The Corridor

Related poetry:

1. Night Ray Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: To her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; It wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: It talks as I do when I grant admittance to […]...
2. The Ancient Speech A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives Named the one indivisible soul of his glen; For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities, Immeasurable complexities of soul? What are these isles but a song sung by island voices? The herdsman sings ancestral memories And the song makes the singer wise, […]...
3. To Sylvia “O love, lean thou thy cheek to mine, And let the tears together flow” Such was the song you sang to me Once, long ago. Such was the song you sang; and yet (O be not wroth!) I scarcely knew What sounds flow’d forth; I only felt That you were you. I scarcely knew your […]...
4. Sonnet to Amicus WHOE’ER thou art, whose soul-enchanting song Steals on the sullen ear of pensive woe; To whom the sounds of melody belong, Sounds, that can more than human bliss bestow; Like the wak’d God of day, whose rays pervade The spangled veil of night, and fling their fires O’er the cold bosom of the em’rald glade, […]...
5. As a World Would Have It Shall I never make him look at me again? I look at him, I look my life at him, I tell him all I know the way to tell, But there he stays the same. Shall I never make him speak one word to me? Shall I never make him say enough to show My […]...
6. On Hearing O stay, harmonious and sweet sounds, that die In the long vaultings of this ancient fane! Stay, for I may not hear on earth again Those pious airs that glorious harmony; Lifting the soul to brighter orbs on high, Worlds without sin or sorrow! Ah, the strain Has died even the last sounds that lingeringly […]...
7. THE SINGING I was walking home down a hill near our house on a balmy afternoon Under the blossoms Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here every spring with Their burgeoning forth When a young man turned in from a corner singing no it was more of A cadenced shouting Most of which I couldn’t […]...
8. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
9. My Coffin Deeming that I was due to die I framed myself a coffin; So full of graveyard zeal was I, I set the folks a-laughing. I made it snugly to my fit, My joinering was honest; And sometimes in it I would sit, And fancy I was non est. I stored it on my cabin shelf […]...
10. Whom We Worship I WOULD not have the love of lips and eyes, The ancient ways of love: But in my heart I built a Paradise, A nest there for the dove. I felt the wings of light that fluttered through The gate I held apart: And all without was shadow, but I knew The bird within my […]...
11. Two Tramps In Mud Time Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!” I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind And let the other go on a way. I knew pretty well what he had in […]...
12. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
13. Seaside Golf How straight it flew, how long it flew, It clear’d the rutty track And soaring, disappeared from view Beyond the bunker’s back – A glorious, sailing, bounding drive That made me glad I was alive. And down the fairway, far along It glowed a lonely white; I played an iron sure and strong And clipp’d […]...
14. The Woman and the Wife I THE EXPLANATION “You thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong. This we can say, the rest we do not say; Nor do I let you throw yourself away Because you love me. Let us both be strong, And we shall find in sorrow, before long, Only the price Love ruled that we […]...
15. A Poet's Wooing I woo’d a woman once, But she was sharper than an eastern wind. Tennyson “What may I do to make you glad, To make you glad and free, Till your light smiles glance And your bright eyes dance Like sunbeams on the sea? Read some rhyme that is blithe and gay Of a bright May […]...
16. The Whip The doubt you fought so long The cynic net you cast, The tyranny, the wrong, The ruin, they are past; And here you are at last, Your blood no longer vexed. The coffin has you fast, The clod will have you next. But fear you not the clod, Nor ever doubt the grave: The roses […]...
17. The Junk Man I AM glad God saw Death And gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired Of living: When all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and The connections loose And the clock goes on ticking and telling the wrong time From hour to hour And people around the house […]...
18. The Prisoner I count the dismal time by months and years Since last I felt the green sward under foot, And the great breath of all things summer- Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature’s lute Sounds on, behind […]...
19. Salesmanship, With Half A Dram Of Tears Gripping the lectern, rocking it, searching The faces for the souls, for signs of heartfelt Mindfulness at work, I thought, as I recited Words I wrote in tears: instead of tears, If I had understood my father’s business, I could be selling men’s clothes. I could be Kneeling, complimenting someone at the bay Of mirrors, […]...
20. Going to Heaven! Going to Heaven! I don’t know when Pray do not ask me how! Indeed I’m too astonished To think of answering you! Going to Heaven! How dim it sounds! And yet it will be done As sure as flocks go home at night Unto the Shepherd’s arm! Perhaps you’re going too! Who knows? If you […]...
21. Why He Was There Much as he left it when he went from us Here was the room again where he had been So long that something oh him should be seen, Or felt-and so it was. Incredulous, I turned about, loath to be greeted thus, And there he was in his old chair, serene As ever, and as […]...
22. Alias Bill We bore him to his boneyard lot One afternoon at three; The clergyman was on the spot To earn his modest fee. We sprinkled on his coffin ld The customary loam, And so old Bill was snugly slid To his last home. A lonesome celebate we thought, For close as clam was he; We never […]...
23. Time to play It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head translate into sentence structures, As lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the Jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can […]...
24. The Broken Tryst That day a fire was in my blood; I could have sung: joy wrapt me round; The men I met seemed all so good, I scarcely knew I trod the ground. How easy seemed all toil! I laughed To think that once I hated it. The sunlight thrilled like wine, I quaffed Delight, divine and […]...
25. In Tara's Halls A man I praise that once in Tara’s Hals Said to the woman on his knees, ‘Lie still. My hundredth year is at an end. I think That something is about to happen, I think That the adventure of old age begins. To many women I have said, ”Lie still,” And given everything a woman […]...
26. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
27. Music When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovely things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face, With […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. To a Dead Poet I knew not if to laugh or weep; They sat and talked of you “‘Twas here he sat; ’twas this he said! ‘Twas that he used to do. “Here is the book wherein he read, The room wherein he dwelt; And he” (they said) “was such a man, Such things he thought and felt.” I […]...
30. To Be Blind Is it sounds converging, Sounds nearing, Infringement, impingement, Impact, contact With surfaces of the sounds Or surfaces without the sounds: Diagrams, skeletal, strange? Is it winds curling round invisible corners? Polyphony of perfumes? Antennae discovering an axis, erecting the architecture of a world? Is it orchestration of the finger-tips, graph of a fugue: Scaffold for […]...
31. The Master A flying word from here and there Had sown the name at which we sneered, To be reviled and then revered: A presence to be loved and feared We cannot hide it, or deny That we, the gentlemen who jeered, May be forgotten by and by. He came when days were perilous And hearts of […]...
32. A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving Let it not your wonder move, Less your laughter, that I love. Though I now write fifty years, I have had, and have, my peers; Poets, though divine, are men, Some have lov’d as old again. And it is not always face, Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace; Or the feature, or the youth. But […]...
33. Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
34. Reconciliation WORD over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world: … For my enemy is dead-a man divine as myself is dead; I look […]...
35. Quia Multum Amavi Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest When first he takes from out the hidden shrine His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, Feels not such awful wonder as I felt When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, And all night long before thy […]...
36. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. New Year's Chimes What is the song the stars sing? (And a million songs are as song of one) This is the song the stars sing: (Sweeter song’s none) One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one) One to stand, and many to cling, The many things, and the one […]...
39. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
40. Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...