'Tis One by One the Father counts

Related poetry:

1. WHEN THE FOX DIES, HIS SKIN COUNTS.* (* The name of a game, known in English as “Jack’s Alight.”) WE young people in the shade Sat one sultry day; Cupid came, and “Dies the Fox” With us sought to play. Each one of my friends then sat By his mistress dear; Cupid, blowing out the torch, Said: “The taper’s here!” Then we […]...
2. Two Schools I put my heart to school In the world, where men grow wise, “Go out,” I said, “and learn the rule; Come back when you win a prize.” My heart came back again: “Now where is the prize?” I cried. “The rule was false, and the prize was pain, And the teacher’s name was Pride.” […]...
3. I can't tell you but you feel it I can’t tell you but you feel it Nor can you tell me Saints, with ravished slate and pencil Solve our April Day! Sweeter than a vanished frolic From a vanished green! Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen Round a Ledge of dream! Modest, let us walk among it With our faces veiled As they […]...
4. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
5. Death sets a Thing significant Death sets a Thing significant The Eye had hurried by Except a perished Creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little Workmanships In Crayon, or in Wool, With “This was last Her fingers did” Industrious until The Thimble weighed too heavy The stitches stopped by themselves And then ’twas put among the Dust Upon the Closet […]...
6. Low at my problem bending Low at my problem bending, Another problem comes Larger than mine Serener Involving statelier sums. I check my busy pencil, My figures file away. Wherefore, my baffled fingers They perplexity?...
7. The Child Is Father To The Man ‘The child is father to the man.’ How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: ‘The child is father to the man.’ No; what the poet did write ran, ‘The man is father to the child.’ ‘The child is father to the man!’ How can he be? The […]...
8. Father My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs, We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two […]...
9. My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in […]...
10. The Leader I wanna be the leader I wanna be the leader Can I be the leader? Can I? I can? Promise? Promise? Yippee I’m the leader I’m the leader OK what shall we do?...
11. Tho' my destiny be Fustian Tho’ my destiny be Fustian Hers be damask fine Tho’ she wear a silver apron I, a less divine Still, my little Gypsy being I would far prefer, Still, my little sunburnt bosom To her Rosier, For, when Frosts, their punctual fingers On her forehead lay, You and I, and Dr. Holland, Bloom Eternally! Roses […]...
12. TO FATHER* KRONOS [written in a post-chaise.] (* In the original, Schwager, which has the Twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.) HASTEN thee, Kronos! On with clattering trot Downhill goeth thy path; Loathsome dizziness ever, When thou delayest, assails me. Quick, rattle along, Over stock and stone let thy trot Into life straightway lead Now once more Up […]...
13. Elizabeth Elizabeth, it surely is most fit [Logic and common usage so commanding] In thy own book that first thy name be writ, Zeno and other sages notwithstanding; And I have other reasons for so doing Besides my innate love of contradiction; Each poet – if a poet – in pursuing The muses thro’ their bowers […]...
14. One Third Of The Calendar In January everything freezes. We have two children. Both are she’ses. This is our January rule: One girl in bed, and one in school. In February the blizzard whirls. We own a pair of little girls. Blessings upon of each the head The one in school and the one in bed. March is the month […]...
15. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
16. Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; Contrariwise, my blood runs cold When little boys go by. For little boys as little boys, No special hate I carry, But now and then they grow to men, And when they do, they marry. No matter how they tarry, Eventually they marry. […]...
17. Elegy For My Father HLF, August 8, 1918-August 22, 1997 “Bequeath us to no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.” -Hart Crane, “Voyages” “If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it” -Ludwig Wittgenstein Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly Past the long edge of the […]...
18. Far from Love the Heavenly Father Far from Love the Heavenly Father Leads the Chosen Child, Oftener through Realm of Briar Than the Meadow mild. Oftener by the Claw of Dragon Than the Hand of Friend Guides the Little One predestined To the Native Land....
19. Song. A Beautiful Mistress IF when the sun at noon displays His brighter rays, Thou but appear, He then, all pale with shame and fear, Quencheth his light, Hides his dark brow, flies from thy sight, And grows more dim, Compared to thee, than stars to him. If thou but show thy face again, When darkness doth at midnight […]...
20. Poem For Maya Dipping our bread in oil tins We talked of morning peeling Open our rooms to a moment Of almonds, olives and wind When we did not yet know what we were. The days in Mallorca were alike: Footprints down goat-paths From the beds we had left, At night the stars locked to darkness. At that […]...
21. It don't sound so terrible quite as it did It don’t sound so terrible quite as it did I run it over “Dead”, Brain, “Dead.” Put it in Latin left of my school Seems it don’t shriek so under rule. Turn it, a little full in the face A Trouble looks bitterest Shift it just Say “When Tomorrow comes this way I shall have […]...
22. Turns And Movies: The Cornet When she came out, that white little Russian dancer, With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young, He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players, And only heard an immortal music sung,- Of dryads flashing in the green woods of April, On cobwebs trembing over the deep, wet grass: Fleeing their […]...
23. Man And The Echo Man. In a cleft that’s christened Alt Under broken stone I halt At the bottom of a pit That broad noon has never lit, And shout a secret to the stone. All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after […]...
24. 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...
25. Rule Britannia When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main; This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: “Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.” The nations, not so blest as thee, Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall: While thou shalt flourish great and […]...
26. 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...
27. 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 […]...
28. On A Political Prisoner She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers’ touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became […]...
29. 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!...
30. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
31. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 01: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive […]...
32. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
33. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 07: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive […]...
34. Father He never made a fortune, or a noise In the world where men are seeking after fame; But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys Who loved the very ground on which he trod. They thought him just little short of God; Oh you should have heard the way they said his name […]...
35. 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...
36. Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel, Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, And into the shadow again, without a whisper!- Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent. Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent. But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, […]...
37. To God the Father To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, The God with the long grey beard And flowing robe fastened with a hempen girdle Who sits nodding and muttering on the all-too-big throne Of Heaven. What a long, long time, dear God, since you set the Stars in their places, Girded the earth with the […]...
38. My Father The memory of my father is wrapped up in White paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits Out of his hat, he drew love from his small body, And the rivers of his hands Overflowed with good deeds....
39. MY FATHER I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist Of his breath, his firm signature no more. No more holding down his hat in the wind, Running to catch the last post, he has gone Beyond the wind-shaped stones on […]...
40. Father The long lines of diesels Groan toward evening Carrying off the breath Of the living. The face of your house Is black, It is your face, black And fire bombed In the first street wars, A black tooth planted in the earth Of Michigan And bearing nothing, And the earth is black, Sick on used […]...