A Sparrow took a Slice of Twig

Related poetry:

1. No further slice of me Enduring an inguinal hernia repair can Drive you to despair, it is a monumental Nonsense; in my defence I hadn’t lived Through one before, couldn’t be sure What it meant, should have feared Not knowing. I believed I was going Through a trifling program for relief And remediation. It was some consolation Knowing discomfort so […]...
2. As The Sparrow To give life you must take life, And as our grief falls flat and hollow Upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed With white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures Lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow Did to you; I am old when […]...
3. The Owl And The Sparrow In elder days, in Saturn’s prime, Ere baldness seized the head of Time, While truant Jove, in infant pride, Play’d barefoot on Olympus’ side, Each thing on earth had power to chatter, And spoke the mother tongue of nature. Each stock or stone could prate and gabble, Worse than ten labourers of Babel. Along the […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. PG Wooster, Just as he Useter Bound to your bookseller, leap to your library, Deluge your dealer with bakshish and bribary, Lean on the counter and never say when, Wodehouse and Wooster are with us again. Flourish the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing, Prepare for the fabulous browsing and sluicing, And quote, til you’re known as the neighborhood nuisance, The gems that […]...
7. On such a night, or such a night On such a night, or such a night, Would anybody care If such a little figure Slipped quiet from its chair So quiet Oh how quiet, That nobody might know But that the little figure Rocked softer to and fro On such a dawn, or such a dawn Would anybody sigh That such a little […]...
8. Going to Him! Happy letter! Going to Him! Happy letter! Tell Him Tell Him the page I didn’t write Tell Him I only said the Syntax And left the Verb and the pronoun out Tell Him just how the fingers hurried Then how they waded slow slow And then you wished you had eyes in your pages So you could […]...
9. 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...
10. 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...
11. 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 […]...
12. 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!...
13. 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...
14. The King's Breakfast The King’s Breakfast The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: “Could we have some butter for The Royal slice of bread?” The Queen asked the Dairymaid, The Dairymaid Said, “Certainly, I’ll go and tell the cow Now Before she goes to bed.” The Dairymaid She curtsied, And went and told The […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. The Long Small Room THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they […]...
18. Her breast is fit for pearls Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a “Diver” Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest. Her heart is fit for home I a Sparrow build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest....
19. 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 […]...
20. Mr. Apollinax WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States His laughter tinkled among the teacups. I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, And of Priapus in the shrubbery Gaping at the lady in the swing. In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. His laughter was submarine […]...
21. The Strangest Creature On Earth You’re like a scorpion, my brother, You live in cowardly darkness like a scorpion. You’re like a sparrow, my brother, Always in a sparrow’s flutter. You’re like a clam, my brother, Closed like a clam, content, And you’re frightening, my brother, like the mouth of an extinct volcano. Not one, not five Unfortunately, you number […]...
22. 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...
23. The Solution After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writers Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And […]...
24. Remembrance has a Rear and Front Remembrance has a Rear and Front ‘Tis something like a House It has a Garret also For Refuse and the Mouse. Besides the deepest Cellar That ever Mason laid Look to it by its Fathoms Ourselves be not pursued...
25. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
26. Sunday The mint bed is in Bloom: lavender haze Day. The grass is More than green and Throws up sharp and Cutting lights to Slice through the Plane tree leaves. And On the cloudless blue I scribble your name....
27. Sonnet LXVII: On Passing over a Dreary Tract Swift fleet the billowy clouds along the sky, Earth seems to shudder at the storm aghast; While only beings as forlorn as I, Court the chill horrors of the howling blast. Even round yon crumbling walls, in search of food, The ravenous Owl foregoes his evening flight, And in his cave, within the deepest wood, […]...
28. Of Consciousness, her awful Mate Of Consciousness, her awful Mate The Soul cannot be rid As easy the secreting her Behind the Eyes of God. The deepest hid is sighted first And scant to Him the Crowd What triple Lenses burn upon The Escapade from God...
29. Epilogue Those blessиd structures, plot and rhyme Why are they no help to me now I want to make Something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write With the threadbare art of my eye […]...
30. Unclean I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Psalm 102 The pelican in scripture is unclean. It pukes dead fish Onto the hatchlings, and it roosts alone, like Satan On the Tree of Life. Nobody told […]...
31. Far Within Us #5 The nights are running out of darkness Steel branches grasp The arms of passers-by Only anonymour chimneys Are free to walk the streets Which slice across our sleeplessness In the gutters our stars decay...
32. 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 […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. Dream Song 39: Goodbye, sir, & fare well. You're in the clear Goodbye, sir, & fare well. You’re in the clear. ‘Nobody’ (Mark says you said) ‘is ever found out.’ I figure you were right, Having as Henry got away with murder For long. Some jarred clock tell me it’s late, Not for you who went straight But for the lorn. Our roof is lefted off Lately: […]...
35. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
36. Some, too fragile for winter winds Some, too fragile for winter winds The thoughtful grave encloses Tenderly tucking them in from frost Before their feet are cold. Never the treasures in her nest The cautious grave exposes, Building where schoolboy dare not look, And sportsman is not bold. This covert have all the children Early aged, and often cold, Sparrow, unnoticed […]...
37. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
38. God gave a Loaf to every Bird God gave a Loaf to every Bird But just a Crumb to Me I dare not eat it tho’ I starve My poignant luxury To own it touch it Prove the feat that made the Pellet mine Too happy for my Sparrow’s chance For Ampler Coveting It might be Famine all around I could not […]...
39. Experiment to me Experiment to me Is every one I meet If it contain a Kernel? The Figure of a Nut Presents upon a Tree Equally plausibly, But Meat within, is requisite To Squirrels, and to Me....
40. I think just how my shape will rise I think just how my shape will rise When I shall be “forgiven” Till Hair and Eyes and timid Head Are out of sight in Heaven I think just how my lips will weigh With shapeless quivering prayer That you so late “Consider” me The “Sparrow” of your Care I mind me that of Anguish […]...