A Marine Etching

Related poetry:

1. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
2. To the Mother of a Dead Marine Your boy once touched me, yes. I knew you knew When your wet, reddened gaze drilled into me, Groped through my clothes for signs, some residue Of him-some lusciousness of mine that he Had craved, that might have driven his desire For things perilous, poisonous, out-of-bounds. Could I have been the beast he rode to […]...
3. Shenandoah IN the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering. Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play. The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, […]...
4. The Ballade Of The Automobile When our yacht sails seaward on steady keel And the wind is moist with breath of brine And our laughter tells of our perfect weal, We may carol the praises of ruby wine; But if, automobiling, my woes combine And fuel gives out in my road-machine And it’s sixteen miles to that home of mine […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Dust When the white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world’s delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in our separate night; When your swift hair is quiet in death, And through the lips corruption thrust Has stilled the labour of my breath When we are dust, when we are dust! […]...
8. Meeting and Passing As I went down the hill along the wall There was a gate I had leaned at for the view And had just turned from when I first saw you As you came up the hill. We met. But all We did that day was mingle great and small Footprints in summer dust as if […]...
9. Handfuls BLOSSOMS of babies Blinking their stories Come soft On the dusk and the babble; Little red gamblers, Handfuls that slept in the dust. Summers of rain, Winters of drift, Tell off the years; And they go back Who came soft- Back to the sod, To silence and dust; Gray gamblers, Handfuls again....
10. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
11. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
12. ARCADIAN WINTER WOE is me to tell it thee, Winter winds in Arcady! Scattered is thy flock and fled From the glades where once it fed, And the snow lies drifted white In the bower of our delight, Where the beech threw gracious shade On the cheek of boy and maid: And the bitter blasts make roar […]...
13. Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
14. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
15. The Olive Garden (Rainer Maria Rilke) He went up under the gray leaves All gray and lost in the olive lands And laid his forehead, gray with dust, Deep in the dustiness of his hot hands. After everything this. And this was the end. Now I must go, as I am going blind. And why is it Thy […]...
16. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
17. Love thou art high Love thou art high I cannot climb thee But, were it Two Who know but we Taking turns at the Chimborazo Ducal at last stand up by thee Love thou are deep I cannot cross thee But, were there Two Instead of One Rower, and Yacht some sovereign Summer Who knows but we’d reach the […]...
18. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
19. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
20. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
21. Epitaph for Maria Wentworth And here the precious dust is laid; Whose purely-temper’d clay was made So fine that it the guest betray’d. Else the soul grew so fast within, It broke the outward shell of sin, And so was hatch’d a cherubin. In height, it soar’d to God above; In depth, it did to knowledge move, And spread […]...
22. Shelley's Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March) Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies – A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be; – Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality. Lived its meek life; […]...
23. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
24. In Memory of Anyone Unknown to Me At this particular time I have no one Particular person to grieve for, though there must Be many, many unknown ones going to dust Slowly, not remembered for what they have done Or left undone. For these, then, I will grieve Being impartial, unable to deceive. How they lived, or died, is quite unknown, And, […]...
25. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
26. The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin […]...
27. Pan with Us Pan came out of the woods one day, His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they, And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill. He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked […]...
28. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
29. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
30. 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, […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
33. Death In Leamington She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev’ning star That shone through the plate glass window From over Leamington Spa Beside her the lonely crochet Lay patiently and unstirred, But the fingers that would have work’d it Were dead as the spoken word. And Nurse came in with the tea-things Breast […]...
34. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
35. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
36. Love is Enough Love is enough. Let us not ask for gold. Wealth breeds false aims, and pride and selfishness; In those serene, Arcadian days of old Men gave no thought to princely homes and dress. The gods who dwelt on fair Olympia’s height Lived only for dear love and love’s delight. Love is enough. Love is enough. […]...
37. In The Virgins You can’t put in the ground swell of the organ From the Christiansted, St. Croix, Anglican Church Behind the paratrooper’s voice: “Turned cop After Vietnam. I made thirty jumps.” Bells punish the dead street and pigeons lurch From the stone belfry, opening their chutes, Circling until the rings of ringing stop. “Salud!” The paratrooper’s glass […]...
38. Bells Of Gray Crystal Bells of gray crystal Break on each bough The swans’ breath will mist all The cold airs now. Like tall pagodas Two people go, Trail their long codas Of talk through the snow. Lonely are these And lonely and I…. The clouds, gray Chinese geese Sleek through the sky....
39. This Evening Also more fully, Since snow fell even on this Sun-drifted, sun-drenched sea, Blossoms the ice in those baskets You carry into town. Sand You demand in return, For the last Rose back at home This evening also wants to be fed Out of the trickling hour....
40. Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover, Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...