Pretty Words

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1. Words, Wide Night Somewhere on the other side of this wide night And the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say It is sad? In one of the tenses I singing An impossible song of desire that […]...
2. A few kind words A few kind words, what can be bought with that? In essence just a clique of tidy prose, A verb, a noun, perhaps an adjectival phrase Offered in the form of venal praise – and be surprised at what it buys. Like a fleeting smile it’s currency outweighs The simple form, a hint of urbane […]...
3. Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my […]...
4. Words Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes – As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through – Choose me, You English words? I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and […]...
5. Last Words If the shoe fell from the other foot Who would hear? If the door Opened onto a pure darkness And it was no dream? If your life Ended the way a book ends With half a blank page and the survivors Gone off to Africa or madness? If my life ended in late spring Of […]...
6. Words Words are like days: Coloring books or pickpockets, Signposts or scratching posts, Fakirs over hot coals. Certain words must be earned Just as emotions are suffered Before they can be uttered – clean as a kept promise. Words as witnesses Testifying their truths Squalid or rarefied Inevitable, irrefutable. But, words must not carry More than […]...
7. Portrait Of An Old Woman On The College Tavern Wall Oh down at the tavern The children are singing Around their round table And around me still. Did you hear what it said? I only said How there is a pewter urn Pinned to the tavern wall, As old as old is able To be and be there still. I said, the poets are tere […]...
8. Words Be careful of words, Even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, Sometimes they swarm like insects And leave not a sting but a kiss. They can be as good as fingers. They can be as trusty as the rock You stick your bottom on. But they can be both daisies and […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
11. An Exhortation Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a day? Poets are on this […]...
12. Why Do Birds Sing? Let poets piece prismatic words, Give me the jewelled joy of birds! What ecstasy moves them to sing? Is it the lyric glee of Spring, The dewy rapture of the rose? Is it the worship born in those Who are of Nature’s self a part, The adoration of the heart? Is it the mating mood […]...
13. I found the words to every thought I found the words to every thought I ever had but One And that defies me As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun To Races nurtured in the Dark How would your own begin? Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal Or Noon in Mazarin?...
14. Infelice Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening They said: […]...
15. For The Future Planting trees early in spring, We make a place for birds to sing In time to come. How do we know? They are singing here now. There is no other guarantee That singing will ever be....
16. Words I had this thought a while ago, ‘My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land.’ And I grew weary of the sun Until my thoughts cleared up again, Remembering that the best I have done Was done to make it plain; That every year I have […]...
17. To Whom Words Are Mightier 1/ To whom words are mightier than swords Be warned, for woes may thee betide After our pride, land, offsprings and lives What more of us can be deprived? Virtuousness and compliance Are being ridiculed by this persecution Avarice rules the world, conscience Eclipsed by Darwinian aggression Peace is a piece of cake offered at […]...
18. A Valentine For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda, Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure Divine – a talisman – an amulet That must be worn at heart. Search well […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. On No Work Of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to […]...
21. The Dying Words Of Stonewall Jackson “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle.” “Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train.” “Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.” The stars of Night contain the glittering Day And rain his glory down with sweeter grace Upon the dark World’s grand, enchanted face All loth to turn away. And […]...
22. What Needeth These Threat'ning Words What needeth these threnning words and wasted wind? All this cannot make me restore my prey. To rob your good, iwis, is not my mind, Nor causeless your fair hand did I display. Let love be judge or else whom next we meet That may both hear what you and I can say: She took […]...
23. Sonnet XLII: Some Men There Be Some men there be which like my method well And much commend the strangeness of my vein; Some say I have a passing pleasing strain; Some say that im my humor I excel; Some, who not kindly relish my conceit, They say, as poets do, I use to feign, And in bare words paint out […]...
24. Words If on isle of the sea I have to tarry, With one book, let it be A Dictionary. For though I love life’s scene, It seems absurd, My greatest joy has been The printed word. Though painter with delight May colours blend, They are but in his sight Means to an end. Yet while I […]...
25. Night Words after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps Again and dreams of another city On a high hill above a wide river Bathed […]...
26. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
27. Your thoughts don't have words every day Your thoughts don’t have words every day They come a single time Like signal esoteric sips Of the communion Wine Which while you taste so native seems So easy so to be You cannot comprehend its price Nor its infrequency...
28. Words For A Trumpet Chorale Celebrating The Autumn “The trumpet is a brilliant instrument.” – Dietrich Buxtehude Come and come forth and come up from the cup of Your dumbness, stunned and numb, come with The statues and believed in, Thinking this is nothing, deceived. Come to the summer and sun, Come see upon that height, and that sum In the seedtime of […]...
29. In soothing, sweetened words No, she said, I never knew it was your first. It doesn’t Matter anyway. I always had an inkling that we’d find A way. And then we did. I’m glad about it just for that. Whether it was good or bad, or would have happened Had we made a pact or that it should have […]...
30. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
31. Sonnet XXI: Your Words, My Friend Your words, my friend, (right healthful caustics) blame My young mind marr’d, whom Love doth windlass so, That mine own writings like bad servants show My wits, quick in vain thoughts, in virtue lame; That Plato I read for nought, but if he tame Such doltish gyres; that to my birth I owe Nobler desires, […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. Madam, Withouten Many Words Madam, withouten many words Once I am sure ye will or no… And if ye will, then leave your bourds And use your wit and show it so, And with a beck ye shall me call; And if of one that burneth alway Ye have any pity at all, Answer him fair with & {.} […]...
34. Carol of Words 1 EARTH, round, rolling, compact-suns, moons, animals-all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances-beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that those were the words-those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words-the substantial words are in the […]...
35. He ate and drank the precious Words He ate and drank the precious Words His Spirit grew robust He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was Dust He danced along the dingy Days And this Bequest of Wings Was but a Book What Liberty A loosened spirit brings...
36. Last Words Dead! all’s done with! R. Browning. These blossoms that I bring, This song that here I sing, These tears that now I shed, I give unto the dead. There is no more to be done, Nothing beneath the sun, All the long ages through, Nothing by me for you. The tale is told to the […]...
37. O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
38. She dealt her pretty words like Blades She dealt her pretty words like Blades How glittering they shone And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone She never deemed she hurt That is not Steel’s Affair A vulgar grimace in the Flesh How ill the Creatures bear To Ache is human not polite The Film upon the eye Mortality’s […]...
39. Incantation A white well In a black cave; A bright shell In a dark wave. A white rose Black brambles hood; Smooth bright snows In a dark wood. A flung white glove In a dark fight; A white dove On a wild black night. A white door In a dark lane; A bright core To bitter […]...
40. Last Words to Miriam Yours is the shame and sorrow, But the disgrace is mine; Your love was dark and thorough, Mine was the love of the sun for a flower He creates with his shine. I was diligent to explore you, Blossom you stalk by stalk, Till my fire of creation bore you Shrivelling down in the final […]...