I breathed enough to take the Trick

Related poetry:

1. In falling Timbers buried In falling Timbers buried There breathed a Man Outside the spades were plying The Lungs within Could He know they sought Him Could They know He breathed Horrid Sand Partition Neither could be heard Never slacked the Diggers But when Spades had done Oh, Reward of Anguish, It was dying Then Many Things are fruitless […]...
2. Cherry bomb I said goodbye and went to bed to die; I never knew that they had lied – was quite Surprised they didn’t seem to care, I agonised, Refused to cry although in time the tears Were quietly shed. When I awoke and found My sight, listened to the sound of night’s Retreat, got to my […]...
3. The Truth is stirless The Truth is stirless Other force may be presumed to move This then is best for confidence When oldest Cedars swerve And Oaks untwist their fists And Mountains feeble lean How excellent a Body, that Stands without a Bone How vigorous a Force That holds without a Prop Truth stays Herself and every man That […]...
4. 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...
5. 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...
6. 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 […]...
7. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
8. The Winds Out of the West Land Blow The winds out of the west land blow, My friends have breathed them there; Warm with the blood of lads I know Comes east the sighing air. It fanned their temples, filled their lungs, Scattered their forelocks free; My friends made words of it with tongues That talk no more to me. Their voices, dying […]...
9. 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!...
10. 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...
11. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
12. The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
13. Meddlesome Matty One ugly trick has often spoil’d The sweetest and the best; Matilda, though a pleasant child, One ugly trick possess’d, Which, like a cloud before the skies, Hid all her better qualities. Sometimes she’d lift the tea-pot lid, To peep at what was in it, Or tilt the kettle, if you did But turn your […]...
14. 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, […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. A Shade upon the mind there passes A Shade upon the mind there passes As when on Noon A Cloud the mighty Sun encloses Remembering That some there be too numb to notice Oh God Why give if Thou must take away The Loved?...
18. 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 […]...
19. I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone The dogs greet me, I descend Into their world of fur and tongues And then my wife and I embrace As if we’d just closed the door In a motel, our two girls slip in Between us and we’re all saying Each other’s names and the dogs Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs, […]...
20. Montjuich “Hill of Jews,” says one, Named for a cemetery Long gone.”Hill of Jove,” Says another, and maybe Jove stalked here Once or rests now Where so many lie Who felt God swell The earth and burn Along the edges Of their breath. Almost seventy years Since a troop of cavalry Jingled up the silent road, […]...
21. I lived on Dread I lived on Dread To Those who know The Stimulus there is In Danger Other impetus Is numb and Vitalless As ’twere a Spur upon the Soul A Fear will urge it where To go without the Sceptre’s aid Were Challenging Despair....
22. In A Year Never any more, While I live, Need I hope to see his face As before. Once his love grown chill, Mine may strive: Bitterly we re-embrace, Single still. II. Was it something said, Something done, Vexed him? was it touch of hand, Turn of head? Strange! that very way Love begun: I as little understand […]...
23. A Baby Asleep after Pain As a drenched, drowned bee Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower, So clings to me My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears And laid against her cheek; Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk. My sleeping baby hangs upon my life, […]...
24. 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...
25. Denial is the only fact Denial is the only fact Perceived by the Denied Whose Will a numb significance The Day the Heaven died And all the Earth strove common round Without Delight, or Beam What Comfort was it Wisdom was The spoiler of Our Home?...
26. Of Course I prayed Of Course I prayed And did God Care? He cared as much as on the Air A Bird had stamped her foot And cried “Give Me” My Reason Life I had not had but for Yourself ‘Twere better Charity To leave me in the Atom’s Tomb Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb Than this […]...
27. Not any higher stands the Grave Not any higher stands the Grave For Heroes than for Men Not any nearer for the Child Than numb Three Score and Ten This latest Leisure equal lulls The Beggar and his Queen Propitiate this Democrat A Summer’s Afternoon...
28. Harold Arnett I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick, Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, Weak from the noon-day heat. A church bell sounded mournfully far away, I heard the cry of a baby, And the coughing of John Yarnell, Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, Then the violent voice of my wife: “Watch out, the potatoes […]...
29. Dumb Gabriel whispered in mine ear His archangelic poesie. How can I write? I only hear The sobbing murmur of the sea. Raphael breathed and bade me pass His rapt evangel to mankind; I cannot even match, alas! The ululation of the wind. The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit On every poet’s holy head; No […]...
30. The Inconsistent I say, “She was as good as fair,” When standing by her mound; “Such passing sweetness,” I declare, “No longer treads the ground.” I say, “What living Love can catch Her bloom and bonhomie, And what in newer maidens match Her olden warmth to me!” – There stands within yon vestry-nook Where bonded lovers sign, […]...
31. Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday You cannot see the walls that divide your hand From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it. You cannot see the walls because they are glass, And glass is nothing until you try to pass it. Beat on it if you like, but not too hard, For glass will break you […]...
32. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
33. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
34. I Held A Shelley Manuscript My hands did numb to beauty As they reached into Death and tightened! O sovereign was my touch Upon the tan-inks’s fragile page! Quickly, my eyes moved quickly, Sought for smell for dust for lace For dry hair! I would have taken the page Breathing in the crime! For no evidence have I wrung from […]...
35. Echo How sweet the answer Echo makes To music at night, When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes, And far away, o’er lawns and lakes, Goes answering light. Yet Love hath echoes truer far, And far more sweet, Than e’er beneath the moonlight’s star, Of horn or lute, or soft guitar, The songs repeat. ‘Tis […]...
36. The Octopi Jars Long-vacant eyes Now lodged in clear glass, A-swim with pale arms As delicate as angels’ … You are beyond all hope Of salvage now… And yet I would pause, No fear!, To once touch Your arcane beaks… I, more alien than you To this imprismed world, Notice, most of all, The scratches on the inside […]...
37. Letter to My Lover After Seven Years You gave me the child That seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poems, Five years of peace & two of pain. You gave me darkness, light, laughter & the certain knowledge That we someday die. You gave me seven years During which the cells of my […]...
38. Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers Ye poets ragged and forlorn, Down from your garrets haste; Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born, Not yet consign’d to paste; I know a trick to make you thrive; O, ’tis a quaint device: Your still-born poems shall revive, And scorn to wrap up spice. Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them […]...
39. A Hand-Mirror HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Outside fair costume-within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye-no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and […]...
40. The Martyr Poets did not tell The Martyr Poets did not tell But wrought their Pang in syllable That when their mortal name be numb Their mortal fate encourage Some The Martyr Painters never spoke Bequeathing rather to their Work That when their conscious fingers cease Some seek in Art the Art of Peace...