Sonnets 03: Not With Libations, But With Shouts And Laughter

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1. Poetry Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower, And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee. Bowing my head in deep humility Before the silent thunder of thy power. Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light, As from the specter of pursuing death; Intimidated lest thy mighty breath, Windways, will sweep me into utter night. […]...
2. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
3. Sonnets 02: Into The Golden Vessel Of Great Song Into the golden vessel of great song Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast Let other lovers lie, in love and rest; Not we,-articulate, so, but with the tongue Of all the world: the churning blood, the long Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed Sharply together upon the escaping guest, The common […]...
4. Sonnets 06: No Rose That In A Garden Ever Grew No rose that in a garden ever grew, In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine, Though buried under centuries of fine Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew Forever, and forever lost from view, But must again in fragrance rich as wine The grey aisles of the air incarnadine When the old […]...
5. Laughter and Tears IX As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance […]...
6. Two Sonnets In Memory (Nicola Sacco Bartolomeo Vanzetti) Executed August 23, 1927 I As men have loved their lovers in times past And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace, So have we loved sweet Justice to the last, That now lies here in an unseemly place. The child will quit the cradle and grow wise And stare […]...
7. Sonnets xvii O NEVER say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify! As easy might I from myself depart, As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not […]...
8. Sonnets 12: Cherish You Then The Hope I Shall Forget Cherish you then the hope I shall forget At length, my lord, Pieria?-put away For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay These mortal bones against my body set, For all the puny fever and frail sweat Of human love,-renounce for these, I say, The Singing Mountain’s memory, and betray The silent lyre that […]...
9. Robert William Service – Laughter I Laugh at Life: its antics make for me a giddy games, Where only foolish fellows take themselves with solemn aim. I laugh at pomp and vanity, at riches, rank and pride; At social inanity, at swager, swank and side. At poets, pastry-cooks and kings, at folk sublime and small, Who fuss about a thousand […]...
10. Sonnets 08: And You As Well Must Die, Beloved Du And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell, […]...
11. Introspection If you go deep Into the heart What do you find there? Fear, fear, Fear of the jaws of the rock, Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear Flesh from the bone, and the moist Blood, running unfelt From the wound, and the hand Suddenly moist and red. If you go deep […]...
12. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XXIII Call to me to the one among your moments That stands against you, ineluctably: Intimate as a dog’s imploring glance But, again, forever, turned away When you think you’ve captured it at last. What seems so far from you is most your own. We are already free, and were dismissed Where we thought we soon […]...
13. Sonnets From An Ungrafted Tree XLI I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear you body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clairfy the pulse and cloud the […]...
14. To the Reader of These Sonnets Into these Loves who but for Passion looks, At this first sight here let him lay them by And seek elsewhere, in turning other books, Which better may his labor satisfy. No far-fetch’d sigh shall ever wound my breast, Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring, Nor in Ah me’s my whining sonnets […]...
15. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise Into the seamless life proclaimed in your […]...
16. Laughter In The Senate In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land; He huddles his rags with a cripple’s hand; He mutters, prone on the barren sand, What time his heart is breaking. He lifts his bare head from the ground; He listens through the gloom around: The winds have brought him a strange sound Of distant merrymaking. Comes […]...
17. A Child's Laughter ALL the bells of heaven may ring, All the birds of heaven may sing, All the wells on earth may spring, All the winds on earth may bring All sweet sounds together – Sweeter far than all things heard, Hand of harper, tone of bird, Sound of woods at sundawn stirred, Welling water’s winsome word, […]...
18. A Calendar of Sonnets: April No days such honored days as these! While yet Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide For some fair thing which should forever bide On earth, her beauteous memory to set In fitting frame that no age could forget, Her name in lovely April’s name did hide, And leave it there, eternally allied To all the […]...
19. Momus, God Of Laughter Though with gods the world is cumbered, Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered, Never god was known to be Who had not his devotee. So I dedicate to mine, Here in verse, my temple-shrine. ‘Tis not Ares, – mighty Mars, Who can give success in wars. ‘Tis not Morpheus, who doth keep Guard above us while […]...
20. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
21. The Laughter Of Women The laughter of women sets fire To the Halls of Injustice And the false evidence burns To a beautiful white lightness It rattles the Chambers of Congress And forces the windows wide open So the fatuous speeches can fly out The laughter of women wipes the mist From the spectacles of the old; It infects […]...
22. The Whale The Whale is found in seas and oceans, Indulging there in fishlike motions, But Science shows that Whales are mammals, Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels. When undisturbed, the Whale will browse Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows, On food that satisfies its tongue, Thus making milk to feed its young. Asking no costly […]...
23. Choriambics II Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void, Lost in the haunted wood, I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitude Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleam Glowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream, Unrecaptured. For […]...
24. The Bull Moose Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, Lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, Stumbling through tamarack swamps, Came the bull moose To be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture. Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware There was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle. They, […]...
25. Oil And Blood In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet....
26. Forever at His side to walk Forever at His side to walk The smaller of the two! Brain of His Brain Blood of His Blood Two lives One Being now Forever of His fate to taste If grief the largest part If joy to put my piece away For that beloved Heart All life to know each other Whom we can […]...
27. The Sonnets To Orpheus: I A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence A new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright Unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; And it was not from any dullness, not From […]...
28. The Sonnets To Orpheus: XXV But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose name I didn’t know, you who so early were taken away: I will once more call up your image and show it to them, Beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry. Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate, Pausing, as though your young […]...
29. A Calendar of Sonnets: February Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year’s ill, And prayer to purify the new year’s will: […]...
30. Sonnet XXIII: To Aetna's Scorching Sands To AEtna’s scorching sands my Phaon flies! False Youth! can other charms attractive prove? Say, can Sicilian loves thy passions move, Play round thy heart, and fix thy fickle eyes, While in despair the Lesbian Sappho dies? Has Spring for thee a crown of poppies wove, Or dost thou languish in th’ Idalian grove, Whose […]...
31. The Wildy Ones The sheep are in the silver wood, The cows are in the broom; The goats are in the wild mountain And won’t be home by noon. My mother sang that olden tune Most every night, And to her newest she would croon By candle light; While cuddling in the velvet gloom I’d dream of cows […]...
32. The End We decided to have the abortion, became Killers together. The period that came Changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple Who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the crash Was not a surprise. We went to the window, Looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming Curved shears of […]...
33. The Words Of Belief Three words will I name thee around and about, From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee; But they had not their birth in the being without, And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be! And all worth in the man shall forever be o’er When in those three words […]...
34. Sonnets 09: Let You Not Say Of Me When I Am Old Let you not say of me when I am old, In pretty worship of my withered hands Forgetting who I am, and how the sands Of such a life as mine run red and gold Even to the ultimate sifting dust, “Behold, Here walketh passionless age!”-for there expands A curious superstition in these lands, And […]...
35. Testament I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body To the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the Feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left Over they can not put away. Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty People eat the clover over my grave and […]...
36. Sonnets 05: Once More Into My Arid Days Like Dew Once more into my arid days like dew, Like wind from an oasis, or the sound Of cold sweet water bubbling underground, A treacherous messenger, the thought of you Comes to destroy me; once more I renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of […]...
37. Sonnets 04: Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by […]...
38. Poppies She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in. In a loose white gown she walks and a new child tugs at cords in her body. Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping, A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber: She loves blood-red poppies for […]...
39. Cups of Coffee THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white Flowers… in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel. The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones… and The woman who sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel… […]...
40. Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets 1 Lo dм che han detto a’ dolci amici addio. – Dante Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci! – Petrarca Come back to me, who wait and watch for you: Or come not yet, for it is over then, And long it is before you come again, So far between my pleasures are and […]...