Baffled for just a day or two

Related poetry:

1. The Truro Bear There’s a bear in the Truro woods. People have seen it – three or four, Or two, or one. I think Of the thickness of the serious woods Around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds; I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles, The cranberry bogs. And the sky With its new moon, […]...
2. A Clock stopped A Clock stopped Not the Mantel’s Geneva’s farthest skill Can’t put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still An awe came on the Trinket! The Figures hunched, with pain Then quivered out of Decimals Into Degreeless Noon It will not stir for Doctors This Pendulum of snow This Shopman importunes it While cool concernless […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. The Naked Land A beast stands at my eye. I cook my senses in a dark fire. The old wombs rot and the new mother Approaches with the footsteps of a world. Who are the people of this unscaled heaven? What beckons? Whose blood hallows this grim land? What slithers along the watershed of my human sleep? The […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. It Nods and Curtseys and Recovers It nods and curtseys and recovers When the wind blows above, The nettle on the graves of lovers That hanged themselves for love. The nettle nods, the wind blows over, The man, he does not move, The lover of the grave, the lover That hanged himself for love....
8. At the Melting of the Snow There’s a sunny Southern land, And it’s there that I would be Where the big hills stand, In the South Countrie! When the wattles bloom again, Then it’s time for us to go To the old Monaro country At the melting of the snow. To the East or to the West, Or wherever you may […]...
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. The Spell Of The Yukon I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got it Came out with a fortune last fall, Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it, And somehow […]...
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. The Leaves like Women interchange The Leaves like Women interchange Exclusive Confidence Somewhat of nods and somewhat Portentous inference. The Parties in both cases Enjoining secrecy Inviolable compact To notoriety....
13. 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 […]...
14. Life in a Bottle Escape me? Never Beloved! While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue. My life is a fault at last, I fear: It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though I do […]...
15. Ezra on the Strike Wal, Thanksgivin’ do be comin’ round. With the price of turkeys on the bound, And coal, by gum! Thet were just found, Is surely gettin’ cheaper. The winds will soon begin to howl, And winter, in its yearly growl, Across the medders begin to prowl, And Jack Frost gettin’ deeper. By shucks! It seems to […]...
16. Life In A Love Escape me? Never – Beloved! While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue. My life is a fault at last, I fear – It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though […]...
17. 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!...
18. No Life can pompless pass away No Life can pompless pass away The lowliest career To the same Pageant wends its way As that exalted here How cordial is the mystery! The hospitable Pall A “this way” beckons spaciously A Miracle for all!...
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. Evening Oh! thou bright-beaming god, the plains are thirsting, Thirsting for freshening dew, and man is pining; Wearily move on thy horses Let, then, thy chariot descend! Seest thou her who, from ocean’s crystal billows, Lovingly nods and smiles? Thy heart must know her! Joyously speed on thy horses, Tethys, the goddess, ’tis nods! Swiftly from […]...
21. The Way Through the Woods They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove […]...
22. Hilaire Belloc – The South Country When I am living in the Midlands That are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in the evening: My work is left behind; And the great hills of the South Country Come back into my mind. The great hills of the South Country They stand along the sea; And it’s there walking in the […]...
23. 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 […]...
24. Come On In, The Senility Is Fine People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa, But you don’t have to live forever to become a grampa. The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild, You only have to live until your child has a child. From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder, Because sometimes you […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Afternoon On A Hill I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must […]...
27. Skunk Cabbage And now as the iron rinds over The ponds start dissolving, You come, dreaming of ferns and flowers And new leaves unfolding, Upon the brash Turnip-hearted skunk cabbage Slinging its bunches leaves up Through the chilling mud. You kneel beside it. The smell Is lurid and flows out in the most Unabashed way, attracting Into […]...
28. 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...
29. A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods He came. Out of the woods my […]...
30. I robbed the Woods I robbed the Woods The trusting Woods. The unsuspecting Trees Brought out their Burs and mosses My fantasy to please. I scanned their trinkets curious I grasped I bore away What will the solemn Hemlock What will the Oak tree say?...
31. October Ay, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a […]...
32. 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?...
33. TO SIR CLIPSBY CREW Since to the country first I came, I have lost my former flame; And, methinks, I not inherit, As I did, my ravish’d spirit. If I write a verse or two, ‘Tis with very much ado; In regard I want that wine Which should conjure up a line. Yet, though now of Muse bereft, I […]...
34. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. […]...
35. Fictitious line Smokes Of cigarettes And mugs Full of coffee, Next To the fictitious line Where the eddy Of words Leans against And nods, Wounded, To my silence....
36. February: The Boy Breughel The birches stand in their beggar’s row: Each poor tree Has had its wrists nearly Torn from the clear sleeves of bone, These icy trees Are hanging by their thumbs Under a sun That will begin to heal them soon, Each will climb out Of its own blue, oval mouth; The river groans, Two birds […]...
37. Our Boat Starts At Night Our boat starts at night From the beach of Yen Kuang. Great ships sail only for profit Only small boats come here because of your fame. The passers-by are embarrassed by your virtue. So in the night we steal by the place where you used to fish....
38. The Doves The house where I was born, Where I was young and gay, Grows old amid its corn, Amid its scented hay. Moan of the cushat dove, In silence rich and deep; The old head I love Nods to its quiet sleep. Where once were nine and ten Now two keep house together; The doves moan […]...
39. Are You the New person, drawn toward Me? ARE you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning-I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction? Do […]...
40. Ideals Snow-covered mountains, Ancient monuments, A north wind that nods to us, A thought that flows, Images imbued With hymns of history, Words on signs With ideals of geometry....