast! A strange fowl! But most fit For feasts like this, whereby I honor one […]...
19. Moon And Sea You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea: The tide of hope swells high within my breast, And hides the rough dark rocks of life’s unrest When your fond eyes smile near in perigee. But when that loving face is turned from me, Low falls the tide, and the grim rocks appear, And […]...
20. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
21. Common Things I like to hear of wealth and gold, And El Doradoes in their glory; I like for silks and satins bold To sweep and rustle through a story. The nightingale is sweet of song; The rare exotic smells divinely; And knightly men who stride along, The role heroic carry finely. But then, upon the other […]...
22. All the letters I can write All the letters I can write Are not fair as this Syllables of Velvet Sentences of Plush, Depths of Ruby, undrained, Hid, Lip, for Thee Play it were a Humming Bird And just sipped me...
23. The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball each day mowed And mowed his lawn, his dry quarter acre, The machine slicing a wisp From each blade’s tip. Dust storms rose Around the roar: 6:00 P. M., every day, Spring, summer, fall. If he could mow The snow he would. On one side, his neighbors the cows Turned their backs to him And […]...
24. Testament Oh, let it be a night of lyric rain And singing breezes, when my bell is tolled. I have so loved the rain that I would hold Last in my ears its friendly, dim refraln. I shall lie cool and quiet, who have lain Fevered, and watched the book of day unfold. Death will not […]...
25. MUSIC MUSIC doth uplift me like a sea Towards my planet pale, Then through dark fogs or heaven’s infinity I lift my wandering sail. With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, And through the cordage wail, I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me Beneath her sombre veil. I feel the tremblings of all […]...
26. One Train May Hide Another (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya) In a poem, one line may hide another line, As at a crossing, one train may hide another train. That is, if you are waiting to cross The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at Least after the first train is gone. And so when you […]...
27. Sonnet (1979) Caught the bubble In the spirit level, A creature divided; And the compass needle Wobbling and wavering, Undecided. Freed the broken Thermometer’s mercury Running away; And the rainbow-bird From the narrow bevel Of the empty mirror, Flying wherever It feels like, gay!...
28. Raccoon Coon, why did you come to this dance With a mask on? Why not the tin man And his rainbow girl? Why not Racine, His hair marcelled down to his chest? Why not come as a stomach digesting Its worms? Why you little fellow With your ears at attention and your Nose poking up like […]...
29. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
30. Civilization spurns the Leopard! Civilization spurns the Leopard! Was the Leopard bold? Deserts never rebuked her Satin Ethiop her Gold Tawny her Customs She was Conscious Spotted her Dun Gown This was the Leopard’s nature Signor Need a keeper frown? Pity the Pard that left her Asia Memories of Palm Cannot be stifled with Narcotic Nor suppressed with Balm...
31. Liebestod When I was bold, when I was bold- And that’s a hundred years!- Oh, never I thought my breast could hold The terrible weight of tears. I said: “Now some be dolorous; I hear them wail and sigh, And if it be Love that play them thus, Then never a love will I.” I said: […]...
32. January, 1795 Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing ; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving. Lofty mansions, warm and spacious ; Courtiers clinging and voracious ; Misers scarce the wretched heeding ; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding. Wives who laugh at passive spouses ; Theatres, and meeting-houses ; Balls, where simp’ring misses […]...
33. A Theory Of Prosody When Nellie, my old pussy Cat, was still in her prime, She would sit behind me As I wrote, and when the line Got too long she’d reach One sudden black foreleg down And paw at the moving hand, The offensive one. The first Time she drew blood I learned It was poetic to end […]...
34. 5.7 I don’t care if you are you and I am I. I am not some exotic flower. Whatever coat you have on, I will put it on to warm me… and the shoes however small… I will walk in them to balance our height difference. You don’t need to convert for me; I have already […]...
35. Some People some people never go crazy. Me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch For 3 or 4 days. They’ll find me there. It’s Cherub, they’ll say, and They pour wine down my throat Rub my chest Sprinkle me with oils. Then, I’ll rise with a roar, Rant, rage – Curse them and the universe As […]...
36. A Mine there is no Man would own A Mine there is no Man would own But must it be conferred, Demeaning by exclusive wealth A Universe beside Potosi never to be spent But hoarded in the mind What Misers wring their hands tonight For Indies in the Ground!...
37. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
38. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
39. Crepuscule du Matin All night I wrestled with a memory Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought. The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought Its disillusion; now I only cry For peace, for power to forget the lie Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought The sleep which would not come, and night was […]...
40. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...