The Tortoise in Eternity

Related poetry:

1. Baby Tortoise You know what it is to be born alone, Baby tortoise! The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell, Not yet awake, And remain lapsed on earth, Not quite alive. A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean. To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some […]...
2. Lightning The oaks shone Gaunt gold On the lip Of the storm before The wind rose, The shapeless mouth Opened and began Its five-hour howl; The lights Went out fast, branches Sidled over The pitch of the roof, bounced Into the year That grew black Within minutes, except For the lightening – the landscape Bulging forth […]...
3. Dust in the Eyes If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I’m not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming, off a roof And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust, And blind me to a standstill if it must....
4. Tortoise Shout I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb, Yet I’ve heard him cry. First faint scream, Out of life’s unfathomable dawn, Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon’s dawning rim, Far, far off, far scream. Tortoise in extremis. Why were we crucified into sex? Why were we not left rounded off, […]...
5. Eternity for C. G. Macdonald, 1956-2006 Charlie, sunrise is a three-legged mongrel dog, Going deaf, already blind in one eye, Answering to the unlikely name, ‘Lucky.’ The sky, at gray-blue dawn, is a football field painted By smiling artists. Each artist has 3 arms, 3 hands, 3 legs. One leg drags behind, leaving a trail, leaving […]...
6. Autobiographical The lover in these poems Is me; The doctor, Love. He appears As husband, lover Analyst & muse, As father, son & maybe even God & surely death. All this is true. The man you turn to In the dark Is many men. This is an open secret Women share & yet agree to hide […]...
7. Tortoise Gallantry Making his advances He does not look at her, nor sniff at her, No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank. Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin That work beneath her while she sprawls along In her ungainly pace, Her folds of skin that work and row Beneath the earth-soiled hovel […]...
8. Tortoise Shell The Cross, the Cross Goes deeper in than we know, Deeper into life; Right into the marrow And through the bone. Along the back of the baby tortoise The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge, Scale-lapping, like a lobster’s sections Or a bee’s. Then crossways down his sides Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands. Five, […]...
9. Tortoise Family Connections On he goes, the little one, Bud of the universe, Pediment of life. Setting off somewhere, apparently. Whither away, brisk egg? His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings, And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin. A mere obstacle, He […]...
10. Come Out with Me There’s sun on the river and sun on the hill. . . You can hear the sea if you stand quite still! There’s eight new puppies at Roundabout Farm- And I saw an old sailor with only one arm! But everyone says, “Run along!” (Run along, run along!) All of them say, “Run along! I’m […]...
11. Question Body my house My horse my hound What will I do When you are fallen Where will I sleep How will I ride What will I hunt Where can I go Without my mount All eager and quick How will I know In thicket ahead Is danger or treasure When Body my good Bright dog […]...
12. The Call Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night’s primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe! The eternal silences were broken; Hell became […]...
13. The Tortoise In Keystone Heights When I knew, it was raining. Winter in decline. I was tired. You in your soaked shirt diffused Into the western sky bulging with clouds, Speeding cars a few feet away- Why would they not slow down? Though afternoon, a slip of moon Busied itself with rising, And it had to mean something. If only […]...
14. They Were Welcome To Their Belief Grief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. They were welcome to their belief, The overimportant pair. No, it took all the snows that clung To the low roof over his bed, Beginning when he was young, To induce the one snow on his head. But whenever the roof […]...
15. Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night, With blasts that blow the poplar white, And lash with storm the streaming pane? Day, when my crown’d estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sicken’d every living bloom, And blurr’d the splendour of the sun; Who usherest in the […]...
16. How firm Eternity must look How firm Eternity must look To crumbling men like me The only Adamant Estate In all Identity How mighty to the insecure Thy Physiognomy To whom not any Face cohere Unless concealed in thee...
17. Red-Tiled Roof Poets may praise a wattle thatch Doubtfully waterproof; Let me uplift my lowly latch Beneath a rose-tiled roof. Let it be gay and rich in hue, Soft bleached by burning days, Where skies ineffably are blue, And seas a golden glaze. But set me in the surly North Beneath a roof of slate, And as […]...
18. Song's Eternity What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Can it noise and bustle be? Come and see. Praises sung or praises said Can it be? Wait awhile and these are dead – Sigh, sigh; Be they high or lowly bred They die. What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Melodies of earth and sky, Here they […]...
19. Behind Me dips Eternity Behind Me dips Eternity Before Me Immortality Myself the Term between Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray, Dissolving into Dawn away, Before the West begin ‘Tis Kingdoms afterward they say In perfect pauseless Monarchy Whose Prince is Son of None Himself His Dateless Dynasty Himself Himself diversify In Duplicate divine ‘Tis Miracle before Me […]...
20. An Eternity There is no dusk to be, There is no dawn that was, Only there’s now, and now, And the wind in the grass. Days I remember of Now in my heart, are now; Days that I dream will bloom White the peach bough. Dying shall never be Now in the windy grass; Now under shooken […]...
21. ETERNITY O years! and age! farewell: Behold I go, Where I do know Infinity to dwell. And these mine eyes shall see All times, how they Are lost i’ th’ sea Of vast eternity: Where never moon shall sway The stars; but she, And night, shall be Drown’d in one endless day....
22. The Recall The night was dark when she went away, and the slept. The night is dark now, and I call for her, “Come back, my Darling; the world is asleep; and no one would know, if you came For a moment while stars are gazing at stars.” She went away when the trees were in bud […]...
23. Signet of Eternity The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee; And entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd, Unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon Many a fleeting moment of my life. And today when by chance I light upon them and […]...
24. Brink Of Eternity In desperate hope I go and search for her In all the corners of my room; I find her not. My house is small And what once has gone from it can never be regained. But infinite is thy mansion, my lord, And seeking her I have to come to thy door. I stand under […]...
25. New Farm Tractor The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses. It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here. The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules-he sings to you instead of ten span of mules. A bucket of oil and a […]...
26. Pentecost Better a jungle in the head Than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered By the fireflies’ crooked street; Winter lamps do not show Where the sidewalk is lost, Nor can these tongues of snow Speak for the Holy Ghost; The self-increasing silence Of words dropped from a roof Points along iron railings, Direction, in not […]...
27. Sunset on the Spire All that I dream By day or night Lives in that stream Of lovely light. Here is the earth, And there is the spire; This is my hearth, And that is my fire. From the sun’s dome I am shouted proof That this is my home, And that is my roof. Here is my food, […]...
28. A Song Of Eternity In Time Once, at night, in the manor wood My Love and I long silent stood, Amazed that any heavens could Decree to part us, bitterly repining. My Love, in aimless love and grief, Reached forth and drew aside a leaf That just above us played the thief And stole our starlight that for us was shining. […]...
29. A Smuggler's Song If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet, Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street. Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by! Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the […]...
30. Houses Of Dreams You took my empty dreams And filled them every one With tenderness and nobleness, April and the sun. The old empty dreams Where my thoughts would throng Are far too full of happiness To even hold a song. Oh, the empty dreams were dim And the empty dreams were wide, They were sweet and shadowy […]...
31. Song: Eternity of Love Protested How ill doth he deserve a lover’s name, Whose pale weak flame Cannot retain His heat, in spite of absence or disdain; But doth at once, like paper set on fire, Burn and expire; True love can never change his seat, Nor did her ever love, that could retreat. That noble flame which my breast […]...
32. Sense Of Something Coming I am like a flag in the center of open space. I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live It through. While the things of the world still do not move: The doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full Of silence, The windows do not rattle yet, and the dust […]...
33. TO THE GENIUS OF HIS HOUSE Command the roof, great Genius, and from thence Into this house pour down thy influence, That through each room a golden pipe may run Of living water by thy benizon; Fulfil the larders, and with strength’ning bread Be ever-more these bins replenished. Next, like a bishop consecrate my ground, That lucky fairies here may dance […]...
34. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
35. Lost in the Prairie In one of fhe States of America, some years ago, There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow, Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen, Who had finished their day’s work – nine or ten of them. The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp, And with the thick falling […]...
36. The Higher Pantheism The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,- Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He, tho’ He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this […]...
37. Spring Rain I thought I had forgotten, But it all came back again To-night with the first spring thunder In a rush of rain. I remembered a darkened doorway Where we stood while the storm swept by, Thunder gripping the earth And lightning scrawled on the sky. The passing motor busses swayed, For the street was a […]...
38. THE HAG The Hag is astride, This night for to ride, The devil and she together; Through thick and through thin, Now out, and then in, Though ne’er so foul be the weather. A thorn or a bur She takes for a spur; With a lash of a bramble she rides now, Through brakes and through briars, […]...
39. St. Senanus and the Lady St. Senanus “On! haste, and leave this sacred isle, Unholy bark, ere morning smile; For on thy deck, though dark it be, A female form I see; And I have sworn this sainted sod Shall ne’er by woman’s feet by trod!” The Lady “Oh! Father, send not hence my bark Through wintry winds and billows […]...
40. Cowardice Although you deem it far from nice, And it perchance may hurt you, Let me suggest that cowardice Can masquerade as virtue; And many a maid remains a maid Because she is afraid. And many a man is chaste because He fears the house of sin; And though before the door he pause, He dare […]...