Francesca

Related poetry:

1. A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes; And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto […]...
2. The Ordinary Man If you and I should chance to meet, I guess you wouldn’t care; I’m sure you’d pass me in the street As if I wasn’t there; You’d never look me in the face, My modest mug to scan, Because I’m just a commonplace And Ordinary Man. But then, it may be, you are too A […]...
3. Tz'u No. 16 (Bajiao) Who planted the Bajiao tree under my windows? Its shade fills the courtyard; Its shade fills the courtyard… Leaf to leaf, heart to heart, Folding and unfolding, It expresses boundless affection. Sad and broken-hearted, lying awake on my pillow, Late into the night I hear the sound of rain. It drips and splashes, cool and […]...
4. Ordinary Love Indescribable our love and still we say With eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary way And tug the coverlet where once we lay, All suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white… Indescribably in love. Or so we say. Your hair’s blonde thicket now is tangle-gray; You turn your back; you murmur […]...
5. Ulster fancy shooting a man dead for an old label But think If there weren’t any old labels Nobody would ever be shot dead And all those poor people Whose livelihood depends on making guns Would have to be left to starve Make up your mind Who would you sooner see living men with bullets in […]...
6. The Klondike Never mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us; All we need now is the last way they looked at us. Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering – Twelve men or one man, ‘t will soon be all the same; For this is what we know: we […]...
7. Butterflies Eyes aloft, over dangerous places, The children follow the butterflies, And, in the sweat of their upturned faces, Slash with a net at the empty skies. So it goes they fall amid brambles, And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, Till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles, They wipe their brows and the hunting stops. […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Ordinary Miracles Spring, rainbows, Ordinary miracles About which Nothing new can be said. The stars on a clear night Of a New England winter; The soft air of the islands Along the old Spanish Main; Pirate gold shining In the palm; The odor of roses To the lover’s nose. . . There is no more poetry To […]...
10. Modern Love VI: It Chanced His Lips Did Meet It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool. She had no blush, but slanted down her eye. Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die: And most she punishes the tender fool Who will believe what honours her the most! Dead! is it dead? She has a pulse, and flow Of tears, the price of […]...
11. Of Him I Love Day and Night OF him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead; And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that place; And I dream’d I wander’d, searching among burial-places, to find him; And I found that every place was a burial-place; The houses full […]...
12. Tourists In a strange town in a far land They met amid a throng; They stared, they could not understand How life was sudden song. As brown eyes looked in eyes of grey Just for a moment’s space, Twin spirits met with sweet dismay In that strange place. And then the mob that swept them near […]...
13. The ordinary again (1) the ordinary You are not interested in me A receiver of food and a giver of shit My brain knuckled under I have rendered the skills of my Limbs to generations of caesars And caesar’s gods have siphoned off my spirit By day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers My own […]...
14. After the Sea-Ship AFTER the Sea-Ship-after the whistling winds; After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes, Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks, Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship: Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying, Waves, undulating waves-liquid, uneven, emulous waves, Toward that whirling current, […]...
15. Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath […]...
16. Stream Of Life The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day Runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth In numberless blades of grass And breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same […]...
17. In Cabin'd Ships at Sea 1 IN cabin’d ships, at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves-the large imperious waves-In such, Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine, Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or […]...
18. Looking-Glass River Smooth it glides upon its travel, Here a wimple, there a gleam O the clean gravel! O the smooth stream! Sailing blossoms, silver fishes, Pave pools as clear as air How a child wishes To live down there! We can see our colored faces Floating on the shaken pool Down in cool places, Dim and […]...
19. Light Light, my light, the world-filling light, The eye-kissing light, Heart-sweetening light! Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; The light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; The sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. […]...
20. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
21. Time Of Disturbance The best is, in war or faction or ordinary vindictive life, not to take sides. Leave it for children, and the emotional rabble of the streets, to back their horse or support a brawler. But if you are forced into it: remember that good and evil are as common as air, and like air shared […]...
22. Cosmopolitan Greetings To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates & International Bards 1986 Stand up against governments, against God. Stay irresponsible. Say only what we know & imagine. Absolutes are coercion. Change is absolute. Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Observe what’s vivid. Notice what you notice. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. If we don’t show anyone, we’re […]...
23. Troth with the Dead The moon is broken in twain, and half a moon Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; The other half of the broken coin of troth Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie. They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; I had […]...
24. Dorcas Gustine I was not beloved of the villagers, But all because I spoke my mind, And met those who transgressed against me With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing Nor secret griefs nor grudges. That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, Who hid the wolf under his cloak, Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. It is […]...
25. The Vernal Age WHERE the pheasant roosts at night, Lonely, drowsy, out of sight, Where the evening breezes sigh Solitary, there stray I. Close along the shaded stream, Source of many a youthful dream, Where branchy cedars dim the day There I muse, and there I stray. Yet, what can please amid this bower, That charmed the eye […]...
26. Far Rockaway Night till Morning WHAT can we say of the night? The fog night, the moon night, the fog moon night last night? There swept out of the sea a song. There swept out of the sea-torn white plungers. There came on the coast wind drive In the spit of a driven spray, On the boom of foam and […]...
27. The Tree I stood still and was a tree amid the wood, Knowing the truth of things unseen before; Of Daphne and the laurel bow And that god-feasting couple old That grew elm-oak amid the wold. ‘Twas not until the gods had been Kindly entreated, and been brought within Unto the hearth of their heart’s home That […]...
28. The Plunge I would bathe myself in strangeness: These comforts heaped upon me, smother me! I burn, I scald so for the new, New friends, new faces, Places! Oh to be out of this, This that is all I wanted – save the new. And you, Love, you the much, the more desired! Do I not loathe […]...
29. A Poison Tree I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I waterd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears: And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both […]...
30. Haunts THERE are places I go when I am strong. One is a marsh pool where I used to go with a long-ear hound-dog. One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there a moonlight night with a girl. The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these places when there is no […]...
31. The Hangman's Great Hands And all that is this day. . . The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. .. Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his Wife… Anger won’t help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was Being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us […]...
32. Five Bells Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship’s hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who […]...
33. Two Rivulets TWO Rivulets side by side, Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. For the Eternal Ocean bound, These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life, Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, The Real and Ideal, Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, (Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, […]...
34. Vanity (I) The fleet astronomer can bore And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind: He views theirs stations, walks from door to door, Surveys, as if he had designed To make a purchase there: he sees their dances, And knoweth long before, Both their full-eyed aspects, and secret glances. The nimble diver with his side Cuts […]...
35. The Lacking Sense Scene. A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale I “O Time, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours, As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, As of angel fallen from grace?” II – “Her look is but […]...
36. Douglass Ah, Douglass, we have fall’n on evil days, Such days as thou, not even thou didst know, When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways, And all the country heard thee with amaze. Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow, The awful tide that battled […]...
37. None who saw it ever told it None who saw it ever told it ‘Tis as hid as Death Had for that specific treasure A departing breath Surfaces may be invested Did the Diamond grow General as the Dandelion Would you serve it so?...
38. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain. . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while […]...
39. Epilogue Patience, little Heart. One day a heavy, June-hot woman Will enter and shut the door to stay. And when your stifling heart would summon Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay, Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies Flaming on after sunset, Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow […]...
40. Its little Ether Hood Its little Ether Hood Doth sit upon its Head The millinery supple Of the sagacious God Till when it slip away A nothing at a time And Dandelion’s Drama Expires in a stem....